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bedlamsbardTitle: There Are No Heroes Here
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bedlamsbard
Fandom: Harry Potter
Characters: Oliver Wood
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 6842
Summary: When Harry Potter finally kills Voldemort, two years, nine months, and three days later, Oliver is in St. Mungo’s again, sedated, restrained, and finally broken. When he gets out, he stands on the sidewalk of Diagon Alley, staring at the happy shattered remains of his civilization.
Author's Notes: This is not a story about Harry Potter. This is not a story about Draco Malfoy. This is a story about Oliver Wood, and what happens after a war that lasted eight years longer than anyone ever expected. Since dates occasionally pop up in here, this assumes that the war officially began after OotP (1996) and ended eight years later in 2004. Takes place in the same universe as "Lust" and "Figuring Strategies." See other notes at the end.
Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
The Ministry cancels all professional Quidditch three months into the second year of the war. Oliver and his teammates get shuffled off into various Ministry departments depending on their talents; Oliver eventually ends up with the Aurors, who at this point in time don’t care about anyone NEWT scares, just their ability to stay alive. Oliver goes through two months of extremely sped-up training and kills his first man on his twenty-second birthday. He celebrates by getting extremely plastered and waking up in bed with a chronically depressed George Weasley (Fred has been dead seven months yesterday).
Harry Potter is missing. Nobody’s seen him in a year and a half. The war is dragging on longer than anyone had ever expected. There are no heroes, not now: just men, and soldiers who do what they must. Oliver lasts a year longer than his colleagues predicted and then snaps; spends three days sedated and restrained in St. Mungo’s before he wakes to the realization that he’s been shattering the bones in his wrists and ankles faster than the Mediwizards can mend them (Healers are for real injuries, not Aurors with broken nerves). Ruby Broadmoor tells him he was screaming orders to a Quidditch team ten years gone, then pauses and finally adds that he cried for a dead man.
Three years to the day after Puddlemere United was disbanded, Harry Potter walks into the relocated Ministry of Magic, which takes up most of Hogwarts castle. He has two shadows, as always, but only one was there eight years ago. Hermione Granger walks with a pronounced limp, fingers locked tight around her wand; Ron Weasley is nowhere in sight, but Draco Malfoy has taken his place. The entire squad of Aurors currently in the castle stops and stares at him – Death Eater! is on the tip of every tongue, but nobody says the words. Malfoy raises his chin and stares over their heads, gray eyes cold and a little frightened, and when his sleeves fall back Oliver can se the white scars on his wrist that look like they’re from a burn. He gets a better look later; they’re in the exact shape of an oval with the Slytherin serpent inside. Moody takes Harry and Malfoy away into his office, while George comes tearing out of the office he and Oliver share to take Hermione in his arms. Oliver watches for a moment, then turns his back and goes back to his job.
When Harry Potter finally kills Voldemort, two years, nine months, and three days later, Oliver is in St. Mungo’s again, sedated, restrained, and finally broken. When he gets out, he stands on the sidewalk of Diagon Alley, staring at the happy shattered remains of his civilization.
He takes the first Portkey out of Britain.
-
Cascade Academy of Magic serves the wizarding population of North America’s Pacific Northwest. The school is smaller than Hogwarts, located just outside a wizarding town on the east side of the Cascade mountains, in country that looks nothing whatsoever like Scotland. Oliver applies for and gets the Charms position, then has to spend the next week digging through his old textbooks to try and come up with a curriculum. It’s only the day before students are due to arrive that he realizes he shouldn’t be teaching out of Hogwarts textbooks and his students will have had to had their Charms textbooks special-ordered from Britain.
Cascade students aren’t Sorted, for which Oliver is grateful, but Oliver is introduced to the school at dinner and has his first, unnerving experience of being referred to as “Professor Wood, your new Charms teacher.” Flitwick, he thinks fleetingly, but he’s ten years out of Hogwarts and not in Scotland any more.
His first class of the day is Freshman Charms. The room is wide and airy, the big desk by the window empty (he hasn’t had time to settle in yet; he’s been working out of the tiny office they’ve given him). Oliver flings open the windows and sees the Quodpot pitch outside. It’s enough like a Quidditch pitch that he stares at it for a moment, nostalgic, then flicks his wand so that thin cotton curtains cover the windows and block the view.
His students file in five minutes later. Most of them are wary and all of them are curious. Oliver stands up and moves to the front of the room, acutely aware of all the eyes on him.
“Hallo,” he says self-consciously. He doesn’t think there’s that much accent in his voice, but there must be, because several girls’ eyes widen immediately.
“Oooh,” one of them hisses to her friend. “He sounds just like Dominic Monaghan. That is so hot.”
Oliver has no idea who Dominic Monaghan is, but he clears his throat like he remembers Professor McGonagall doing. “I’m Professor Oliver Wood,” he continues, “and I’ll be your new Charms professor. Before we get started, does anyone have any questions?”
Hands shoot up. Oliver picks one at random. “Yes, Mister –”
“Jack Jameson,” the boy says. “Where did you graduate from?”
“Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, class of 1994,” Oliver says, and points. “You.”
“Where are you from?”
He presses his lips together. “Scotland,” he says shortly, realizing that he shouldn’t have opened the doors he did. “Anything important? Yes, you.”
“What did you do before you came to the U.S.?”
Oliver is starting to get a headache, and the beginnings of a panic attack he hasn’t had since he took that Portkey out of London. “Things.”
“What?”
“I worked for the Ministry of Magic,” he says. Not I played Quidditch or I killed people or I fought in a war, but something that shouldn’t raise too many eyebrows. The war in Britain isn’t something that gained a lot of press overseas. Voldemort didn’t care about the rest of the world; they never cared about him.
He tries to ignore the way his hands are shaking, as well as the other raised hands. “All right,” he says, trying to channel McGonagall again. “Let’s see what you know.”
-
Cascade’s Quodpot teams, varsity and junior varsity and C teams, play other wizarding schools in North America. Oliver is in his classroom grading papers one day when he opens the windows for air, sees the flash of movement in the air, the clean, smooth lines of a broom in flight, and is aching for the feel of wood between his fingers before he’s quite aware of what he’s doing. The next thing he knows is aching despair, residual pain in his once-shattered wrists, phantom blood streaming down his face, flesh beneath his fingers, and the fact that he’s on the floor beneath his desk with his wand out and a Shield Charm up around him.
He doesn’t open the windows in the evening again.
-
Professor Bloom, the Herbology teacher, bounces into his classroom the first Saturday of the year with two broomsticks in her hand. She doesn’t notice the way Oliver recoils.
“The faculty and the upperclassmen play Quodpot every Saturday,” she tells him cheerfully. “Applied magic versus academic. It’s fun; you’ll love it. Quodpot’s easy to pick up.”
“No,” Oliver says flatly.
She looks startled. “Everyone does it,” she says. “Even Neal –” the Transfiguration professor, whose name Oliver recognized his first week at Cascade from the ranks of the Sweetwater All-Stars a million years ago “– you can fly, can’t you? It’s really easy to learn.”
Oliver remembers wood breaking beneath his fingers, smooth dead skin under his hands, blood dripping off the tips of his hair. “I don’t fly,” he says.
-
He stays away from the pitch the rest of the year, right up until the end of June, where Dr. Waters approaches him to ask about teaching the summer quarter.
“It’s mostly just electives,” she says. “Not core curriculum. You’ve taught some interesting charms this year; I was wondering if you wanted to do a class on them this summer.”
Oliver has nothing else to do. No power on Earth can make him set foot in England again. “All right,” he says.
-
He teaches a class on elemental charms out on the lawn on the other side of the school. It’s a small class, only about a dozen upperclassmen (seniors and juniors), and they’re all eager to hear what he has to say.
One day, late in the semester, in the middle of August, one of his students messes up a wind charm and creates a clap of displaced air that sounds too much like one of the curses Bellatrix Lestrange was fond of using. The next thing Oliver knows he’s flat on his stomach on the ground, wand out, Shield Charm over the entire class as he scans the sky and the trees for Death Eaters.
His students are utterly silent as Oliver remembers the war is over and the Death Eaters are gone, all gone, and stands up. “Class dismissed,” he says, voice hoarse. “We’ll continue tomorrow.”
The rumors start less than an hour later. The Muggleborn students are absolutely convinced he’s either MI-6 or Special Forces (not that Oliver has any idea what they’re talking about), while the pureblood and halfbloods tell them that obviously, pureblood British wizard, clearly worked in the Office of International Espionage. Another pureblood flatly forestalls the conversation by reminding his classmates that Oliver comes from Britain, and they just finished a damn war.
“Are you kidding?” Schneider says. “No wonder Wood reacted the way he did. He probably spent the last couple years fighting over in England.”
Oliver walks away, silent in the halls.
-
The third week of his fourth year at Cascade, Hoffman, the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor, calls in sick. Oliver thinks nothing of it until Dr. Waters comes tearing into his classroom in the middle of his Introduction to Charms class.
“Oliver,” she says, as his second years – seventh graders – stare at her in bewilderment. “I need you to take Fritz’s Defense classes.”
“No,” Oliver says.
“Nobody else is qualified to teach the class,” Waters says. Oliver can hear the words she’s not saying: Nobody else has actually had to use anti-Dark Arts spells. Nobody else has killed people with their wands. “I can take your beginning Charms classes, but Fritz has a nasty bug and he’ll be on his back for the better part of a month.”
“Dr. Waters –”
“Oliver,” she tells him flatly. “You’re taking the class, starting next period.”
-
Next period is Advanced Defense Against the Dark Arts. Oliver is still pissed off about the fact that DADA is an elective, not a required class. He recognizes his juniors and seniors in the class, all mixed together, all of whom look surprised to see him there.
“Professor Hoffman is ill,” he tells the class to forestall any questions. “I’ll be taking the class until he’s on his feet again.”
One of his seniors raises her hand. “Professor Wood?” she says. “Did you study Defense Against the Dark Arts at Hogwarts?”
