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Penny Haywood had been a Quidditch fan ever since she could remember. In fact, one of her earliest memories consisted of her parents discussing the League results over breakfast, her mother brimming with excitement and her father rolling his eyes. Penny had always shared her mother’s excitement for the sake of it, but for the longest time the true appeal of Quidditch had somewhat eluded her.
When the Haywoods moved to Wigtown, a small town in Southern Scotland, things changed for Penny. On match days the whole of magical Wigtown was united in support of the Wigtown Wanderers, the local Quidditch club. People were cheering and mourning with them, treating the players of this tradition laden team like heroes. Most important among them were, of course, the Parkins.
During every match Penny studied the Parkins, committing their names and faces, their positions and favourite moves to memory. She was proud every time she saw a Parkin’s Pincer being executed, almost like she was a part of this legendary family herself. When she learned that Ethan Parkin, her idol and most successful of the Parkins, had a daughter the same age as herself, Penny was barely able to contain her excitement.
On her first day at Hogwarts, Penny kept looking out for Skye Parkin, but all she heard were rumours, one of them being that Ethan Parkin had dropped his daughter off at school on a broomstick. When a stocky girl with freckles and flashy black and bluehair sat on the podium in the Great Hall to be Sorted, Penny shrieked and clapped as Skye Parkin was proclaimed a Hufflepuff. She couldn’t believe she was going to be friends with a Parkin - the Skye Parkin - because one thing was for sure: Friends they were going to be.
But as it turned out, Skye wasn’t as easy to befriend as Penny would have liked. Everybody in her year was enamoured by Penny’s natural charm and it wasn’t long until she had become profoundly popular. Skye, however, didn’t care for any offer of friendship extended to her; she was acting elusive and arrogant, making it clear from the beginning that she wanted nothing to do with any of them, however much Penny was trying to convince her otherwise.
None of the other girls sharing the dormitory with Penny and Skye were particularly fazed by Skye’s behaviour. Lizzie Jameson, a lively girl Penny quickly had become friends with, pointed out that maybe Skye just didn’t share the same interests as them. Nothing they could do about it, really - after all, Skye couldn’t be forced to be their friend.
In the beginning of their second year, however, things began to change. No one was surprised when Skye made it onto the Hufflepuff house team with flying colours. With a Parkin being back on the Hogwarts pitch, she was the talk of the school and gradually, Skye started opening up. More often than not she was heard boasting about her skills or her family, but she still kept mostly to herself.
Shortly before the first house match of the season Penny dragged her friend Lizzie to watch a Hufflepuff practice match. When a rogue Bludger shot towards the two cheering girls in the stands, Skye stepped in at the last minute to save their faces - literally and figuratively. Lizzie went to thank Skye afterwards and returned hours later with a spark in her eye Penny had never seen on her before.
The rest, as they say, was history.
With Lizzie being part of the Hufflepuff team as well, Skye had no choice but to be dragged into Lizzie’s circle of friends. Through Lizzie, Skye and Penny began interacting more and more but somehow Penny could never quite shake the thought that Skye was really just enjoying the attention she was willing to bestow on her.
Still, it wasn’t a far stretch to say that Penny was proud of her friendship with Skye. She was the most famous friend she’d ever had and even though Skye was prickly and unlikeable at times, Penny refused to let anyone talk badly about her; she was a Parkin after all.
Over the course of the years, their friendship deepened. Penny could be counted on to cheer for Skye and Lizzie during their matches and she was there to offer comfort and distraction whenever they lost.
Every time Lizzie and Skye were fighting - which was more often than Penny would have liked - it felt like a knife was being twisted inside her heart. Penny was thriving off harmony and there was nothing she wanted more than her friends - one of them being the embodiment of everything she admired - to be on speaking terms again.
When Skye would tell stories about her family, Penny positively hung onto her every word. When she got the chance to meet Skye’s father Ethan Parkin in their fourth year, she couldn’t believe her luck; having the chance to talk to him and get his signature on her copy of The Wonder of Wigtown Wanderers was like her birthday, Christmas and Easter had fallen on the same day.
The high of meeting her hero was followed by a deep, deep low at the beginning of their fifth year. After Skye got hit by a wave of Amortentia during Potions class, Penny was worried about her prolonged absence. She went to their dorm between classes to check on Skye and found her lying on her bed, staring dreamy-eyed at the yellow canopy above it. When Penny called out to her, Skye giggled like a little girl.
“Skye,” Penny asked tentatively, taken aback by her very un-Skye-like reaction, “are you alright?”
“Of course,” Skye sighed, “how could I not be, now that you’re here?”
Penny blinked in surprise. “We’d better get you to the Hospital Wing. An overdose of Amortentia is no joke.”
Skye rolled onto her stomach and looked at Penny, head tilted to the side. “If you say so. No one knows as much about potions as you do.”
“Thank you for the compliment, but Professor Snape probably knows a lot more about potioneering than I do.”
“Snape can go sit in a dirty cauldron,” Skye snorted. Despite herself, Penny had to giggle at the notion, hiding her laugh behind her hand. Skye’s eyes went wide.
