Oh my gosh. This is like, the first story I written in ages. Haha I got an excuse though: Exams.

KBOW obviously, I hoped you guys will like this one. I think its cute, though I characterized Oliver a little differently than usual.

Enjoy.

This interesting fact surprised many. Most had presumed it would be Quidditch related, and even the closest of his friends were shocked to hear this confession. Undeniably though, Oliver Wood was socially-awkward, blunt, and suffered from the most unfortunate case of insensitivity and masochism (this list was supplied by the Weasleys).

"Of all the things you could wish to do with a tongue, You just had to choose the most boring answer, mate," Fred had told him, shaking his head.

His not-so-hidden talent for saying the wrong things at the wrong time have gotten him into more trouble then necessary. Snape always seemed to be present almost all the time he made an accidental slip, and this earned him plenty of detention, which made him swore. In return, the Potions professor just gave him even more detention.

It also seems that he was blessed with being tongue-tied at the most unfortunate moments. Words often failed him whenever he needed them most, like when the twins demanded why there was a Quidditch shrine in his room. He often struggled through such situations, especially when he was having a lone conversation with a certain chaser.

True, the gift of fluency would have been great, but his friends didn't seem to think that there was a necessary need for it. After all, He had a horde of fan-girls more than willing to hear him speak, so what more did he need the gift of gab for?

Still, Oliver would find it immensely useful in a lot of cases. Like, for example, last Tuesday during lessons in Defence Against the Dark Arts.

How Lockhart could even come up with such an absurd idea was beyond Oliver's comprehension. But nevertheless, he had managed to outdo himself by announcing in his class that he needed several volunteers to assist him for Valentine's Day. His idea, unfortunately, consisted of them walking around peddling kisses, and collecting money in exchange. All proceeds of this walking-kiss-booth-masquerading-as-charity idea would go to St Mungo's, although Oliver was convinced a large sum of it would go to purchasing liberal amount of hair products.

Lockhart seemed to have the ability to churn up schemes after schemes of very bad ideas and bestow it among the most unfortunate victims. Though not picked as a volunteer himself, some others were not as lucky. He had unpleasantly witnessed Lockhart walk past Angelina Johnson, Alicia Spinnet, and Katie Bell just as they were commenting on his Valentine's Day idea during lunch. Mistaking criticism for enthusiasm, the five-time-Witch-weekly-Most-Charming-Smile-Award-recipient immediately signed them up as volunteers, thanking them for their support.

This, for an instance, would be a highly useful time for Oliver to own a tongue or open his mouth. Instead, he had choked on a bread roll and started sputtering.

The girls, on the other hand, were not quite as adverse to the idea as he was. Long resigned to their fate, they didn't not seemed to have a problem when Lockhart suggested they don some colourful robes to highlight themselves as one of the volunteers. What seemed to worry him more though, was not how degrading the whole scheme seemed to be, but also the fact that Roger Davies had been eyeing Katie suggestively the whole week.

Katie was very, very pretty and it didn't take long for Oliver Wood to notice that. While not hormonal like the rest of the teenage guys in school, Oliver was not entirely immune to her charms. He had many a pleasant dreams about her long swishy brown waves and its owner, most of which ended quite explicitly and plastered ridiculous grins on his face. This freakish event was undiscovered by many, and Oliver chose to keep his feelings private… for the time being.

However, Oliver (as stated) did not have the gift of gab. Unlike the others, he found himself incapable to successfully carry out small talk with Katie Bell. Most of the time he would start faltering and she would stare at him with those lovely green eyes, which made the situation infinitely worse. He was rendered speechless most of the time, his mouth becoming dry and his brain malfunctioning.

Unfortunately for him too, all his coordination of limbs would stop working around her. His Quidditch reflex would fail him at this very timing, making him very vulnerable to melting onto the floor and turning into a puddle of water.

His legs would turn into jelly.

Of course, he had to put the cherry on top of the icing by stupidly saying that team-dating was highly forbidden.

Yes, to sum it up, Katie Bell was the type of girl who would attract a lot of unwanted male attention. So definitely, he was very much alarmed when Roger winked at her and told her he had been saving up galleons… literally. This placed Oliver in panic mode, and he spent many sleepless nights wondering why he didn’t have the gift of gab.

