Work Text:
1991
“Dean?”
Soft voice, scared voice. Dean can barely hear it over the sound of the lashes of rain against the windowpanes and the deep thrum of the storm outside. It takes him a second – Seamus’ voice is still new to his ears, his freckle-dotted face breathtaking in its novelty – and then he answers.
“Yeah?” he whispers back. It was easy to pair up, last week in the Great Hall after the sorting. They found each other at the table by seeking out a familiar face, and it was good because Harry and Ron knew each other already, and Neville’s a little strange and a little quiet and also he has a toad which Dean thinks is just odd. Seamus is just right, like the story about Goldilocks his Maman told him once, because Seamus too grew up in something like a Muggle household (Ron had called it “mixed” with something of a snort, Seamus, brightly, “half-n-half”) and at least he knows what football is. Harry too, but Harry’s too caught up in his own everything – celebrity, friendship, whatever. He likes them all, but Seamus is just easier.
“I can’t sleep,” says Seamus from the next bed over. Dean is pretty sure he means that he’s afraid of the thunder, but it’s not right to pry, his Maman always told him.
“Do you,” Dean tries, then again, “do you want to come sleep in my bed?”
1992
“Dean?”
“Yeah?”
It is early May; Seamus has just turned 13, Dean’s voice goes through more octaves in a day than Flitwick’s toad choir, Fred and George and Lee told them three days ago what wanking is like.
Hermione is lying cold in an infirmary bed, found earlier today – yesterday – and the castle hums with rumours.
“What do you think’s going to happen?” Seamus asks, his voice small. Lavender’s revived the ever popular theory that Harry is the Heir of Slytherin, and just today Dean found three spiders in his book bag. Whatever’s going on, it isn’t good.
“I don’t know.” His Maman always says it’s better to admit to not knowing than to lie or to make something up – which, well, he doesn’t really see the distinction, but it’s good advice nonetheless.
“You’re a Muggle-Born,” Seamus whispers into the dorm. Ron whuffles a snore in his own bed. Harry’s light has only just gone out a few minutes ago, but his breathing has evened out too.
“Yeah. Well, probably.”
“I’m just – are you – can I sleep with you tonight?”
“Yeah. Come on.”
1993
“Dean?”
This time he’s barely awake, but somehow in the last two years his ears have been trained to pick up Seamus’ voice – from across the dorm, from the Ravenclaw table where he sometimes sits with Anthony Goldstein and Padma, from the other end of the classroom when the professors decide Seamus is being too rowdy for once and needs to be separated from Dean (it happens at least once a week, and he’s always worse when they’re apart so it never lasts long, which suits them).
(Sometimes he wishes the others could know this Seamus – soft, frightened in the night, calling out for Dean – but then he smothers the thought and decides he’s glad he gets to keep this version for himself.)
“Yeah?” His voice sounds groggy to his ears.
“Do you really think Sirius Black is coming for Harry? Here?”
There have been rumours, of course, just gossip, but Seamus spends a lot of time with Lavender and Parvati, and has heard it all. Something’s bound to have an inkling of truth to it, he says. It's insidious, the truth, or the half-truths, or the whatever -- it makes them all doubt their idea of safety, and Harry.
“I hope not,” Dean breathes. He’s glad for the dark because he thinks maybe his own face looks as frightened as Seamus’ voice sounds. “Come here.”
1994
“Dean?”
It’s late, and Dean is all but asleep when Seamus stumbles into Dean’s bed without an invitation or so much as a grunt of acknowledgment, smelling like whatever it was Fred and George and Lee cooked up to pour into the punch. His skin is hot when he plasters himself to Dean’s side.
“Yeah,” he groans.
“Why’d you leave the dance?”
Dean resists pointing out that it ended two hours ago. He shrugs, but he’s lying on his back and Seamus is literally wrapped around his torso with his head on his shoulder so it’s not so much a shrug as a twitch.
“Wasn’t feeling it.”
“I kissed Lavender,” Seamus breathes, perfunctory questions already put aside.
Dean’s own date, Susan Bones, had looked lovely in a soft yellow gown that perfectly matched Dean’s traditional Senegalese robes. More than lovely. Beautiful, even – her white skin and freckles a stunning contrast against his dark hands and arms when they danced. She hadn’t asked for a kiss, but he thinks maybe she would have taken it had he given one.
