Incongruous Compatibility by Kihin Ranno

Penelope broke up with Percy Weasley the day everyone knew that Voldemort had returned.

When Percy came to the flat she practically shared with him, white-faced and shivering underneath his overcoat, he told her what had happened. He told her about the Battle at the Department of Mysteries, the exoneration and death of Sirius Black, and that everything she had been told to believe was wrong. It was all a lie.

Something snapped inside of her like a cracking bone. She leapt off the couch, upending the breakfast she’d been having, and stalked back to their – really his – bedroom. She grabbed the largest bag she could find, pulled open the drawers he had given to her, and proceeded to throw her belongings inside.

“Penny?” Percy asked, coming into the room as if he was a wanderer unsure of his footing. “What are you doing?”

Penelope scoffed. “I realize you were not in Ravenclaw, Percy, but really, I should think it’s obvious.”

“You’re not leaving.” A flat denial.

Penelope pulled her wand from her pocket and levitated the remaining articles of clothing into the bag. Then she slammed them shut with a violent flick of her wand. “Yes. I am.”

“Just like that?” Percy asked. His voice trembled in that way that made her want to hold him and stroke his ginger hair.

She turned to the bathroom and summoned her toiletries. “Just like that.”

“But you can’t!” he shouted, his voice already breaking. “You can’t— I need you, Penny. Now more than ever.”

Penelope thrust her hands into her hair, her fingers getting caught in the tangles as she twisted it into a bun. “You need me to hold your hand and tell you it’s all right, Percy, but it isn’t. I can’t stay.”

She saw his ears start to redden in the reflection of the bedroom mirror. A picture of them was tucked into the corner. She couldn’t remember where it had been taken, but she looked happy. They both did. “I know that I was wrong about You-Know-Who, but I don’t see why that means you have to leave.”

Penelope leaned forward onto the dresser, her fingers curling around the edge. “For a year, Percy, I gave you the benefit of the doubt. I listened to your rational explanations. I held on to my faith in the government I worked for. I openly dismissed the evidence offered by the opposition as paranoia in deference to a madman and his boy soldier.”

She looked up and caught his eyes in the mirror. He was crying. She wasn’t. “But from the first, I believed Harry.”

Percy’s ears grew redder. “You never said.”

“I didn’t want to start an argument.” It was more a lie than the truth, but it wasn’t totally a lie. And though Percy would never have agreed with her, he deserved better than her real reasons.

“So you lied?”

“You never asked what I thought. You assumed that I believed the way you did.”

“Because it was the logical conclusion given the evidence!” Percy spluttered. “He’s a child! A child who saw his parents die, who was at the center of every catastrophe since the day I met him. I know the Muggles who raised him; I know how they mistreated him. Lashing out would only be natural. I was his Prefect for Merlin’s sake! I know how unstable he is.”

Penelope nodded. “But I didn’t follow the logic, Percy.” She reached behind her and grabbed her bag, looping it over her shoulder. “I just believed him.”

Percy swiped at his eyes as she turned. “Not very Ravenclaw of you.”

“I never was a very good Ravenclaw.”

Percy shifted so that he stood in front of the door, tilting his chin up in defiance. It was a good look for him. It really was too bad that he so rarely used it. “So you’re leaving me because I was wrong?”

“No,” Penelope murmured. “I’m leaving you because anyone who really followed the logic would have concluded some time ago that Harry Potter and Dumbledore weren’t lying. I’m leaving you because you held on to that because you wanted to disagree with your parents. To get back at your father. You wanted to make him and your family angry, so you held on to your convictions.” She swallowed the lump in her throat. “You always were a stubborn swot.”

Percy’s eyes began to harden. For years, they had been nothing but softness and devotion for her, and even if it was only for her, it was enough. Now they were wet stones. It would have been the same gaze he turned on everyone, had it not been for the tears. “You were wrong too, you know.”

She raised an eyebrow. “About?”

He stepped out of the doorway. “You’re a very good Ravenclaw.”

She shut her eyes, but walked forward, gently pushing past him on her way out. When their shoulders brushed together, the spark that had left her stomach doing cartwheels while they were in school did not emerge. It was nothing new, but it still stung.

“I’ll send your things from my flat, shall I?” Penelope asked.

“This isn’t right,” Percy said roughly.

“Maybe not for you,” she muttered, striding away. “But it is for me.”

Then she walked out of his apartment for the last time.

An hour later, Penelope had arrived at her own home, unpacked her things, and sent an owl to the Ministry with her resignation. Then she curled up on her couch and covered herself in a blanket Mrs. Weasley had knit for her when she was still welcome in that home. She tucked herself in up to her chin, sliding her feet between the sofa cushions. She lay there for the rest of the day, and she didn’t cry.

“I am never dating a Gryffindor again.”

-----

A few days later, Penelope had calculated that she could survive the rest of the month on her current funds thanks to the pathetic salary she had received from the Ministry. This meant that procuring a job was a necessity that could not be put off to mourn a relationship or a career fallen by the wayside. She could, of course, waste valuable time and energy looking through the Daily Prophet for want ads, but she knew that there were far better resources available to her than that.

There were various flaws with the house system of Hogwarts. It was easy to see how it could inspire a gang mentality, which made inter-house relations a bit of a bear. However, Penelope also knew that there were advantages to it as well. Chief among those was the ability to network.

The housing systems acted a bit like social fraternities common to universities in the United States. It built up an instant camaraderie between members of the same house even if they were decades apart in age. It also meant that even if two classmates had never been friends as such, they still felt a sense of ingrained loyalty.

So when Penelope got in touch with Duncan Inglebee, a Ravenclaw boy from her year who had played Beater on the Quidditch team, he was not the least bit surprised to hear from her. Nor was he averse to meeting her for dinner to discuss what resources and connections he had with which he could find her some gainful employment. As the son of one of the foremost executives in the Nimbus Broom Racing Company, he had quite a few connections.

It was her bad luck that the return of the Dark Lord didn’t exactly make this a hiring market.

“I don’t want to be a research assistant, Duncan,” Penelope sighed, stabbing at her chips with unusual vehemence. She didn’t mind eating fried food as a rule, but when she couldn’t afford the more appetizing items on the menu thanks to her financial situation, it put her in a bit of a mood. “And I couldn’t even stand it for a while to make ends meet.”

He arched an eyebrow. “Really? And I’d been saving that one for a fellow ’Claw.”

Out of politeness, Penelope did not gag at the nickname. “Duncan, I know we weren’t the best of friends, but think back to our time at school. Do you remember ever seeing me study?”

Duncan flashed a smile, and she found herself blinking overmuch. He had surprisingly white teeth. “Well, I was a bit focused myself.”

“Oh, right,” Penelope murmured, frowning. “I’d forgotten. That’s how I got away with this.”

Duncan’s smile immediately vanished, his mouth hardening into something grim and threatening. “Penelope, I certainly hope you are not implying that because we were too busy studying, you managed to cheat on your exams. Because if that is what you are implying, don’t think I won’t march to Hogwarts right now and have them revoke your Head Girl status.”

Penelope scoffed, waving her fork at him. “Please. As if I would risk the wrath of our house. I heard the conspiracy theories the little ones cooked up to discover the deception of Hermione Granger. I’m fine with my hands staying hands, thanks.”

His face changed back to his original so quickly it may as well have given her whiplash. “Well, that’s all right then. What did you mean?”

Penelope grasped her straw between her fingers and began to swirl the remaining ice around in the glass, creating a little water spout. “Everyone in Ravenclaw studies like mad. That’s the stereotype, yeah? I never did.”

“Never studied?”

“Well, not never-ever never,” she clarified. “But not much, and not just by Ravenclaw standards. Charms and Defense and Potions all came surprisingly easy to me. It’s not that I didn’t try at all; I just never had to try very hard.”

Duncan stared at her for a moment, then snorted. “I can think of a few girls in our year who’d like to strangle you for that.”

“I’d deserve it a bit, wouldn’t I?” Penelope said, returning to her cooling chips. “Any other ideas?”

Duncan scratched at his chin, overemphasizing the five o’clock shadow that seemed too elegant not to be deliberate. “I suppose an editor wouldn’t suit you either.”

“Not likely,” Penelope agreed. “I need to do something active, or I’ll go barmy. Something that requires movement and engagement. And I don’t mean delivering mail and running idiotic little errands. That’s all I ever did at MoM, and there were times that I wanted to swallow my wand.”

“I can imagine,” Duncan agreed. “Well, I’d offer to look into what’s open at the company, but I doubt it would be anything other than secretarial work. And something tells me you don’t do well with bosses.”

Penelope valiantly tried not to think about the various demerits and reprimands she’d received from her various employers at the Ministry. Apparently they found her cheeky.

Idiots.

“A bit hard not to have a boss if I want to find work.”

“Always self-employment.”