Oliver grits his teeth. “At Hogwarts,” he says, “Defense Against the Dark Arts is a required subject and yes, I studied it every day of my life from my first year to my seventh year, and then needed to use it after I graduated.”
He only realizes after he’s said it that he never meant to admit that last part.
Hoffman left no notes whatsoever on his desk, but Oliver knows him, knows that he doesn’t know anything about what it’s really like to face Dark wizards. So he gets to the front of the room and charms the whiteboard clean, then picks up a dry erase marker and starts writing.
“The Unforgivables,” he says, when he’s done. “The use of any one of them when not Ministry-sanctioned is enough to earn a life sentence in Azkaban. Azkaban,” he adds, forestalling Lieberman’s question, “is the wizarding prison in Britain. Very nasty place. You wouldn’t want to be there. Cruciatus. Imperius. And Avada Kedavra.”
He can feel the class go completely cold.
“Crucio,” he says quietly, “is a torture curse. Imperio lets you control anyone that doesn’t have the willpower to repel it. And Avada Kedavra kills instantly.”
Daniels raises her hand. “Are you going to show them to us, Professor Wood?”
Oliver nearly stops breathing for a moment. “Absolutely not,” he says when he can think again. “For one thing, they’re highly illegal. For another –”
Hakamura interrupts. “Not in the U.S.,” he says. “Second Amendment covers Dark curses too.”
“Is your country fucking insane?” Oliver says before his brain can catch up with his mouth, and the class lets out little titters of indignation.
He slides his eyes shut and keeps them there, trying to blank out the memories that come whenever he thinks of the Unforgivables. The Lestranges. Greyback. Snape. Zabini. Flint. Oliver has to force himself to stop thinking and just stand there, breathe in and out, remind himself that the war’s over and he’s free.
He opens his eyes to find the class is staring at him. Oliver takes a deep breath, can hear the rasp in his voice. “Anyone ever tries to cast an Unforgivable on you, it’s just another curse. Remember that. You can still duck it. You can block it. Aim well, cast another spell at the same time, they’ll angle off each other. You don’t want to do that unless you’re good at Arithmancy and can calculate the angles, or unless you’re completely surrounded.”
“Have you ever had to, Professor Wood?” Jameson says. He’s never known when to stop.
Oliver shuts his eyes again, then opens them. “Yes,” he says flatly, then turns around to scribble on the board again, underneath the names of the Unforgivables. He can feel the wide eyes of his students on his back. When he’s finished writing, he turns back toward his class and steps aside so the board is clear.
“Use of Unforgivables by the government in times of war or great social upheaval,” he says, and he only knows these phrases because of the bloody politics involved in working for the Ministry. “Discuss.”
There’s a moment of wide-eyed silence, and then Hakamura raises his hand.
Oliver points at him. “Go on,” he says, and what Hakamura says gives the rest of the class courage to start talking.
-
Three weeks later, Dr. Waters finds him in his office, where’s he’s sitting and going over a pile of Intermediate Defense Against the Dark Arts papers with a red pen (he’s finally broken the lifelong habit of using quill and ink; besides, Muggle pens are simpler).
“Oliver,” she says, pushing the door open without knocking, “I’d like to take you off the underclassman charms classes and put you on DADA permanently.”
Oliver puts his quill down and caps the ink bottle. “What about Hoffman?” he asks.
Waters takes the seat across from him without even asking. “Frankly, Oliver, you’re a better teacher than he is. He got shoehorned into the job because there was no one else to take it “ She pauses a moment. “Actually, he was in the running for the Charms position before you applied.”
“Why didn’t he get it?” Oliver asks, knowing that Hoffman has been teaching longer than he has.
“I can’t tell you that,” Waters says, but she looks at Oliver with enough pity in her eyes that he knows the only reason he got hired was because of the novelty. “But if you’re willing to take the classes permanently – Introduction, Intermediate, and Advanced – I’ll put Fritz on the underclassman Charms classes, and you can teach DADA and upperclassman Charms.”
“Why?”
And Waters comes out and says it. “Because you’ve been there, Oliver. And no one else at Cascade has. I want my students to go out into the world knowing something that will keep them alive.”
Oliver closes his eyes. Thinks of all the people seven years of Defense Against the Dark Arts didn’t keep alive.
And the ones it did.
“All right,” he says. “I’ll do it.”
-
By the time his Advanced Defense Against the Dark Arts students come to class on Monday – his classroom, the Charms room, not the Defense one, which Hoffman will turn to underclassman Charms now – they’ve all heard. They sit down in their usual seats and look at Oliver. Silent, waiting. He’s been teaching Defense for almost a month now.
They’re all waiting for him to speak, make some official statement about, “this is the way it’s going to be.” Instead he puts down one last mark on Delia Eldridge’s Intermediate Charms paper (“B” – he’s finally gotten used to the grading scale used in America) and stands up.
“Jameson, O’Neill, Rodriguez,” he says. “Hakamura, McKay, Bloom. Daniels, Lieberman, MacKenzie. Ellers, Sasaki, Chen. Dostoevsky, Piper, Van Der Ryn. Young, Cahill, Wahle.”
It takes the class a minute or so to realize he’s actually referring to groups, and they split up and separate into the trios he’s named. Once they’re there, Oliver flicks his wand and various objects appear on desks in front of all the groups. They’re seemingly random – old Coke bottles, pens, reports from the last staff meeting, boots – the sort of items used for Portkeys back in Britain. His students stare at them blankly.
“You’re wizards for the Department of Magical Law Enforcement and these objects have been Owled to your desks. You don’t know what they are. Find out.” And he steps back toward his desk as everyone looks at him, the objects, and each other.
The first one goes off fifteen minutes later. Oliver’s not actually sure what Ellers’ group did to trigger it early, but he looks at them, flat on their arses with beards growing down from their chins, and points toward the door. “Think about what you might have done,” he says. “The beards will be gone in ten minutes. Come back in half an hour. Don’t leave the building,” he adds as an automatic afterthought.
They leave, looking disgruntled, and Oliver points his wand at the battered copy of Shakespeare’s sonnets and watches it fly back to his desk. He waves his wand again, takes the charm off, and turns around to bark at his class, “Nobody said stop! And Lieberman – every curse is different.”
Lieberman lowers her wand, looking put out.
Oliver leans back in his chair, watches his students, reminds them, “You don’t know how much time you have,” and thinks that he may actually have something here.
-
Professor Zelenka, the History of Magic teacher, finds him sometime in the last few weeks of school. He’s settled back in his desk with a book, all his grading done, and contrary to popular opinion among his students, he does not, in fact, spend all his free time thinking up ways to torture them.
“Oliver,” she says briskly, reminding more of McGonagall than Binns, “I’d like you to come in and talk to my Modern Magical History class.”
Oliver puts his book down slowly. “No,” he says, because she can only be talking about one thing.
Zelenka looks at him with something like kindness in her blue eyes. “I know it’s hard for you to think about,” she says. “I – my uncle was in Vietnam. He goes the same way I’ve seen you do – flashbacks, moments when you’re not really here.”
Oliver bites his lip so hard he tastes blood and looks down.
Zelenka makes a move like she’s about to reach out towards him and then thinks better of it. “You don’t have to talk to my class,” she amends. “I’d like you to, very much, but if it’s too – painful, too soon – I’d still like you to just sit in on a class.”
Oliver can’t meet her eyes, but he manages to surprise himself when he says, “All right.”
-
Modern Magical History is made up of seniors and juniors, the odd sophomore and freshman scattered among the upperclassmen, and all of them know Oliver. Most of them are smart enough to guess why he’s here as well. Only the underclassmen look surprised when he takes a seat near the back of the room and listens.
Zelenka is a good teacher. Her hands fly through the air as she speaks, picking up near the end of the story.
“By the year 2004 the British wizarding community had been devastated. Over half the population had been killed by Lord Voldemort’s Death Eaters or by the Ministry of Magic. Many British citizens – mainly those with children still of school age – left the country to start anew in mainland Europe. Some came to America, some to Australia, others went even farther abroad.
“The Ministry itself suffered a seventy-nine percent casualty rate. The Aurors Office itself lost ninety percent of its people –”
And Oliver blanks out at that, sits there with his eyes shut tight. He comes back to itself as Zelenka begins on what’s become known as the Great Betrayal.
“In April of that year, Ginevra Weasley, one time love interest of Harry Potter –”
Oliver stands up and walks out of the room. He worked with Ginny in the Ministry. Was one of the Aurors she brought down. Knows the story. He doesn’t need to hear this.
He waits until he thinks Zelenka must have exhausted everything that’s known about the Great Betrayal, then slips back inside the room. Apparently she hadn’t known as much about Ginny as Oliver had thought.
“With two of Voldemort’s top operatives dead –”
Oliver listens, quietly, blanks out the parts he can’t stand, and then Zelenka turns on the stereo she has in a corner of the room.
“This is a copy of the October 31 radio broadcast,” she says, and Oliver goes absolutely, completely still.
“Good morning, England, this is Lee Jordan reporting from – well, I’d tell you where I’m reporting from, but then I’d have to kill you –” and his voice is just light enough that it’s a joke instead of a threat and Oliver remembers him, not just from the war but from Hogwarts, commentating his Quidditch matches and oh God, he wants to throw up, can taste the bile in the back of his throat and the blood where he’s bitten clear through his lip.
“– lists of the dead. Bertha Jorkins. Bartemius Crouch, Sr. Cedric Diggory. Sirius Black.”
Cedric. Oliver can’t do this any more, can’t expose himself to this, this history, not this. He’d listened to the annual memorial broadcast every year for seven years. This is the world he left. Somehow he can’t get up the will to leave, though, just sit there and listen, fists clenched so tightly he’s leaving grooves in his palms.
“Frederick Weasley. Verity St. John. Edmund Dawlish. Zacharias Smith. Nymphadora Tonks.”
Oliver closes his eyes, wants to curl in on himself and scream his head off, wants another chance at life.
“Ronald Weasley. Pansy Parkinson. Penelope Clearwater. Amos Diggory. Gwenog Jones.”
The list goes on for far too long.
The last names are, as always, the ones that hurt the most.
