Chapter Text
The hum of the television from the living room drifted into Dean’s room as he absently sketched a crooked broomstick in the corner of his sketchbook. His five siblings were scattered around the house, arguing about what to watch next; His oldest brother Jason was currently obsessed with ‘Inspector Gadget’ while Keisha wanted to watch ‘Ducktales’. It was a never ending battle in the Thomas household. Their voices were muffled by the walls but Dean could still hear them, faint and familiar. There was something comforting about the noise, even if it was the usual bickering over cartoons. He had no idea where Dominique, Omar and Jermaine were, probably playing with their neighbours kid down the street.
“Dean! Don’t forget to take the bins out before dinner!”
Dean didn’t answer but he knew it wasn’t a suggestion, his mum was always on top of things like that. His stepdad had been at work all day and would haven taken the Telly by now, and it sounded like Keisha was now somewhere in the kitchen likely making a mess with her new art supplies.
Life at home had never felt more ordinary.
If he had gone to secondary school, it would have probably been a summer of hanging around on skate parks and playing football with some new mates. Of course, he had friends that he still spoke to from his primary school, but it was getting more and more difficult to maintain the lie that he had managed to get into a ‘prestigious private school in Scotland’ when he really hadn’t done all that great in school to begin with and didn’t know the first thing about calculating angles of a triangle, or how to structure a PEEL Paragraph effectively. Deans actual friends were scattered around the UK, and his best friend was all the way in County Kerry.
He desperately missed Hogwarts and the way the castle seemed to breathe with life, the unexplainable thrill of magic at every turn, and even the chaos that Peeves brought had its charm. The constant noise of students, the unpredictable professors, and the feeling of the wind rushing past him during Quidditch matches had all become so familiar to him. How long had it been since he’d been flying?
Dean paused his drawing, glancing at the half-finished sketch of Oliver Wood, mid-air in front of a goal post, and furrowed his brow. It wasn’t quite right, the lines looked too stiff and the colours were all off. He let out a sigh as he turned the page to the one previous. He’d been drawing little scenes from Hogwarts a lot lately, since it seemed to make the time go by quicker. He had drawn the gory, messy explosion of Seamus’s cauldron after one of his more ambitious attempts at potion-making, Snape with a large hooked nose and devil horns, his four poster bed- oh how he missed it- and the cosy hearth in his dormitory. This sketchbook had become his most prized possession as it served as a reminder of the world he had only been a part of for a year.
A loud thud echoed from downstairs, Keisha had probably knocked something over in the kitchen judging by his mums sudden voice afterward. He half-smiled to himself and flipped the page back and began drawing another figure, but this time it wasn’t a Quidditch player or a piece of furniture- it was a small, familiar face.
Harry.
Dean couldn’t explain it, but something had been nagging him most of the summer. He hadn’t heard from Harry in ages, his first owl had been rather short and to the point, as if he didn’t have much time to write it, and he hadn’t seen Hedwig since. They had promised to keep in contact, even meet up for a day- it seemed out of the ordinary for Harry to just disappear without a word after promising something like that, and it worried him.
“Dean! Bins!”
His mum’s voice coming from downstairs pulled him out of his thoughts so, with another sigh, he stood up and glanced one last time at the unfinished doodle of Harry with his trademark messy hair, and shoved the notebook into his drawer.
Later that evening, the house was quiet. The telly was on a low volume as his stepdad sat in his armchair watching the 10 o’clock news. The kitchen was clean, and the only sound that came from upstairs was his mum getting ready for bed. Dean should have been settling down for bed ages ago- this time last year he would have been- but since becoming a wizard, his parents had become a little more lenient with him. Jason and Keisha called it favouritism, Dominique simply didn’t care and Omar and Jermaine were too young to even understand that he was different from the rest of his family.
He sat alone at the dinner table with a half-full mug of tea going cold beside him, flicking absently through his sketchbook once again. He paused on a page near the middle: it was a very rough drawing of Harry perched on a broom in midair, reaching for the snitch. Dean had drawn it from memory back in late November and it was by no means a good drawing, he hadn’t gotten the shading right and Harry’s eyes were a little wonky, yet it was still undeniably Harry. Seamus had even tried to enchant it to move but all it did was make the lines even more wobbly than they already were.
He tapped his pencil against the page while biting his lip, staring at Harry and his wonky eyes whilst deep in thought.
Something wasn’t sitting right.
He’d heard from Ron often enough, Hermione had sent a neat little card from Calais then another for his birthday, and Seamus had written him from Kenmare just yesterday and enclosed a crisp two-leaf clover that Dean had carefully pressed inside one of his textbooks. Even Neville had written to him to complain about his grans overbearing attitude.
And yet he had received nothing from Harry since their first initial exchange at the start of summer- not even a scribbled “I’m alive” on the back of a biscuit wrapper. Maybe that was normal. Maybe Harry had just been busy, or on holiday, but something about it felt wrong. Off. Like a low hum he could feel in his ribs.
He remembered, suddenly, the way Harry had once flinched when his aunt and uncle came up in conversation. He’d always tried to downplay it with basic comments like ‘They’re… not great’ , or ’ they’re fine, I suppose. I don’t know’. He’d never gone into detail about them and, now that he thought back, he really didn’t know anything about Harry’s home life- he had just always gotten the vibe that Harry’s life had started when he started Hogwarts like some sort of NPC.
Dean stood up from the table and crossed the room to the hallway where The Yellow Pages was tucked between the phone and his mums never-ending takeaway menus. He flipped the book open, thumbing quickly past the Ls, past Surrey, until-
Little Whinging.
He scanned the names under D-
Dursley, V.
That couldn’t be anyone else. Harry had referred to his aunt and uncle as ‘The Dursleys’ more than once.
He circled the name once, and then again for good measure. He didn’t know what he planned to do with the number and address; obviously there was no point in sending a letter the muggle way since owls clearly hadn’t worked, and calling out of the blue was just a bit weird- what would he say? “ Hi, it’s Dean, just checking you’ve not been murdered or died tragically”? The more he thought about it, the crazier he seemed. He was probably fine, maybe Harry just didn’t think of him as a close friend enough to send regular owls like he and Seamus did- Ron has probably heard from him loads .
With that thought tugging at the pit of his stomach, he headed upstairs to his room, quietly shutting the door and turning to his single bed.
It was a depressing sight.
He really couldn’t wait to go back to Hogwarts.