[Former Puddlemere United Keeper Oliver Wood was interviewd by Seeker Weekly in 2005. Caught late at night at a Dorset pub following a late-season Puddlemere victory, Wood briefly discussed his time at Hogwarts and made several unverified allegations of corruption within the English League. The interview was deemed too candid for publication and discarded; a reproduction of the transcript was discovered several years later and disseminated throughout the Quidditch community. The following is an excerpt from that unreleased interview.]
WOOD: Potter? Well that was the queerest thing. At the beginning of my fifth year McGonagall came up to me and told me she’d be picking the Seeker spot on the Gryffindor team. I was captain then, it was my first year of that, I figured it was normal. So then about a month into school she pulls me out of class, shows me Potter, and says this is your Seeker. And the kid was – this kid was ten or eleven, had barely much as touched a Cleansweep, half-blind, nervous as shite – it was an odd pick, yeah? But McGonagall insisted, I don’t think I had as much as a choice. And then we got the kid to the pitch – he was fine, he figured it out, he even got half-decent by the end of it, my time with him at least – but McGonagall told me – well I don’t remember how she said it, but it was, like – make this kid feel special. And so I did. I had the whole team – and this was a team with George Weasley on it, mind you, and his twin brother – I had the whole team celebrate this little runt like he was some great shakes. McGonnagall even got him a broom, a Nimbus, top shite back then. Like – like it was a charity program, like a whole thing muggle’s got for kids with cancers or whatever, give the kid nice toys, make him feel like he’s captain for England, let him square the big quaffle, you catch me? It was odd. I don’t know how or why we did that. I guess he was famous. Or we were helping make him famous. Or – I don’t know. What I do know is, yeah, great Quidditch player? Nah.
[. . .]
Oh, I mean, did I say it? Berk near fell off his broom his first-ever match. Shite, he could barely fly at that point, green as a, I don’t know, a Welsh Green, or. I heard in the book they wrote about him he said he was getting hexed or something, by some Slytherin or something. Fat chance. The boy was just nervy and shite at flying. He got better. He got better. But damn now I think of it, he was always falling off. How many damn times did he fall off that Nimbus? All types of excuses, dementors, house-elfs, You Know Who, Syltherins. Wrecked his whole damn broom my seventh year. And the school paid for that! Got him a fuckin’ Firebolt to replace it! Like I don’t know, I’m not great shakes for history, but the Potters weren’t poor, were they? Aren’t they old, what’s-its-place, old Godric’s Hollow money, right? Invented the invisibility cloak or something, didn’t they? The kid wasn’t poor. And we’ve got McGonagall buying brooms for him. Mad it was. The whole place was mad. But hey, made me who I am today. Got me the spot on Puddlemere. I don’t know if I learned shite, but the Quidditch program? Top marks. I don’t know how you play Quidditch in England and not come up through Hogwarts. I s’pose you don’t.
VOLKOV (PUDDLEMERE BEATER): [Asks inaudible question.]
WOOD: I near suspected something was up, yeah. That he was being fed up the chain or sommat. There was – [inaudible] – well I won’t get into that. But I remember talk. I was going to get the spot at Tutshill, but then – I don’t know, I don’t think – it’s never you mind and all. I’ll say that, Minerva McGonagall – that old minx is – the bird’s got the game tied up tight as her pants, that one.
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