“As what? A dog-walker?” She paused. “Actually, dogs aren’t so bad.”

Duncan looked ill. “Please. Don’t debase yourself that much. The house would have to disown you.”

Penelope sighed, tearing her napkin. “If you have any better ideas, please, tell me.”

To her surprise, Duncan gave the matter due consideration. After a moment, she saw his eyes light up – the proverbial light bulb. “You liked Quidditch, didn’t you? Never played, but you were a fan.”

“Still am. Support the Harpies.”

Duncan leaned forward conspiratorially. “I happen to have heard of a certain reserve Keeper for Puddlemere United who is in need of an agent. He was recruited right out of Hogwarts, so he was left to negotiate the terms of his contract himself. And since he’s in Gryffindor, word on the pitch is that he got a crap deal.”

It took an avid Quidditch fan to know the reserve players of a team they did not support. Penelope was a very avid Quidditch fan. “Oh, Duncan. Really?”

“What’s wrong with the idea? I think you’d be great! You’re… assertive.”

“Oh, thanks,” she drawled, knowing what ‘assertive’ really meant in male-speak.

“Bloody brilliant of course,” Duncan continued undeterred. “And if what you said about not trying is true, you must have a good head for numbers. You were always tops in Arithmancy.”

Penelope held up her hands before he could continue to list her attributes. “The only thing I don’t like about the idea is who you’re talking about.”

“Wood? What’s wrong with him?”

Penelope bit her tongue to keep from saying ‘Gryffindor.’ “I always thought he was insufferable. Possibly even deranged. I love Quidditch, but… well, we all heard the rumors about his broomstick.”

“Yeah,” Duncan murmured, chuckling. “And that he liked to put the Snitch up his—"

“The point is,” Penelope interrupted, “that I don’t think we’re suited.”

Duncan shrugged. “I don’t know about that. And I also don’t know what alternatives you have.”

There were alternatives of course. Penelope knew he was exaggerating grossly. But the fact remained that without further study, she would not be qualified for jobs more intellectually stimulating. And people were likely to be fleeing to the schools, whose protections were often better than people could provide for themselves. Furthermore, she couldn’t handle a desk job. She would go absolutely insane if she went with a desk job. There may have been options, but she couldn’t think of anything more promising than dog-walker.

And independent of Oliver Wood, the idea of being a sports agent was intriguing. She liked negotiating. She always drove a hard bargain. She wasn’t especially good at persuading people gently, but she definitely had the determination to hammer at them until they gave in. And it would involve her in Quidditch, something she’d always loved more than she cared to admit.

“Well,” Penelope said, pushing her plate of cold chips away, “may as well give it a go.”

-----

When Oliver had first gotten recruited for Puddlemere United, his friends and family and fellow teammates had informed him that he was in for quite a shock when he began practicing. “It’s nothing like school,” they said. “Much more strenuous. You probably won’t be able to stand afterwards.”

Oliver had learned in short order that this was not true. He had run much more challenging practices when he was a captain. They didn’t even start until nine in the morning for Godric’s sake!

So, while most of his other teammates – even the more seasoned ones – had to drag themselves off the pitch, Oliver always had a spring in his step. After all, he’d just finished doing what he loved to do, and comparatively, it hadn’t been that hard. He had attempted to explain to their trainer what more they could do, but she’d informed him that he was an overenthused git who needed to get a girlfriend or at least get laid on a more regular basis, otherwise she would be forced to slaughter him.

Everyone had always joked that Quidditch was his only love. However, when he tried to use it himself, people mostly just looked sad.

As he strode off the pitch, Oliver was sidelined by the sight of a slightly familiar woman leaning against the door to the showers. Perhaps Quidditch was his mistress, but Oliver was still male, and he had a certain appreciation for the female form. Saying she was fit would have been an unforgivable understatement. She was dressed in a Muggle ensemble – black pencil skirt, purple blouse, and high heels that would have sunk into the mud if it hadn’t been for some kind of charm. Her long, shapely legs seemed to go on for longer than the law should have allowed, and Oliver found himself thankful that Muggles favored less fabric all together. She was definitely a woman with curves in all the right places. He didn’t place her until he got closer and saw her wildly curly brown-black hair twisted into a bun that could barely contain it. He remembered that she’d used to wear her hair down against her Ravenclaw robes. He remembered her skin like burnt almonds and the way she smiled with only one corner of her mouth.

Penelope Clearwater had definitely done some growing up.

“Penelope!” Oliver bellowed, pulling off some of his Keeper’s gear. “This is certainly a surprise.”

The right side of her mouth crept up farther. “I’m surprised you remember me, Oliver. Since you’re a big Quidditch star now.”

He returned her smile, trying to remember if the chip in his front tooth was obvious. He did need to remember to get that fixed one of these days. “Never forget a fellow Quidditch fan. Even if you never did bet on my team.”

“House loyalty, Oliver.”

“You must have known we were better.”

“That’s why it was never more than few sickles.”

Oliver laughed that too-loud-uncomfortable laugh everyone indulged in when talking to pseudo-strangers. He planted his broomstick on the ground like he was claiming the pitch for England, and said, “So, what brings you here? Autographs from the rest of the team?”

“Not why I’m here, but I may take you up on that later,” Penelope said, pushing off the door. “A little Inglebee bird told me that you’re in need of representation.”

Oliver raised his eyebrows. “You a barrister now?”

“I meant an agent.”

Oliver had suspected that. He’d just hoped he was wrong. “Inglebee… Duncan, right? Bloody sod’s been trying to get me represented for an age.”

“Along with everyone else I hear,” Penelope said. “You’re the only player on the team without some kind of endorsement deal.”

He shrugged. “Don’t need them.”

“And I’ve heard rumors about your pay.”

“I’m just a reserve player, and a newbie besides.”

She scoffed. “Next you’re going to tell me that money doesn’t matter to you.”

“Well, it doesn’t,” he admitted. “All I’ve ever wanted to do is play Quidditch. I’m playing. And I’ve got enough to keep me fed and bed. Don’t need anything else.”

Penelope got the same look on her face that a lot of people had when they discussed this subject with him – like she wanted to beat her head against something. “Oliver, I can get you a better deal than that.”

“Probably,” he agreed. No one had been very close with Penelope, aside from Percy Weasley of course. But she’d always struck Oliver as rather saucy. She seemed like a woman used to getting her way by force. “But it doesn’t matter to me.”

She narrowed her gaze. It looked like there was lightning flashing in her dark eyes. “Oliver, as much as you think this noble hero persona will endear you to the adoring female masses, it does not endear you to me.”

Oliver began to lean away. “Okay….”

“And more importantly, it will not endear you to your trainer, your manager, or the owners of the team,” she pressed on. “Quidditch is competitive on and off the field. If you want to be more than a reserve player, you have to show that you’re willing to put up a fight. It’s perfectly clear that your thought process begins and ends with a fanatical love of Quaffles, but I can fight for you. You’re expected to have someone to do that. Frankly, I’m amazed you haven’t been chewed up trying to navigate this on your own thus far. You will never do more than sit on the sidelines and pray for the day when Wadcock’s too ill to mount his broom. Which, as I recall, has not happened once since you joined the team.”

Oliver glanced away quickly. It had been a long held frustration that Geoffrey Wadcock had never had to sit out a game for any reason. The man was irrationally muscular, to the point where he was often mistaken for a Beater by non-fans. It made him something of a flying brick wall. He seemed impervious to injury and illness, which left Oliver perpetually grounded and moping on the sidelines.

“You think you could get me in the air?” Oliver asked.

“I know I can.”

Oliver scratched the back of his head. He didn’t lie when he said that he didn’t give a rat’s piss about the money. It wasn’t that he was too altruistic or noble to take it. It wasn’t even that he’d grown up around haughty Purebloods and saw what too much financial solvency did to people. He just honestly didn’t need it, and he wasn’t the sort of guy who found himself wanting much more than he needed. The argument could be made, he supposed, that playing Quidditch and flying a broom until his thighs chafed was not necessary for his survival, but it wasn’t an argument he’d listen to long enough for the other person to make their point.

The pay didn’t matter. Exposure didn’t matter. He had about as much use for fame and fortune as You-Know-Who had for a Marvin the Mad Muggle costume on Samhein.

But if she could get him in the air….

“I really hope that you’re not just grandstanding, Penelope Clearwater,” Oliver sighed. “If you are, I will be one sad little man.”

Penelope beamed at him so brightly that the corners of her mouth were nearly on level with one another. “Ravenclaws never grandstand; we never say we can do anything unless we know it’s true.”

Oliver didn’t have to ask who the Wizarding World considered the real show-offs were in her mind. “Well, I’ve caught a whiff of myself now, so I’d best be getting into the showers. There’s a pub across the way – McLachlan’s Magical Mead. Bugger me if the name isn’t the stupidest in the tri-county area, but they have a home brew that makes Ogden’s look like Pumpkin Juice. Meet me there in an hour after I’ve run back to my place and grabbed the papers.”

