Freshly Showered

Disclaimer: If I were J.K. Rowling, I'd keep Oliver Wood to myself, thank you very much.

A/N: Hey guys! I'm just editing all my chapters up before I post the epilogue/sneak peek and the first chapter of the sequel. I think I've grown a lot as a writer since I first posted this (2008!), and I'd like my work to reflect that. As always, I'd be very happy if you left me a review :) Enjoy.

CHAPTER 1 – Ideas

"He probably just uses too much deodorant," Angelina huffed as she hovered on her broom.

From the ground, Alicia struggled to lace her boots up. "Yeah," she grunted, "Well, I bet he blasts his armpits with a pore-refining charm of some sort, like the ones from our magazines. You know, to stop the sweat from dripping –"

"I think he just smells that way," Katie interrupted, a goofy grin on her face. She rolled onto her back to lie down on the grass.

"Who smells what way?" a freshly showered Oliver Wood grinned as he stepped onto the pitch. Katie sat up, eyes wide. "Crap!" she thought frantically, her brows knitting together in despair.

"Nobody smells in absolutely no direction, Cap'n, none at all," Katie hastily blurted, turning beet red. Oliver laughed, and Alicia hastened to explain.

"We were just wondering, Oliver, why it is that you never smell. Since you've probably already heard our theories, would you care to enlighten us?"

"Actually," Oliver leaned in conspiratorially, "Katie here is." Katie burrowed her face into her Chaser's gloves. She was absolutely mortified.

"Come on now, Bell," Oliver teased, prodding her with the toe of his boot. "No need to be embarrassed. Everyone wants to take a whiff Oliver Wood, I'm sure."

"Well isn't Oliver Wood the modest one?" Katie rolled her eyes at him. Pulling her gloves on, she clambered onto her broom and kicked off in the direction of the Quidditch hoops.

Turning to Oliver, Alicia amusedly informed him, "She likes you, you know. It's so obvious. She got us wondering why you smelled so good all the time last week, and I don't really know how she took to smelling you in the first place."

Angelina leaned in unabashedly, a bit to Oliver's obvious discomfort. Angelina looked up at him, and rolled her eyes at his panicked expression. "What! I only wanted to smell for myself."

"Oh. Erm, uh, go ahead?"

"Thank you."

Angelina then took a deep whiff and exhaled. Her eyes clamped themselves shut and a mellow grin spread across her face.

"Katie was right," she concluded. "You do smell unusually pleasant." She then buried her nose deeper into surprised Keeper's uniform, right over his firm chest. "Mmmmm. Won't Katie be jealous?" she giggled.

Alicia exchanged a glance with Oliver, who shrugged. She laughed and grabbed a handful of his robes, taking a big sniff as Angelina did. And, like Angelina, she remained there. Now Oliver was really confused.

"What are you girls on? Oh great," lamented the poor Captain sullenly, "Now it looks like I'm breastfeeding my Chasers. You know what that is? That's unprofessional!"

Nothing. Angelina and Alicia snickered into his uniform, refusing to budge.

"Please get off, girls, the Twins better not see this. Who knows what they'll pull on me tomorrow? They'll probably slip me something to turn my skin green –"

"OY!" Two cries resounded from the equipment shed. Fred and George were lugging the chest of balls to where Oliver remained helpless.

"Great," Wood groaned. "What now? I'm rather preoccupied at the moment," he muttered, sarcastic.

"This is low, Wood," started Fred in mock anger. He and George violently dumped the chest before Oliver.

George continued, "We turn our backs one second –"

"One SECOND!" cried Fred.

"– to fetch your bleeding balls," (George high-fived his chortling twin) "And then we return –"

"– to find our girlfriends plastered to your man breasts? It's quite obvious, dear Captain, that these Twins," they pointed to themselves, "are infinitely superior to yours."

"You cretin," huffed George.

"You're despicable!" Fred crossed his arms.

"And really nice-smelling," commented Angelina.

The twins stared at her. Fred elbowed George in the ribs.

"Ow! She's your girl," he said sourly.

"Well in case you haven't noticed, yours is latched onto him as well, genius."

They looked up at Oliver, simultaneously tilting their heads.

"Huh. Your hair's wet. Showered, did ya, Wood?" asked Fred.

"Before practice?" asked George. Both had suggestive expressions on their faces that mortified Oliver, but which the girls did not see.

"Why would you feel the need do that?" they asked together, waggling their eyebrows for emphasis. It was as if they were in on a very big secret. Or at least a very hard one.

Alicia and Angelina straightened up, not picking up on the twins' insinuations. Taking one look at Oliver's hair and verifying that it was indeed, wet, Alicia muttered, "Cheat," and both Chasers kicked off to join Katie, who was determinedly weaving through the hoops.

Fred and George had identically mischievous grins on their faces. They had taken out their Beaters' bats and stroked them diabolically. Oliver couldn't miss their point if he were blind. He rolled his eyes.

"It's not like that," he said simply.

"Oh? You mean to say you don't take a wank before practice because of a certain Chaser named Katie Bell whom you secretly pine for but cannot date because you are an utter pillock who overthinks everything and decided she's too young?" one twin asked innocently as the other batted his eyelashes.

Oliver was too flabbergasted to remember which twin did what. They were too close to the mark for comfort. How they'd guessed was completely beyond him. Also, that sentence was ridiculously long and rather difficult to follow.

No, not about the wanking part, nor the pillock part (he did not overthink everything! Or did he?), but the Katie part. He'd never told anybody that…

"Do your drills!" he yelled, having nothing witty to retort with. Oliver was not one for many words.

Cackling, the twins went to the end opposite the girls, where Harry sat waiting on a bleacher.

With a sigh, Oliver released the balls and took the Quaffle.

"That was awkward. Wanking indeed," he thought. But judging from the twins rude gestures from one end of the pitch and the giggles he could hear from the other, he knew it was far from over.

At the back of his head, however, a thought suddenly surfaced: "Bell fancies me? Does she really?" and he flew over to where the Chasers did their agility drills, grinning all the while.