“Oh,” Dean says. Seamus is already asleep.
1995
“Dean?”
He doesn’t want to answer. Seamus has been – difficult, is a word for it, picking fights with Ron and Harry, talking back in class, muttering to anyone who’ll listen about how unsafe Hogwarts is and how he should have gone to that private school at Tara way back when his mother first wanted him to. Which, alright, whatever, but Dean doesn’t think Seamus understands how much that feels like a gunshot to the lungs every time. He doesn’t understand what’s going on in Seamus’ head because they haven’t been speaking much. Dean’s been spending most of his time with Tony and Padma and Neville now, doing homework and drawing and reading, because he can’t stand to be around the dorm or the common room. The tension crackles under everyone’s skin but maybe his most of all and the Educational Decrees stare at them from the walls and sometimes he feels like he’s going to explode with the force of it.
He answers anyway, because Seamus is always going to be the epicentre of the fucking blast, and Dean’s been a sucker for natural disasters ever since that first storm.
“Yeah.”
“My da left my mam,” Seamus says. “For good, this time.”
A beat, a pause, a pregnant space between breaths that lets the tension out a little. Replaces it with something else – heaviness, sadness, maybe. Something, anyway. Which is a bit melodramatic for a 15-year-old but Dean fancies himself a bit of an artist, so whatever. He leaves it to settle so he can examine it more closely later under the strokes of his charcoal.
“Come on,” he sighs, and shifts over. Seamus says nothing else as he pads over and slips inside the bed.
1996
“Dean?”
“Yeah?”
Dean’s giddy, felt flushed as he entered the dorm on his tip-toes and now sits on his bed breathing hard, taking off his shirt – it’s already a bit askew, stretched where it was pulled to make way for lips on his collarbone.
“You like her? Ginny?”
Ginny is – something. Fire, heat, loud voice, dirty jokes, freckles hiding on her eyelids, curse words spilling from her mouth into his, hands clutching his biceps, breathless laughter, smell of sweat and leather and wool, red red red cheeks. It feels nice. To be wanted.
“Sure,” he says. Shrugs. His body is cooling, coming down from the contact high he gets from touching the unstoppable force that is Ginevra Weasley.
“Oh.” Seamus sounds smaller than he has in years, and something twists like a knife in Dean’s gut, and suddenly he’s angry. Angrier than he’s ever been – well, he’s never really been angry, he’s always left that to Seamus – and he wants to scream. Why can’t Seamus just let him have this, this moment, for fucking once?
“Yeah, I do,” he says louder. Stops for a second to think about his other dorm-mates. Neville and Ron are asleep if their snores are any indication, and Harry could be anywhere or could be right there; always a bit of a wildcard, him. Dean can’t even bring himself to care right now.
“I’m glad,” Seamus says quietly, and then Dean’s no longer angry, the flash of rage gone as quick as it came, replaced by bone-shattering exhaustion. He’s so fucking tired of fighting against– oh. He’s just tired. This must be how Harry feels every day of his life. Yeah, Seamus is probably never going to let him have this, or anything else like this, whether it’s intentional or not. And at this point, Dean can’t tell if it is. Never really could.
“Fuck,” he says, “just fucking come here.”
1997
“Dean?”
“Yeah?”
“Your turn to keep watch.”
“Ta, Ted. Goodnight.”
1998
“Dean?”
Some kind of miracle happened here, he thinks. The old dorm has been left barely touched, cold and dusty in a way that says no one’s been for a few weeks, not even the elves. They’ve been working all day, since – well, since. Dean can’t remember the last time he slept. He might remember eating a ham sandwich at some point, taking a few gulps of lukewarm water, but it’s mostly a blur. His magic is wearing out, each small charm a jolt up his arm, and he doesn’t know what time it is. It’s dark, anyway. The moon’s hiding behind clouds, the candles are unlit in the castle, rubble is piled up in doorways and corridors and Dean will never be able to set foot in the Great Hall again without seeing –
Well. At least this, he can have. And Seamus is sitting on his old bed, soot-stained, still bloody and swollen, half-deaf from a misplaced curse, shoulder bandaged where a pillar fell to its untimely death and narrowly missed his head.
“Yeah?”
Seamus looks beautiful.
“Come to bed.”
Dean does.