For a moment, Oliver thought Penelope looked so happy that she was going to hug him – and though he wouldn’t normally be opposed to the idea, he was in no mood for her to smell him at such close quarters. In the end, she stuck out her hand and gave him a firm, businesslike shake. His inner sixteen-year-old couldn’t help but be mildly disappointed.

“You won’t be sorry,” she vowed, the gleam in her eyes reminding him of her assurances that Ravenclaws kept their promises.

He shrugged amiably. “If you say so.”

-----

Indeed, Penelope had said that Oliver would not be sorry. However, after fidgeting outside the pub for an hour and then spending another hunched over the documents while her steak pie went cold, she was fairly sure that she was going to be.

“For the first time in the history of magic, the rumor is not nearly as bad as the truth,” Penelope lamented. “How could you have agreed to this sum?”

Oliver shrugged, shoveling chips into his mouth as if it was about to go out of style. “Already answered that, didn’t I?”

“Yes, but this is so much worse than I could have imagined,” Penelope said, driving her fingernails into her bun. She’d pulled it too tight, and it was giving her a headache, but damned if she was going to pull it down in this humidity. “This is well below average for reserve players, especially someone of your caliber.”

Oliver smiled at the praise. “Why, Penelope, I had no idea.”

“Just because I’m house-loyal doesn’t mean I can’t tell a fantastic Keeper when I see one.” She just barely stopped herself from adding, ‘Even if your complete lack of sense makes me want to kick your teeth in.’ “And it extends even beyond the pay. Your health benefits are utterly atrocious. It all but says that they won’t pay for a mediwizard unless you’re hemorrhaging your guts out your nose, and even then, they’d dither around before doing it.”

Oliver patted his nose as if to reassure himself that his spleen wasn’t poking out of a nostril. “I’ll be honest; most of that legal jargon went right over my head.”

Through the grace of God or some other divine intercession, Penelope did not roll her eyes. Though, if she were in a more charitable mood, she would have admitted that some of it was making her go cross-eyed. “This is why you get a lawyer or an agent to look these things over before you sign them. It’s a magical contract; it’s not like you can break it and then apologize for it later hoping no one gets sued.”

For a moment, Oliver looked mystified, but then he snapped his fingers, spraying bits of potato onto the paper. “I forgot. You’re Half-Blood, aren’t you?”

Even when the Dark Lord had been little more than a specter on the back of Quirrell’s head, her blood status had been a sensitive topic. Penelope gave him a look that would have given even Professor Snape pause. “Does that make a difference?”

Oliver just kept smiling at her, and she wondered if he was a moron, brave, or a brave moron. “No, I was just curious as to how you knew Muggle law, and then I remembered. I never cared a flip for anyone’s parentage.”

Coming from a Pureblood, even one from a family as diametrically opposed to the Malfoys as one could get, Penelope found this hard to believe. She took a swig from her pint to get the sour taste out of her mouth. “My point is, in addition to your salary being a joke worthy of the Weasley twins, your benefits are so scant that they may as well be non-existent. Not to mention the fact that if you’re caught so much as looking at the manager of another team the wrong way, they’ll have you tied up in litigation faster than a Firebolt can fly.”

Probably because Oliver had consumed more drink than her, he chuckled and murmured, “I love a woman who uses Quidditch metaphors.”

Leaving aside her shock that Oliver Wood knew literary terms at all, Penelope gave him a withering look. “Down, boy. I didn’t offer to be your agent so that you could play find the Snitch in my knickers.”

Oliver guffawed, choking on his lager. Once he’d spelled away the mess, he had the decency to look chagrined. “Sorry. I didn’t mean anything by it. I know you’re spoken for.”

Penelope could not stop from wincing. She’d dreaded having this conversation with anyone, much less Oliver Wood of all people.

“How is Perce? I heard he got a promotion at the Ministry that’s got his superiors spitting acid.”

Penelope remembered when he’d gotten that promotion, the first of many, she had no doubt. He’d come home lit up like a Christmas tree – late for dinner and obviously buzzed. She’d started to lay into him for not bothering to tell her he’d be late, but he’d grabbed her and spun her around in a dance that couldn’t quite decide between the jitterbug and the foxtrot. Then he’d told her about it, and Percy, who even in the privacy of their own apartment seemed endearingly bashful when he saw her naked, made love to her right there on the living room floor. The sex had been spectacular and entirely worth the rug burns.

“Penelope?”

She shook herself out of her daydream and took another long drink of her beer. “Percy and I… well, we aren’t….” She trailed off, waving her hands in a series of vague gestures she hoped were unmistakable.

And Oliver Wood, who likely paid her as much mind as he did his socks, gave her a look of unabashed sympathy. “I’m sorry to hear that. Percy was my roommate, and even if he didn’t talk to anyone much, anyone could see how happy you made him. You seemed happy too.”

She had been happy. Penelope knew she had been. Other people could trick themselves into being happy, but she was so naturally suspicious of everyone’s intentions that she was far more likely to fool herself the other way. She’d been happy because Percy made her happy. Because he was the one Pureblood in the whole damn castle whom she believed when he said he didn’t care who her parents were. Because he was so unfailingly polite that he shifted his gaze when she stepped out of the shower. Because she saw his stubbornness and ambition as a virtue, not a hindrance, and because at first, what flaws she did see could be overlooked.

But eventually weeds take root and before you know it, the garden’s been dead for months for want of care.

“Thank you,” she murmured, running her finger around the rim of her mug. Then she smiled, chuckling. “You know, I tend to forget Percy had roommates. From First Year on, he seemed like the sort who did better on his own, and that’s after I knew he had more siblings than fingers on one hand.”

Oliver laughed in that fond tone everyone always used remembering the Hogwarts of their youth – without the trolls and basilisks and other things of course. “Percy was a loner, but even living with four other boys, he’d perfected the ability to be by himself in a room full of other people. Suspect he got it from living with such a big family. He was so… insulated. It was like he was born with the ability to cast a world-wide Silencing Charm, and he could shut us all out so he could bury his nose in his book.” Then Oliver rolled his eyes, but not unkindly. “Course he didn’t, or he wouldn’t have known the exact right moments to look at us disapprovingly over the spine.”

Penelope snorted quietly. “That’s my Percy all right.”

Except he wasn’t hers anymore, and she’d made the decision for him not to be.

The awkward silence that settled over them was about as stifling as a Devil’s Snare around her throat. Like most Gryffindors, Oliver couldn’t abide it. “Mind if I ask you something?”

“That is highly dependent on what the question is.”

Oliver gave her a conciliatory nod, but pressed on. “I’m your first client, aren’t I?”

Penelope stared, self-consciously aware that her mouth was hanging open. After a moment, she recovered her senses enough to want to kick herself for doing something so obvious as to let him see through her. “How did you know?”

Oliver shrugged. “Just knew.”

He just knew. Typical. A Slytherin would have saved the information for when it would prove useful. A Hufflepuff would suspect but tactfully keep silent unless it was necessary to speak up. A Ravenclaw would have done the research, discovered the truth, and been satisfied just with being right. But a Gryffindor led with their gut and laid it all out with an affable tone and a charming smile.

This was why Penelope did not like Gryffindors as a rule.

“That doesn’t mean—"

“I know,” he said, holding up his hands. “My guess is that you’re a sight brighter than 95% of the other agents in the country. It doesn’t seem like a very Ravenclaw job, does it?”

Her own voice echoed back at her from the week before. I never was a very good Ravenclaw. “Not as such, no.”

“Not nearly enough reading,” he joked, badly, and by the look on his face, he knew it. “So what did you do before this?”

Penelope pursed her lips. She wasn’t especially in the mood to bare her soul to him, but talking about former occupations was hardly Earth-shattering information, and not anything he couldn’t have picked up elsewhere. She supposed it was her penchant for secrecy that made her hesitate. “I worked at the Ministry, Department of Magical Games and Sports, specifically in the Ludicrous Patents Office.”

Oliver wrinkled his nose. Quidditch players were notorious for despising all of the red tape and paperwork involved with the sport. “I never understood why it’s called the Ludicrous Patents Office. Don’t see anything ridiculous about Quidditch.”

If they’d been friends, she would have patted him on the head at that comment and said, “Of course you don’t.” But they weren’t friends. “Ludicrous comes from the Latin word for ‘game,’ so really what we do – or did in my case – is all to do with game-related enchantments. Different ways to hide the pitch, spells for referees, among other things.”

Oliver snorted. “Leave it to a Ravenclaw to know the etymology for ludicrous.”

Penelope pointedly did not blush.

