Oliver Wood and the Muggleborn's Wand
Chapter 18
Alhazred - ssjDOTalhazredATgmailDOTcom - alhazredDOTlivejournalDOTcom
Not For Profit work. Harry Potter and related materials © J.K. Rowling.

Oliver wasn't, at all, sure how he and Jessica had ended up in his bed together. While he was sure Conner would've passed out if he saw them, there wasn't anything truly compromising about it. From the way she was shivering in her sleep, she seemed to be clinging to him for warmth more than anything.

He hadn't been properly drunk, so he didn't need to check and see if they were still clothed. He remembered going to bed without taking anything off. Likewise, he remembered going to bed as the sun came up, so while the light coming in through the open window was obnoxious, it wasn't unexpected.

Content, Oliver closed his eyes again, fully prepared to waste the day getting more sleep. His arm was still throbbing, everything below his hair was sore, and awkward or not, having some human company this close was nice. It was oddly calming. Maybe it was that stuff Flint had said after the game. Yes, that made sense. Having Jessica close certainly helped to scrub his brain clean of that particular weirdness.

Then the owl perched outside of the window and started pecking on it.

Really, Oliver wondered why he didn't fall to the floor right there. He managed to gently tug himself away from Jessica as the haughty brown owl waited patiently. Once Oliver's feet hit the floor and he padded over, he steeled his resolve against the cold undoubtely waiting and opened the window.

The owl hooted once, dropped a package with a letter attached on the windowsill, and then flew away. Cold air from outside blew in at Oliver, and it was dramatically uncomfortable even for the second it took him to close the window.

The delivery was the Sunday edition of the Daily Prophet, with a note from his parents explaining that they'd bought him a subscription. "Oh, joy. Bad news delivered right through my window every day..."

His first thought upon seeing the picture on the front page was that he'd just rammed his foot down his throat. The picture was Marcus hugging him, and Oliver could see the look on his own face when Marcus pulled away. He knew why he looked bewildered, knew what Marcus had said, words the picture hadn't captured.

For a moment, Oliver panicked. Had Rita Skeeter overheard what Flint said?

When he looked at the rest of the page, Oliver's stomach settled down. The byline wasn't Rita's, and the headline read, "Tutshill Tornados Win First Quidditch Game Since The End Of You-Know-Who!"

Indeed, the picture was relevant to a subject not entirely related to the game itself; skimming the article, Oliver read it aloud, in a hushed voice so as not to wake Jessica. "'Perhaps the most important aspect of this game was its exemplary display of sportsmanship, reflecting well on the status of the Wizarding world as we come out of such dark times. Marcus Flint and Oliver Wood, known to have been fierce Quidditch rivals during their time at Hogwarts, are now a shining example of what we should all strive to be...'"

Folding the paper back over itself and tossing it gently to an empty spot on the bed, Oliver felt a little jilted. Flint wasn't any friendlier than he'd been at Hogwarts, just...gay, apparently.

It didn't really bother Oliver. He just felt somehow off, like his dream had prophesied the end of the world and he was just waiting for it to happen.

His dream.

He hadn't remembered it when he first woke up, but now...spinning on his heels, Oliver wasn't sure what he expected. His Other staring at him from the other side of the window, maybe. There was nothing there, no red eyes, nothing but a feeling of emptiness. Something was missing, Oliver just couldn't figure out what.

Jessica seemed fine, still unconscious and curled up under her Puddlemere robe. It was rather touching, in a way that Oliver would never, ever admit out loud, that she'd slept a night right next to him without a second thought. He hadn't been even that close to anything since Katie. Even before Katie.

His hand picked up Katie's photo from the bureau without even looking. Thinking of her made Oliver realize just how much he'd moved on with his life in the last few months without even realizing it. Seeing her face, frozen and smiling up at him, he couldn't help but think that he had no right to be happy, to have friends and to watch his dreams come true around him while she lay dead in the memorial cemetery.

"I got him," he whispered, "I murdered the bastard who murdered you...and I don't really know if you'd even like that I did it...but I try real hard to think you would...I never would've guessed my life would've turned out like this..."