“Alleyne Cadwallader. Aiden Lynch. Percy Weasley. Molly Weasley. Arthur Weasley. William Weasley. Viktor Krum. Angelina Johnson. Alicia Spinnet. Cho Chang. Katelyn Bell. Roger Davies. Demelza Robbins.”
Oliver was there. He should have died.
Zelenka flicks her wand at the stereo to turn it off and looks at him, waiting with her eyebrows raised. If she knew Occlumency, she’d probably be telling him, You don’t have to, but I’d like you to.
Oliver stands up and moves to the front of the room. The eyes of every student in the class follow him.
“I think you all know me,” he says, and several people nod. “For those that don’t, I’m Professor Oliver Wood and I teach Charms and Defense Against the Darks Arts here. I was also a student at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry from 1986 to 1994. And,” he hesitates, but only for a moment, “I was also an Auror for the British Ministry of Magic during the Second Voldemort War.”
The class is silent. They’ve all known this for months now, but Oliver has never said it before.
He takes a deep breath. “I think you know that Voldemort rose again in June of 1995. The War didn’t officially start until after the battle in the Ministry of Magic the next year, though. In 1998, the Ministry ordered all professional Quidditch teams suspended. At the time – at the time I was playing Keeper for Puddlemere United. The Quidditch teams were split up and the members dispersed throughout the Ministry. I was with the Couriers’ Office for a couple months, then I was moved to the Aurors’ Office. Before the war began, the qualifications to become an Auror included a N.E.W.T. each in Defense Against the Dark Arts, Charms, Herbology, Potions, and Transfiguration. After the war, they loosened the requirements because they needed Aurors so badly.
“I was an Auror for six years. Almost everyone I knew died or was injured.” He’s silent for a moment, thinking of what to say. He doesn’t want to talk about the war, but he doesn’t have much of a chance. “In 2004…you’ll know the Great Betrayal happened then. Not much information has ever been released about it. The team Ginny Weasley brought down was a team made up exclusively of Quidditch players. We were transporting wounded to St. Mungo’s Hospital. Ginny Weasley was one of the flyers on the team. She killed – a majority of the team and all the wounded with one curse; there were only a few of us that survived. George and Charlie Weasley, Ruby Broadmoor – and me. That was the last real tragedy of the war. Two days later Harry killed Lord Voldemort. We were all still in St. Mungo’s then.”
He’s silent. The class follows his example, some of them obviously wondering how he can just gloss over six years of open warfare. Then Nick Hakamura raises his hand.
“Yes,” Oliver says.
“Do you regret it?” Hakamura asks.
It’s a startling, unexpected question, and Oliver is unprepared for it. “Yes, absolutely,” he says finally.
“But you could have died.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Oliver tells him, and really, this time he’s speaking to himself and he knows it. “There are some things worth dying for. Voldemort would have killed us all, and then gone on to do the rest of Europe. You’re a halfblood, aren’t you, Hakamura?”
“Yeah,” Hakamura says, blinking.
“So he probably would have let you live. Jameson, you’re Muggleborn.”
He nods, slowly.
“He would have killed you without even thinking about it.”
“Voldemort sounds like Hitler,” Lieberman says; her grandparents were immigrants from Germany.
Oliver knows a little Muggle history; Alicia explained it to him once. “The difference is that Voldemort never bothered with death camps,” he says. “I would have died; I could have died; I almost did die. All of them would have been worth it.”
And the class nods. They understand, or almost do.
-
Zelenka finds him after the class, in his office pouring brandy into his tea. “Thank you,” she says. “I know that was hard to do.”
“You have no idea,” Oliver says, and tosses back the first cup of tea. It burns his throat, or maybe that’s the brandy. He pours himself another cup.
She hesitates. “I didn’t know you played Quidditch,” she says. “Ellie told us that you can’t fly.”
“I can fly,” Oliver says. “I haven’t flown in almost four years. I can’t – it hurts too much. I qualified for the Scottish team just before the teams were disbanded,” he adds with a flash of old pride. “I was captain of Quidditch at Hogwarts.” He’s quiet. “I don’t like to fly anymore.”
“I don’t know if you know,” Zelenka says slowly, “but I’m qualified as a psychiatrist. If you’d like to talk to someone…”
Oliver swirls his tea around in his cup, looking at the way the tea leaves fall. He never took Divination, but Percy Weasley had, and he’d done his best to explain it to Oliver once a week or so. “It’s hard,” he tells her finally. “I don’t like to think about it.”
Zelenka’s voice is calmly interrogating. “You saw combat, though?”
“Yes. No. We didn’t call it that. I killed people. People tried to kill me.” He gulped at his tea. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“The best Quidditch team Gryffindor ever fielded is dead, except for three of us,” Oliver says suddenly. “George Weasley – Harry Potter – and me. The others are all dead. Fred, Alicia, Katie, Angelina – the Chasers died in Ginny’s attack – Harry told me she played Chaser and Seeker too, you can’t trust anyone that plays two positions – and Fred was killed the second summer of the war. It nearly broke George. He didn’t laugh much, after. We had the same team for my last three years at Hogwarts. Before that, I flew with Charlie Weasley. He was – he was an amazing flyer. Still is. You should see him with his dragons.”
Zelenka sits down across from him, looking at the bottle of brandy sitting on his desk. “Do you miss it?” she asks.
“The war?”
“Flying.”
“I haven’t thought about it,” Oliver lies. He can’t look at a broomstick without wanting to be sick. Once he spent a week as a prisoner of war, wondering why the Death Eaters didn’t just kill him already and get it over with. Bellatrix Lestrange had finally knelt down in front of him, right down in the mud where he was lying, and curled her fingers around his jaw. He’d spit in her face.
She’d Crucioed him.
“You do miss it,” Zelenka says. “If it was so much of your life for so long.”
Oliver looks at his hands. There are scars winding their way all across them. “It was my life,” he says honestly.
“But it’s not anymore.”
“It almost killed me. We fell over a hundred and fifty feet out of the sky.”
“But you miss it.”
“No,” Oliver says immediately and then, finally, he tells the truth, his voice raw and sore. “Yeah. I miss it. I miss flying. I miss my people.”
-
That summer he teaches three classes, two of which he has been bribed into by the combination of Professor Zelenka, Dr. Waters, and his seniors, who want to take a few last minute classes from him. It’s the only possible reason DAD441, Military Magic, and DAD445, What To Do When You Know The Worst Is Coming (not DIV445), are on his schedule along with CHA615, Elemental Charms. To his surprise, all the classes are filled up.
Zelenka, who’s teaching History of Magic in the Ancient World (HOM553) and History of Magical Warfare (HOM662), tries to explain it to him, “You’ve been there,” she says, “and you know what it’s like. They’ve only got a few months before they’re out in the real world and they want this one last chance.”
“I don’t get it,” Oliver says helplessly. “I spent my summers at Quid – lying around doing nothing.”
“And they like you,” she adds and laughs at his expression.
-
“We’ve got a visitor coming,” Dr. Waters tells the summer teachers one day, cheerful in the staffroom. “It’s an honor – he doesn’t do a lot of public appearances.”
“Who is it?” Bloom asks.
Waters smiles. “Harry Potter.”
Oliver, who’s been mainlining tea, drops his teacup and starts choking. “No,” he says when he’s got his breath back.
Waters blinks, looking surprised. “Yes. Do you know him?”
Oliver’s throat is raw and he stares at the broken shards of china on the floor, tea spreading out over the carpet. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, I – I played Quid – I knew him at Hogwarts. He was four years behind me.”
“Well, that’ll be good,” the principal says, still cheerful. “Familiar faces are good.”
Oliver stands up and leaves.
-
He misses the welcoming party; instead, he holes himself up in his office with a pile of tests from all three classes. He’s just gotten into his flow when someone knocks on the door.
“Come in,” he calls, setting down his pen.
The door opens and Harry Potter steps in.
Oliver’s breath catches in his throat. It’s like seeing a ghost, even though he knows Harry never died. This is one of his people.
“They told me you were here,” Harry says. “I thought – I didn’t see you downstairs, so I thought – Oliver, no one’s seen you for four years. George and Charlie are worried sick.”
Oliver sinks his head into his hands and rubs his fingers over his forehead. “I had to leave,” he says. “You have to know what that’s like.”
“Yeah,” Harry says. “Yeah, of course, but I let people know where I was going. Hermione is convinced you jumped in front of the Hogwarts Express. George thinks you ran off and changed your name to Horatio Hotcock.”
Oliver snorts. “He would.”
Harry sits down without waiting to be asked. “I never thought I’d see you here. You never struck me as a teacher.”
“I’m good at it,” Oliver says defensively. “The students like me.”
“Apparently it’s going around,” Harry says. “George and Charlie are teaching too.”
“You’re kidding.”
“And Hermione, of course,” he adds.
“Teaching what?”
“George is teaching Transfiguration,” Harry says. “Charlie’s teaching Care of Magical Creatures and flying; he’s also Head of Gryffindor House. Hermione is Potions Mistress.”
“What about you?”
“I’m teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts,” Harry says cheerfully. “The jinx is gone now; I’ve been there three years.”
Oliver snorts. “Who would have guessed we’d all end up as teachers ten years ago?” he says. “Shock me some more, Potter.”
“Draco’s teaching Arithmancy. Enrollment is up twenty percent from before the war. He’s also Head of Slytherin, God help us all. Fleur’s teaching Charms.” He taps his fingers on his chin thoughtfully. “Luna got the Divination job. Neville has Herbology. Ernie MacMillan’s teaching History of Magic; someone finally got Binns exorcised. Ruby Broadmoor’s teaching Ancient Runes; she’s Head of House for Hufflepuff.”
“Please don’t tell me that Lovegood is Head of Ravenclaw,” Oliver says fervently.
“No, that would be Padma Patil. She’s teaching Astronomy.” Harry pauses. “McGonagall’s Headmistress, of course.”
“What happened to Flitwick? Last I heard he was still alive.”