“Why did you leave? I’m tempted to make a joke about the patents getting too ludicrous for you, but I don’t think it would land anymore.”

Penelope nodded in agreement. Then she drank the rest of her lager, of which there was a sizeable amount. If she was going to tell him this, and she suspected she had better if she wanted to solidify his trust in her, she damn well wasn’t going to be completely sober for it. Ignoring his wide-eyed look, she told him.

“You-Know-Who is why I left,” Penelope muttered, pausing to hiccup. “The Ministry absolutely ran themselves ragged over the last year, diverting resources towards proving that Harry Potter was madder than a cockatrice in heat. It was embarrassing, frankly. I stuck it out more for Percy’s sake than anything, but after the Department of Mysteries, the truth about Sirius Black coming out, and everything else… I just didn’t have the stomach for it anymore.”

Oliver glared darkly into his pint. She’d never seen him up close during a match, but she rather suspected that this was the look he used when his team was down in points. “You thought he was back as well, huh?”

“I suspected,” Penelope sighed. “I just… I suppose it’s different for me than others since I got wrapped up in that Basilisk business.” She paused, only to marvel at how she could dismiss being turned to stone and just narrowly avoiding an untimely demise with ‘that Basilisk business.’ “But I just wanted to believe Harry. Well, I did and I didn’t, but you know what I mean.

“Everyone assumed that because Potter had lost his parents and because he’d been nearly killed by teachers and werewolves and Basilisks that he’d gone around the bend when Cedric died. But I always thought that if he was going to lose it, he would have done it sooner. I saw plenty of that boy with Percy, and what others saw as instability, I saw a fierce determination to stay sane at all costs. And when they weren’t saying he was mad and claiming he was a liar, I knew it had to be rubbish. Anyone who survived the Killing Curse by a fluke of luck wouldn’t go around joking about it thirteen years later.”

She looked up and saw that Oliver had finished off his lager as well and had gestured for another round. She was tempted to refuse, but she could hold her liquor well enough, and she was in the mood to be less than sober.

“I believed him too,” Oliver confided.

“I hope you’re not expecting my shock and awe to make an appearance.”

He shook his head, tearing a chip in half. “Nah. There were plenty of other Gryffindors who didn’t believe him, though, so don’t think it’s out of my own house loyalty, of which there is an abundance. But I’m the Gryffindor who coached him, and…” He frowned, pausing while the waitress dropped off the beer and asked if there was anything else they needed. After she’d gone, Oliver continued.

“Everyone thinks Gryffindors are stupid,” Oliver said, grinning at Penelope’s almost imperceptible twitch. “Not as stupid as Hufflepuffs mind, but they think all we do is rush in where demons and angels both fear to tread. I suppose that’s true of some if not all to an extent, but… I have a theory.”

Penelope had heard that phrase bandied about her own common room on an endless loop during her seven year tenure at school. Hearing it come out of Oliver’s mouth reminded her of when her grandfather threw Greek at her over Christmas.

“Ravenclaws think with their heads, yeah? Well, Gryffindors don’t. We think with our guts – our instincts.” Oliver paused, rubbing a foam mustache away with his sleeve. “And every Gryffindor this applies to probably develops some sort of specialized sixth sense of a sort. For example, I’m a fantastic Keeper because I’m a damn good guesser at where the Quaffle’s going to be when. I know it’s more than guessing of course – it’s having good eyes and the sense to use them and plenty of other things. But I make damn more saves due to luck than I ought to.

“And with Harry… Well, he’s been fucking up Dark Lords since the cradle, yeah? So when he says there’s something nasty going on with You-Know-Who or his merry band of Death Eaters, I see nothing to do but believe him and stay out of his way.”

“You always were the consummate strategist, Wood.”

If Oliver had been a peacock, Penelope was willing to bet he would have fluffed his plumage in pleasure.

She sighed and pushed her chair back, leaving her second beer only halfway finished. “I’d better get going. I’m going to need to glare at these for awhile longer to make sense of the various ways in which you have screwed yourself over.”

Oliver smiled, and he looked a little apologetic. “I haven’t thanked you, have I? That makes me rather a giant tit.”

Penelope smirked. She was so used to Percy and his careful evasions of four-letter words. She rather liked that Oliver used them about as much as articles and conjunctions. “Just give me the 15% we agreed upon once I’ve straightened your mess out for you. That’ll be thanks enough.”

She slipped her spring coat on, subconsciously touching her bun, anxious to get home and take it down. Then she stopped and said, “Oliver.”

“Hm?”

“If Ravenclaws think with their heads and Gryffindors with their instincts, what about the other houses?”

Oliver gave it a moment’s consideration. “Well, ’Puffs with their hearts I suppose, since they’re always going on about what’s fair to everyone.”

Penelope nodded. “And Slytherins?”

This time, Oliver didn’t pause. “With their cocks or the female equivalent.”

Penelope squawked, momentarily scandalized. “I cannot believe you just said that!”

“Oh, we all know what went on in those Common Rooms when they filched things from Snape’s storeroom.”

Penelope valiantly attempted not to laugh, but it was something of a rousing failure. She waved her hand, nearly upending a passing waiter’s tray. “Night, Oliver.”

“Good night, Penelope.”

On her way home to her flat, Penelope decided that as far as Gryffindors went, maybe Oliver Wood wasn’t that bad.

-----

Even if Puddlemere United didn’t see fit to find a purpose for him in actual games, Oliver knew he was dead useful when they were running skirmishes. Sometimes it was the reserves against the first string, and other times they mixed it up a bit. Oliver never really cared how, so long as they did it. He would have gone as mad as a Lestrange if they’d hired him and then never let him kick off the ground to feel the wind in his face.

Practicing schedules had not been the surprise he’d been promised, but sometimes, he still found himself awed by the intensity that was a professional Quidditch game. Keeping track of the Quaffle took nearly as sharp eyes as a Seeker, and he had to be just as fast.

He watched Darcy pass the ball to Quinn, watched Quinn pretend to fumble so that it dropped into Slattery’s waiting arms, all so Slattery could perform a behind-back-toss back to Darcy. Then it sailed over to Quinn who, as the only male Chaser in the first string, threw the Quaffle with as much force as a Beater with a Bludger.

But Oliver knew it was coming, and although Quinn tried to disguise his aim, Oliver knew which hoop it was going for. He swooped down and knocked the ball away with the end of his broom, sending it sailing over Quinn’s head and directly into the arms of one of his Chasers, Mallory. He zipped back towards the other goalposts so quickly that he was a little more than a navy blur on the wind.

Of course, Wadcock never let the Quaffle get through his hoop either. It was a rare day when one of these skirmishes didn’t wind up tied zero to zero. The primary difference between Oliver and Geoffrey was in the latter’s tendency to show off. In an utterly unnecessary move that could have caused more harm than healing, Wadcock swung off his broom just as Mallory let the Quaffle fly with a vicious twist. Holding on with one hand, Wadcock kicked the ball away from the lower goalpost, and then swung back up, looking all the world like a Muggle cowboy remounting his steed.

Wadcock was a damn good Keeper, but he was a show-off, and he took unnecessary risks. If Oliver had been his captain, he’d have boxed Geoffrey’s ears five times over for pulling those stupid tricks at practice, and then saving the truly spectacularly stupid moves for games so that he could shine for the press. Even now, he let Geoffrey know what he thought of it, and if Wadcock ever did kill himself or come damn close to it, Oliver would have had his spot in a flash.

It was really just bad luck that Wadcock never seemed to get hurt.

“All right, ladies and gents,” their trainer, Lowry, called out in her usual fit of pique. “You’re all rubbish, but you’re unfed rubbish. Go eat something, and I swear, if it’s not according to the nutritional standards you’ve all been given, I will make vegetables grow out your ears and then have you eat them.”

No one even winced at the threat anymore; they knew it was true, but no one had the bad sense to eat chips in front of Lowry. Oliver started to drift to the ground to pack it in, but then he saw a familiar curly head bobbing in the stands. He looked closer, saw it was indeed Penelope descending the stairs, presumably to talk to him, and then banked to his right. No sense making her walk if she didn’t have to.

“Haven’t seen you in awhile,” Oliver said genially. “Finished glaring at my contract yet?”

“Not nearly,” she muttered, a bit crossly. He noticed she’d pulled her hair back into a ponytail this time. It was more favorable than a bun, but he still preferred it down. To his further dismay, she was wearing those blue trousers Muggles were so fond of instead of one of her pencil skirts. “But I’ve more or less got it worked out. Only one mystery left really.”

He raised an eyebrow. “What’s that?”

“Why in the name of everything that’s holy are you on reserve?”

Oliver would have been tickled at the compliment if it weren’t for all the trappings. “Er.”