It was Valentine's Day now, and Oliver was very, very worried. Being socially-awkward handicapped him in many ways, such as this morning when Katie Bell walked down the stairs, looking extra pretty and particularly ravishing in red robes. It was only then did it occur to Oliver that he had to do something about it.

Something inside him snapped, and something inside him went through some kind of inner tumult.

Quite accidentally, he consulted the Weasley twins about it, to his deepest devastation when he realised his mistake.

"Too late, bro. Unless you can somehow prevent people from kissing her," George told him, smirking at the rather giddy Oliver, wondering how long has this been happening.

" Yeah," Fred added, too much distracted by Angelina to take as much perverse interest as usual. But then an idea went into his head. " You could always try our pilot product, Lov-"

Deciding rather than to risk having the Weasley's involvement and take direct action instead, he sprung up to his feet and immediately walked up to Katie, who looked at him rather puzzledly.

" I-I'll walk… down with you." To his surprise, Katie agreed and immediately started talking about Puddlemere's latest game.

Absurdly pleased that he managed to attain a certain level of fluency, he found himself yakking away with her, entering the Great Hall arguing happily about the match. However, he was not so lucky from here onwards. Roger Davies immediately accosted them at the door.

" A word with you, Katie?" He said, cocking his eyebrow and pulling her out of the hall and slamming the entrance door at Oliver, leaving him very much alone.

Now, more than ever, he wished that he was born with a silver tongue. He told the Weasley's so as he slowly sat down at the breakfast table.

" We would find a chance for you to do something better with it, Wood," George said when he heard the story, and the twins ran toward the entrance before Oliver had the chance to stop them.

It was a minute later did they return, with very large smirks on their face. Very suspicious.

"What did you do?" Oliver demanded, and before they had a chance to reply Katie sat gracefully down beside him, slightly flushed. He noticed her slipping a gold coin into her robe. He decided not to question them anymore, at least, in the presence of Katie.

Shortly after breakfast, Oliver offered to escort Katie to her next class.

" Why? I'm perfectly capable of walking to Potions myself." she asked, raising her eyebrows.

" It's… On the way to my class," he answered, flustered. Satisfied, the both of them walked toward the dungeons, and Oliver felt no need to tell her that his class was three floors above.

However, things did not always seem to go well with Oliver. Beyond the dungeon's door he spotted several students leering at Katie when she entered, and as he departed reluctantly, feeling rather sure that at least one of them would make an offer. He needed a new plan, he knew, and fast.

So, after being docked a couple of points from Professor McGonagall, he spent the next hour devising plans on how to distract Katie from them, pointedly not looking at several interested girls clad in coloured robes, choosing to ignore their advances.

His plans proved to be rather difficult to accomplish. Professor Lockhart's Valentine's Day scheme seemed to have almost no loopholes. With the long lines of giggling girls and surly-looking dwarfs blocking his way, he found it almost unmanageable to manoeuvre his way around the school. The over-pink-ishness of the decorations and confetti's gave him a headache.

His plans therefore were, of course, quite easily thwarted, especially with the whole bunch of persistant, over-zealous girls he bumped into at the hallway. In the end, he only managed to accompany the pretty chaser to two out of five more of her classes. Even then, he found himself having problems coming up with fresh excuses to the somewhat oblivious Katie, only managing to salvage the situation when a singing-dwarf happened to pass by for either of them.

"-all the wonderful things we can do, when I'm sitting on top of your Wood, oops, I mean, broom," sang a tone-deaf dwarf with a flourish, and he heard Katie burst into tears of laughter beside him.

" Stop it," Oliver told her as he chased the dwarf away, firmly trying to not let his knees give way when he saw how pretty Katie looked when she laughed.

" That must be the best song I heard about you all day." She insisted, still unable to stop her shoulders from shaking.

" At least they aren't as bad as the puns about 'Bell and how much your kisses you sell'," he countered, immensely delighted that he could make a comeback. Katie just rolled her eyes as she walked into her next class, leaving her Captain slightly dazed when she turned back and smiled.

