Disclaimer: I don't own any of the Harry Potter characters, JK Rowling does. I do however own the plot and various made up characters.
This is set in America. It was originally about baseball, but I decided that it was too OC/AU for my liking. So I apologise if it sounds a little odd. Also Hermione and Draco have never met before and there is no Voldermort.
Chapter 1"God, I love it when you have your hands on me." The husky words broke the stillness of the room.
Hermione Granger slid her fingers over the muscled back of the half-naked man lying in front of her, the warm oil slick under her palms. Skin slipped against skin as her breath came faster, a faint dew of moisture forming on her flushed face. The scent of the oil wove its way into her senses; the warmth of his body heated hers. She caught her lower lip between her teeth in concentration.
"I don't want to share you," he groaned. "Let's just run away, you and me."
Hermione's mouth curved. "Oliver, you try running away with anyone and your wife will track you down and brain you with a frying pan." She slapped him smartly on the shoulder. "Off the table, coach. Time to go teach these kids to play quidditch."
Oliver Wood, manager for the Lovewell Tigers minor league quidditch team, sat up and ran his fingers through his grizzled hair. Years of sitting poorly on a broom as a major league beater had given him dickey knees and chronic bursitis in his shoulder. Only Hermione's skilled hands could banish the aches these days when the arthritis gnawed at him. "You got yourself a great touch, kid. I'm gonna have you teach my wife."
"I don't know." Hermione put her hands on her hips and gave him a sassy look from under the bangs of her brown hair.
"If I were you, I'd be a little nervous about bringing Essie in. I might have to tell her you're threatening to run off on her unless you make it worth my while."
"Aw, you know I was just joking." When she only looked at him, he slumped his shoulders in defeat. "What do you want?"
"New hoses for the whirlpool."
"That's a hundred galleons. I'll have to fill out a req."
"You're the one asking me to keep a secret, Oliver," she reminded him, fighting a smile. "I'm only here as long as Ron's out with his carpal tunnel problem, and who knows how long that will be. I've got to do what I can to get this place in shape before I leave."
"You're not goin' anywhere," he insisted. "Whether Ron comes back this season or not, I'm gonna find a way to keep you on. Even if you do push me around."
Hope ballooned up inside her before she could hold it down. "I don't push you around, Oliver. I just…encourage you. But it's all for the sake of the team." She gave him an impudent grin and shoved her hands into the pockets of her khaki walking shorts, trying to ignore the leap of excitement. She knew that keeping her spot, as team trainer was a long shot. It didn't do to count on things that might not happen.
Oliver walked out of the clubhouse and into the shadowed space underneath the grandstand, following the sloping walkway that led to the pitch. A couple of players skidded up from the parking lot in muggle clothes.
"Hey, Oliver, is it true?"
"What? You should be dressed and on the field stretching, not bugging me," he barked in the gruff tone he imagined gave him authority. "It's almost time for practice. In my day we cared enough to be early."
"But is it true?" asked Paul Orlando, the tough, good-looking chaser with the makings of major league talent.
"Is it true?" Oliver's voice rose. "Is it true that all of ya are gonna be out on the field in fifteen minutes or I'm handing out fines? You'd better believe it."
"No, for real, we heard that Draco Malfoy is coming as a fielding instructor."
Oliver took his time hitching up his trousers and adjusting his cap, then nodded. "Yep, he'll be the fielding instructor all week, and he'll go on the road with us." His look turned to a glower. "But unless you guys get changed and out on that field in ten minutes, you ain't never gonna meet him."
"You just shaved off five minutes off the time, Skipper," protested Tim Lang, one of the team's beaters.
"That's nothin' compared to what I'm gonna shave off you if you don't get your butts out on that pitch," Oliver thundered, and the players scattered toward the clubhouse.
Hermione stretched a new cover over the massage table, idly listening to the chatter of the players as they dressed for practice. When she'd first joined, a few of them had tried to put the moves on her, but she'd laughed them off. Hermione had been around locker rooms most of her life, whether competing or assisting the coaches, and locker rooms frequently contained half-naked, testosterone-laden men who found it hard to believe that a lush-mouthed brown-head like Hermione could resist their charms. Over the years she'd gotten very good at doing just that.
