Oliver Wood had been playing Quidditch since he was old enough to walk. In his nearly twenty years of flying, he had never quite learned to manage first day nerves. In his youth, he had been prone to obsessive compulsively pacing his room, running through plays in his head. Oliver liked to think he had made significant progress in that he [i]now[/i] spent his first night [i]seated[/i] while obsessive compulsively running through plays in his head. While it wasn’t quite restful as, say, [i]sleep[/i], it left him a shade less exhausted than pacing had.

As far as first days went, this one was not going well. Oliver hadn’t played Quidditch [i]proper[/i] in nearly a year—not since the ill-fated protest last December. Morally, it had been the right thing to do, of course, but it had thrown his life into a chaos for which he was ill-prepared. He’d nearly been thrown in Azkaban with his muggleborn players and had been issued a lifetime ban on playing Professional Quidditch. Oliver hadn’t quite realized how grim things were until he’d realized he was being tailed by Auror’s, marked for a dissident. And, well, since they thought he was a rebel proper, he’d given it a shot. Frustratingly, he hadn’t been able to do as much as he would have liked; the downside of being a [s]former[/s] national Quidditch star. But he had lent his wand to old friends and helped smuggle a few muggleborns out of the country. And when the call to battle went out, Oliver was one of the first to answer.

The war had ended, and though it took a few months to sort through the mess, his lifetime ban had finally been reversed in time for the new season. Oliver noted with some bitterness that Kearney Stevens, one of his Chasers [i]still[/i] hadn’t been freed from Azkaban, his paperwork somehow taking much longer than Oliver’s. No matter how he pushed, the Ministry was still slow to respond. Never mind the mess it made of his training schedule; Flitney should never have spent a day in Azkaban, let alone nearly ten months. Even without Dementors, the prison was not a place for good men. Now, he found himself in the Team Manager’s office, sorting through the aftermath. He should have been with his team at breakfast, raising their spirits, not drowning in a sea of miserable bureaucracy. 

“Kearney Stevens' paperwork will be seen tae in due coorse',” Oliver read in disgust from a scroll of parchment. At the table, a weary witch groaned, dropping her face into her hands. Azkaban had aged Manpreet Bellamkonda—when Oliver had last seen the woman, she had been polished and bright eyed, passionate about Quidditch and brilliantly suited to liaising between the business and the sport. She had agreed to allow Oliver defy the order to fire all muggleborn players and go to play the Harpies with their original team in solidarity. The owner of Puddlemere had thrown her beneath the broom. He had blamed Manpreet for the stunt when it had (predictably, he realized now) gone to hell. She’d been sentenced to Azkaban where Oliver had escaped. She had not been protected by fame. Yet, unlike Kearney, her release paperwork had gone through almost instantly. Of course, unlike Kearney, Manpreet was a full blood. It shouldn’t have surprised Oliver, and yet, he’d thought that once the war had been won, things would be fair again. It was an awful lesson to learn. “This is disgustin’. They’re dragging thair feckin feet because he’s muggleborn.”

“I know. I’ve arranged for a hearing, but the earliest I could get was next month. They’re booked solid, or so they claim,” Manpreet sounded close to tears, raising her head to look at Oliver helplessly. “I’m beginning to think he’s dead, Oliver. I’ve been sending Kearney letters since I got out. He stopped writing back a month ago.”
Oliver’s blood ran cold. He’d been playing with Kearney for six years now, and the idea of losing one of his closest friends to that fucking prison was enough to make him want to scream. Instead, he reached out to drop a steadying hand to Manpreet’s slim shoulders. He drew deep for the confidence in his voice,
“Don’t think lik’ that. He’s going tae be okay. We’ll get him home.”
“Right,” she nodded, as if she were trying to convince herself. She took a shuddering breath, and then smiled weakly at him. “Okay. For now, pull up the reserve Chasers, see who we can substitute for him. I’ll write an appeal to get Kearney’s hearing moved forward, see if I can find an advocate to help out. You should get to practice.”
“Of coorse,” He squeezed her shoulder one final time, rising and gathering the folder of paperwork she’d assembled for him. Everything was mad; the Ministry wouldn’t release his innocent forward chaser from prison, but they’d assigned the team an Auror to protect them from blood elitists. He wondered if they’d purged their ranks of the scum who had served under He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, or if they’d be protected by a war criminal.

Oliver dropped his paperwork off in his small office off the locker room, hefting the practice chest out and onto the shoulder of his navy blue robes. Grasping his broom in his offhand, the burly Scot made his way towards the pitch. The autumn sun and the crisp morning air were a welcome comfort. Quidditch was back and soon he’d have his mate free and in the sky. Everything would be okay. It had to be; it was the only thing that kept him going some mornings.

He nodded to his assembled players as he approached, raising a brow at the sight of a neatly dressed woman. Approaching, he lowered the large chest to the ground in a smooth movement as she walked to him. The blonde looked a little familiar, but he couldn’t quite place her.
“Captain Wood?” She addressed him briskly, holding out her hand. He grasped it in a firm shake, giving her a questioning look. “I don’t know if you remember me, but I am Ryan Lockwood. I’m from the Auror’s office, sent to watch over your team in practice and the like.”
“Aye, that’s me,” he assured her, before his brows knit together at her greeting. A muscle in his jaw clenched. The Auror’s office. He’d been followed by Aurors, had dueled a few during the war, and it was difficult to forget the terror of being watched, of being hunted. Her name sounded familiar, but Oliver could only assume that they had been at Hogwarts together. “Ah heard you’d be joining us fur th' neist while. We… appreciate it,” he forced the words out, trying not to let on his discomfort too much. This was part of things getting better. She was trying to protect them. He needed to trust that. 

She informed him she’d be out of the way, and presented him a letter. He accepted it, opening it and scanning it. Same paperwork that Manpreet had gone over with him. He stuffed it in a pocket in his robes.
“Whatever ye’ll need tae dae yer job, let me know, I’ll make sure ye get it,” He told her, before allowing her to depart. He turned to his team, watching him curiously, some of the lads watching the Auror leave with interest. A few had the same wary look on their face that lingered in his gut. War had changed all of them. “A'richt ye bastards, git in th' air! We're flyin’ suicides.”

The familiar chorus of complaints brought a grin to Oliver’s face, blue eyes dancing warmly as his team grudgingly obeyed. War had blighted the skies, but Quidditch would clear the air.