“Wadcock isn’t better than you; he just looks better,” Penelope snapped. He swore that her hair somehow managed to get bigger when she was angry. “I’d never noticed before because I hadn’t seen you play side by side until today. He wastes time with those fancy maneuvers, and even if Puddlemere’s record is great on an off-year, it would be better if he didn’t go off pulling stunts so he can get a hot shag with the latest Witch Weekly centerfold.”

It was such a cliché to say that woman were cute when they were angry. Growing up around any number of Gryffindor girls who would hex his balls off at the intimation had taught him that much. And Penelope also did not look cute when she was angry.

Damn it if she didn’t look scorching though.

“What is the matter with everyone that they prefer Wadcock over you?” she asked indignantly.

Oliver frowned, leaning against the front of his still airborne broom. “How much do you know about Quidditch history?”

Penelope blinked. “Well, I’ve read the book, but I didn’t memorize it. And I haven’t touched it since I was 11.”

This surprised Oliver not at all. Ravenclaws didn’t have much of a penchant for rereading; they did it once, and they did it right. “Does the name Joscelind Wadcock ring a bell?”

It didn’t, not at first, but then he saw Penelope make the connection. She was definitely cute when she realized something, but he supposed that was a regular pick up line in her house. “They’re not related?”

“He’s her nephew.”

Penelope let out a groan. “Bugger.”

“I hear she was initially a bit disappointed that he didn’t turn out to be a Chaser, but he doesn’t have the build for it. About three seconds later, she decided she preferred he played a different position. That way he wouldn’t break her record of most goals in a season.”

“Nepotism,” she snarled. “I am so bloody sick of it. I cannot tell you how absolutely rankled the Ministry is with it, and now it’s even in Puddlemere United.”

He felt tempted to pat her shoulder, but that seemed far too familiar. “I must say, I’m impressed you’re this passionate about it. I know.” He banked away before she could swat at him. “You’re my agent, and you’ll fight for me. I suppose I’m just… not used to people giving me much thought.”

She gave him a smile that was trying very hard not to be pitying, but she failed somewhat miserably. He felt very much like a starving puppy in Quidditch robes. “Oliver, you’re single-minded to an unhealthy degree, and you don’t have a head for business. That doesn’t mean you deserve to get jerked around and mistreated because of it.”

Oliver knew she didn’t think much of him intellectually, and that was all right. He knew he wasn’t stupid, and that was all that really mattered to him. Still, it was nice to hear this compliment from her, however warped. “I’m off to get a bite. I wouldn’t mind company.”

She raised her eyebrow. “What about your teammates?”

“They’re still a bit shirty with me for asking the trainer for Saturday practices.”

“Can’t imagine why.”

“Me either!”

She gave the matter due consideration, which he appreciated. He didn’t want her to come along out of politeness and then have things be awkward the whole way through. Finally, she shrugged. “Why not? Everyone needs to eat.”

He smiled at her, and hoped it wasn’t so bright that she balked.

She didn’t.

-----

The lunch went more or less all right with the pair of them making small talk about Penelope’s vision for his career and Oliver reminding her that he was quite all right with his crummy little flat, thanks very much. After that, they made it something of a regular habit to meet for lunch. Penelope knew Oliver didn’t like to be lonely, and with the rest of the team shunning him on principal, he was bound to be. She also knew he was off his game when he was depressed, and even in practices, she wanted him to perform at top form. She’d been making fire calls and sending owls, sending out feelers for a business that wasn’t tanking in the wake of the Dark Lord’s return, and she wouldn’t have minded taking them to see Oliver in action.

In the end, she found something in the unlikeliest of places.

“Fred and George Weasley?” Oliver asked, but only after he’d narrowly avoided spitting hot tea in her face. “My Fred and George Weasley?”

Penelope grinned to herself. She’d known he would like that. “God save us all if there are more of them. I was as surprised as you were to hear about it. Rumor has it that they got the start up money from Harry, and business has been more or less booming ever since.”

Oliver shook his head. “You know, I’d never thought of what they’d do out of school. I always sort of assumed that they’d never leave. I couldn’t imagine them growing up.”

“I suppose now they won’t.”

Oliver had surprised her quite a lot over the past couple of weeks, and one of those surprises was to find that he was tactful. After his first mention of Percy, he had deftly avoided the subject of him and anything remotely connected to him. It didn’t stop her from thinking about her former boyfriend, but it did stop her from talking about him. She appreciated that.

But she could tell from the struggling look on Oliver’s face that he was going to say something now.

“You want to know if it was awkward?” she guessed.

“I don’t mean to pry, but… yes.”

Penelope frowned. She had no idea what of the Weasley’s business had been aired in public. Certainly Percy never talked about it, but Percy was the most private person she’d ever met. To say that his family members were less so seemed to her like the understatement of the year at least.

“In a way,” she said, settling on exposing her confusion. It wasn’t likely to cost her anything after all. “You see, Percy and the rest of his family… didn’t quite see eye-to-eye on the Harry issue, if you know what I mean.”

Once again proving that Oliver was quicker than he looked, he raised his eyebrows. “Oh. That must have made a cock-up of holidays.”

“We didn’t go,” she muttered.

“Well then.”

Penelope hesitated in telling him more, and then decided that if she didn’t, Fred and George eventually would, and they would probably embellish it past the point of decency. “They looked like I was an Inferius come to drag them into a lake when they first saw me. Then they looked sour because they thought Percy was with me. Then they were just confused.” She reached forward and dropped another sugar cube into her tea, casting a warming charm over the dark liquid. “They didn’t know.”

Oliver winced in sympathy. “Explaining your relationship status to the Weasley twins…. That must be one of the circles of hell.”

Penelope chuckled, but her heart wasn’t in it. “Possibly. They tried to be sympathetic, but mostly, they wanted to know what happened. And damn it if those two aren’t just as bright as Percy, in their own way. They know the timing is suspicious.”

She’d rambled on in frustration and said too much, but prudence continued to reign over the unlikely subject of Oliver Wood. She’d never come out and said that she’d left Percy for much the same reason that she’d left the Ministry, but she’d come to realize that he was smart enough to work it out. It was her good luck that he was also kind enough to act as though he didn’t.

“I suppose if I’m going to endorse something,” Oliver said, changing the subject like a bull in a china shop, but changing it nonetheless, “may as well be for old teammates. But I swear, if they turn me into anything unnatural—"

“I think you still terrify them a little,” Penelope assured him. “Only a little though. So they may, I don’t know, slip you a love potion and make you fall in love with your broomstick.”

Oliver snorted. “I always knew they’d started that rumor.”

“You had any doubt?”

“Thought it might have been Charlie.” Oliver frowned. “Come to think of it, it may still have been. It’s not quite pornographic enough for the twins.”

Deciding that Oliver Wood’s pornographic tendencies, imagined or otherwise, were not something she wanted to discuss, Penelope shifted tack. “Do you want to do it?”

“I have a choice?”

“Technically, yes, but in reality, not especially.”

Oliver grinned at her, displaying the chip in his tooth. She resisted the urge to reach across the table and mend it. It looked painful. “All right then. You said they’re offering an insane amount of money, and even if I don’t care, I’m sure you do. Since you get a cut.”

Penelope’s face heated up so quickly that she felt entirely too much like a Weasley for her liking.

“Don’t give me that look. You’re pragmatic, and I know you’ve been scrimping lately. And you won’t ever let me pay for your portion. Seems Gryffindors aren’t the only ones with pride.”

It was probably pride that kept her from kicking him under the table. Pride and the fact that she was nearing twenty.

“So, get the papers drawn up, and I’ll sign them.” He paused. “And be sure there’s a clause in there that says I can do horrible things to them if they make me sprout wings out my arse or something.”

“Already intended to.”

Oliver spent the next few moments mulling over his tea, but as always, the quiet space between them did not last long. “I’ve always wondered something about you.”

Spending time with Oliver had decreased her naturally suspicious tendencies towards him, but a healthy amount remained. “Oh?”

“Don’t give me that look,” he said. “I just thought I’d ask… if you’re such a big fan of Quidditch, how come you never played?”

She couldn’t help it. She laughed in his face. “Oliver, really. Does every fan wind up playing?”

“No, and I’ve never understood that.”

She continued laughing. There were surprising depths to Oliver Wood, but he still did not understand that not everyone desired to spend all the hours of their day with a broom between their legs. “Oliver, do you not remember me at flying lessons?”

“You don’t remember me?” he asked. “Madame Hooch threatened to curse me and my descendants – by which I suspect she meant bollocks – because I wouldn’t stop flying off on my own.”

Penelope did remember that now. She’d forgotten how easy it was for the very young to get wrapped up in their own private dramas and forget that there were other people in the world. “For the first half, I couldn’t get the broom to respond to my hand. I was the last one who managed it. And after that….” She trailed off, shivering at the memory of the broom bucking beneath her, of it lurching forward so quickly she nearly threw up her stomach, of the tree zooming closer and closer and closer so that only Madame Hooch being quick on the draw saved her from being utterly flattened.

