Wood and Weasley, sitting in a tree

sinesofinsanity prompted me to write a post on "minor character(s) that stood out to you. Was there ever a minor character that you invented a backstory or future or side adventure for because you needed/wanted to see more of them than was ever intended to be in canon?"

Oliver Wood.

Allow me to tell you about how he and Percy Weasley are married with children.

We'll start at the beginning. You know how Oliver and Percy are the only two male Gryffindors mentioned in their year in the books? You know how they're captain of the quidditch team and head boy. Leadership qualities, both of them, I am saying. I feel like they would have kind of got each other.

...and then you had the films come out and I feel that it was made very clear just how well those two fell into some base fannish predilections, shall we say? Ooh, Oliver, you're so Scottish and athletic and adorable. and Ooh, Percy, you're slender and ginger and bookish and here to enforce the rules... yes, please so there's actually a decent amount of fic that got written for these two.

...and that's fine, all of that is fine and totally normal, and I read in a fair number of Harry Potter ships. There were so many characters in that series and it was essentially a game in fandom to ship everyone with everyone and everything. I have a lot of HP ship feels in a lot of different directions because of that.

...and then the seventh book came out. It was the final piece of canon, a lot of ships got sunk in that - in that they're never going to be canon possibly because someone died - and some you know, happened. I haven't actually read the final book since it came out, but, I kind of remember Percy and Oliver showing up at the final battle together. (Clearly Oliver helped Percy pull his head out of his ass.) ...and then they both survive the final battle, which is great. No one in this ship dies. Amazing. ...and then a funny thing happens in the epilogue: "Harry thought he heard Percy discoursing loudly on broomstick regulations..."

Clearly this means that Percy and Oliver end up together. There is no other reasonable explanation, obviously. The SCUSA ship name is Bedknobs & Broomsticks, okay?

So, yeah, I have historically thought about that a bit and how that would have gone down, and I think it is a damn shame that Rowling apparently never did, because I feel it would have been so easy for her to explicitly write about a Wood-Weasley or Weasley-Wood kid and that there would have been a lot of triumphant fists raised if she did. ...as it was, it was just me, basically, I sort of feel, and some of my fellow shipmates, and we are not, proportionally, a really big part of the whole of HP fandom.

This ship, I am telling you. I feel like a lot of the fic for it is pretty fanon, but: Percy Weasley spends a lot of the books being kind of a pompous ass and trying so hard to follow the rules and succeed and Oliver Wood is a reasonably chill dude but Quidditch-obsessed and a bit tactless. How can you not want to toss all of that at each other? They would get each other. They would be good for each other. They would be beautiful and hilarious and Oliver would be so into Percy's broomstick regulation discourse.

So into it.