Harry shakes his head. “He died in his sleep two years ago. Fleur already had most of the Charms classes; after he died she got the whole job. Charlie’s Depeuty Headmaster.”
“Good for him,” Oliver says, pleased. “It would have been better if he’d gone off and played Quidditch, but you can’t have everything. Would have been better if you’d gone off and played Quidditch.”
Harry snorts. “Why aren’t you playing Quidditch? I would have thought we’d have to drag you away from the Pitch with an Unsticking Charm as soon as the Ministry reformed the teams.”
Oliver’s face freezes. “I don’t – I don’t fly, not any more.”
Harry studies his face quietly, green eyes inscrutable behind his glasses. “You should come back,” he says abruptly. “No one knows what happened to you. People are worried.”
“Are they?” Oliver’s not sure what to say to that.
Harry reaches over and touches his wrist lightly. “Just think about it,” he says, his voice warm, and Oliver remembers that he’s talking to Harry the Hero, not Potter his Quidditch prodigy.
-
Harry sits in on all his classes, which annoys Oliver right up until the minute when Sasaki screws up and Oliver swoops down on her with the wrath of God in him. “Congratulations, Sasaki, you’re now responsible for the death of your entire team, as well as releasing a retrovirus out into the entire wizarding population of North America. Within fifty hours every witch and wizard in the Pacific Northwest will be dead. Within a week the virus will have spread to the East Coast. And within a month it will have affected every magician in the world. How do you feel about that?”
Sasaki and her team (half his Military Magic class) bristle, but before any of them can say anything Harry speaks up. “You said it yourself, Oliver, they’re working in a clean lab. Would that virus really have been able to get through the wards?”
Oliver turns on him. “But would you want to bet your life on that? Your friends’ lives? Your civilization’s life?”
Harry doesn’t back down. “As I remember, you and George managed to contain that virus.”
“As I remember, you were out gallivanting around Albania with Granger and Malfoy at the time.”
“That doesn’t mean I didn’t hear what happened after from George. You could have died.”
“Potter, I could have died every day of the war. Getting locked in a room with George Weasley and a Death Eater-manufactured retrovirus is nothing special. When you’re in a war where both sides are inventing new curses twice a day, getting turned inside out by a magical retrovirus is nothing special. Letting that magical retrovirus out on your people is special.”
“But you managed to reverse-spell it,” Harry points out with deadly accuracy.
“And if I hadn’t, we’d all be dead right now and not having this conversation.” Oliver turns back to his class, who’re watching them with wide eyes. “No one said stop. Sasaki, you and your team are dying. You know. Write a report for your superiors that detailed everything you did and discovered, right up until your deaths. The wizarding world may, in fact, want a chance to fight the virus your people so foolishly released on them.”
“You know, you were a lot less scary when you were just captaining Quidditch,” Harry says dryly, and Oliver actually grins.
-
Harry presents Oliver with a thick parchment envelope with slightly singed edges and Oliver Wood written in scrawling, familiar script on the front. Oliver takes it, looks at it, and thinks of sitting in that clean room with George, watching him scrawl notes onto every spare piece of parchment they have, all the while staring at the goblet in the middle of the room and waiting for it to explode and kill them and then every wizard in England. He looks accusingly up at Harry. “You told George.”
“I told George,” Harry agrees. “Because Charlie and Hermione have been holding him back from going on a world tour looking for you. He’s been a little worried.”
Oliver looks down at the letter in his hand.
“I also had to stop him from Flooing over,” Harry adds. “Because that would break several American border control laws and they’re a little sensitive about that lately. I think there’s a wedding invitation in there somewhere.”
“George is getting married?” Oliver says, and there’s a tiny part of him that’s incredibly hurt at knowing that, because – he firmly tells that part of himself to shut up, he hasn’t talked to George since his little sister tried to kill them all and mostly succeeded.
Harry raises his eyebrows. “Yes,” he says. “To Hermione. I think he wants you to be his best man. Charlie is probably depressed. One brother left and he doesn’t have a chance in hell of getting the job if you show up.”
“What about you?”
“I’m supposed to be Hermione’s man of honor,” Harry says, deadpan. He puts his fingers on Oliver’s wrist, warm and real. “Read the letter,” he suggests, and Oliver does.
-
England is a lot warmer than it was four years ago; of course, four years ago the country was overrun by Dementors that severely threw off the natural climate. Oliver follows Harry out of the Arrivals room of the Department of International Magical Cooperation and out into the main room, and then has to ignore the urge to turn around and demand to be returned to the United States.
Hermione and Charlie are the first people Oliver sees, and they both hug Harry tightly. “How was your trip?” Hermione asks, smiling, and the scars have almost faded from around her right eye. She wears glasses now; they’ve slipped down to the end of her nose and she pushes them back up with the back of her hand.
“Fantastic,” Harry says. “Where’s Draco?”
“Oh, you know him,” Charlie says. “Said he’s not moving for Harry bloody Potter.”
Harry grins. “I brought you something back.”
Hermione brightens. “Books?” she says hopefully. “There was a thesis published by Elizabeth Zelenka over the rise of the –”
“Someone,” Harry corrects. “Wood – Oliver – get over here.”
Hermione looks at him with wide eyes, unrecognizing for a moment, then she gasps and flings her arms around Oliver’s neck. “Oliver!” she says. “We thought you were dead.”
Charlie claps him on the back. “It’s good to see you again, mate.”
Then the door bangs open and someone else enters the room. “Sorry I’m late, has Harry’s Portkey come in…yet…”
George comes to an abrupt halt as soon as he sees Oliver. They stare at each other in silence for several moments, and then George says, voice suddenly thick, “You look like hell, Wood,” and pulls him into a fierce hug.
It’s almost like coming home.
Back when I still frequented the FictionAlley boards, there was a discussion going on about American wizarding schools. Now, that was a long time ago (almost five years) and I haven't retained much of the information, but what little I have retained has gone into Cascade Academy of Magic. Cascade, as Oliver points out, services the Pacific Northwest region of the United States -- in other words, Washington, Idaho, and Oregon. It's located on the east side of the Cascade Mountains' Snoqualmie Pass; for those that know the geography, it's located roughly where Cle Elum, Washington, is. Most of the school is based on public high school life in the U.S., that being what I know; there are also parts of it that are taken from private high school life. Cascade takes students from seventh grade through twelfth grade; upperclassmen are traditionally eleventh and twelfth (junior and senior), while underclassmen are ninth and tenth (freshman and sophomore). Both phrases are used loosely within the story, as well as in real life (in some scenes, underclassmen refers to seventh through ninth and upperclassmen tenth through twelfth; most scenes use the traditional use of the word). Although it's never directly mentioned in the story, classes also operate on a "block" schedule -- three classes one day, a different three classes the next day, revolving throughout the weeks. The school also operates on a quarter system -- fall quarter (September through November), winter I quarter (November through January), winter 2 quarter (February through April), spring quarter (April through June), and summer quarter (June through August) (there are five; summer quarter isn't usually taken by anyone but upperclassmen).
Cascade's classes, while mostly similar to Hogwarts, have some differences. The most major one referenced in the story is that Defense Against the Dark Arts is an elective class. Let me make something clear: in my high school, foreign languages are elective classes. So are other fun classes like chemistry, physics, pre-calculus, and calculus. Yes, they're generally required to get into college, but they're not really required in life (please don't tell my math or physics teachers I said this). DADA is the same way. It's an elective class, offered in three one year sessions: Introduction to Defense Against the Dark Arts, Intermediate Defense Against the Dark Arts, and Advanced Defense Against the Dark Arts. And while Professor Fritz Hoffman was teaching it, it was a fairly useless class that students took just because it would look good on their transcripts. Oliver gets the job because, as Dr. Waters says, he's actually been there, and he'll teach his students what it's like. There's a scene that was cut that takes place during graduation at Cascade, where Jack Jameson and Nick Hakamura come up to tell Oliver they've been recruited by FAMA (Federal Agency of Magical Affairs) just on the basis of actually having a decent DADA teacher. Oliver, at least for his Advanced DADA class and his Military Magic class, throws students right into a mess. He may have been a scary teacher, but at least he was one hell of a teacher.
Oliver does not fly. This is brought up early in the story because, well, Oliver Wood. Word association? Quidditch. And he's not flying. He explains why later, but I thought it was the perfect thing to bring across how much things have changed during the war, and how much war can change a person.
I'm well aware I killed off most of Britain's wizarding population. It's open war. Fudge says so himself in HBP. And while Voldemort had eleven years of terror sixteen years ago, now he knows there actually is someone out there who can defeat him -- so he'll speed everything up double time. And the Ministry will respond. Professional Quidditch is shut down -- the players are shuffled throughout the Ministry. There are casualties. Lots of them. In my own personal post-HBP-fanon, Fred is killed in an attack on Weasley's Wizard Wheezes the summer after HBP and George immediately signs up to fight, enraged. Ron is killed at some point on the Horcrux hunt, and Draco Malfoy ends up with one of the Horcruxes embedded in his wrist. People are changed. People die.
The Cup Oliver mentioned is Hufflepuff's Cup, and it is indeed a Horcrux. It also has a scary magical virus enspelled into it, which Oliver and George reverse-spell. Honestly, did even you think Harry would manage to find four Horcruxes in a year? Right now he's two for six, if you count the Peverell ring Dumbledore took care of. I think Oliver and George's Auror team found this one.
You know, I'm a very weird person in that I feel no guilt whatsoever about all the American OCs in this story, which are, like, the bane of fandom, but I get incredibly guilty bringing up Ruby Broadmoor -- who's been seen before in "Figuring Strategies" as Cedric's Hufflepuff yearmate and Beater.
I'm still very unhappy about how the scene with Zelenka and Oliver after the Modern Magical History class turned out, but I'm not sure how to fix it short of just taking it out. If I ever edit this thing, I'll probably rewrite that.
Originally, everything took place in the second year Oliver was teaching at Cascade, and I didn't really like that, so I changed it to the fourth. But there's a big empty gap of four years, and it makes me unhappy. If I ever edit, I'll probably slot something in there.