“Flying never suited me,” she concluded. “But I always loved watching, so… I suppose that’s how I started as a fan.”

Oliver stared at her as though he might actually start crying. “I think that’s the most horrible thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Yes, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named has got nothing on thwarted Quidditch dreams.”

“I only meant that… well, if you really want something, if you love something with all your heart, it’s not fair that you can’t have it. I think it’s awful.” He rubbed a hand through his sweat-laden hair. “The fact that it’s Quidditch makes it a thousand times worse of course, but.”

Unsurprisingly, Penelope thought of Percy, more specifically of him telling her it was wrong to leave. He still loved her, she knew. For that matter, she still loved him, and maybe always would in a way. It didn’t change that she’d had to leave.

“Sometimes you have to be practical,” she said with more sadness than she’d intended.

She didn’t know if Oliver knew what she was thinking. She couldn’t see how, even if he had been a secret MENSA scholar. But after that, he let the silence stretch past his usual point of breaking, and he made a point not to ask any more questions.

Not for the first time, Penelope wondered if Oliver was almost like a friend.

-----

Things continued to go on normally for the next two weeks or so. Penelope and Oliver continued to meet every day for lunch during the week, and she only seemed slightly annoyed with him that one time he’d popped around to her place on a Sunday. She drew up the contract for the endorsement deal at Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes, and he’d already started working on that ad campaign. The twins had not turned him into anything, but probably only because he had the good sense not to eat or drink anything that was offered. He had been very sorely tempted to jinx them until their noses fell off when they decided that it was necessary to reenact his supposed attempted suicide after a particularly disastrous loss in the showers for Penelope.

And to think, he occasionally thought of the twins with some fondness.

It had been nice to hear her laugh, though.

Once that had been sorted, the time had finally come for Penelope to have a sit down with the team’s owners and work out what she saw as a more suitable contract for him. Oliver had no doubt that she’d overshoot in an attempt to get something fair, and while he had all the faith in the world in her, he hoped she didn’t push it too far.

“Nervous, Wood?” Quinn asked genially. He’d been more or less forgiven for asking after Saturday practices, and he rather suspected most of the male members of the team fancied Penelope a bit.

“I thought you didn’t care about the money,” Darcy pointed out, moving her wand in a complicated series of movements so that her waist-length red hair plaited itself.

Wood frowned. He didn’t. He knew no one believed him, and that if they did, they thought he was an idiot, but he really didn’t.

But the money wasn’t just going to him anymore, now, was it?

Before any of the other team members could ask him any questions, Penelope appeared on the pitch. She looked breathless, as if she’d run part of the way before she remembered to Apparate. She was giving him that one-sided smile he’d grown increasingly fond of, and for the first time, seemed devoid of that underlying grim determination he could sense in the set of her jaw whenever she looked at him. She seemed entirely happy – almost unnaturally so. She reminded him briefly of when Marcus Flint had discovered that abusing Cheering Charms could have hallucinogenic affects.

“How did it go?” he asked, suddenly feeling a bit winded himself.

Penelope walked forward, stumbling as her heel sank into the ground. She’d forgotten the lightening charm this time, and now she didn’t seem to care about it. “Not only did I get your pay practically doubled, not only did I get your health benefits increased, not only did I get you an extra week of vacation time that I know you won’t take, but I got you playing Keeper in the next game!”

“What?” he and Wadcock shouted with entirely different inflections.

Penelope was verging on giddy. “I told them it wasn’t fair that you were the only reserve player who’d never actually gotten a chance to play a real game, and they agreed to let you play in the game day after tomorrow! And they said if you do well, they’d be willing to give Wadcock some time off.” She gave the Keeper in question a particularly smug smile. Ever since she’d found his lineage out, she’d taken a rather obvious dislike to him.

Wadcock stomped off, but the rest of his teammates proceeded to thump him on the back or tackle him in a mismanaged group hug. Oliver himself felt his cheeks start to ache at the way he was smiling. The others teased him about not caring about the money some more, but he knew it wasn’t about that.

He suddenly found it very hard to take his eyes off Penelope and her crooked lips.

“You know what?” Oliver announced. “Sod practice tomorrow. We are going to the pub, and the first round’s on me.”

Once the others had recovered their shock over Oliver saying sod anything having to do with Quidditch, they gave a loud bellow and hoisted him onto their shoulders. They proceeded to the pub in that fashion, with Penelope trailing behind.

-----

Penelope was having the time of her life, and while she normally shied away from hyperbole, that night she didn’t care. She had accomplished what she’d set out to do, she’d done it well, and now she was being bought drinks right and left. Since she’d done something to earn her keep, she didn’t mind accepting.

Best of all, when she’d told the story of her triumph in detail – including the exact figures she’d gotten for Oliver – several members of the other team had seriously informed her that they may become her clients sooner rather than later. And Penelope had a feeling that if she kept looking out for various members of Puddlemere United, it would not be long before she represented the lot of them.

Except for Wadcock. She didn’t want Wadcock.

Everything was perfectly lovely. Yes, she was a bit more buzzed than usual – perhaps verging on drunk if she were honest with herself. But for the first time in a long time, she didn’t feel the need to hold back. She’d accomplished something major, something she had never doubted and yet still felt surprised by. She’d given Oliver not what he wanted, but certainly what he needed, and if she played her cards right, she’d have more clients very shortly because of it. All in all, things were looking up.

Then Percy walked in.

It defied logic, really, that he had walked in at all. As far as she knew, he never came down by Puddlemere. It wasn’t exactly adjacent to London proper, and Percy had developed an unnatural dislike for any place that was not London proper. He also was not the sort of bloke who tended to wander into strange pubs, even ones with innocuous names that easily verged on parody. Then she saw some others trail in after him, and realized that he must have been there on Ministry business. Since he had no girlfriend to get home to anymore, he’d allowed himself to be dragged along.

He didn’t see her immediately, but he sensed her staring soon enough. He seemed to twitch towards the door almost reflexively, and for a moment, she thought he would leave without ever having to look at her, which she could have endured. But then she saw his spine straighten and he lifted his eyes, meeting hers with almost reckless abandon.

She realized all too quickly that he didn’t want to spare her. He wanted her to see the poorly concealed sadness in his eyes, the dark circles floating over his skin, pale even in the summer. He wanted her to know that he was hurt, and that he would go on hurting for a long time. He wanted to make sure she felt his scorn and his blame, which he unsuccessfully used to cover up his grief.

It hurt all the same.

In a move better suited to any one of his brothers or his sister, Percy grabbed the two Ministry underlings whose names she couldn’t bother to come up with and all but dragged them out the door. She stared at the patch of empty air where Percy had stood after they had gone. He’d come and gone so quickly that it almost didn’t seem real. She could have tricked herself into believing it was an apparition if she tried hard enough. But part of her didn’t want to.

She sat there for a full five minutes, adrift amongst the celebrations and the flowing wine. Conversation swirled around her like ocean waves breaking against the rocks, and she allowed herself to drown in it momentarily, letting it dull her senses. Finally, she could not stand the suffocating joy or anything else about the pub. She threw herself to her feet and walked out of the bar, stumbling as she went.

When she hit the open air, she discovered that it was unseasonably cold. It was well into the summer months now, and even for England in the dead of night, she expected something warmer. She also expected that the alcohol would succeed where Mother Nature failed, but here too, she was thwarted. She simply felt cold and shaken and plagued by a sense of loss. She imagined it was like having a cat curl up against you for an hour only to have them move away without so much as a by your leave.

Penelope wrapped her arms around her frame, remembering the days when she hadn’t been made to do it herself. Percy had always hugged her when she asked, even though she knew he didn’t much like being held or even doing the holding. Penelope had always gotten the impression that the loud, boisterous love of the Weasleys had more or less slipped past Percy, as if he was too quiet to fully benefit. So while Bill, Charlie, the Twins, Ron, and Ginny received hugs to spare, Percy was forgotten. Or perhaps they assumed Percy didn’t need them. It left Percy uncomfortable with the concept, feeling as though he was bankrupt in physical affection.

Sometimes she’d wanted to beat his head against walls, and sometimes she’d wanted to kiss him senseless. But she always chose the latter when she remembered the concessions Percy made for her.

Penelope surprised herself by letting out a strangled sob. She clamped down on her mouth with one hand, her teeth scraping against the flesh and wetting it with drool. It did no good. She couldn’t entirely drown out the sound of her moan.

She hadn’t cried the night she broke up with him. She hadn’t cried since then. But it seemed on the night of her victory she was going to sob like a child.

“Penelope?”

For a mad moment, she’d thought Percy had come to find her after all. She jumped away, prepared to banish him back to London. She shouldn’t have been surprised to see it was Oliver. “Go away, Oliver,” she groaned. “I don’t want you to see me like this.”

