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A handwritten rugby roster/line up with two separate writers contributing to listing the players starting in the next match:
Hogwarts Roster v. Ilvermorny
1. G. Goyle - prop
2. T. Higgs - hooker
3. V. Crabbe - prop
4. C. Warrington - lock
5. P. Derrick - lock
6. Weasley 1 - flanker [crossed out and replaced with “Fred”]
7. Weasley 2 - flanker [crossed out and replaced with “George”]
8. Marcus - 8 man [added “C”]
9. C. McLaggen - scrummie
10. O. Wood - fly half [added “C”]
11. H. Potter - wing
12. G. Montague - inside center
13. Z. Smith - outside center
14. C. Diggory - wing
15. A. Pucey - fullback
Subs
- R. Weasley [arrow pointing to 5. P. Derrick]
- D. Malfoy [note: “Malfoy needs playtime” “Put in for Diggory late”]
- L. Boyle [arrow pointing at 1-3 front row with note “sub @ half”]
- R. Davies [arrow pointing at 1-3 front row]
- D. Thomas
“HOGWARTS RUGBY FOOTBALL CLUB” [written in block letters]
[a rough sketch of a stick figure kicking a ball between uprights with an arrow to its head reading “shiny hair]
[sketch is crossed out and note reads: “STOP DOODLING ON THE ROSTER!”]
- Tighthead Prop - Gregory Goyle
“Along with the hooker, the loose-head and tight-head props make up what is known as the front row. Props must be extremely strong and should relish head-to-head competition.”
Captains got their own room. On away matches too far away from Hogwarts College to travel to and from all in one day and get more than a single hour of sleep, the team would crowd four players into a room with two double beds - five rookies in one room if the numbers worked out against them, but the forwards captain and the backs captain shared a room, meaning that the flyhalf and backs captain, Oliver Wood, and the eight-man and forwards captain, Marcus Flint, each got their own bed. Unless you have a situation where your fucking club treasurer booked a room with a queen sized bed. One single queen sized bed.
Oliver was sure treasurer Gregory Goyle, only elected because no one else wanted the job, had done it on purpose in retaliation for the amount of sprints Oliver had the team do in practice that week.
When Oliver woke up with his arms wrapped around his co-captain, he slipped out of the bed quietly - at least Marcus Flint slept like a log - and got dressed and changed in the bathroom.
- Hooker - Terrence Higgs
“Lining up in the scrum between the two props, the hooker coordinates the timing at the scrum and are responsible for winning possession by hooking the ball back.”
The second time Oliver kissed Marcus was a lot like the first. Oliver had scored a match-winning try, he was wildly drunk at a social, and he was in the bathroom of the rugby house with its lack of toilet paper and empty bottle of hand soap and half-full bottle of dish soap left on the sink by some enterprising resident with a higher than average commitment to germ theory.
The only real difference between the first and second kiss was that they were older this time, bigger than they had been freshman year, and they were captains now, and Marcus had his wrist in a brace from when he had sprained it, and Oliver had a black eye from when he got a cleat to the face during a tackle.
Marcus kissed the black eye too - right on the swollen purple-blue bloom at the top of Oliver’s cheek. The barest brush of his lips. Oliver grabbed his shirt and pulled him in desperately in response.
Just like the first time, they did not talk. Marcus left the bathroom and joined in on the singing before anyone could notice they were gone.
“If I were the marrying kind, which thank the Lord I’m not sir,
The kind of girl that I would wed would be a rugby -”
“Hooker, sir!” Marcus called out. Oliver could hear his booming voice all the way from the bathroom before the rest of the team joined in with the response.
“And she’d use props, and I’d use props,
And we’d both use props together.
We’d be all right in the middle of the night
Using props together.”
Oliver spent the rest of the song composing himself in the bathroom before returning with a plastered smile before anyone could notice he was gone. He and Marcus did not so much as make eye contact for the rest of the night.