Oliver Wood was now extremely worried. Extremely, extremely worried.

He had spent two hours looking for Katie, and yet she was nowhere in sight. On top of all, he spotted Roger fifteen minutes ago, looking complacent and walking around with a confident swagger. This made him alarmed, and he paced up and down the corridor, panicking. It was then he decided that he cannot suppress his feelings anymore: he will tell her the truth. Right.

Ten minutes later, he chickened out. Perhaps, he reasoned, it would be too rushed. It would scare her by being too hasty and abrupt. Perhaps it would be better if he just took out some of his savings and buy up her kisses. Yes, he would tell her it was to help her out, and there would be no awkward situation in her part, and maybe, just maybe, he would even be able to kiss her.

Yes. That was better. Quickly he ran up to the Common Room, determined to carry out his plan when he bumped into the lovely Bell herself. She was grinning. Immediately he felt his heart-attack returning.

" What?" he asked, hoping it didn't have anything to do with a certain Ravenclaw.

Nodding her head towards the couch, she replied " Fred and Angelina. He's going to bankrupt himself."

Turning his head to look, he saw indeed that the two said individuals were all over each other, kissing each other with too much enthusiasm than was allowed for public display.

"I see w-what you m-mean." He said, frowning as a bunch of confetti burst out nowhere and littered themselves all over their head. He could feel the tongue tying syndrome coming back to haunt him. Worst still, his courage had abandoned him and was now cowering somewhere under his bed.

" I have no idea how Fred is going to come up with the money," Katie continued, leaning back against the wall. " He himself should know best that this is just a commercial holiday to over-exploit people."

" What do you mean?" he asked, feeling slightly guilty as thoughts about his initial plans to buy her out was shoved immediately to the back of his head.

" Who do you think was selling those love-inducing sweets to the first years?" she said, slightly vexed as she tried sweeping off the huge amount of colourful confetti decorating her hair. Pausing for a moment, he finally helped her remove the last remaining confetti on her hair, causing her to freeze before recovering seconds later.

" You are acting very weirdly today, Oliver." She commented.

" How so?"

" You have been following me unusually close the whole day. In the past, we barely even manage to carry out a proper conversation. What is up with you?" she pressed, but Oliver didn't really manage to process her question. He was to busy staring at those wonderful green eyes.

He didn't know whether it was because he had been staring at them, or because he finally mustered the courage to admit his feelings. He didn't know what possess him to say what he said next.

" These robes really brings out the colour of your eyes." He blurted.

There was a pause, and Oliver felt his heart beating unusually fast (unusual for a fit athlete anyway). Then-

" Are you trying to say I have red eyes?" Katie asked, laughing.

His tongue. Again. This was why he wished he knew what to say at the right time. His stupid, stupid mouth.

" No! I mean - what I wanted to say is-" he fumbled, but finding that words were failing him again.

Laughing, Katie just shook her head and said "Never mind", leaning in towards him and drawing her height-

And there it was, all six-foot tall of social-awkwardness of him, standing in the Common Room, his lips pressed against the very girl he liked, and it felt good.

For the first time he knew exactly what to say to her.

" Wow." He said. "Wow."

" Wow." She echoed, smiling at the very red but happy Captain, choosing not to tell him about her plans to cancel her date with Davies tomorrow. "The twins told me this, by the way."

So that was why they hadn't done anything to him all day. Like, embarrass the hell out of him or tied him and Katie together. He had been wondering.

But this didn't really matter anymore. All that mattered was that Katie was smiling at him.

" How much would a kiss like that cost?" he asked before he could process what he said, fully prepared to break his piggy bank in his room.

As usual, he sounded stupid and awkward, and even he winced at his words when he realised what he said, but Katie didn't care.

" It's free of charge for you, Captain," she told him, leaning in once more.

This time, Oliver knew exactly what to do with his tongue.

This is dedicated to Ash, or just. a. contradiction to you guys. This is to thank her for being a wonderful friend and beta, even though I didn't let her beta this cos its meant to be a surprise. So that's why its so full of grammatical error.

I hope you guys like it, and I beg you all to please, please please REVIEW.