As little as six months ago, Oliver had been sure that his life would inextricably involve Katie, that they would be thinking about when to have their wedding by now, that they might entertain fleeting thoughts of starting a family at some point.

Instead, Oliver was alone, or nearly alone, in a Muggle town where no one would bother him about the war. Conner and Jessica were good friends; they had the sense not to ask for more when he only volunteered enough information to get the point across.

Somewhere, in the back of his mind, Oliver realized that Jessica falling asleep curled up next to him was not something 'simple' friends normally did, that he could at least ask her out to dinner, maybe even a movie.

But it hadn't even been six months. What kind of respect for the dead was that?

Fleetingly, Oliver reached to the bureau again, intent on picking up Katie's wand, feeling the warmth it always seemed to give off. For being nothing more than the wand of a fallen witch, it seemed as though its purpose in this world was to comfort him as best it could. As if Katie herself was trying to ease him, through it.

Oliver turned his head and saw the sight before him, knew what he was looking at, but didn't fully understand it until his hand laid down on the wood and felt...nothing. He saw nothing, a near-blank space where the photograph in his hand and the wand nowhere in sight once sat, occupied only by the ring he'd given her.

The wand was gone. "No." It wasn't possible. He never put that wand anywhere else. "No!" It couldn't have rolled off. The wood wasn't polished, the wand wasn't perfectly round. It had never moved of its own accord, there were no marks left in the light layer of dust save for the outline of where it had been.

Oliver knew all of this, knew it even as he opened each drawer and rummaged through his clothes, slamming each shut and moving to the next, he knew it was futile, but it had to have just rolled off. No other explanation would allow the world to continue making any kind of sense.

By the third drawer, Jessica had stirred. She was groggy at first, and then startled, not at the noise Oliver was making, but at what her sleep-addled brain was perceiving. "What the hell am...oh, Oliver, thank god, I thought I was at..."

She stopped talking the instant she sat up and actually looked at him. Oliver seemed feverish, a look of abject horror on his face. He practically dove to the floor so he could look under the bed, acknowledging her presence the way one acknowledges a hallucination. "It can't be gone! It's got to be here, right? It can't be gone."

Slipping off the bed, keeping the Quidditch robe around her shoulders for warmth, she said, "Oliver, calm down...what's wrong?"

Stopping cold, Oliver spent a long second looking at her. He became aware of what he looked like, going mad over the missing object. It wasn't like he'd suddenly forgotten Katie, having something so personal of hers was nice, yes, but he couldn't shake the feeling that there was something deeper about this. He felt it in his very soul, as if someone was dancing all over his grave. "It's...it's gone...Katie's wand...I always keep it right here."

She didn't criticize him for the way he was acting over it, didn't judge him. She didn't dare assume that she knew even a little about how he felt after going through the things he had. "Okay, okay...take a deep breath, and think...it has to be here somewhere, right? You do that weird thing with the squishy noise on the door whenever you go out, so it's not like someone could just walk in and steal stuff...right?"

"Yeah," Oliver thought back to putting the locking charm on the door, remembered that familiar squelching noise, and remembered...that he hadn't heard it in several days. He hadn't heard it again since the last time he'd un-locked the door, and the last time he'd unlocked the door was -

Once out the door, Oliver closed it and promptly leaned down to pull his wand from the sheath. "Colloportus." Precisely half of one second after the door squelched, he realized that he had, indeed, forgotten something. "Oh, for...good one, Wood. Alohamora."

Dashing back in, Oliver grabbed his broom from where it waited, propped up in the corner near the door. Leaving once more, he closed the door and let Jessica lead him to her flat.

- two days ago, and he hadn't been home at all in the time between, hadn't been home since early in the morning.

The revelation made Oliver sick. Physically ill, yes, but worse than that. He felt poisoned, violated in the most personal way possible, his mind wounded and his body unsure how to follow suit.

"No...no, I didn't."

There was no other explanation; someone had taken Katie's wand.