- Loosehead Prop - Vincent Crabbe
“You’ll also often see props used as battering rams in attack, receiving short passes and hitting the opposition defence at pace in an attempt to occupy the defenders and make space for the more athletic players.”
Marcus got concussed in the last ten minutes of their final match of the fall semester in a nasty but legal hit from a two-hundred-fifty pound prop. (“Good timing,” Marcus joked. They had still managed to win despite conceding a try after he was led off the field and replaced with Ron Weasley.)
The trainer had said the idea that you shouldn’t let someone sleep through the night after a concussion in order to prevent them from slipping into a coma was a myth. She said dim lights, absolutely no alcohol, and physical therapy, and Marcus listened to that advice, but his father told him to not sleep through the night, and so Oliver slept on the floor in his room, waking him up every few hours.
Oliver knew Marcus asked him because he was captain and because he trusted him and because he knew Oliver would take concussion protocol seriously and not do something stupid like give Marcus a beer he wouldn’t refuse like Cassius Warrington might.
When Marcus slept he curled his arms around a pillow and hugged it to his chest. Each time Oliver got up to wake him with a gentle shake of his shoulder, Oliver paused for a minute before touching him, watching his chest rise and fall in the red light of the alarm cloak.
Not counting the interruptions, Marcus slept for twelve hours.
When the words swam across the pages of Marcus’s textbooks and he was close to tossing them to the wall, Oliver read chapters out loud to him. When Marcus said the light of his laptop bothered him, Oliver offered to type his final papers for him. Marcus dictated lines, sitting up in his bed while Oliver sat by the desk.
“You don’t have to do this, you know,” Marcus said between paragraphs.
The season was over anyway. Oliver had the time.
“I’m captain. You’d do the same for me."
“I would.”
Uncomfortable with the look Marcus gave him, Oliver said quickly, “And the sooner you recover, the sooner you can get back to training, and we need you back to full strength by March.”
“I’ll be fine by March.” Marcus smirked: crooked teeth, crooked nose, crooked smile. Everything about his face was just off and imperfect and unselfconscious and clearly breakable - it had all been broken - but completely capable of healing. A resilient smile.
Oliver flashed a smile back. Clean. Straight teeth. Straight nose. A politician’s smile. “We’ll make sure of it.”
If Oliver sat on the bed with Marcus when reading aloud to him or typing up his papers, it was only because it was easier for them to be close together. If Marcus would finger Oliver’s sweatshirt or, once, the waistband on his pants, it was because concussions make you do odd things. If Marcus put his head in Oliver’s lap while Oliver read, well, concussions, obviously. The trainer had said to rest.
- Lock - Cassius Warrington
“Locks are the engine room of the scrum.”
Over winter break, Oliver had little reason to reach out to Marcus. There was no rugby, no homework Marcus might need his help with.
Two days before Christmas, Oliver finally texted: “How’s the head?”
Two hours later: “Better!”
On Christmas, Oliver typed and retyped a variety of Christmas greetings, which all seemed inappropriately formal or oddly casual or comically impersonal or terrifyingly personal. Finally, that afternoon, he received a text from Cassius Warrington which just read: “Merry Christmas! [christmas tree emoji],” and Oliver copied and pasted it to send to Marcus.
Normal texts between teammates because his relationship with Marcus was just as normal as his relationship with Warrington.
Marcus immediately responded with a selfie of himself and a pile of boys (identified only as “cousins!!”) in what appeared to be the lobby of a ski resort.
“Head’s better then?”
Two hours later, Marcus sent him a selfie of him and a pint of beer and a very similar looking man, presumably a cousin, except the cousin’s grin, nose, and teeth weren’t crooked and were therefore less interesting to look at, which was why Oliver only zoomed in on Marcus’s face in the photo and ignored the other man. Had Marcus’s eyes always been that grey-brown? Had anyone ever had eyes like that?