Author:
bedlamsbardFandom: Harry Potter
Characters: Oliver Wood
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 6842
Summary: When Harry Potter finally kills Voldemort, two years, nine months, and three days later, Oliver is in St. Mungo’s again, sedated, restrained, and finally broken. When he gets out, he stands on the sidewalk of Diagon Alley, staring at the happy shattered remains of his civilization.
Author's Notes: This is not a story about Harry Potter. This is not a story about Draco Malfoy. This is a story about Oliver Wood, and what happens after a war that lasted eight years longer than anyone ever expected. Since dates occasionally pop up in here, this assumes that the war officially began after OotP (1996) and ended eight years later in 2004. Takes place in the same universe as "Lust" and "Figuring Strategies." See other notes at the end.
Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
The Ministry cancels all professional Quidditch three months into the second year of the war. Oliver and his teammates get shuffled off into various Ministry departments depending on their talents; Oliver eventually ends up with the Aurors, who at this point in time don’t care about anyone NEWT scares, just their ability to stay alive. Oliver goes through two months of extremely sped-up training and kills his first man on his twenty-second birthday. He celebrates by getting extremely plastered and waking up in bed with a chronically depressed George Weasley (Fred has been dead seven months yesterday).
Harry Potter is missing. Nobody’s seen him in a year and a half. The war is dragging on longer than anyone had ever expected. There are no heroes, not now: just men, and soldiers who do what they must. Oliver lasts a year longer than his colleagues predicted and then snaps; spends three days sedated and restrained in St. Mungo’s before he wakes to the realization that he’s been shattering the bones in his wrists and ankles faster than the Mediwizards can mend them (Healers are for real injuries, not Aurors with broken nerves). Ruby Broadmoor tells him he was screaming orders to a Quidditch team ten years gone, then pauses and finally adds that he cried for a dead man.
Three years to the day after Puddlemere United was disbanded, Harry Potter walks into the relocated Ministry of Magic, which takes up most of Hogwarts castle. He has two shadows, as always, but only one was there eight years ago. Hermione Granger walks with a pronounced limp, fingers locked tight around her wand; Ron Weasley is nowhere in sight, but Draco Malfoy has taken his place. The entire squad of Aurors currently in the castle stops and stares at him – Death Eater! is on the tip of every tongue, but nobody says the words. Malfoy raises his chin and stares over their heads, gray eyes cold and a little frightened, and when his sleeves fall back Oliver can se the white scars on his wrist that look like they’re from a burn. He gets a better look later; they’re in the exact shape of an oval with the Slytherin serpent inside. Moody takes Harry and Malfoy away into his office, while George comes tearing out of the office he and Oliver share to take Hermione in his arms. Oliver watches for a moment, then turns his back and goes back to his job.
When Harry Potter finally kills Voldemort, two years, nine months, and three days later, Oliver is in St. Mungo’s again, sedated, restrained, and finally broken. When he gets out, he stands on the sidewalk of Diagon Alley, staring at the happy shattered remains of his civilization.
He takes the first Portkey out of Britain.
-
Cascade Academy of Magic serves the wizarding population of North America’s Pacific Northwest. The school is smaller than Hogwarts, located just outside a wizarding town on the east side of the Cascade mountains, in country that looks nothing whatsoever like Scotland. Oliver applies for and gets the Charms position, then has to spend the next week digging through his old textbooks to try and come up with a curriculum. It’s only the day before students are due to arrive that he realizes he shouldn’t be teaching out of Hogwarts textbooks and his students will have had to had their Charms textbooks special-ordered from Britain.
Cascade students aren’t Sorted, for which Oliver is grateful, but Oliver is introduced to the school at dinner and has his first, unnerving experience of being referred to as “Professor Wood, your new Charms teacher.” Flitwick, he thinks fleetingly, but he’s ten years out of Hogwarts and not in Scotland any more.
His first class of the day is Freshman Charms. The room is wide and airy, the big desk by the window empty (he hasn’t had time to settle in yet; he’s been working out of the tiny office they’ve given him). Oliver flings open the windows and sees the Quodpot pitch outside. It’s enough like a Quidditch pitch that he stares at it for a moment, nostalgic, then flicks his wand so that thin cotton curtains cover the windows and block the view.
His students file in five minutes later. Most of them are wary and all of them are curious. Oliver stands up and moves to the front of the room, acutely aware of all the eyes on him.
“Hallo,” he says self-consciously. He doesn’t think there’s that much accent in his voice, but there must be, because several girls’ eyes widen immediately.
“Oooh,” one of them hisses to her friend. “He sounds just like Dominic Monaghan. That is so hot.”
Oliver has no idea who Dominic Monaghan is, but he clears his throat like he remembers Professor McGonagall doing. “I’m Professor Oliver Wood,” he continues, “and I’ll be your new Charms professor. Before we get started, does anyone have any questions?”
Hands shoot up. Oliver picks one at random. “Yes, Mister –”
“Jack Jameson,” the boy says. “Where did you graduate from?”
“Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, class of 1994,” Oliver says, and points. “You.”
“Where are you from?”
He presses his lips together. “Scotland,” he says shortly, realizing that he shouldn’t have opened the doors he did. “Anything important? Yes, you.”
“What did you do before you came to the U.S.?”
Oliver is starting to get a headache, and the beginnings of a panic attack he hasn’t had since he took that Portkey out of London. “Things.”
“What?”
“I worked for the Ministry of Magic,” he says. Not I played Quidditch or I killed people or I fought in a war, but something that shouldn’t raise too many eyebrows. The war in Britain isn’t something that gained a lot of press overseas. Voldemort didn’t care about the rest of the world; they never cared about him.
He tries to ignore the way his hands are shaking, as well as the other raised hands. “All right,” he says, trying to channel McGonagall again. “Let’s see what you know.”
-
Cascade’s Quodpot teams, varsity and junior varsity and C teams, play other wizarding schools in North America. Oliver is in his classroom grading papers one day when he opens the windows for air, sees the flash of movement in the air, the clean, smooth lines of a broom in flight, and is aching for the feel of wood between his fingers before he’s quite aware of what he’s doing. The next thing he knows is aching despair, residual pain in his once-shattered wrists, phantom blood streaming down his face, flesh beneath his fingers, and the fact that he’s on the floor beneath his desk with his wand out and a Shield Charm up around him.
He doesn’t open the windows in the evening again.
-
Professor Bloom, the Herbology teacher, bounces into his classroom the first Saturday of the year with two broomsticks in her hand. She doesn’t notice the way Oliver recoils.
“The faculty and the upperclassmen play Quodpot every Saturday,” she tells him cheerfully. “Applied magic versus academic. It’s fun; you’ll love it. Quodpot’s easy to pick up.”
“No,” Oliver says flatly.
She looks startled. “Everyone does it,” she says. “Even Neal –” the Transfiguration professor, whose name Oliver recognized his first week at Cascade from the ranks of the Sweetwater All-Stars a million years ago “– you can fly, can’t you? It’s really easy to learn.”
Oliver remembers wood breaking beneath his fingers, smooth dead skin under his hands, blood dripping off the tips of his hair. “I don’t fly,” he says.
-
He stays away from the pitch the rest of the year, right up until the end of June, where Dr. Waters approaches him to ask about teaching the summer quarter.
“It’s mostly just electives,” she says. “Not core curriculum. You’ve taught some interesting charms this year; I was wondering if you wanted to do a class on them this summer.”
Oliver has nothing else to do. No power on Earth can make him set foot in England again. “All right,” he says.
-
He teaches a class on elemental charms out on the lawn on the other side of the school. It’s a small class, only about a dozen upperclassmen (seniors and juniors), and they’re all eager to hear what he has to say.
One day, late in the semester, in the middle of August, one of his students messes up a wind charm and creates a clap of displaced air that sounds too much like one of the curses Bellatrix Lestrange was fond of using. The next thing Oliver knows he’s flat on his stomach on the ground, wand out, Shield Charm over the entire class as he scans the sky and the trees for Death Eaters.
His students are utterly silent as Oliver remembers the war is over and the Death Eaters are gone, all gone, and stands up. “Class dismissed,” he says, voice hoarse. “We’ll continue tomorrow.”
The rumors start less than an hour later. The Muggleborn students are absolutely convinced he’s either MI-6 or Special Forces (not that Oliver has any idea what they’re talking about), while the pureblood and halfbloods tell them that obviously, pureblood British wizard, clearly worked in the Office of International Espionage. Another pureblood flatly forestalls the conversation by reminding his classmates that Oliver comes from Britain, and they just finished a damn war.
“Are you kidding?” Schneider says. “No wonder Wood reacted the way he did. He probably spent the last couple years fighting over in England.”
Oliver walks away, silent in the halls.
-
The third week of his fourth year at Cascade, Hoffman, the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor, calls in sick. Oliver thinks nothing of it until Dr. Waters comes tearing into his classroom in the middle of his Introduction to Charms class.
“Oliver,” she says, as his second years – seventh graders – stare at her in bewilderment. “I need you to take Fritz’s Defense classes.”
“No,” Oliver says.
“Nobody else is qualified to teach the class,” Waters says. Oliver can hear the words she’s not saying: Nobody else has actually had to use anti-Dark Arts spells. Nobody else has killed people with their wands. “I can take your beginning Charms classes, but Fritz has a nasty bug and he’ll be on his back for the better part of a month.”
“Dr. Waters –”
“Oliver,” she tells him flatly. “You’re taking the class, starting next period.”
-
Next period is Advanced Defense Against the Dark Arts. Oliver is still pissed off about the fact that DADA is an elective, not a required class. He recognizes his juniors and seniors in the class, all mixed together, all of whom look surprised to see him there.
“Professor Hoffman is ill,” he tells the class to forestall any questions. “I’ll be taking the class until he’s on his feet again.”
One of his seniors raises her hand. “Professor Wood?” she says. “Did you study Defense Against the Dark Arts at Hogwarts?”
Oliver grits his teeth. “At Hogwarts,” he says, “Defense Against the Dark Arts is a required subject and yes, I studied it every day of my life from my first year to my seventh year, and then needed to use it after I graduated.”
