Chapter Text
1991
The scarlet red locomotive was slowly filling with nattering children, carrying books, cats and owls and bright smiles on their faces.
Parents stood at the platform 9¾, watching over their excited children with mixed emotions.
Some mothers were crying, some looked stressed.
Dean had found an empty compartment.
His mother had helped him pack his suitcase somewhere safe.
There he sat now by the window, looking out onto the platform, his mother standing in the midst of the chaos.
She gave her best not to give her sadness away, Dean knew.
His mother did not cry.
She would be alone for months now, while he would learn about charms and potions.
If he had not been so excited, he would be crying, too.
But he reminded himself that he would be home again for Christmas in a few months.
Children passed his compartment, some of them already wearing their school uniforms.
Dean was not wearing it yet, but he had already taken it out of his suitcase and folded it on the seat next to him.
He wished he would not be so alone. All the children that passed seemed to know each other already.
They were bantering with one another, like going to a wizard boarding school was the most normal thing.
And maybe it was for them.
The nice lady that had visited Dean and his mother to tell them about Hogwarts, had told Dean that there were many children like him.
Children that never knew about the wizarding world but were magical themselves.
Where were those children? Maybe they would want to sit down with him.
A loud whistle told him that the train would leave the station very soon.
His eyes met his mother’s. She smiled at him encouragingly and waved.
Dean waved back, feeling a little sting in his heart.
He would miss her.
The train started moving and finally, the door to Dean’s compartment was pushed open.
A boy with sandy blonde hair and freckles smiled at him.
“Hi.” He said. “May I sit down?”
Dean nodded eagerly, relieved not to be alone anymore.
“Sure.”
The boy managed to somehow pull his suitcase through the narrow door.
It was almost as big as himself.
Dean stood up to help him put it under the seat.
“Thanks, mate.” The boy said and flopped onto a seat.
“I’m Seamus by the way.”
“I’m Dean Thomas.” Dean said shyly.
“Is Thomas your middle name or your last name?” Seamus asked, still smiling cheekily.
“Last name.” Dean said, looking at the boy with great interest.
“You’re not wearing your school uniform either.” He deducted.
“No, I think it’s stupid when you don’t even know your house yet.” Seamus said.
Dean nodded like it was an everyday conversation.
But he was excited and wanted to know more. The boy called Seamus seemed to know exactly what awaited him in Hogwarts.
“Are your parents wizards?” Dean asked carefully. He did not want to give away that he barely knew anything about the world of magic.
Seamus nodded silently and began fumbling with the hinged table under the window.
Dean wished he would just tell him more about what it was like to have wizards for parents.
He imagined it to be pretty cool and quite helpful.
“Yours aren’t?” Seamus asked in passing. He took out his wand from a pocket of his coat and started tapping on the table.
“My mother isn't a witch. She said my father wasn't a wizard either, but I never met him, so...” Dean said, trying his best not to give away his nervousness.
“Oh.” Seamus said and looked up at Dean for a second, before turning back at the table.
While he kept tapping on it, sparks flew from his wand.
“So you were raised by Muggles.” Seamus said and Dean could not help but hear a certain negativity come from the way Seamus said it.
Seamus must have realized that Dean felt offended because he said: “Don’t worry about it, mate. My father is a Muggle, too. Mam’s a witch and she didn’t tell him until they got married.
He wasn’t having it in the beginning, you know.
Mam told me all about Hogwarts. She even bought me a broom and let me train for Quidditch.”
“Quidditch is a sport, isn’t it?” Dean asked, feeling a little bolder.
“The best sport on the planet, I swear.” Seamus said and his eyes lit up.
So did the table under the window.
“Bloody hell!” Seamus shouted when flames flickered on the wooden table.
Dean’s eyes widened.
Quickly he picked up a bottle of water he had brought from home and poured it over the burning wood.
They did not move for a second, Seamus holding the wand in his hand and starring at the now black table, Dean holding the empty water bottle.
Slowly they turned to look at each other.
“Did you just set fire to our table?” Dean asked horrified.
Seamus laughed boisterously at the bewildered look in Dean’s brown eyes.
Dean looked at him for a second.
Then the ridiculousness of the situation occured to him and he laughed along with Seamus, all the nervousness and anxiety falling off his shoulders.