The buzz of a locker room energized her, and okay, so she'd gotten an eyeful once or twice. Admittedly, it was sometimes…entertaining, especially when her social life was almost non-existent. Still, it didn't throw her off her stride. She'd perfected a slightly bored matter of factness that made her one of the boys, even though she was all female. And maybe to their own surprise, the Lowell players found themselves treating her like a bossy older sister rather than date bait.
"Look it up in the book. I'm telling you, he had a 89 success rate for catching snitches and when he played chaser he was scoring every 2 minutes." That was Walter Brown, aka Stats, and resident quidditch trivia fiend.
"You're full of it," Orlando's voice came back. "That's almost as high as Ted Williams. Next you're going to be telling me his season high was 95."
"93," Stats said triumphantly.
"That's bullshit."
Hermione glanced idly out the door of the training room and into the locker area.
"Hey, if Stats says that's the number, that's the number," Tom Scott, the team's burly keeper, broke in. Twenty-three and married, Watson was the elder statesman of the team.
"Man, oh man, what I'd give to go round scoring like that in the big leagues," said Tim Lang, dreamily pulling on his robes.
"Me, I'd settle for having his snitch catching average with the ladies," Orlando Grinned as he leaned down to tie his shoes.
"Who's this?"
Four heads whipped around to stare at Hermione before they went back to dressing. "Draco Malfoy"
Even Hermione had heard about Draco Malfoy, seen his white-blond good looks as he'd escorted rich purebloods and models to swanky benefits and balls. He's also escorted them to his bed, if the media was to be believed. There was something else about him that nibbled at the edge of her memory, something she couldn't quite dredge up.
"He retire or something, didn't he?"
"He got retired, more like it." Orlando stood and gathered up his quidditch gear, tucking his leg guards under his arm. "Car accident. A big rig took him out. He's lucky to be alive."
Lucky was hardly the way the man in the Bronco would have put it. Draco Malfoy pulled into the parking lot at Lovewell's stadium and turned off his truck, listening to the ticks of the cooling engine. Lucky would have been knowing he was going to be back on the pitch. Lucky wasn't losing the only thing that he'd ever wanted to do with his life.
He climbed out of the truck, frowning at the stiffness in his back and leg, and then ignoring it as he habitually did. To favour it was to give in to it, to say that the accident had won. The accident had already won too much.
He absently tucked his grey T-shirt more securely into the back of his worn jeans, the faded material stretching over his lean, hard muscled frame. During the long months of rehab, the Florida sun had miraculously streaked his white-blond hair over his collar. Back in his playing days he'd kept it trimmed short for convenience. Now, he only bothered to have it cut when it hung down in his metallic grey eyes or tickled his neck enough to distract him.
A slight limp marred his loose, athletic walk, a limp that faded as he crossed the street to the back fence of the minor league stadium. He leaned on the wall and stared at the pitch and sky. It exerted an almost irresistible pull, beckoning him to vault the fence, grab a broom and join in the game. Instead, he watched the players complete their fielding drills. They looked like a litter of young puppies, still loose and joyfully gawky, their playing infused more with raw talent than finesse. And now he, of all people, was supposed to come here and show them how it was done.
Once, his job had been to catch that vital snitch, or score those crucial goals, to help propel his team to the finals half a dozen times in a single decade. That had been before a trucker long past his legally mandated sleep period had lost control of his tractor-trailer and taken Draco off the road. Before the weeks in ICU and the surgeries, the months of rest. Before the news that he was never going to play quidditch in the major leagues again.
Quidditch had been all he'd ever wanted, all he'd dreamed about ever since he'd been a kid. He'd been one of the chosen handful that had had the skill, talent, and drive to live that dream. And indeed, quidditch had been his life. When he hadn't been playing, he'd been working out. When he hadn't been working out, he'd been watching game tapes. When he hadn't been doing either, he'd kept the media entertained.
Now, there was a giant hole where quidditch had been, so Blaise Zabini, his onetime team-mate and self-appointed saviour, had bullied him, or conned him, rather, into trying out as a roving instructor.
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