Author's Note: Post Half Blood Prince. Spoilers abound. And though I know it's not strictly canon, when I wrote this the image of Oliver I had was of Oliver in the movies (Sean Biggerstaff). And I don't think the Order was really using Grimmauld Place as HQ anymore, so please forgive that minor breach.
Of all the things Oliver had imagined himself doing after he left Hogwarts, assisting a secret order to fight You-Know-Who was certainly not one of them.
Lord Voldemort, he had to remind himself. Voldemort. Hermione was fond of telling him that fear of a name only increases fear of the thing itself. He guessed it made sense, and Hermione's a smart girl. Still… even thinking the name made him more than a little uncomfortable.
He leaned back into the armchair he was lounging in and rubbed at his temples. Here he was, in number twelve, Grimmauld Place, the Black family's manor, which now apparently belonged to Harry Potter. That was still something his mind hadn't quite been able to wrap itself around, and he felt rather odd asking. No one seemed quite forthcoming with any information. Sirius Black, whom he'd grown up understanding to be a murderer and one of the worst of the Death Eaters, actually was Potter's godfather and had been killed heroically in the attack at the Ministry spring before last.
Yeah... still didn't make a bit of sense.
And yet here he was. It was such a laugh- Oliver Wood, a member of the Order of the Phoenix! The only thing he'd ever been good at was Quidditch. His grades had always been absolutely average (and sometimes less than that, depending on the state of the team and the time of season), and he'd never shown any talent of note in any of the magical arts he'd learned at Hogwarts. He'd earned enough O.W.L.s to get by and had even managed to scrape together a few N.E.W.T.s, but it had certainly been nothing to brag about. To be fair, he allowed, he had never particularly tried very hard. He was good at Quidditch, and he knew he wanted to play Quidditch professionally, so he'd devoted all his time to it. He almost smiled at the thought of his class notes filled with new plays and scribbled gameplans (he had always been good at charming those to move). How Percy Weasley had looked down his nose at that… But then, Percy had looked down his nose at most things concerning Oliver.
But times changed. You-Know- Voldemort came back, when he'd been playing with Puddlemere United's reserve team. Oliver had believed it- he'd never bought any of the rubbish the Ministry had been pushing. All those sly hints in the Daily Prophet that Harry Potter was off his rocker, that Professor Dumbledore was getting old and foolish. Potter had said he'd seen the Dark Lord rise, and Oliver had believed him. Oliver knew Harry, and he knew he wasn't crazy. Anyone that good at Quidditch couldn't be crazy (all claims that Oliver himself was crazy, aside). Besides, Professor Dumbledore had backed Potter, too, and Oliver would certainly trust Dumbledore before he trusted Fudge.
He'd heard about Cedric Diggory. Cedric, whom the girls had always giggled about, and Oliver had had to remind them that he was the enemy and he'd beat them if he could. Diggory had always been a fine Quidditch player, whose skills Oliver had had a lot of respect for. He'd gone to see his grave and it had been like a dream (nightmare). How could Cedric Diggory be dead? Hufflepuff Captain and Seeker Cedric Diggory, a year younger than Oliver himself? He still caught himself thinking of Diggory in the present tense, sometimes, and it still hurt.
And despite that, it had all seemed somehow… distant. Somehow otherworldly, while the battles were taking place infrequently enough at first and then far enough away that Oliver hadn't been touched. Yeah, the Death Eaters broke out of Azkaban, but it wasn't as though the Woods would be high on their list of targets, was it? He'd gone on playing Quidditch, and he'd even made the first team, as starting Keeper, making his dreams of aspiring to Captain all that much closer. Quidditch remained his life, as it always had been. His family had been safe and he'd taken the Daily Prophet reports with a grain of salt. Soon they were proclaiming Potter the 'Chosen One,' and who knew what to take seriously? He knew nothing of the Order of the Phoenix, and, well, what was that Muggle expression? Ignorance was bliss. Voldemort (there, he said it, first try) remained a distant, lurking fear, like a nightmare that didn't seem so scary in the daylight. Oliver'd always been good at blocking out what he didn't need to know, anyway- he could focus on an entire Quidditch field at once and see absolutely nothing else, hear nothing else. As long as he didn't think of Voldemort and the Death Eaters, then, well, they didn't matter, did they?
Then last June had happened. Oliver closed his eyes and fought back the memory of the day he'd opened up the paper to the blaring headline. There had been an attack, at Hogwarts. Dumbledore had been killed. Snape had murdered him.
It had hit him, then. If not even Hogwarts was safe, if Hogwarts could be attacked, nowhere was untouchable. If Dumbledore could be killed… No, Oliver didn't like to think of that. Because if Dumbledore could be killed, then what chance did Oliver have?
He never knew how much of what was written in the Daily Prophet that he could trust, but he pieced together enough to have a general idea of what had happened. Malfoy, the little snake, was a filthy traitor just like his father, and his behavior hadn't been surprising in the least. Snape, however, was worse. Oliver had never liked Snape (what Gryffindor did?), but he knew that Dumbledore had trusted him. He had been a professor, and, as he came to learn, a member of the Order of the PhoenixSnape's betrayal was a bitter pill to swallow and Oliver started to be much more careful with what he told to whom.
Oliver had seen Potter, once, shortly after, and he'd barely even recognized him. The boy had grown, certainly, but that wasn't it. It was the haunted look in his green eyes and his too gaunt face. It was the bent slope of his shoulders, as though he was carrying the whole weight of the world. Oliver supposed that maybe he was.
