Tomorrow

Tomorrow.

Oliver Wood first started playing Quidditch for Gryffindor in his third year, as a short awkward reserve Keeper who was accidentally hit in the head with a bludger a short while into the game, and collapsed onto the pitch. He woke up the next day in the Hospital Wing, and had to suffer the taunting of the Slytherin team for several months afterwards. The fourth year Slytherin Chaser, Marcus Flint, was his main adversary and tormentor, and even cornered Oliver one day late in April and hit him with two quick punches to the stomach before laughing and walking away.

Oliver shot up like a string bean over the summer. He was gangly at first, somewhat awkward, but it was more than enough to return the same two punches to Marcus' ribcage during the first week of term, and add a kick to his stomach once Marcus was down. Nothing more, though. That wouldn't have been fair.

Later that year, quite casually, Oliver heard a smart comment from Flint about the Hufflepuff/Ravenclaw match they'd both witnessed, and before he could stop himself, he responded. Both of them seemed quite surprised at the fact they could say two words to each other without someone getting decked or insulted, but then, this was Quidditch, and it was the one thing guaranteed to break even their rivalry as much as it sustained it.

Over the next few months, a series of rules were established thanks to a series of imadvertent trial and error. No talking about homework, or houses - or friends, after Marcus made a jibe about how Percy Weasley probably liked to take it up the arse, and Oliver smacked him upside round the head. Another week or two of silence passed before Marcus grudgingly asked Oliver what he thought of the Wasps current Beater strategy, and things were all right again - as right as they ever got, all things considered.

The weeks of conversation turned to months, and the months turned to years. They wrote each other during the holidays, sending clippings from the sports section of the Daily Prophet, complete with encircled words, and scribbled comments in the margins as they argued that really, both of them had more clues about Quidditch than the entire writing staff of the damn paper.

In Oliver's fifth year, they extended the rules to make sure that team tactics weren't mentioned, as Oliver made a surly comment after Slytherin's first match again Ravenclaw, and the Slytherins' tendency to cheat, and Marcus nearly pushed him down a flight of stairs.

Gryffindor started winning though, thanks to their new seeker, and Marcus got really tired of Oliver's shit-eating grin, as Marcus put it so sweetly himself. Their discussions got more formal and less polite at the same time, a constant strain in the air between them. From this point, Marcus tended to hang round with Pucey or Higgs, and try bringing up the Cannons or Puddlemere, or the new brooms, but all Higgs would do was whine about Potter, and Pucey was too busy checking out his hair in any nearby reflective surfaces. Oliver tried mingling with Katie and Angelina and Alicia for the while, but Katie tended to stare and go bug-eyed when he made small talk, and the other two just watched them both and giggled. Oliver had no clue what they were on about - maybe it was a girl thing.

This went on for a month, which turned into many months. Neither was going to be the first to relent and admit they actually enjoyed one another's company, albeit in a very twisted, disturbing way. Quidditch wasn't the only thing they had in common; a certain stubborn pride had been handed out to the pair of them in equal parcels. So they made do with what they had, and went quietly insane in their own time. It became easier to forget that there were anything other than enemies; it was as simple as that and always had been.

In this, they were supported by their follow Quidditch players and housemates, who preferred to see the Gryffindor/Slytherin grudge match reach its typical conclusion in this and all other cases. Because if Marcus Flint and Oliver Wood were just another statistic, another example of why Gryffindor and Slytherin could not, would not and should not ever be friends or even get along, that meant that all the others who came before, and all the others who would come after - Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy being just another example - were perfectly fine in not struggling or striving to overcome the stereotypes. They too could resign themselves to senseless antipathy, not bothering to ever ask why, because why was unimportant. What was important was that the march of history continued, and in not talking, not resolving, Marcus Flint and Oliver Wood made sure of that.

Stubborn pride turned to surly resentment over the months, the gap widening with the holidays, making it easier to blame the other for any feeling of loss or distemper. It wasn't until midway during the next year that they even spoke again, and that was not exactly the choice of either of them. Following the cancellation of the Quidditch season, and their shared incessant hassling of both Madam Hooch and Professor McGonagall as to when it could restart (although neither of them had known the other was hassling as well) they had been landed with cleanup duty in the interim. Cleanup duty meant maintaining the pitch, clearing the stands, giving the school's set of brooms a once-over.

Neither Oliver nor Marcus was entirely sure who started the argument first but after a spending most of the weekend on cleanup duty, tempers were definitely frayed when they arrived at the shed to tackle the brooms. It all began with an offhand comment: Oliver making a smart remark about the only good thing about Quidditch being cancelled was that he didn't have to watch Marcus cheat. Marcus replied dryly that at least he didn't have to watch Oliver work his team into the ground in the hope of winning, and that just because Oliver didn't have a life he shouldn't expect that the rest of the team didn't as well.