1999
Dean Thomas shouldered his backpack. His next class would be herbology.
It cost him a lot of disciplin to go there.
At the end of this year he would start his education at the Ministry of Magic to become an Auror.
Dean understood that he needed good grades in order to be accepted to the Auror Office.
Still it did not occur to him in how far herbology was any helpful for his future career.
It could have been a mild day in march, but a biting wind blew over the Hogwarts castle and its property.
He stepped out of the classroom and into the corridor.
If he had not known any better, he could have thought the Battle of Hogwarts had never happened.
The old walls of the castle looked just like they used to when he first saw them almost eight years ago.
Dean had helped to rebuild them. The corridor he was walking through was merely ten months old.
He turned right and walked through a gate towards the gardens.
From here he could already see his classmates walking towards the greenhouses.
As soon as he stepped onto the lawn outside the castle, the strong wind teared at his Hogwarts uniform. He pulled up his robe to protect his throat from the weater.
Getting sick was nothing he could afford right now.
A lot of exams were scheduled for the next weeks.
It was extremely important that he would score as high as possible in his Charms exam.
If he wanted to become an Auror, he needed grades in accordance with the Ministry’s regulations.
Harry and Ron were already studying like hell. Quite apart from Hermione who was rarely seen, as she hardly ever left the library these days.
Dean however, had his mind on something else.
He walked down a slope, trying not to get blown away by the wind.
Students fought their way through the storm and into the greenhouses, walking with their heads down.
Dean looked around annoyed. He was supposed to meet Seamus here, who had just had a class of History of Magic.
But his Irish friend was nowhere to be found.
It was typical for Seamus to be late, but Dean became more and more annoyed.
Seamus left him waiting alone here in the storm, probably flirting with some girl from sixth grade.
When Seamus would not show up five minutes later, it dawned on Dean where he might be.
Angrily Dean walked around the second greenhouse. He knew that there was some space between the glass of the greenhouse and the brick wall of Hogwarts castle.
Seamus would occasionally take a girl there to snog in the minutes between classes.
Dean walked around the corner. He could already hear the wet kisses before he even saw them.
Seamus groped some blonde girl’s behind, the other hand burried in her long hair and kissed her passionately.
Dean wanted to throw up.
The kiss was so sloppy and awkward that Seamus had saliva around his mouth.
Dean cleared his throat.
The girl turned around surprised and then blushed really hard.
Seamus let go of her and looked at Dean with a cheeky smile.
“Ugh gross, Janine.” Dean said with exaggerated disgust at the girl’s messed up face.
Janine was dangerously red and glared at him.
“Shut up, Dean.”
She picked up her bag from the mossy floor and turned to leave.
“See ya later.” Seamus said, slapped her butt and winked at her.
Janine giggled and ran off.
When her bonde mane had disappeared around the corner, Seamus grinned smugly at Dean.
“She’s so hot, mate.” He said and shook his head.
“Yeah, but you gotta stop snogging those girls before class. We’re already late.” Dean said annoyed.
“Not your problem who I snog and where I snog ‘em, is it?” Seamus said and patted Dean’s arm.
“It is my problem when you tell me to meet you before class and then never appear.” Dean contradicted.
“Right” Seamus said and nodded. He picked up his own bag from the grass and shouldered it.
“Let’s go to some boring herbology class with Neville getting all the points for Gryffindor, shall we?”
Thank Merlin it was already friday.
Dean had no energy for another day of school.
Tonight the students of age who absolved their last year at Hogwarts, would meet at the Three Broomsticks.
Hogsmeade parties had become a regular thing since a lot of the students were over seventeen.
Most of them were the ones that needed to make up for their last year.
The classes had been influenced too much by the Death Eaters’ ideals.
Some students even had been missing the entire year because of their blood status.
Dean himself had been hiding in the countryside until he had been caught by Snatchers.
It felt strange, returning to Hogwarts.
After months of being far away from civilization, he had first returned to the castle last May.
The school had never been the same after Death Eaters took control over it.
He tried hard to make it feel like home again, but the comfortable feeling it once gave Dean was no longer there.
He knew he was not the only one who felt this way.
Tonight they would drink and party again to forget about their losses for a while.