He remembered Harry flying, Harry catching the Snitch. He remembered his wide grin and the sound of his laughter, the mischief he inevitably got himself into with Ron and Hermione. Oliver thought of that Harry, and couldn't reconcile that figure with this one. And that was when he'd known that he couldn't sit by and do nothing. If Harry was steeling himself up for a battle with the most powerful wizard alive, then there was no way Oliver could ever live with himself if he didn't do something to help.
Because it wasn't just Potter's battle. It was the entire wizarding world's battle, and none of them stood a chance if everyone didn't do their part.
So Oliver went to Professor McGonagall, because he knew that if anyone was working against Voldemort it would be her. At first she'd been reluctant to let him in, because after all, who knew his lack of effort in anything other than Quidditch better than his old Head of House? But she also knew that people could change, that Oliver had been put into Gryffindor for a reason, that he had a manic energy and when he did put his mind to something he always excelled. Besides… it wasn't as though she fooled herself into thinking she could simply turn aside willing hands, and Oliver wasn't a child in need of protection anymore.
And Oliver liked to think that he was good at charming people, with his easy smile and boundless enthusiasm and the light in his eyes. But then… McGonagall had never really fallen for that before, had she? It certainly hadn't worked when he'd tried to convince her to let Potter have his Firebolt back (and bloody hell but he'd been so sure she'd listen to him). No, McGonagall had never been anything but strict, though she had always kept him playing Quidditch, despite all his brawls with Marcus Flint. Maybe that was why Oliver had liked her so much- the woman had wanted Gryffindor to win the Quidditch Cup almost as badly as he had.
Those involved with the Order hadn't come as a surprise. McGonagall, of course. The Weasleys and old Professor Lupin, who'd done a fair job at keeping Oliver's attention on class instead of Quidditch (well, fair compared to the other Defense Against the Dark Arts professors he'd had). Aurors like Moody and Shacklebolt. Hagrid. Then there were the students (and graduates, he had to remind himself), who, while not all officially members, were doing what they could to help. Harry Potter, Hermione Granger, and Ron Weasley. The entire Weasley family, actually, minus Percy. There was the Longbottom boy, a blonde Ravenclaw he didn't know, a few Hufflepuffs he recognized. Even his Chasers Angelina Johnson, Alicia Spinnet, and Katie Bell popped by every now and then, and the list went on and on. Oliver didn't know whether to be impressed there were so many or depressed that there had to be so many.
It was strange how few of them he actually knew, though. He knew Charlie Weasley, and he knew Potter and Fred and George and the rest of his Cup winning team. Well… sort of. Not really. They were all his friends, certainly, but how many times had he had conversations that weren't in some way involving Quidditch? …Ugh. Had he really been that anti-social at Hogwarts? Oliver smiled a bit. Yeah, he had. Nothing but Quidditch, day and night. The Weasley twins had loved to tease him about how all the girls thought of him fondly as a handsome bloke who was great at Quidditch but too thick to be worth the effort. He'd always thought they were pulling his leg, and they probably were, but maybe there'd been some truth to it, after all? He did know, at least, that most of the school had laughed at him for his obsession (he preferred the term "passion"). He had ignored them. Didn't mean it hadn't hurt, though.
Funny, that. That he could be so alternately idolized for his skills and for his leadership of the team and then poked fun at. Adolescence was a strange mix of emotions. People never laughed at Oliver anymore- now they asked for his autograph.
Oliver didn't want to think of Percy Weasley, so estranged from his family- while they'd never been friends, per se, they'd grown up together at Hogwarts. Their interests and their personalities had been completely opposite, but Oliver remembered Percy softly sobbing behind the bedcurtains when Ginny had gone missing her first year, and he'd wished that he could've been the type of person who would've known exactly what to do. He'd wished that had he known, Percy would've even let him. Oliver didn't know exactly what had gone wrong between Percy and the other Weasleys. He didn't know a lot of things. He hoped that it would work itself out, that it wouldn't take a tragedy to make them realize how foolish their pride had been. Oliver found that he hoped for a lot of things, these days.
Charlie Weasley had been present when Oliver had first arrived. Charlie Weasley, who'd been Captain when Oliver had first made Gryffindor's House Team and Oliver's idol. He still maintained that Charlie could've played for England had he not decided he preferred dragons over chasing tiny Golden Snitches. Oliver had never claimed Charlie wasn't crazy.
If all these people could put aside their lives and their dreams to fight the greatest evil the wizarding world had ever known, then Oliver certainly could put Quidditch on hold for a while. It hurt, for sure, but he guessed that maybe he had finally grown up, finally realized that, yes, there really were some things more important than Quidditch. Like doing anything and everything in his power to ensure that his family stayed safe, that they weren't ripped apart like so many others less fortunate than they.
So Oliver came forward and offered to do what he did best. He put his flying skills to better use than Quidditch and became a spy for the Order. The missions were dangerous and long and tiring and he knew full well that he could be captured, he could be tortured, he could be killed.
But somehow, someway, that picture paled in comparison to the idea of doing nothing while Harry prepared to face death.
Oliver may never have planned on fighting Voldemort, but then, in Quidditch, you had to be ready for anything, from rogue Bludgers to stooging. And Oliver Wood was used to winning.
Final Note: Oliver was always terribly amusing to me and one of my favorite characters from the books (yes, even though he was most definitely a minor character), and I wanted to do a little piece on him deciding to join the Order. I'm still holding out hope that J.K. Rowling will bring him back for book 7… Hey, I can dream, can't I?