Oliver hit him. Marcus responded, and somewhere along the way they started grappling, which turned into a tussle, and pretty soon they were rolling around the dirt floor of the broomshed. Finally, Oliver managed to pin Marcus to the floor, straddling his chest, both of them panting with the physical extertion of the struggle.

"Give up?" Oliver asked hoarsely.

"Not a fucking chance," Marcus told him, grinning, and leant up to kiss him.

It was not exactly the tactic that Oliver expected, but considering Marcus' tendency to play dirty and break with any notions of the usual, it was probably the only thing he should have expected. Perhaps more unexpectedly, considering Oliver's love of rules and stricture and ways to easily measure and define himself, was that he kissed back.

By the time they were finished cleaning up, they had to clean themselves up as well, before making their blessedly separate ways back to their respective dorms. That night, Oliver Wood was told that Hermione Granger had been petrified, and he also made sure he cleaned his teeth very well. He and Marcus did not talk much during the remainder of term, but they found other ways to resume their communication, and the owls started up again over the holidays with more articles and that familiar annotation.

Oliver's final year approached, and he took a certain devious joy in finding out that Marcus had to repeat the year. This soon meant that Marcus had to find ways of keeping him quiet - and places in which to do it in - and looking back on it, Marcus wondered sometimes if that wasn't Oliver's purpose to begin with.

The year went by. Dementors and convicts and rumours and shadows and above it all, Quidditch and the comfort it offered them both. The first time they had sex, it was in the changing room showers, and, to put it bluntly, it wasn't that brilliant for either of them. The second time involved Marcus being bent over a bench in the broomshed, Oliver laughing at first from the sheer lunacy of it, and what might happen if Hooch found them. Marcus suggested she'd ask to join in, which just made Oliver laugh louder. Marcus worried that meant it wasn't very good, but then they both quickly realised that it was, and there was no more laughing to be had - or heard.

School finished, and suddenly they were both free, with little idea of what such things actually meant. Oliver went to Puddlemere, and Marcus got a job selling Quidditch gear in Diagon Alley. They met up occasionally, when they weren't busy, sometimes to go to Quidditch matches or pore over the day's reporting of matches they had been too busy to go to or go through the latest equipment catalogues, so that Oliver could come to his own opinions on the new accessories Marcus was sure to highlight as worthy of his interest. The owls continued between them. Less frequently, they would spend afternoons in Marcus' dingy flat or Oliver's slightly less cramped quarters reacquainting themselves with other shared interests, such as touch, and the way Marcus used to grin when they kissed, or how long Oliver could keep himself from climaxing no matter how Marcus teased and worked him mercilessly. Sex was not of huge importance to them; it was comfortable and nice and occasionally extremely enjoyable but it was not quite Quidditch.

During the year, Oliver played when he was needed, and Marcus spent most of his pay on membership in the South London Quidditch club, and private training there with one of the advanced instructors. But despite Marcus' instructor and Oliver's coach, the opinion they trusted first and foremost was each other's. No one else was quite as obsessive as they, and no one likely would ever be.

The year ended, and during the following year another end manifested itself. Cedric had died, and both of them heard the rumours. They attended the funeral (although not together) and both of them mourned a good Quidditch player in their own way. They did not live together, and at most they were friends with benefits. No words were left unspoken that needed to said, no promises made that could not be kept. They had each other, but what they had did not need definition: it simply was, a lot like them, and both of them had little time for the changing world around them. War, death, ideology, all of that could be damned. They wanted no medals, no accolades, no cities to cower under their reign - the purity of their game was an art, no more, no less, and they intended to keep it that way, and their lives just as pure.

Oliver continued with the Cannons, and Marcus managed to get onto the Wasps' team as a reserve Chaser. They continued the same familiar patterns, and the world shifted around them, not taking much notice of their solitary dedication. And they liked it that way. At times, one or the other would get asked out, and they would never say they were taken, merely uninterested. (Later, Marcus told Oliver he would have paid to see the reaction when Percy Weasley invited Oliver on a date and Oliver turned him down.)

One morning, Marcus woke and Oliver turned in bed at the sudden shift in weight in the bed, the removal of body heat and contact. Staying over was something they were still getting used to, a gradual disruption in their usual routine of playing the game. By the time Marcus returned, Daily Prophet in hand, Oliver was lying on his side, head propped up on a hand to watch as he sank down on the bed.

"What is it?"

Marcus tossed the paper in his direction. "The Ministry announced You Know Who has returned."

Oliver read over the article and shrugged, throwing the paper over the side of the bed.

"Hey, that's my floor!"

"So you pick it up then," Oliver told him, and Marcus did. There was a pause before Marcus stood up again, and he started tickling Oliver in all the places he knew Oliver was most sensitive, at which point Oliver had no compunction about hitting him severely with a pillow. They didn't always like each other, and they didn't always trust each other, but Quidditch was Quidditch and they could agree on that. Papers and history and the future aside, tomorrow would be dealt with one day at a time.