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Dean insisted that they send out their wedding invitations on a Tuesday. Tuesday was his favourite day of the week.
‘It’s underappreciated’, he’d told Seamus. Seamus had said he was fine with whatever Dean wanted, his go-to attitude when it came to wedding decisions.
This was an arrangement that suited them both very well. Dean did exactly what he liked in exclusive consultation with Luna Lovegood who, in Dean’s words, ‘Knew how to throw a good party’.
So when Seamus got home on Tuesday afternoon, and Dean didn’t call out hello, his first thought was that perhaps Dean was still busy sending invitations. And then Seamus remembered that Dean had planned to owl all the invitations out in the morning and then spend the afternoon working on a particularly tricky piece of code he’d been battling with for a few days. Seamus remembered Dean telling him this very specifically while Seamus shovelled corn flakes and pumpkin juice into his mouth, right before giving Dean a sticky kiss goodbye. Which made the absence of Dean all the more peculiar, because when Dean was stuck on some code he normally welcomed any and all distractions. Especially Seamus, whom Dean had once declared was ‘the ultimate distraction’.
Now that he had finished hanging his cloak and toeing out of his sneakers, however, Seamus thought he could hear something after all. A sort of muffled choking sound. He set off in search of the source, dragging one hand haphazardly though his hair. Seamus only played with his hair when he was nervous, something he’d never realised until Dean pointed it out.
He found Dean in the kitchen, collapsed against one of the cupboards. For a single, terrible moment Seamus thought something was horribly wrong, and then he recognised the wheezing sound Dean was making for what it was. The kind of hysterical laughter that had gone on so long it would have sounded more appropriate if it was being emitted by a choking victim.
‘Hey,’ Seamus said, hesitantly. Helplessly.
Dean wheezed on.
It was then that Seamus noticed the scraps of parchment littering the kitchen floor, all scrawled on untidily. It took Seamus a moment to place them as the handiwork of Ginny Weasley, who had never been known for her penmanship. This, Seamus thought, as he squinted at one of the scraps of paper, was not unfounded. While Dean continued to wheeze out chuckles and clutch at his side, Seamus busied himself ordering the notes as best he could and then reading them from the start.
-
Dearest Dean and Seamus,
We would be delighted to accept your invitation, and look forward to seeing you at the wedding. Can’t believe it’s only a month away!
Sincerely,
Ginevra and Harry Potter
P.S. I read the invitation out to Harry just now, and apparently he had no idea you two were engaged. What a knob. - Ginny
-
Dear Dean,
Scratch that, he’s just told me he had no idea you two were dating at all. I asked him what toilet he’s had his head stuck in for the last eight years. Will investigate further.
Yours,
Ginny
-
Dean,
I asked him, and he seems to have been under the impression that it was a housewarming party. Don’t worry, I have already informed him that you two have been living in the same apartment for the last, oh, five years now. At least now we all know why he kept mumbling about how he ‘liked the way you’ve done the place up’.
Got to go, I flooed Hermione and Ron and they’ve just got here.
Ginny
-
Dear Dean,
Sorry for leaving you hanging, Hermione had to spend nearly a half hour explaining the history of your relationship to an incredulous Harry who I think thought I was having him on. Ron and I spent the whole time just about dying from laughter and I am only now recovering. Harry has apparently spent the last ten years thinking you and Finnigan were just best buds or roommates or something. He keeps asking ‘Mione if she is really sure it’s all real.
Merlin, I haven’t laughed this much in months.
Ginny
-
Dean,
Thank you for that last note, I read it out to Harry and he very nearly fell off his chair. He is still bright red. Amazing.
Gin
-
D,
Yes, that works for us. And if you and Finnigan don’t snog in front of Harry I will be extremely let down.
Got to go wrangle the monsters as it is now dinnertime. See you Thursday.
x,
G.
-
‘What’s on Thursday?’ Seamus asked Dean.
Dean took a shuddering breath and managed, ‘Harry and Gin are coming round for tea.’
‘Ahh,’ said Seamus. ‘What was in the note that made Potter turn bright red?’
Dean started giggling again at this. It was quite a while before he managed to tell Seamus, ‘I told her to tell Harry that we’ve fucked in the same room as him.’
Seamus snorted. ‘Isn’t really true though, is it?’
Dean grinned at him, red-faced and madly, eloquently delighted. ‘Close enough.’
-
Seamus Finnigan grew up being the odd one out. He liked to tell people, when he was a little older, that his Mam was a witch but his Dad was a muggle. It was true in all the ways that mattered to people. But his Mam married a muggle not because she loved the man (some days she did, and some days she didn’t) but because she loved what he was. Seamus’s Mam had never been proud of her magic. But then, she never was quite as magic as Seamus.
Standing in Ollivanders, a couple months before his eleventh birthday, a stooped and white-haired old man would mutter about volatile and turbulent magic.