He only realizes after he’s said it that he never meant to admit that last part.
Hoffman left no notes whatsoever on his desk, but Oliver knows him, knows that he doesn’t know anything about what it’s really like to face Dark wizards. So he gets to the front of the room and charms the whiteboard clean, then picks up a dry erase marker and starts writing.
“The Unforgivables,” he says, when he’s done. “The use of any one of them when not Ministry-sanctioned is enough to earn a life sentence in Azkaban. Azkaban,” he adds, forestalling Lieberman’s question, “is the wizarding prison in Britain. Very nasty place. You wouldn’t want to be there. Cruciatus. Imperius. And Avada Kedavra.”
He can feel the class go completely cold.
“Crucio,” he says quietly, “is a torture curse. Imperio lets you control anyone that doesn’t have the willpower to repel it. And Avada Kedavra kills instantly.”
Daniels raises her hand. “Are you going to show them to us, Professor Wood?”
Oliver nearly stops breathing for a moment. “Absolutely not,” he says when he can think again. “For one thing, they’re highly illegal. For another –”
Hakamura interrupts. “Not in the U.S.,” he says. “Second Amendment covers Dark curses too.”
“Is your country fucking insane?” Oliver says before his brain can catch up with his mouth, and the class lets out little titters of indignation.
He slides his eyes shut and keeps them there, trying to blank out the memories that come whenever he thinks of the Unforgivables. The Lestranges. Greyback. Snape. Zabini. Flint. Oliver has to force himself to stop thinking and just stand there, breathe in and out, remind himself that the war’s over and he’s free.
He opens his eyes to find the class is staring at him. Oliver takes a deep breath, can hear the rasp in his voice. “Anyone ever tries to cast an Unforgivable on you, it’s just another curse. Remember that. You can still duck it. You can block it. Aim well, cast another spell at the same time, they’ll angle off each other. You don’t want to do that unless you’re good at Arithmancy and can calculate the angles, or unless you’re completely surrounded.”
“Have you ever had to, Professor Wood?” Jameson says. He’s never known when to stop.
Oliver shuts his eyes again, then opens them. “Yes,” he says flatly, then turns around to scribble on the board again, underneath the names of the Unforgivables. He can feel the wide eyes of his students on his back. When he’s finished writing, he turns back toward his class and steps aside so the board is clear.
“Use of Unforgivables by the government in times of war or great social upheaval,” he says, and he only knows these phrases because of the bloody politics involved in working for the Ministry. “Discuss.”
There’s a moment of wide-eyed silence, and then Hakamura raises his hand.
Oliver points at him. “Go on,” he says, and what Hakamura says gives the rest of the class courage to start talking.
-
Three weeks later, Dr. Waters finds him in his office, where’s he’s sitting and going over a pile of Intermediate Defense Against the Dark Arts papers with a red pen (he’s finally broken the lifelong habit of using quill and ink; besides, Muggle pens are simpler).
“Oliver,” she says, pushing the door open without knocking, “I’d like to take you off the underclassman charms classes and put you on DADA permanently.”
Oliver puts his quill down and caps the ink bottle. “What about Hoffman?” he asks.
Waters takes the seat across from him without even asking. “Frankly, Oliver, you’re a better teacher than he is. He got shoehorned into the job because there was no one else to take it “ She pauses a moment. “Actually, he was in the running for the Charms position before you applied.”
“Why didn’t he get it?” Oliver asks, knowing that Hoffman has been teaching longer than he has.
“I can’t tell you that,” Waters says, but she looks at Oliver with enough pity in her eyes that he knows the only reason he got hired was because of the novelty. “But if you’re willing to take the classes permanently – Introduction, Intermediate, and Advanced – I’ll put Fritz on the underclassman Charms classes, and you can teach DADA and upperclassman Charms.”
“Why?”
And Waters comes out and says it. “Because you’ve been there, Oliver. And no one else at Cascade has. I want my students to go out into the world knowing something that will keep them alive.”
Oliver closes his eyes. Thinks of all the people seven years of Defense Against the Dark Arts didn’t keep alive.
And the ones it did.
“All right,” he says. “I’ll do it.”
-
By the time his Advanced Defense Against the Dark Arts students come to class on Monday – his classroom, the Charms room, not the Defense one, which Hoffman will turn to underclassman Charms now – they’ve all heard. They sit down in their usual seats and look at Oliver. Silent, waiting. He’s been teaching Defense for almost a month now.
They’re all waiting for him to speak, make some official statement about, “this is the way it’s going to be.” Instead he puts down one last mark on Delia Eldridge’s Intermediate Charms paper (“B” – he’s finally gotten used to the grading scale used in America) and stands up.
“Jameson, O’Neill, Rodriguez,” he says. “Hakamura, McKay, Bloom. Daniels, Lieberman, MacKenzie. Ellers, Sasaki, Chen. Dostoevsky, Piper, Van Der Ryn. Young, Cahill, Wahle.”
It takes the class a minute or so to realize he’s actually referring to groups, and they split up and separate into the trios he’s named. Once they’re there, Oliver flicks his wand and various objects appear on desks in front of all the groups. They’re seemingly random – old Coke bottles, pens, reports from the last staff meeting, boots – the sort of items used for Portkeys back in Britain. His students stare at them blankly.
“You’re wizards for the Department of Magical Law Enforcement and these objects have been Owled to your desks. You don’t know what they are. Find out.” And he steps back toward his desk as everyone looks at him, the objects, and each other.
The first one goes off fifteen minutes later. Oliver’s not actually sure what Ellers’ group did to trigger it early, but he looks at them, flat on their arses with beards growing down from their chins, and points toward the door. “Think about what you might have done,” he says. “The beards will be gone in ten minutes. Come back in half an hour. Don’t leave the building,” he adds as an automatic afterthought.
They leave, looking disgruntled, and Oliver points his wand at the battered copy of Shakespeare’s sonnets and watches it fly back to his desk. He waves his wand again, takes the charm off, and turns around to bark at his class, “Nobody said stop! And Lieberman – every curse is different.”
Lieberman lowers her wand, looking put out.
Oliver leans back in his chair, watches his students, reminds them, “You don’t know how much time you have,” and thinks that he may actually have something here.
-
Professor Zelenka, the History of Magic teacher, finds him sometime in the last few weeks of school. He’s settled back in his desk with a book, all his grading done, and contrary to popular opinion among his students, he does not, in fact, spend all his free time thinking up ways to torture them.
“Oliver,” she says briskly, reminding more of McGonagall than Binns, “I’d like you to come in and talk to my Modern Magical History class.”
Oliver puts his book down slowly. “No,” he says, because she can only be talking about one thing.
Zelenka looks at him with something like kindness in her blue eyes. “I know it’s hard for you to think about,” she says. “I – my uncle was in Vietnam. He goes the same way I’ve seen you do – flashbacks, moments when you’re not really here.”
Oliver bites his lip so hard he tastes blood and looks down.
Zelenka makes a move like she’s about to reach out towards him and then thinks better of it. “You don’t have to talk to my class,” she amends. “I’d like you to, very much, but if it’s too – painful, too soon – I’d still like you to just sit in on a class.”
Oliver can’t meet her eyes, but he manages to surprise himself when he says, “All right.”
-
Modern Magical History is made up of seniors and juniors, the odd sophomore and freshman scattered among the upperclassmen, and all of them know Oliver. Most of them are smart enough to guess why he’s here as well. Only the underclassmen look surprised when he takes a seat near the back of the room and listens.
Zelenka is a good teacher. Her hands fly through the air as she speaks, picking up near the end of the story.
“By the year 2004 the British wizarding community had been devastated. Over half the population had been killed by Lord Voldemort’s Death Eaters or by the Ministry of Magic. Many British citizens – mainly those with children still of school age – left the country to start anew in mainland Europe. Some came to America, some to Australia, others went even farther abroad.
“The Ministry itself suffered a seventy-nine percent casualty rate. The Aurors Office itself lost ninety percent of its people –”
And Oliver blanks out at that, sits there with his eyes shut tight. He comes back to itself as Zelenka begins on what’s become known as the Great Betrayal.
“In April of that year, Ginevra Weasley, one time love interest of Harry Potter –”
Oliver stands up and walks out of the room. He worked with Ginny in the Ministry. Was one of the Aurors she brought down. Knows the story. He doesn’t need to hear this.
He waits until he thinks Zelenka must have exhausted everything that’s known about the Great Betrayal, then slips back inside the room. Apparently she hadn’t known as much about Ginny as Oliver had thought.
“With two of Voldemort’s top operatives dead –”
Oliver listens, quietly, blanks out the parts he can’t stand, and then Zelenka turns on the stereo she has in a corner of the room.
“This is a copy of the October 31 radio broadcast,” she says, and Oliver goes absolutely, completely still.
“Good morning, England, this is Lee Jordan reporting from – well, I’d tell you where I’m reporting from, but then I’d have to kill you –” and his voice is just light enough that it’s a joke instead of a threat and Oliver remembers him, not just from the war but from Hogwarts, commentating his Quidditch matches and oh God, he wants to throw up, can taste the bile in the back of his throat and the blood where he’s bitten clear through his lip.
“– lists of the dead. Bertha Jorkins. Bartemius Crouch, Sr. Cedric Diggory. Sirius Black.”
Cedric. Oliver can’t do this any more, can’t expose himself to this, this history, not this. He’d listened to the annual memorial broadcast every year for seven years. This is the world he left. Somehow he can’t get up the will to leave, though, just sit there and listen, fists clenched so tightly he’s leaving grooves in his palms.
“Frederick Weasley. Verity St. John. Edmund Dawlish. Zacharias Smith. Nymphadora Tonks.”
Oliver closes his eyes, wants to curl in on himself and scream his head off, wants another chance at life.
“Ronald Weasley. Pansy Parkinson. Penelope Clearwater. Amos Diggory. Gwenog Jones.”
The list goes on for far too long.
The last names are, as always, the ones that hurt the most.
