To Be A Magical Boy

Chapter 9 - Fifth Year (part 3)

Before he'd left for the holidays, Dean had thought he might not even want to come back to school given that it would mean leaving his family. The situation with Ron's dad, of which somehow the papers had gotten a hold of and vaguely detailed as being an 'incident at the Ministry' yet had somehow wound him up in hospital, made Dean all the more aware of the fragility of his own family. Of how in an instant anything could happen to them and he might not even be present to realise it.

So Dean spent the entire break with his family. With his mum as she took herself to each of their cousins' houses for lunch as was typical of them. With Andrew as he idled most of Christmas day in the kitchen, ensuring that his roast didn't dry out and that there were enough baked potatoes to feed a small army. With Millie as she asked him to help with her traditional wall repaint repaint and Keira with the new gaming device called a Playstation that she'd gotten for a gift. With June too, who was chewing her way through an impressive pile of books at a rapid rate yet for some reason still requested he read with her aloud. Or listened, more correctly, for though she always spoke in quiet words June seemed love the sound of her own voice.

Dean loved his family and he worried about them. He worried even more after Harry's proclamation the previous year about He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, and more still after what had happened with Ron. And he liked their company, of his parents and sisters. He truly did.

And yet even so, by the end of the Christmas break Dean was more than happy – relieved, even – to get away from them. Maybe it was simply that boarding school life was rubbing off on him but he was certainly happy enough to return to Hogwarts.

Alone, as he would have it, for apparently Seamus was already back. Dean wasn't sure whether to be concerned for that fact or not; Seamus had seemed chirpy enough in the letters they'd exchanged pertaining to Christmas and that very fact, but then Dean had also been vastly ignorant the previous summer when Seamus was deliberately hiding the explosion that had happened at his house.

As it happened, however, when Dean started up the hill from the carriages after alighting from the train, the chill winter air bitingly sharp and his only accompaniment a puff of pale smoke that erupted from his own mouth with every breath, it was to have Seamus present himself before him. Or more correctly for Dean to notice him immediately, as it was impossible not to. Seamus was loud, raucous even, and no one with a pair of ears to hear with would have been able to miss him.

"You've got shit aim, Ernie! Were you even aiming for me, like, or did you mean to hit that tree on purpose?"

Halfway up the slope towards the school, Dean paused in step. His gaze was drawn to a clutch of half a dozen of his fellow students as they tore across the grounds. Dean saw Seamus and Wayne, Susan and Hannah, and a pair of other Hufflepuffs that he rarely conversed with – Ernie MacMillan was a stuck up twat and Megan Jones was so aloof that Dean had thought her something of a cow for until Hannah had informed him that she was actually a very nice person, if a little detached.

They appeared to be engaged in a somewhat violent snowball fight. Or at least violent on part of Seamus, Ernie and Susan, the latter of which had almost eerily accurate aim. Wayne, Hannah and Megan appeared to be more correctly the subjects of their target practice than competitors. Or at least Dean thought as much until Ernie lobbed a snowball at Seamus' head and Seamus seemed to take it as a personal insult.

In instant retaliation, he was launching himself across the distance between them and tackling Ernie to the ground in a heap that set the rest of them barking into cackles of laughter. Ernie was on his feet and chasing after a suddenly fleeing Seamus an instant later, only for the tides to turn when Seamus managed to scoop a snowball together and spin threateningly with a wide grin.