Sitting on the back lawn, at age four, Seamus would flick sparks from his fingers until they clung onto dry leaves or thin twigs and blossomed into flame. It had always been so disappointing to him when some adult came screaming and stomped the fledgling fire from existence. A waste.
Odd, they called him. His Nanna said to his Mam over a cup of tea, ‘that boy of yours is a queer one’. Neither of them noticed that Seamus had crawled under the table to converse with the fluff bunnies. It was nothing he hadn’t heard before.
Seamus imagined (when he imagined it at all) that Hogwarts would be more of the same. That the other kids would find him just as weird as the kids at his muggle school, who stuck their tongues out at him but never called names because even back then Seamus had an air of being stretched thin around something inside of him that yearned to break free. A wildfire, uneasily contained.
He could not, in hindsight, have been more wrong.
Seamus Finnigan stepped onto the Hogwarts Express from the murky twilight of Platform 9 and ¾. He dragged his trunk into the nearest compartment with an open door, where a skinny black kid with the widest smile Seamus had ever seen was sitting.
‘Hi,’ said the kid, grinning. ‘I’m Dean. Thomas. Dean Thomas, that is, not Thomas Dean.’
‘Er,’ said Seamus, and had no idea how much of himself this moment would end up defining. ‘I’m Seamus Finnigan. Mind if I sit down?’
-
From the moment Harry and Ginny Potter walked through the front door of their apartment, Dean was hanging off Harry’s every word and expression. It was the kind of thing that would once have sent Seamus into a fit of jealousy, back when he was young and stupid.
In recent years, Seamus had come to the conclusion that being jealous of Harry Potter was not only stupid and futile, but also pointless. For all that Dean had harboured a hero crush on him all through their fourth and fifth years, it was now extremely obvious that Harry had been completely unaware.
‘Hello there, Ginger’ Seamus said, grinning lopsidedly at Ginny. She smiled at him brightly, even while she distractedly watched as Harry shook hands uncomfortably with a delighted Dean.
‘Hey, Finnegan.’
Seamus and Ginny had been at odds for years. It was almost like the start to a joke. A redhead and an irishman get in a fight over a boy. Not pretty, to say the least. But they’d sorted out their differences eventually. It had helped when Ginny fell pregnant with her firstborn and Seamus had been forced to admit that the inevitable break up of the Potter’s relationship he had been predicting for years seemed unlikely to ever happen.
Harry finally managed to extract himself from Dean’s enthusiastic grip, and hurriedly turned to great Seamus as Ginny pressed a flamboyant smooch to Dean’s cheek before linking her arm through his and ushering him out of the entryway. Seamus rolled his eyes at their theatrics and shook Harry’s hand.
“Seamus, good to see you. Er, how’ve you been?” Harry said, running a hand nervously through his trademark messy dark hair.
“Not too bad,” Seamus replied, smiling widely at Harry and leading him in pursuit of their wayward partners. Tonight, Seamus thought, was going to be one hell of a dinner party.
-
Dinner, followed by several generous glasses of firewhiskey, had left Seamus boneless and satisfied. It wasn’t just the alcohol either, he had spent most of the meal trying desperately to contain his laughter as Ginny and Dean systematically teased Harry into a state of complete bafflement.
To Potter’s credit, though, he had taken their ribbing good naturedly.
“I’m sorry,” he had protested repeatedly, “That I was too focused on defeating the Dark Lord to realise Dean and Seamus were- were dating!”
“But Harry, you all lived together!” Ginny would rebut. And then Harry would just look at her, his bemused and politely curious expression such a study that Ginny and Dean would burst into giggles once again.
But now dinner was over, and they had gathered in the living room, with the soft glow of the fire blurring the sharper edges of the conversation. Seamus was curled up next to Dean, cradling his glass of whiskey to his chest as he fended off the cat with one socked foot.
Dean and Harry were talking about Quidditch now, with Ginny interjecting at intervals to tell them both what large and obnoxious knobs they were.
Seamus felt warm and soft, and utterly at home. He was sure that later Dean would recount to him the highlights of the dinner, as they brushed their teeth together before bed. That the memory of Harry’s blushing face in response to even the most off-hand reference to sex of any kind would amuse them both for months to come.
“You’re both useless if you think the Harpies don’t have the strongest Chasers in the league.” Ginny declared loudly, tipping her head back against Harry’s shoulder and making a sweeping gesture with her glass of firewhiskey. Seamus watched consideringly as Harry smiled softly before continuing the point he had been making.
The cat had climbed up on the back of the sofa now, and Seamus nestled further into Dean’s side, thinking about how far they had all come, since getting on that train for the first time. All the bad, and all the good that had become of them.
There was something to be said, Seamus thought, for this kind of a happy ending. One with good friends, and laughing so hard your stomach hurt, and a wedding just around the corner. Or maybe it wasn’t an ending, really.
Maybe it was just a beginning.