“Alleyne Cadwallader. Aiden Lynch. Percy Weasley. Molly Weasley. Arthur Weasley. William Weasley. Viktor Krum. Angelina Johnson. Alicia Spinnet. Cho Chang. Katelyn Bell. Roger Davies. Demelza Robbins.”
Oliver was there. He should have died.
Zelenka flicks her wand at the stereo to turn it off and looks at him, waiting with her eyebrows raised. If she knew Occlumency, she’d probably be telling him, You don’t have to, but I’d like you to.
Oliver stands up and moves to the front of the room. The eyes of every student in the class follow him.
“I think you all know me,” he says, and several people nod. “For those that don’t, I’m Professor Oliver Wood and I teach Charms and Defense Against the Darks Arts here. I was also a student at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry from 1986 to 1994. And,” he hesitates, but only for a moment, “I was also an Auror for the British Ministry of Magic during the Second Voldemort War.”
The class is silent. They’ve all known this for months now, but Oliver has never said it before.
He takes a deep breath. “I think you know that Voldemort rose again in June of 1995. The War didn’t officially start until after the battle in the Ministry of Magic the next year, though. In 1998, the Ministry ordered all professional Quidditch teams suspended. At the time – at the time I was playing Keeper for Puddlemere United. The Quidditch teams were split up and the members dispersed throughout the Ministry. I was with the Couriers’ Office for a couple months, then I was moved to the Aurors’ Office. Before the war began, the qualifications to become an Auror included a N.E.W.T. each in Defense Against the Dark Arts, Charms, Herbology, Potions, and Transfiguration. After the war, they loosened the requirements because they needed Aurors so badly.
“I was an Auror for six years. Almost everyone I knew died or was injured.” He’s silent for a moment, thinking of what to say. He doesn’t want to talk about the war, but he doesn’t have much of a chance. “In 2004…you’ll know the Great Betrayal happened then. Not much information has ever been released about it. The team Ginny Weasley brought down was a team made up exclusively of Quidditch players. We were transporting wounded to St. Mungo’s Hospital. Ginny Weasley was one of the flyers on the team. She killed – a majority of the team and all the wounded with one curse; there were only a few of us that survived. George and Charlie Weasley, Ruby Broadmoor – and me. That was the last real tragedy of the war. Two days later Harry killed Lord Voldemort. We were all still in St. Mungo’s then.”
He’s silent. The class follows his example, some of them obviously wondering how he can just gloss over six years of open warfare. Then Nick Hakamura raises his hand.
“Yes,” Oliver says.
“Do you regret it?” Hakamura asks.
It’s a startling, unexpected question, and Oliver is unprepared for it. “Yes, absolutely,” he says finally.
“But you could have died.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Oliver tells him, and really, this time he’s speaking to himself and he knows it. “There are some things worth dying for. Voldemort would have killed us all, and then gone on to do the rest of Europe. You’re a halfblood, aren’t you, Hakamura?”
“Yeah,” Hakamura says, blinking.
“So he probably would have let you live. Jameson, you’re Muggleborn.”
He nods, slowly.
“He would have killed you without even thinking about it.”
“Voldemort sounds like Hitler,” Lieberman says; her grandparents were immigrants from Germany.
Oliver knows a little Muggle history; Alicia explained it to him once. “The difference is that Voldemort never bothered with death camps,” he says. “I would have died; I could have died; I almost did die. All of them would have been worth it.”
And the class nods. They understand, or almost do.
-
Zelenka finds him after the class, in his office pouring brandy into his tea. “Thank you,” she says. “I know that was hard to do.”
“You have no idea,” Oliver says, and tosses back the first cup of tea. It burns his throat, or maybe that’s the brandy. He pours himself another cup.
She hesitates. “I didn’t know you played Quidditch,” she says. “Ellie told us that you can’t fly.”
“I can fly,” Oliver says. “I haven’t flown in almost four years. I can’t – it hurts too much. I qualified for the Scottish team just before the teams were disbanded,” he adds with a flash of old pride. “I was captain of Quidditch at Hogwarts.” He’s quiet. “I don’t like to fly anymore.”
“I don’t know if you know,” Zelenka says slowly, “but I’m qualified as a psychiatrist. If you’d like to talk to someone…”
Oliver swirls his tea around in his cup, looking at the way the tea leaves fall. He never took Divination, but Percy Weasley had, and he’d done his best to explain it to Oliver once a week or so. “It’s hard,” he tells her finally. “I don’t like to think about it.”
Zelenka’s voice is calmly interrogating. “You saw combat, though?”
“Yes. No. We didn’t call it that. I killed people. People tried to kill me.” He gulped at his tea. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“The best Quidditch team Gryffindor ever fielded is dead, except for three of us,” Oliver says suddenly. “George Weasley – Harry Potter – and me. The others are all dead. Fred, Alicia, Katie, Angelina – the Chasers died in Ginny’s attack – Harry told me she played Chaser and Seeker too, you can’t trust anyone that plays two positions – and Fred was killed the second summer of the war. It nearly broke George. He didn’t laugh much, after. We had the same team for my last three years at Hogwarts. Before that, I flew with Charlie Weasley. He was – he was an amazing flyer. Still is. You should see him with his dragons.”
Zelenka sits down across from him, looking at the bottle of brandy sitting on his desk. “Do you miss it?” she asks.
“The war?”
“Flying.”
“I haven’t thought about it,” Oliver lies. He can’t look at a broomstick without wanting to be sick. Once he spent a week as a prisoner of war, wondering why the Death Eaters didn’t just kill him already and get it over with. Bellatrix Lestrange had finally knelt down in front of him, right down in the mud where he was lying, and curled her fingers around his jaw. He’d spit in her face.
She’d Crucioed him.
“You do miss it,” Zelenka says. “If it was so much of your life for so long.”
Oliver looks at his hands. There are scars winding their way all across them. “It was my life,” he says honestly.
“But it’s not anymore.”
“It almost killed me. We fell over a hundred and fifty feet out of the sky.”
“But you miss it.”
“No,” Oliver says immediately and then, finally, he tells the truth, his voice raw and sore. “Yeah. I miss it. I miss flying. I miss my people.”
-
That summer he teaches three classes, two of which he has been bribed into by the combination of Professor Zelenka, Dr. Waters, and his seniors, who want to take a few last minute classes from him. It’s the only possible reason DAD441, Military Magic, and DAD445, What To Do When You Know The Worst Is Coming (not DIV445), are on his schedule along with CHA615, Elemental Charms. To his surprise, all the classes are filled up.
Zelenka, who’s teaching History of Magic in the Ancient World (HOM553) and History of Magical Warfare (HOM662), tries to explain it to him, “You’ve been there,” she says, “and you know what it’s like. They’ve only got a few months before they’re out in the real world and they want this one last chance.”
“I don’t get it,” Oliver says helplessly. “I spent my summers at Quid – lying around doing nothing.”
“And they like you,” she adds and laughs at his expression.
-
“We’ve got a visitor coming,” Dr. Waters tells the summer teachers one day, cheerful in the staffroom. “It’s an honor – he doesn’t do a lot of public appearances.”
“Who is it?” Bloom asks.
Waters smiles. “Harry Potter.”
Oliver, who’s been mainlining tea, drops his teacup and starts choking. “No,” he says when he’s got his breath back.
Waters blinks, looking surprised. “Yes. Do you know him?”
Oliver’s throat is raw and he stares at the broken shards of china on the floor, tea spreading out over the carpet. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, I – I played Quid – I knew him at Hogwarts. He was four years behind me.”
“Well, that’ll be good,” the principal says, still cheerful. “Familiar faces are good.”
Oliver stands up and leaves.
-
He misses the welcoming party; instead, he holes himself up in his office with a pile of tests from all three classes. He’s just gotten into his flow when someone knocks on the door.
“Come in,” he calls, setting down his pen.
The door opens and Harry Potter steps in.
Oliver’s breath catches in his throat. It’s like seeing a ghost, even though he knows Harry never died. This is one of his people.
“They told me you were here,” Harry says. “I thought – I didn’t see you downstairs, so I thought – Oliver, no one’s seen you for four years. George and Charlie are worried sick.”
Oliver sinks his head into his hands and rubs his fingers over his forehead. “I had to leave,” he says. “You have to know what that’s like.”
“Yeah,” Harry says. “Yeah, of course, but I let people know where I was going. Hermione is convinced you jumped in front of the Hogwarts Express. George thinks you ran off and changed your name to Horatio Hotcock.”
Oliver snorts. “He would.”
Harry sits down without waiting to be asked. “I never thought I’d see you here. You never struck me as a teacher.”
“I’m good at it,” Oliver says defensively. “The students like me.”
“Apparently it’s going around,” Harry says. “George and Charlie are teaching too.”
“You’re kidding.”
“And Hermione, of course,” he adds.
“Teaching what?”
“George is teaching Transfiguration,” Harry says. “Charlie’s teaching Care of Magical Creatures and flying; he’s also Head of Gryffindor House. Hermione is Potions Mistress.”
“What about you?”
“I’m teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts,” Harry says cheerfully. “The jinx is gone now; I’ve been there three years.”
Oliver snorts. “Who would have guessed we’d all end up as teachers ten years ago?” he says. “Shock me some more, Potter.”
“Draco’s teaching Arithmancy. Enrollment is up twenty percent from before the war. He’s also Head of Slytherin, God help us all. Fleur’s teaching Charms.” He taps his fingers on his chin thoughtfully. “Luna got the Divination job. Neville has Herbology. Ernie MacMillan’s teaching History of Magic; someone finally got Binns exorcised. Ruby Broadmoor’s teaching Ancient Runes; she’s Head of House for Hufflepuff.”
“Please don’t tell me that Lovegood is Head of Ravenclaw,” Oliver says fervently.
“No, that would be Padma Patil. She’s teaching Astronomy.” Harry pauses. “McGonagall’s Headmistress, of course.”
“What happened to Flitwick? Last I heard he was still alive.”
Harry shakes his head. “He died in his sleep two years ago. Fleur already had most of the Charms classes; after he died she got the whole job. Charlie’s Depeuty Headmaster.”