“Such a pretty laugh,” she breathed.
Penny’s laughter turned from amused to bewildered. “Uhm, thank you.”
Skye pushed herself into a sitting position, playing with the frayed hem of her school robes. “No, really. It sounds like tiny bells, the ones you put on sledges at Christmas.”
Penny’s smile was beginning to fade. “Skye, are you sure you’re alright?”
“Can you say that again?”
“Say what again?”
“My name. It sounds so nice when you say it. Skye,” she said, frowning when her own name didn’t sound the same when she was saying it herself. “Skye, Skye, Skye. How do you say it to make it sound so pretty?”
“Skye, I’m really starting to worry about you.”
Skye dropped her eyes to the yellow quilt on her bed. “You’re always caring about other people, even me.” She abruptly looked up again, the expression in her green eyes bemused. “Why are you so nice to me?”
Penny furrowed her brow. “Because we’re friends, silly. I like you.”
“You do?”
“Of course I do,” Penny smiled, “who wouldn’t love the Skye Parkin?”
“You really do?” Skye asked again, her tone strangely intent.
Penny was finding her friend’s behaviour increasingly odd. “What’s the matter with you, Skye?”
Skye only hummed in response; Penny could practically see her thoughts racing inside her head.
“Skye?”
“Go out with me.”
Penny would have expected a lot, but Skye’s blurted out words caught her completely off guard. Blinking several times, her mouth dropped open. “What?”
“Go out with me,” Skye repeated. Penny was looking for any sign that she was joking, but found only sincerity on Skye’s face. Her heart sank.
“Godric, Skye,” she said very softly, bracing herself for what she knew she would have to say next. “I am so, so sorry, but that was not what I meant just now. I love you, but as a friend. I am not into girls. I’m really very sorry.”
The succession of emotions flickering over Skye’s face was one Penny had had to witness many times before. Skye’s expression changed from hopeful to hurt to embarrassed within a matter of seconds, before she drew up her walls again, hiding her thoughts behind a mask of forced casualness.
“Oh, yeah, sure. Smashing. Forget about it then. We got Herbology next, right? Gotta run, see you there.” She jumped off her bed, pushed past Penny and positively fled the dormitory.
Penny was flabbergasted when she joined her friends at lunch in the Great Hall; of all things in the world, Skye having a crush on her was the one thing she’d never have expected. Sure, she had always gushed about Skye and all, but the possibility that she would jump to such a false conclusion had never even occurred to Penny. She couldn’t remember ever feeling more miserable.
Her feeling of guilt only increased when Penny found out that the reason Lizzie and Skye had begun fighting again was what had gone down between her and Skye as well. Lizzie begged her to go and talk to Skye to help mend things, but Penny was too scared to do so. The situation was her fault, after all; how could she of all people be the one to make Skye feel better?
And so the icy silence in their dorm carried on. Penny missed Skye’s rough humour and burning determination; it was Skye, her friend, she wished would return back to her normal self rather than Skye Parkin, the Quidditch prodigy. It slowly began dawning on her that maybe they weren’t the same person after all.
It wasn’t until the party in the Hufflepuff common room after the match against Ravenclaw that things were slowly starting to get better. Lizzie had taken a heart and went over to Skye with a butterbeer and an offer of peace. Penny was nervous when Skye came to speak to her afterwards. Her apprehensiveness quickly dissolved into nothingness, however, when Skye apologised before Penny even had the chance to get a word out.
“Sorry I misunderstood things. Hope we can just move on and forget it. Act like nothing happened, alright?” Skye muttered awkwardly. “I don’t have a big bunch of mates, can’t really afford to lose one of my best ones, aye?”
Penny was relieved to hear Skye was ready to move on. It had taken them some time but after the first step had been done, their friendship slowly began to normalise again.
Looking back, their fifth year had been quite eventful for each and every one of Penny and her friends. But despite everything that had happened, what mattered was that now, well into their sixth year, their friendship was stronger than ever.
Penny was abruptly broken out of her thoughts by Lizzie calling her name. Judging by the impatient tone in her voice, it wasn’t the first time that she had done so.
“Hey, Earth calling Penny! Are you coming or not?”
Momentarily confused, Penny blinked. “Coming where?”
Lizzie rolled her eyes, holding up the Quaffle she was carrying under her arm. “Down to the lake. Skye and I want to practise some trick shots. You said you wanted to come.” A grin stole onto her face. “Don’t tell me you’d miss out on an opportunity to spend some time with me and the Skye Parkin.”
But much to Lizzie’s surprise, Penny shook her head. “Sorry but I’ll have to pass you on that.”
Clearly not having expected this answer, Lizzie’s eyes went wide. “What? Why?”
“I don’t need to spend time with you and the Skye Parkin,” Penny chuckled at her friend’s bewilderment. She got up and linked arms with Lizzie, laughing lightly as she walked with her to the exit of the common room. “I’d much rather spend time with you and Skye. Just Skye.”