He sat down at the edge of his bed and gazed around the room with a sense of accomplishment. The room was home to four other Gryffindor boys like him, but it was empty today, and he liked it that way. Most of the scattered belongings gathered under the bed and in the corners of the room over the past seven years had been reluctantly picked up and packed away, leaving the room unusually bare.
It was the last day of Hogwarts, and contrary to what you would imagine, Oliver Wood was excited to leave. Many of the others in his year were quite sad to leave and he found it surprising how attached people could become to what was essentially a boarding school.
Yes, he was going to miss Hogwarts. Like many others, it made a great home away from home, but the only thing that had given him true happiness in his childhood was quidditch. The feeling of the wind rushing alongside you, the adrenaline rush that came when the other team tried to score…and then there was the pure exhilaration that came when he then succeeded in blocking the goal. He simply loved it. He even enjoyed all the strategizing; it was like a maths problem – you had a question (how do we win the next quidditch match?) and you had to find the answer (with many complex strategies). Yes, Oliver lived and breathed quidditch.
The reason why he was excited to leave was because of a letter that had been dropped onto his breakfast with the usual morning owl post last week. He had never realised how happy the unlucky number of thirteen words could make him feel: “Congratulations, you have been accepted into the Puddlemere United team as a reserve”. While others had spent the last week recovering from N.E.W.Ts, taking leisurely strolls around the grounds and preparing to leave, he had spent most of his time on the quidditch pitch simply enjoying the feeling of being in the air. Alone, but it gave him a sense of being on top of the world.
For the final time, Oliver stood up from his bed and took his last lingering look around his bedroom of seven years. It was inevitable that time would eventually reach this moment, but he hadn’t thought it would fly by so fast.
He would remember all the details. From his first to fourth year quidditch matches, Slytherin had smashed Gryffindor. He had almost given up hope, but then Harry Potter had arrived. They should have won it in his fifth and sixth year, but circumstances had arisen… he remembered feeling so desperate in his seventh year. Still, he was completely convinced they’d win it in his final year. There was no other option. And then, triumph. He felt so immensely happy of Harry for beating those dementors, and even more exultant that after six years, he had finally won the quidditch cup for Gryffindor. Finally. He smiled at the memory.
With a deep sigh, he walked out of the room, ready to move on to the next step of his life. His time at Hogwarts had ended, but he was now about to enter the ‘real’ world, and he was ready to move on.
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