Minutes later, Oliver’s phone flashed a new text: “No symptoms in days!”
Oliver could not think of a way to respond that didn’t come across as a worried mother hen, and so he put his phone away.
He woke up to a text that just said “miss you,” even more inexplicable and even more impossible to devise a response to. Oliver and Marcus didn’t text again until the end of break when they began planning out their off-season training schedule and strategizing how best to fight for indoor practice space. All business.
- Lock - Peregrine Derrick
“Locks need to be tall, powerful players with excellent scrum technique and pinpoint timing.”
During their first outdoor practice back, and Marcus’s first full tackle practice in months, Marcus went up against Peregrine Derrick, a tall but willowy lock, in a one v one.
Marcus laid him out. Low, arms around his knees, smooth. If he wanted to dump-tackle him, he could have.
After the thunk of the landing and the chorus of Ooooh’s, Marcus looked at Oliver and grinned.
It was going to be a good season.
- Flanker - Fred Weasley
“Flankers must be excellent all-rounders with inexhaustible energy. Speed, strength, fitness, tackling and handling skills are all vital.”
Oliver bit down on his mouthguard and glared ahead as he got in position off of the scrum. It was too hot for March, unseasonably warm and they had driven south for the match, and Ilvermorny’s fucking flanker kept hitting Oliver late. Pass to Graham Montague at inside center - smack. Skip to Zacharias Smith at outside - smack. Kick for Harry Potter at wing and Pucey at fullback to chase - smack.
Oliver was fine. Nothing was broken. It was just illegal and fucking up their game plan, and the other team knew it, and one of these hits was going to be harder to come up from. If he was on the ground, he couldn’t ruck for Montague. If he was on the ground, he couldn’t chase his own kick and support Potter (well, support him from behind - that little freshman was fast as fuck.)
He and Marcus set a strict no-arguing-with-the-ref culture because it never did any good, but even he was straining. When their scrummie Cormac McLaggen yelled, “Are you fucking blind?” Oliver felt just as grateful that someone had noticed as he was frustrated with his hot head teammate.
“None of that, Laggs!” he yelled as he shoved that fucking flanker off of him. Marcus was rucking for Montague - should have been his job - and Oliver shook his head and got in position off of the ruck, waiting for the next backs ball.
Just after the half, Ilvermorny scored again. Pucey had managed to drive them to the corner but he couldn’t quite stop the try. They missed the conversion though - even Oliver would have struggled with that kick. Hogwarts was still up 21-17, but Ilvermorny just needed one more try to take the lead. Hogwarts would have been up by more if it weren’t for that fucking ref.
Oliver lined up on the fifty with his teammates for the kickoff.
Oliver kicked, right to that fucking flanker, who took one look at Marcus rushing towards him and passing it off to his teammate. A full second later, but who’s counting, the ref hadn’t been, Marcus decked him.
As in, full-on laid him out. Marcus popped up immediately. The flanker did not.
*Phwwwwwhht*
The ref threw up his arm, yellow-card in hand.
“Are you fucking kidding?” Cormac shouted. “Now you can see?”
Oliver knew he should tell Laggs to shut the fuck up, but he was distracted by the crooked smile Marcus gave him as he jogged off the field.
The flanker was still laying on the ground. Trainers jogged over. Water was brought to both teams.
“Got the wind knocked out of him, but he’ll be fine,” Cedric Diggory said, glancing over to the prone athlete.
“He won’t be hitting our flyhalf late again,” George Weasley said with a laugh, throwing a bruised and freckled arm around Oliver.
“You owe Flint a beer,” Fred offered.
George clapped Oliver on the back. “Or ten.”
Oliver just grabbed the water bottle from them. He couldn’t laugh during rugby. They had at least another thirty minutes to go - ten of which they would be playing down. But when he thought of the look Marcus gave him jogging off the field, half “He was asking for it” and half “You’re worth it,” he couldn’t help but smile.