“Good for him,” Oliver says, pleased. “It would have been better if he’d gone off and played Quidditch, but you can’t have everything. Would have been better if you’d gone off and played Quidditch.”
Harry snorts. “Why aren’t you playing Quidditch? I would have thought we’d have to drag you away from the Pitch with an Unsticking Charm as soon as the Ministry reformed the teams.”
Oliver’s face freezes. “I don’t – I don’t fly, not any more.”
Harry studies his face quietly, green eyes inscrutable behind his glasses. “You should come back,” he says abruptly. “No one knows what happened to you. People are worried.”
“Are they?” Oliver’s not sure what to say to that.
Harry reaches over and touches his wrist lightly. “Just think about it,” he says, his voice warm, and Oliver remembers that he’s talking to Harry the Hero, not Potter his Quidditch prodigy.
-
Harry sits in on all his classes, which annoys Oliver right up until the minute when Sasaki screws up and Oliver swoops down on her with the wrath of God in him. “Congratulations, Sasaki, you’re now responsible for the death of your entire team, as well as releasing a retrovirus out into the entire wizarding population of North America. Within fifty hours every witch and wizard in the Pacific Northwest will be dead. Within a week the virus will have spread to the East Coast. And within a month it will have affected every magician in the world. How do you feel about that?”
Sasaki and her team (half his Military Magic class) bristle, but before any of them can say anything Harry speaks up. “You said it yourself, Oliver, they’re working in a clean lab. Would that virus really have been able to get through the wards?”
Oliver turns on him. “But would you want to bet your life on that? Your friends’ lives? Your civilization’s life?”
Harry doesn’t back down. “As I remember, you and George managed to contain that virus.”
“As I remember, you were out gallivanting around Albania with Granger and Malfoy at the time.”
“That doesn’t mean I didn’t hear what happened after from George. You could have died.”
“Potter, I could have died every day of the war. Getting locked in a room with George Weasley and a Death Eater-manufactured retrovirus is nothing special. When you’re in a war where both sides are inventing new curses twice a day, getting turned inside out by a magical retrovirus is nothing special. Letting that magical retrovirus out on your people is special.”
“But you managed to reverse-spell it,” Harry points out with deadly accuracy.
“And if I hadn’t, we’d all be dead right now and not having this conversation.” Oliver turns back to his class, who’re watching them with wide eyes. “No one said stop. Sasaki, you and your team are dying. You know. Write a report for your superiors that detailed everything you did and discovered, right up until your deaths. The wizarding world may, in fact, want a chance to fight the virus your people so foolishly released on them.”
“You know, you were a lot less scary when you were just captaining Quidditch,” Harry says dryly, and Oliver actually grins.
-
Harry presents Oliver with a thick parchment envelope with slightly singed edges and Oliver Wood written in scrawling, familiar script on the front. Oliver takes it, looks at it, and thinks of sitting in that clean room with George, watching him scrawl notes onto every spare piece of parchment they have, all the while staring at the goblet in the middle of the room and waiting for it to explode and kill them and then every wizard in England. He looks accusingly up at Harry. “You told George.”
“I told George,” Harry agrees. “Because Charlie and Hermione have been holding him back from going on a world tour looking for you. He’s been a little worried.”
Oliver looks down at the letter in his hand.
“I also had to stop him from Flooing over,” Harry adds. “Because that would break several American border control laws and they’re a little sensitive about that lately. I think there’s a wedding invitation in there somewhere.”
“George is getting married?” Oliver says, and there’s a tiny part of him that’s incredibly hurt at knowing that, because – he firmly tells that part of himself to shut up, he hasn’t talked to George since his little sister tried to kill them all and mostly succeeded.
Harry raises his eyebrows. “Yes,” he says. “To Hermione. I think he wants you to be his best man. Charlie is probably depressed. One brother left and he doesn’t have a chance in hell of getting the job if you show up.”
“What about you?”
“I’m supposed to be Hermione’s man of honor,” Harry says, deadpan. He puts his fingers on Oliver’s wrist, warm and real. “Read the letter,” he suggests, and Oliver does.
-
England is a lot warmer than it was four years ago; of course, four years ago the country was overrun by Dementors that severely threw off the natural climate. Oliver follows Harry out of the Arrivals room of the Department of International Magical Cooperation and out into the main room, and then has to ignore the urge to turn around and demand to be returned to the United States.
Hermione and Charlie are the first people Oliver sees, and they both hug Harry tightly. “How was your trip?” Hermione asks, smiling, and the scars have almost faded from around her right eye. She wears glasses now; they’ve slipped down to the end of her nose and she pushes them back up with the back of her hand.
“Fantastic,” Harry says. “Where’s Draco?”
“Oh, you know him,” Charlie says. “Said he’s not moving for Harry bloody Potter.”
Harry grins. “I brought you something back.”
Hermione brightens. “Books?” she says hopefully. “There was a thesis published by Elizabeth Zelenka over the rise of the –”
“Someone,” Harry corrects. “Wood – Oliver – get over here.”
Hermione looks at him with wide eyes, unrecognizing for a moment, then she gasps and flings her arms around Oliver’s neck. “Oliver!” she says. “We thought you were dead.”
Charlie claps him on the back. “It’s good to see you again, mate.”
Then the door bangs open and someone else enters the room. “Sorry I’m late, has Harry’s Portkey come in…yet…”
George comes to an abrupt halt as soon as he sees Oliver. They stare at each other in silence for several moments, and then George says, voice suddenly thick, “You look like hell, Wood,” and pulls him into a fierce hug.
It’s almost like coming home.
Back when I still frequented the FictionAlley boards, there was a discussion going on about American wizarding schools. Now, that was a long time ago (almost five years) and I haven't retained much of the information, but what little I have retained has gone into Cascade Academy of Magic. Cascade, as Oliver points out, services the Pacific Northwest region of the United States -- in other words, Washington, Idaho, and Oregon. It's located on the east side of the Cascade Mountains' Snoqualmie Pass; for those that know the geography, it's located roughly where Cle Elum, Washington, is. Most of the school is based on public high school life in the U.S., that being what I know; there are also parts of it that are taken from private high school life. Cascade takes students from seventh grade through twelfth grade; upperclassmen are traditionally eleventh and twelfth (junior and senior), while underclassmen are ninth and tenth (freshman and sophomore). Both phrases are used loosely within the story, as well as in real life (in some scenes, underclassmen refers to seventh through ninth and upperclassmen tenth through twelfth; most scenes use the traditional use of the word). Although it's never directly mentioned in the story, classes also operate on a "block" schedule -- three classes one day, a different three classes the next day, revolving throughout the weeks. The school also operates on a quarter system -- fall quarter (September through November), winter I quarter (November through January), winter 2 quarter (February through April), spring quarter (April through June), and summer quarter (June through August) (there are five; summer quarter isn't usually taken by anyone but upperclassmen).
Cascade's classes, while mostly similar to Hogwarts, have some differences. The most major one referenced in the story is that Defense Against the Dark Arts is an elective class. Let me make something clear: in my high school, foreign languages are elective classes. So are other fun classes like chemistry, physics, pre-calculus, and calculus. Yes, they're generally required to get into college, but they're not really required in life (please don't tell my math or physics teachers I said this). DADA is the same way. It's an elective class, offered in three one year sessions: Introduction to Defense Against the Dark Arts, Intermediate Defense Against the Dark Arts, and Advanced Defense Against the Dark Arts. And while Professor Fritz Hoffman was teaching it, it was a fairly useless class that students took just because it would look good on their transcripts. Oliver gets the job because, as Dr. Waters says, he's actually been there, and he'll teach his students what it's like. There's a scene that was cut that takes place during graduation at Cascade, where Jack Jameson and Nick Hakamura come up to tell Oliver they've been recruited by FAMA (Federal Agency of Magical Affairs) just on the basis of actually having a decent DADA teacher. Oliver, at least for his Advanced DADA class and his Military Magic class, throws students right into a mess. He may have been a scary teacher, but at least he was one hell of a teacher.
Oliver does not fly. This is brought up early in the story because, well, Oliver Wood. Word association? Quidditch. And he's not flying. He explains why later, but I thought it was the perfect thing to bring across how much things have changed during the war, and how much war can change a person.
I'm well aware I killed off most of Britain's wizarding population. It's open war. Fudge says so himself in HBP. And while Voldemort had eleven years of terror sixteen years ago, now he knows there actually is someone out there who can defeat him -- so he'll speed everything up double time. And the Ministry will respond. Professional Quidditch is shut down -- the players are shuffled throughout the Ministry. There are casualties. Lots of them. In my own personal post-HBP-fanon, Fred is killed in an attack on Weasley's Wizard Wheezes the summer after HBP and George immediately signs up to fight, enraged. Ron is killed at some point on the Horcrux hunt, and Draco Malfoy ends up with one of the Horcruxes embedded in his wrist. People are changed. People die.
The Cup Oliver mentioned is Hufflepuff's Cup, and it is indeed a Horcrux. It also has a scary magical virus enspelled into it, which Oliver and George reverse-spell. Honestly, did even you think Harry would manage to find four Horcruxes in a year? Right now he's two for six, if you count the Peverell ring Dumbledore took care of. I think Oliver and George's Auror team found this one.
You know, I'm a very weird person in that I feel no guilt whatsoever about all the American OCs in this story, which are, like, the bane of fandom, but I get incredibly guilty bringing up Ruby Broadmoor -- who's been seen before in "Figuring Strategies" as Cedric's Hufflepuff yearmate and Beater.
I'm still very unhappy about how the scene with Zelenka and Oliver after the Modern Magical History class turned out, but I'm not sure how to fix it short of just taking it out. If I ever edit this thing, I'll probably rewrite that.
Originally, everything took place in the second year Oliver was teaching at Cascade, and I didn't really like that, so I changed it to the fourth. But there's a big empty gap of four years, and it makes me unhappy. If I ever edit, I'll probably slot something in there.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-04 03:14 pm (UTC)I really, really liked this.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-04 07:10 pm (UTC)