In reality, she didn’t want anyone to see her like this, but she was sober enough yet to keep that much to herself.

“It’s all right,” he murmured, moving towards her with an outstretched hand calloused from his sport. “I saw him.”

She sniffed indelicately. “Do you think it matters why, Oliver? You know me well enough to know that I wouldn’t cry without damn good reason. All I care about is being seen.”

In the darkness, she couldn’t see Oliver swallow, but she could certainly hear him. “It’s all right though. To cry, I mean.”

“No, it’s not!” she hissed, her hands getting tangled in her hair. A ring got snagged in a knot and pulled half of it down. “I hate crying, so I don’t do it. I should never have gotten like this tonight. If I’d seen him stone cold sober, I would have been fine.”

She knew Oliver was frowning at her. “Penelope, are you telling me that you never cried over Percy?”

“Of course not.”

“Are you… Penelope, you dated the man for going on four years! That deserves mourning.”

“And what do you know about it?” Penelope demanded, lashing out at the nearest warm body. “What do you know about relationships, Oliver? All our years at Hogwarts, I never even saw you look at a girl – even your Chasers, and certainly they would have been suited. You only lit up when it came to Quidditch.”

She saw Oliver’s eyes glint in the light. She thought he might be glaring. “That’s not fair, Penelope. We may have been in the same year, but that doesn’t mean shit. We hardly knew each other for seven years of being in the same place. You don’t know what I felt about who.”

“Shirt-lifter then, are you?” she snarled with venom.

Oliver sighed with what she knew was dwindling patience. “Not that it’s any of your business, but no. And at any rate, you’re trying to distract me. What possibly made you think that you could hold it together without crying over what happened with Percy?”

“I can’t afford to fall apart just because life doesn’t go as planned, Oliver.”

“Why the fuck not?” he asked, beginning to raise his voice. “Because you’re a woman?”

“Yes!” she snapped, resisting the urge to stamp her foot by a hair’s breadth. “Because I’m a woman. Because I’m a Half-Blood. Because I’m half-American and half-European. Because I’m half-Greek and half-Iroquois. Because I don’t belong anywhere in this world naturally. Because I have to force my way in everywhere, force my way on everyone. Because I don’t get what I want by waiting for it or crying over it.”

Oliver seemed to flap his arms as if he hoped to take flight, but she suspected that was the booze affecting her senses. “That’s not true!”

“The hell it isn’t!” Penelope yelled back. “You don’t know anything, Oliver. Everything you’ve wanted, you’ve gotten handed to you, because you’ve never wanted much. All you wanted was to be able to fly and play Quidditch. As long as you can do that, you’re happy, and bugger all else.”

She stopped to cry, realized she was laughing, and then realized she was really doing both. “Do you remember what I told you weeks ago about not being able to fly?” She scrubbed at her eyes with her fists, and her skin came away blackened by smeared mascara. “When I got my Hogwarts letter, it was all I could think about. My mother told me all about it. She told me about broomsticks and a sport where you never touched the ground and how glorious it was just to lift away from the Earth, to feel weightless and like nothing else mattered.

“But that didn’t happen for me. Instead of flying, I had to stay on the ground or probably die trying. I knew that from the moment Madame Hooch stopped my broom. I cried, and one of the girls came up to me – a Hufflepuff of all things. Do you know what she said to me? She said that it was all right because I was a Half-Blood and couldn’t be expected to get it right.”

Oliver looked shocked, and he had to stammer for a moment before he could form a cogent sentence. “Need I remind you that she was eleven? We all say stupid things at eleven! No one knows what they’re damn well talking about.”

Penelope shook her head. “It didn’t matter that she was right or wrong. It mattered that she pitied me because of something I couldn’t help. It meant that I would never be fully accepted in the Wizarding World.

“My mother was practically a Squib, and when she divorced my father, we holed up in a Greek community in the city. And every one of those people gave me those damn looks like they were sorry for me just because of who my father was, because I didn’t belong. Then I went to go visit my father in the summers, and what did I get? The same thing from his family! I’d thought it would be different with magic, but that day, I figured out that I was wrong. And I knew that if I cried, I’d only make it worse. So I stopped crying, at least where anyone could see me.”

Oliver clutched his head as if he was seriously afraid it would roll off if he didn’t. “You make no sense.”

“I don’t expect you to understand,” she spat. “All you’ve ever cared about is Quidditch!”

He shook with what she could only guess was climbing rage. “That is not true.”

“Prove it!” she dared.

“Fine!”

Then he reached forward, grabbed her shoulders, and drove his mouth onto hers with bruising force.

She’d never been kissed by anyone but Percy. This was hardly an opportune time to judge, but Oliver kissed nothing like his former roommate. Percy’s lips had always seemed to be asking for permission. Oliver just took what he wanted.

After a moment, Penelope regained her senses. She balled up her fist and slammed it into the side of Oliver’s head, not quite a punch but something considerably more painful than a slap. He stumbled away, his mouth still hanging open. Apparently he was just as surprised by his brainlessness as she was. “Penelope… Penelope, I’m so sorry.”

She knew there were any number of things she could say to him that would cut him to the quick. She hadn’t been given the Slytherin’s sense of how to hurt others, but a Ravenclaw’s was often just as good. She could think of half a dozen ways in the time it took her to blink, and another half dozen on the inhale. In the end, there was really only one thing she wanted to say.

“Fucking Gryffindors.”

Then she Apparated to her flat, landing in a ball on the floor. She found then that she didn’t have the strength to move. With the taste of Oliver in her mouth and the ghost of Percy’s arms around her, she felt crushed. She clung to the floorboards, hoping they would swallow her whole, and cried all the tears she had smothered since the last time she had indulged in this. It lasted until dawn, leaving her throat raw and her body cold.

She wondered if she was disappointed that Oliver didn’t come after her.

-----

Oliver spent what time he could manage the day after the disastrous pub “celebration” sulking in his underwear. It didn’t amount to much considering that Lowry put him through his paces and then some before his big debut, and it made him feel no better. The fact that he could not seem to steer the broom with his usual smoothness in no way helped matters.

He should not have done what he did. That had hit Oliver about the same time Penelope had hit him. She was crying, intoxicated, confessing dark secrets she’d have never revealed to him in any other state, and on the rebound. In no way was what he had done a good and acceptable thing by any human standards, and every member of his team up to and including Wadcock had bitched him out for it. He’d let them only because he deserved it.

Every one of them had in some way posed the question, “Why did you do it?” What had possessed him? What acid had he dropped? What head injury had he sustained to make him think that that was an acceptable form of behavior?

Oliver had yet to find an answer.

Sure, he’d known that he fancied Penelope. By looks alone, she was difficult not to fancy. Others might have found her personality off-putting, but he liked that she was hard as nails and grimly determined. He liked that she didn’t swear unless she was drunk, but she looked at him in ways that carried the point across just as well. He liked her frankness, her self-awareness, her pride, her strength, her sense of righteousness, her faith in goodness, her willingness to sever ties with anything that went against that. He even liked the things he knew other people would have hated: he liked that she’d been surprised by his intellect and that she thought he was insane for not wanting what normal people wanted. He liked that she was suspicious because it meant he didn’t have to be. He liked that she treated him more or less like a kid who didn’t know his ass from his earlobe. He liked so many things about her that he could almost forget that he liked her because she loved Quidditch too.

Still, he hadn’t realized he’d fancied her quite that much. Or perhaps he’d known on one level, but kept it hidden because she was coming out of a lengthy relationship with an old roommate, if not a friend of his. Over time, he could pursue something – slowly, knowing Penelope. But Oliver could be patient. He wouldn’t like it, and he’d fidget a lot, but he could do it. He would have done it for the sake of not only being happy, but of making her happy. Because he realized now that for as many smiles and laughs he’d seen from her since they reconnected, she’d never once been happy. Even if she had good reason for it, the thought still depressed him.

He wondered, not for the first time, if he should have gone after her that night.

Now it was the day of the game he was meant to fly in, and he knew she wouldn’t be there. She would have been if he hadn’t gone and molested her, but he had, so she’d be shut up at home with as many anti-Oliver wards as she could manage. He didn’t blame her in the slightest.

Still, he wished she could be there. He hadn’t been this nervous before his game since his first at Hogwarts. He’d thrown up for three hours and nearly fainted off his broom halfway through the game. Charlie Weasley had grabbed the Snitch and then caught him in the same dive.

A heavy hand fell on his shoulder. Oliver nearly pissed himself when he saw who it was. “Wadcock?”

“Hey, Wood,” Wadcock said in his gruff, rumbling baritone. “All right?”

Oliver decided it was best not to answer that truthfully, so he simply nodded.

“Still worried about your girl, eh?”