- Flanker - George Weasley
“Crazy beats big every time.” -the author’s rugby coach on flankers
Hogwarts won their next match.
Two hours into the social afterwards, Fred had come up with a particularly bawdy new verse for Yogi Bear, and George had begun taking off his clothes, and some of the social players followed his lead, and Oliver decided he should put himself to bed.
He should get rest. True. He was too drunk to manage not to ogle his teammates, packed in together half naked or fully naked in a basement. Also true.
“You leaving, Wood?”
Marcus caught up with him as Oliver stepped out onto the front porch of the rugby house.
“Yeah, it’s time. You have fun though.”
Marcus was swaying slightly. He grabbed the doorframe to steady himself.
“What if I’m concussed?” Marcus asked with his crooked grin. “Not sure I could pass a balance test.”
“If you think you might be concussed, I’m going to fucking kill you for drinking.” Oliver poked a finger at Marcus in what he meant as a threatening gesture but ended up trailing down Marcus’s chest.
Marcus’s breath caught.
“I’m not concussed,” he said more softly.
“I’m walking you home,” Oliver insisted, turning back to go back down the steps, hoping Marcus would follow him.
“Yes, you are.”
Once at Marcus’s dorm, they sat on his bed, because that’s what they always did, and it was normal. And if Marcus kissed him, fully with tongue, and ran his hands through Oliver’s hair, and Oliver straddled him and kissed back, well, he was drunk.
Oliver did not stay the night.
- Number Eight/Eight-Man - Marcus Flint
“Support play, tackling and ball-carrying are the eight’s areas of expertise, making their duties similar to the two flankers. The eight must be an explosive, dynamic runner.”
The first time Oliver stayed the night was after a loss.
Oliver did not take losses well.
There was hardly space in the extra-long twin bed for Marcus, the giant eight-man, let alone for both of them, but they were both so drunk and it didn’t matter that they were pressed up together. It didn’t matter that they were pressed up, rubbing up against each other.
They didn’t talk about it. They didn’t talk about why Oliver began spending the night regularly. It was closer to the dining hall. It was convenient. They could talk strategy and rosters and then go to bed. Marcus said he liked when Oliver read his textbooks aloud to him even if the words no longer swam. Oliver liked reading to him.
- Scrumhalf/Scrummie - Cormac McLaggen
“Acting as the link between the forwards and the backs, a good scrumhalf will control exactly when the ball is fed out to the backs from the rear of a scrum, ruck or maul.”
When McLaggen made a homophobic joke in the dining hall after practice, Oliver laughed. Marcus didn’t.
- Flyhalf - Oliver Wood
“The heartbeat of the side and arguably the most influential player on the pitch. Almost every attack will go through the flyhalf, who has the responsibility of deciding when to pass the ball out to the centres and when to kick for position.”
Neither the men’s team nor the women’s team had practice on Tuesdays, but Oliver met Angelina Johnson at the pitch for kicking practice anyway. One of the women’s team’s rookies was supposed to have come too, but Oliver was glad it was just him and Angelina, the women’s team captain and starting flyhalf and maybe the smartest person on both teams put together.
Depending on the day or the season or the person, the relationship between the men’s and women’s rugby teams ranged from strained to very good to nonexistent to openly hostile, but Oliver and Angelina had a good relationship from the start. Both former soccer players, they had joined their respective teams after Charlie Weasley had knocked on doors in their dorm, recruiting players. Charlie always said hitting their hallway and getting Oliver and Angelina in one night was the most productive recruiting session of his life.
Looking back on it, Oliver should have questioned why he had been so enthusiastic about joining the rugby team after seeing Charlie’s freckles and charming smile.
“So… uh, dating your teammate?” Oliver asked as he and Angelina put the balls back into the team shed. “How does that work?”
Angelina huffed as she locked the door. “Wood, I just had to explain it to Smith. I’m not going through it with you too.”
