Chapter Text
"Do you like quidditch?" Oliver Wood asked him that first night.
"No," Percy replied curtly.
"Oh." But Oliver perked up quickly, "Isn't your brother on the quidditch team?"
"Yeah."
"Do you wanna watch the first game with me?"
"No."
"I'll watch it with you, Oliver," said one of the other first years, Jenson. So Oliver jumped off into a conversation with him.
Percy started arranging his desk. Stupid quidditch. Maybe Bill and Charlie could get by on quidditch, but Percy was here for school. He would do well in all of his classes, which meant he could get a job at the Ministry like Dad. Bill and Charlie couldn't do that, not when they were so busy with quidditch. Especially Charlie.
***
Percy felt a spike of pride when he got Mum's letter congratulating him on Gryffindor. He puffed out his chest and waved the letter at Bill and Charlie, who smiled in return.
"Hat might be wrong sometimes," Oliver had retorted. "A Weasley who doesn't like quidditch? Why not a Weasley who's not in Gryffindor."
Before Percy completely deflated, Bill had stepped in to show off his neutral love of quidditch, even if it meant breaking out into an argument with Charlie, so Percy hid his smile by sticking his tongue out at Oliver and dashing away to class. Though they had it together, so running away didn't do much and Oliver just caught up and punched him in the shoulder with a toothy grin. "Bravery comes in all forms, it's just easier to see in quidditch."
Percy didn't see how a sport, where one of the goals was to whack players off their brooms, was brave instead of stupid, so he said just that and ducked into the classroom to avoid another punch to the arm.
***
Oliver continued to be a nuisance. He plastered quidditch posters all around their room, much to the delight of the rest of the boys, but he'd even stuck one up above Percy's desk. They all came back loud and rambunctious after a quidditch match, even if Gryffindor wasn't playing, but Oliver was by far the loudest, shouting over the others about plays that should've been made and what he would've done. Percy just sniffed and cast a silencing charm around his desk so they couldn't bother him.
Except when Gryffindor won, and Oliver would walk up and shake his shoulders and holler in his ears, bounding away before Percy could retaliate.
He tried complaining to Charlie about it, first. But he just laughed and ruffled Percy's hair, saying "You need to relax sometimes Percy, don't stay stuck at your desk." Since that wasn't particularly helpful advice, Percy then went to Bill, but he said basically the same thing: "Let your hair down, Perce, stop being so stuffy." So Percy complained to McGonagall. Weasleys were always Gryffindors, but Ravenclaw must surely be a little bit more quiet and studious, and could she maybe draw up a bed for him there, even if only on nights with quidditch matches. She had raised her eyebrows at him, and he suddenly remembered that Charlie had once said she used to play quidditch, but she said, "Have you maybe tried the library?" Percy blinked, pushed his glasses back up his noise, and said simply, "Thank you."
So now he spent all his free time in the library. He would get his favorite desk in the back, or one a couple down from that if it was taken (never by a window, because you could see the quidditch pitch from here), and hole up with his homework or a book.
He made quiet friends with the Ravenclaws, and one Slytherin boy, Connor, who had bonded with him over a similar Oliver-esque affliction by the name of Marcus Flint. But Gryffindor was his home and his pride, as a Weasley. Oliver may have taken the boys in his year with his talk of quidditch, but Percy would eat with the girls or the second years, play wizards chess with Charlie and Bill and other Gryffindors who had free time and enjoyed it (Percy found it was a good way to connect with the wilder type, as they were a fan of the bashing and the banter while Percy enjoyed the intellectual stimulation, and it reminded him of spending time with Ron and decidedly not Fred or George).
But it was hard to avoid Oliver Wood. As fellow first year Gryffindors, they had every class together, and Oliver was loud. He would cheer and boast in flying lessons with Madam Hooch, he would snore like a foghorn in History of Magic, his charms would get successively louder as if shouting would suddenly make the spell work (it didn't, and Flitwick finally started docking points when Oliver got too loud). Everyone liked Oliver, and Charlie even let him join some of the quidditch practices, even if he couldn't be on the team. Oliver would talk about the practices for hours, even mumbling about it in his sleep. His brothers suggested he try to make friends with him, that they'd be good for each other, but Percy would wrinkle his nose and bury it so deep in his book that his glasses would slip off. He would never be friends with Oliver Wood.