“As has been pointed out to me no less that twenty-seven times, she is not mine.” He closed his eyes. “I never would have said she was even if it were true.”

Wadcock clearly didn’t follow this, but Oliver knew he’d phrased it all wrong, so it didn’t matter. “You’ll make up. She’s your agent, yeah? She won’t drop you just because you made a pass at her while you were drunk.”

Oliver wanted to correct him and say that he had in point of fact assaulted her while she was drunk, but it didn’t seem like the thing to say. “I hope you’re right, but… I’m not sure she’s the forgiving type.”

“Go see her after the game,” Wadcock said. “Tell her you’re sorry. Bring flowers or candy or… she’s Ravenclaw, right? A stack of first editions. Then everything will be fine.”

Oliver bit his tongue to keep from correcting Geoffrey. No sense arguing about it with him. He let the conversation grow quiet, allowing the roar of the crowd to sweep over the both of them. “I still can’t believe she got me the chance to play.”

“Neither can I,” Geoffrey muttered, not without bitterness. “She’s good at what she does, I’ll give her that.”

Oliver sighed, shutting his eyes. Penelope had run herself ragged getting him something he didn’t want, but something she’d decided he’d needed. She’d braved facing her ex-lover’s psychotic twin brothers. She’d argued with the owners until she was blue in the face. She’d given herself migraines staring at his contracts. She’d done all of these things for him, and even if he hadn’t exactly desired them, he was grateful to have them now because she’d given them to him.

And what had she gotten in return? Fumbling hands and a bruised mouth.

“I think maybe I’ll try to drown myself in the showers again.”

“Well, not until after the game,” Wadcock said, despairing of cheering him.

Oliver frowned. Something about that statement rubbed him the wrong way. Something about him even being here didn’t feel right. Of all Penelope’s accomplishments, this was the one that mattered most to him, so why did he feel so queasy?

All you’ve ever cared about is Quidditch!

It wasn’t true. But how was anyone to know that when it was all he talked about, all he lived for, all he ever wanted to do? How was anyone to know that when he’d spent the night not helping Penelope when she cried and then strode onto the pitch the next morning? It didn’t matter what everyone thought, but it damn well mattered what she thought. He did want something more than Quidditch, and even if no one else believed it of him, she was going to before the day’s end.

“Bugger me,” Oliver growled, shoving his broomstick into Wadcock’s hand and stripping off his Quidditch gear.

Unable to hide his surprise or the tiny thrill in his voice, Wadcock cried, “What the bleeding fuck are you doing?”

“I have somewhere else to be.”

-----

Having Oliver Wood tumble out of her fireplace wasn’t exactly the shock of her life, but it was damn near close.

“Christ!” she screeched, leaping onto the back of the couch as a cloud of dust filled the air. She grappled for her wand (which sadly could not be kept in pajama pants with any efficiency) and sucked it up with a Vacuuming Charm. Then she turned to stare at Oliver, who still seemed to be choking on it. “Are you all right?”

He gave a great hack and spit a mouthful of saliva and ash into her fireplace. “I hate Flooing. Really. If wizards are going to use it for transportation, then we oughtn’t use it for burning fires on top of it.” He scrambled to his feet and proceeded to brush soot off his robes.

It took her approximately three seconds to recognize the Puddlemere United emblem. She cast a quick Tempus, let out a horrible noise when she saw the time, and jumped over to him so that she could shake him properly. “Have you gone completely daft? It’s game time! Why are you wasting it here?”

Oliver brushed some more dirt from his hair, clearly self-conscious. “Look, I… I needed to see you.”

Penelope had intended to be especially unkind the next time she saw him, and if she’d held to that, she would have said, “Oh, would you like to assault me at home today? How kind of you to come to me and save me the trouble.” However, something prevented her from doing it.

“I was wrong,” Oliver said, defaulting to the Gryffindor penchant for stating the obvious. “I was so completely out of line the other night. I deserved that punch, and I deserve a few more kicks in important places. I don’t know what came over me, but I just…” He dragged a hand down his face, leaving black streaks on his cheeks. “I care about more than Quidditch, and I needed you to know that. Apparently, after several beers, I decided the best way to inform you of this was forcing myself on you.”

Penelope frowned. “I know this is leading up to an apology, but I must say Oliver, you’re failing at this rather magnificently.”

“I know,” he conceded, looking so miserable she might have forgiven him if it was something more minor. He furrowed his brow, and she could almost see the wheels turning behind his eyes, see him putting the pieces of their lives together into something that made sense.

“It’s not just that, it’s… I hated what you said. I hate that you think you have to hold everything in and choke it down. I hate that you think people automatically think ill of you just because of who your parents are. I know there are people like that, but I’m not one of them, and I want to give those people a few good kicks in their sensitive places. I hate that you think you have to put up a wall just to survive.”

He stopped, licking his lips. “I read something once. Don’t know where. But it said something like… sometimes people put up walls to see who cares enough to climb over them.” He clasped and unclasped his hands as if he wanted to touch her, but didn’t dare. His hands were shaking. “I guess that was my stupid attempt to climb your walls. Because I do want to. I want to know who you are when you’re not feeling very strong. And I think… I think making the decision to do that’s a kind of strength in itself.”

Penelope didn’t know where he’d read it either, but it may as well have been out of the diary she’d never kept. She felt as if he’d plucked something secret out of her, something she hadn’t even known herself. She felt exposed and vulnerable, and for the first time in what might have been her whole life, she almost didn’t mind.

“You left the Quidditch game to tell me that?” she asked quietly.

He nodded. “I never should have stayed away this long. Or maybe you needed the time. Maybe I did too. Fuck if I know. But I… needed you to know what I thought of you. I fancy you, Penelope Clearwater. I want to get to know you. I want to see how much more there is for me to like.”

She stared at him, marveled by the absurdity of life and astounded that she couldn’t laugh. “Oliver Wood left a Quidditch game for a girl,” she murmured. “I guess the world really is ending.”

He laughed for her then, and she remembered that she loved the sound.

After that, Penelope found it was a lot easier to forgive.

-----

The next few months were as perfect as perfection would allow. Oliver might not have flown in that match, but by an incredible stroke of luck (both good and bad), the Puddlemere United goalposts had been struck by lightning during the game. This put Wadcock out of commission for the rest of the season, and in spite of Oliver going AWOL, he was the reserve player for the Keeper position, and he was the one who got to fly. Everyone with sense said he was twice as good as Wadcock, nepotism or no.

Oliver wasn’t the only one with a streak of fortune. Wadcock’s injury had brought the team’s unwillingness to pay for medical attention to the forefront of the sports media. One by one, each and every one of the players for Puddlemere United dropped their agents and turned to Penelope to renegotiate their contracts. In the end, she represented the entire team in what was considered a windfall for player’s rights, and she was charitable enough to include Wadcock in the deal. Though it was probably mostly because he was ill and unable to fly.

Of course, all good things come to an end, and at the end of the season, it was announced that Quidditch was on hold indefinitely until You-Know-Who was well and truly defeated. Oliver had sent Harry Potter a strongly worded owl to tell him to get on with this Chosen One business so people could get back to “more important things.” Not surprisingly, Harry had yet to reply.

With endorsement deals (most specifically Oliver’s) and whatever appearances she could scrounge up, Penelope knew she’d be fine, though it made her a little nervous not have a steady cash flow rolling in. She’d been nearly tempted to add a postscript to Oliver’s letter, but hadn’t, mostly out of a concern that Harry would have no memory of who she was other than Basilisk Victim Number 6.

As for Oliver and Penelope themselves…

“I cannot believe you talked me into this,” Penelope scolded mildly, struggling to hold back a giggle.

Oliver scoffed. “Of course I talked you into it. It’s easily one of my more brilliant ideas.”

“You have brilliant ideas?” she teased. “Well, aside from—"

“Shocking, I know,” he answered, waggling his eyebrows suggestively. She guffawed like she always did at that expression.

“You’re sure it’s all right?” Penelope asked.

Oliver leaned forward and kissed her, and though he had not quite managed to erase the memory of their first entanglement, he was doing a fair job of distancing them from it. Oliver still kissed like he was taking something, but it was no longer so violent. It was not an attack, but even so, she never yielded. People could say what they wanted about Penelope Clearwater, but it was a rare person who could claim that she didn’t give as good as she got.

“I’m sure,” he whispered against her lips. “Hold on tight.”

Then he spun around on the broom, kicked off the ground, and shot into the air with truly alarming speed. She felt the wind in her face, blowing through her unbound hair. She saw the ground pull away from them. And she knew that in spite of a Dark Lord and no income and the fact that a sixteen-year-old boy was meant to save them, everything would be all right. Because what could be wrong soaring in the clouds?

Penelope closed her eyes against the autumn sun, bathed in its light, and let out a whoop of joy that would have made any Gryffindor proud.