“No, I’m genuinely asking! As, as a captain to a captain.”
She turned to him, flicking her long black braids behind her back. “Who is it?”
Oliver went red.
“Uh-”
Angelina started grinning. “It’s those two first years, right? The very blonde one and the winger?”
“Potter and Malfoy? No! They hate each other.”
Angelina started laughing as she plopped onto the ground to take off her cleats. Oliver sat next to her, pretty sure she was laughing at him and not with him.
“Alright, assuming that you’re asking as captain, a particularly unobservant one, I’d say it’s really not that hard to make it work. When you’re on the pitch, you’re teammates, just like you are with everyone else. I have teammates I don’t like very much and teammates I adore, but I will ruck just as hard for both. Setting boundaries obviously - when you’re teammates, when you’re more. I think the only tricky things are socials and jealousy.”
“So, you don’t think dating Katie has been bad for your playing?”
“No! Of course, not. It’s no different than when I was dating Fred - loads better actually. And dating another rugby player - they just get it, and you’re on the same schedule, and they’re not going to look at you funny for having a body covered in bruises - you know Alicia’s ex-boyfriend tried to insist she go to the ER when she had a black eye?” Angelina shook her head, almost laughing. “And they know when to push for actual medical care and what we can do on our own, and they don’t get jealous that you spend all your time with your teammates in season.”
“So you’d recommend it, then?” Oliver asked. They were nearly back to campus.
Angelina shoved him lightly. “Oh, now you’re just making it weird.”
- Wing/Winger - Harry Potter
“Playing out wide on the side of the pitch, the winger is a team’s finisher in the attack.”
After his conversation with Angelina, Oliver continued sleeping over at Marcus’s, but he did not talk about it with Marcus either. He did, however, start paying attention to Potter and Malfoy. They spent the most time together, being the youngest on the A side, but constantly bickered and sniped at each other.
Malfoy was just a little shit - even if he would almost certainly replace Oliver as starting flyhalf after Oliver graduated.
Oliver had no idea what Angelina was talking about.
- Inside Center - Graham Montague
“The centres take on their opposite number in an attempt to either break the defensive line or draw in enough opposition defenders to create space and try-scoring opportunities. They need to be strong and powerful and accomplished at tackling.”
The new play involved a crash from Montague at inside center, a solid ruck from Oliver and Smith at outside, and then McLaggen at scrumhalf would get the ball out quick to Marcus who would use the gap and his bullet train of a body to ram through the other team’s defensive line. It only worked, of course, if Oliver won the ruck against the giant centers counter-rucking him, and Durmstrang had some very big centers.
They ran the play over and over again during practice until the forwards complained that they needed Marcus back for scrumming.
Later that night, Marcus and Oliver went to the green behind the freshman dorm to practice. It had been unusually hot and muggy for May, but the weather at night was almost pleasant. If anyone asked, they were practicing for the weather, not because they had been studying together in Marcus’s room and were bored and desperate to touch each other, but that might have involved talking or making a decision about what they were or getting very drunk, but Oliver had an exam in the morning and couldn’t drink, but leaving Marcus to go to bed or study on his own would have required an amount of discipline and self-control that even Oliver did not possess.
So they gathered their cleats and went outside just after midnight. Easier than talking.
They warmed up: dynamic stretches and shoulder hits and crab walks and Oliver on his hands and feet, knees bent and back flat and core tight, as Marcus pushed and shoved and grabbed and Oliver stayed in position. They rucked against each other again and again. Marcus always won. He was built like the eight out of a flanker’s nightmare - or dream if he was your teammate. Oliver was built like a flyhalf, like the soccer player he had been for over a decade. But with every hit, Marcus offered a few words, and they were the right few words, and Oliver was getting better.
One in the morning, they returned to Marcus’s dorm. Marcus let him shower first, and, as he handed Oliver body wash in the cheaply tiled bathroom, Oliver almost kissed him sober for the first time.