Dean looked at himself in the mirror of the boy’s bathroom.
The bags under his eyes were impressive.
He felt like an old man.
“Move please, would ya?”
Seamus pushed him away from the mirror to look at himself.
He had put on a red shirt and was styling his sandy blonde hair.
Gryffindor colours, Dean thought.
The shirt was quite big but it suited Seamus well.
“Getting ready for the next round with Janine?” Dean said with raised eyebrows.
Seamus was putting a lot of afford in styling his hair.
“Shut up, you know she can't come.” Seamus said and nudged Dean in the side.
“What? Why?” Ron Weasley asked from another sink.
“Because” Dean said with a spiteful smile “Seamus’ little girlfriend is underage.”
“For God's sake Dean, she's sixteen. Don't make me sound like a bloody pedophile.” Seamus said with a disgusted expression.
“Okay, we’re leaving. I told Lavender we’d pick her up downstairs.” Ron said with an examining look at his golden pocket watch.
Harry Potter, who had been sitting on a toilet seat next to Ron, rolled his eyes.
Dean turned away to hide his smile. Harry was obviously fed up with Ron’s brilliant plan to get back together with Lavender Brown.
But Dean figured it was none of his business, so he would not address it.
Instead he nodded.
“Yeah, we’ll catch up with you later. I think Seamus still needs a few hours to get his hair done.” Dean said.
He earned another nudge from Seamus for his comment.
Ron and Harry left the boy’s bathroom.
Dean finally was alone with Seamus.
He sighed audibly.
“Do you think you'll be finished by today, beauty queen?”
“Oh shut up you prick.” Seamus said but he cracked a smile.
“I’m just kidding, you look good.” Dean said and tried not to look at Seamus for too long.
“Who’s the queen now?” Seamus said challenging and looked at Dean shortly. He began fumbling with his hair again.
Seamus bent over the sink to be close to the mirror.
Dean stood behind him, waiting patiently, but the way Seamus arched his back in front of the mirror had Dean distracted.
Suddenly it was very quiet in the bathroom.
Neither Seamus nor Dean said anything, yet something seemed to hang in the air around their heads.
Seamus kept combing his hair with his fingers his body bent over the sink.
Dean watched him silently, but something was different.
Maybe it was one of those nights.
The walls around them were haunted with bittersweet memories.
Sometimes it got a little too intense, walking through the castle and remembering sitting at a specific spot with a person that was no longer alive.
Some days Dean would suddenly remember a place in the castle where he saw a friend dying. Maybe it had even been a stranger.
Whenever he found a spot like that on his way to class, he would try and find another way to the classroom.
One that would not make him relive his painful memories.
Sometimes however, he could not flee from his personal hell.
In those nights he could count on Seamus to be there and stay with him until his heartbeat had slowed down again.
Tonight Dean felt heavy. His arms seemed to hang lower than they usually did, as if weights were attached to his wrists.
He looked at Seamus in the mirror. His friend had a scar on his cheek, a keepsake from the Carrows that had tortured him last year.
Seamus had refused to practice the Crucio spell on muggleborn first graders.
The punishment would show on his beautiful face forever.
Seamus had stopped touching his hair. He looked at Dean through the mirror, clearly realizing that something was going on inside of Dean’s twisted mind.
“Are you okay?” He asked quietly.
When Dean stepped closer, Seamus turned around at last.
He let Dean embrace him with his long arms. They did not need to communicate with words.
Seamus had seen all the effects Dean’s past experiences had had on him.
He would hug him, when Dean broke down again. Seamus would hold him until his friend’s breathe was steady again.
“Sorry.” Dean murmured into Seamus’ hair.
Seamus touched his back gently. “It’s okay, Dean. I’m here.”
Even though Seamus was shorter by a head at least, Dean let his own head sank onto Seamus’ shoulders.
Dean could feel the warm skin of Seamus’ neck at his forehead.
He could smell the perfume Seamus’ denied he was wearing.
And Dean could feel Seamus tense up when he moved his head gently to feel Seamus’ skin with his nose and mouth.
They parted again, as quiet as they had come together, and Seamus turned around before Dean could look at his face.
“Got your stuff?” He asked as if nothing had happened.
“Yeah.” Dean said calmly.
“Good, let’s go then.”