***
It was towards the end of the year when Percy first saw Oliver outside of classes and Gryffindor tower. Percy was at his favorite table in the library, his notes spread out as he studied for final exams. But then there was a tentative cough above him. Percy looked up, his glasses just about slipping off his nose, and a blurry looking Oliver Wood stood before him. Percy shoved his glasses back on his face to make sure that that was actually what he was seeing.
A now in-focus Oliver had a thin stack of paper clutched tightly in his hands, his eyes cast a little off to the side. He shuffled his feet and cleared his throat. "You're pretty smart, right?"
Percy blinked at him, completely thrown off when the word "quidditch" did not come out of Oliver's mouth. "Uh, yeah, I suppose."
"Well, I need help with transfiguration. And potions. McGonagall and Snape said I might fail, based on how I've done so far."
"Maybe if your head wasn't so full of quidditch, that wouldn't be a problem."
Oliver's eyes flashed at that. "Quidditch is my life! That's what I'll do after I graduate so I don't need to know this stuff. And I'm doing fine in all of my other classes, it's just those two."
Even if Oliver was obsessed with Quidditch, Percy wasn't too sure it would pan out professionally, even Charlie wasn't pursuing that. But Percy did know school, and those were the hardest first-year classes.
"Please, Weasley."
That was probably a quidditch thing, calling people by their last names. Charlie did it too, sometimes. Percy found it a little odd, but he went with it. "Okay, I'll help you study. I was just about to start potions anyway."
So Oliver plopped down across from him, set down his meager pile of paper and looked at Percy. "So what's first?"
Percy wrinkled his nose. "I'm not going to walk you through everything. Look over your notes and ask me if you have any questions."
"Okay." So he started rifling through his papers. Loudly.
Percy went back to work for a couple minutes, but Oliver would not stop flipping back and forth and over and under. So Percy sighed and took a glance at Oliver's work. And, that was weird. Some nonsense words about cauldrons, but, "What are all these circles and arrows? Are your notes coded?"
"No, they're quidditch plays! See in this one, the first chaser will come around with the quaffle while the beater goes behind them, leaving the second chaser to --"
"Why do you have quidditch plays on your potions notes?"
"I think it's supposed to be transfiguration. But it ended up mostly being quidditch plays. I have a hard time focusing." Oliver did look a little sheepish at that.
Percy decided to roll his eyes and move on. "Since your notes are pretty much useless, would you like to look at mine?"
Oliver sent him a blinding smile. "Thanks, Weasley!"
Insufferable. But Percy was nothing if not patient, and Oliver was not even close to Fred and George level, so Percy took the first paper off of his carefully organized stack and passed it to Oliver. "These are the topics for the exam. Read through them, and on your own paper, write down what you know, and then we can fill in the blanks."
"Brilliant!" Oliver took the page, and did as Percy suggested with intense concentration. Maybe Oliver wasn't entirely drowning in quidditch.
Percy realized he was wrong, however, when the next time he looked over, Oliver was ranking a list of famous quidditch players. "Morgan was better than Griffiths," Percy interrupted, startling Oliver into looking up.
"What? No way, Griffiths has scored more than Morgan has. Plus, Puddlemere is a better team than the Harpies."
"Actually, the Harpies have won more matches. And Griffiths may have scored more, but that's only because she played longer games because Puddlemere couldn't catch the snitch."
"That's the stupidest shit. The Harpies have won more in total, but in the past five years, Puddlemere has won most of the matches they played against the Harpies."
"Stop ranking quidditch players and study for potions."
Oliver stopped moving, his mouth half open. He had been flailing his arms around, but now they thunked to the table. "I thought you hated quidditch."
"I don't hate quidditch, I just don't like when people get crazy obsessed with it. You can't be a Weasley if you hate quidditch." Percy shot him a withering glare. "But if you don't keep your voice down, Madame Pince will kick us both out."
"I will if you go to a quidditch match with me next year."
"Fine, but you have to get through studying potions, too."
Oliver grinned at him, and Percy thought maybe being friends wouldn't be too bad.