- Outside Center - Zacharias Smith
“The outside centre tends to be the faster of the two and able to offload the ball quickly to the wingers.”
Marcus worked so well with the back line - almost as if he had been a center himself all along. He picked up an offload from Zacharias Smith at outside center during a full 15 v 15 run through and ran through ten men, none of whom could take him down. He might not make it all the way down the field, but it would take more than one man to stop him at pace.
They were ready to play Durmstrang in the final.
Oliver fucking loved rugby. He fucking loved his team. He fucking loved Marcus.
- Wing/Winger - Cedric Diggory
“A winger is also often the last line of defence, and, as such, pace is their major resource.”
Cedric Diggory put a rainbow pin on his kit bag, right next to the sewn “14” and just below “DIGGORY.” He told anyone who asks that his girlfriend is bisexual, and he loves and supports her. He let anyone who didn’t ask make up their own story. Cho and Cedric were the only official couple between the rugby teams now that Fred and Angelina had broken up, and Cedric tended to be on better terms with the women’s team than anyone else. If anyone assumed Cedric was gay due to his pin, he let them.
When Smith said something about a threesome with Cho and another girl, all suggestive eyebrows and teasing tone, Diggory responded with a slight smile and stared him down. True to form, Diggory didn’t lose his temper - just kept that infuriating smile on his face.
When Smith put up his hands and said, “Sorry, man. Didn’t mean to offend you,” Oliver decided he would tell Diggory first, if he told anyone at all, and, after championships, he would put together a plan for telling Diggory. Maybe after graduation.
- Fullback - Adrian Pucey
“The fullback is the closest thing that rugby has to a sweeper in defence. This high-pressure rugby position is not for the faint-hearted, but those who can combine tackling, kicking, catching and running with a cool head can excel here.”
Rugby involves planning and practicing and plays and game tape review and gym sessions and visits to the trainers and adjustment and more planning and more practicing, and still the game always surprises you.
They won. Hogwarts victory. That didn’t surprise Oliver. He had been watching Durmstrang’s game tape obsessively and knew that if they stuck to their game plan and no one got seriously injured, they would win.
Potter scored the winning try chasing down a brilliant kick from Pucey and stiff arming Durmstrang’s fullback. Harry dotted the ball down center posts, and it didn’t surprise Oliver that Potter scored the try and that he, Oliver, made the kick.
What did surprise Oliver was kissing Marcus at the victory party, sober or nearly so - they had been at the rugby house for all of twenty minutes and had barely finished their first cups of beer.
What did surprise Oliver was kissing Marcus in the filthy basement, surrounded by teammates, by the women’s team, not in the grimy bathroom with no toilet paper and no soap.
What did surprise Oliver was that Marcus kissed back.
If he had been able to tear his eyes away from Marcus, Oliver might have been surprised by the reactions: Angelina’s shocked face, Potter’s joy, Draco’s… relief?, Diggory’s easy smile, and the slight way Pucey raised his cup in salute.
He might have had a chance to notice everyone gaping at them, but Fred pulled a cleat out of his kit bag, and, with all of the vigor of a Weasley after a victory, George started chanting “Shoot the boot!” at Harry.
Ignoring the freshman’s protests -
“I’ve already done this!”
“Never for a championship try!” - Pucey emptied his cup into the shoe as Fred shoved it at Harry.
Marcus joined in the chant - “ Down in one, down in one, down in one-uh-un. Down in two, down in two, down in two-uh-oh ” - but Oliver couldn’t quite bring himself to. He kept glancing back at Marcus and his crooked smile, unsure if this was real.
They didn’t hold hands - that would have been much too much - but Marcus’s pinky kept brushing up against Oliver’s and if Oliver leaned in closer it was because of the tightness of the space and if there was a warmth in his chest - well, that’s how it felt to win.