To Be A Magical Boy

Chapter 15 - Seventh Year (part 2)

With a grunt, Dean pushed himself to sitting. It was still dark in the closeted room, but that meant little. With shuttered windows to stave off the sun – though intentions of creating a muted ambiance was hardly the primary objective – it could have been midday and Dean wouldn't have noticed.

Not that it was. He knew it wasn't. Dean hadn't slept for more than a few hours at a time since... he couldn't remember, but it felt like a long time.

For months he'd been on the run. Or in hiding at least, because at first there hadn't been much running involved. Using what savings he had and sticking to inconspicuousness of the Muggle world, he hopped between run-down hostels and bunked in rooms that were little more than stacks of mattresses that he shared with at least half a dozen others, before quickly moving onward. Dean had no goal in mind but to make himself scarce, to keep his ears pricked and his eyes peeled. He didn't need to read the papers to know what disasters were confounding the world.

The Ministry in upheaval.

The deaths that spurted like inky-black blood across the pages of the Daily Prophet.

The missing people, the found people, the victims and the subjugated.

Dean read about what was becoming of the Wizarding world, compared the stories told in the Muggle papers and winced that the Muggles knew so little. They didn't know what was going on. Freak accidents and natural disasters were the accepted explanation. It was horrifying that, had Dean not been afforded the glimpse of his world through scavenged newspapers, he would have been just as ignorant.

Perhaps worst times were when Dean read about his hometown and fretted for the family he'd left behind. He'd called them several times, just to make sure they were alright, and after the first time when his mum had verbally torn him to shreds, they clung to their brief moments of contact. It was all the reassurance Dean had that they were alright.

Or perhaps word of Hogwarts was the worst. Alongside the articles about his hometown that struck him on a personal level, the murmured rumours that speculated in roundabout terms as to what kind of disasters arose at the Ministry, the stories of Hogwarts were the worst. That Snape had taken over as headmaster. That he'd hired new professors for the Defence and Muggle Studies positions and that they conducted the kind of hard-love that wasn't really love at all. That more and more people had dropped out of school, and there was no explanation for their temporary absence but for the fact that they'd left. Dean didn't need to be told. It was apparent to him what was going on, even if the papers didn't say anything. Some of those kids... they all but disappeared when they left Hogwarts.

Dean was scared for his friends. He was terrified for what was happening to them, for what they were going through that the paper and the leaked stories didn't detail. They were under Snape's rule? Snape, the man who had killed Dumbledore, because everyone knew it even if they didn't say so aloud. Dean had confidence in teachers like McGonagall and Flitwick, but even they could only do so much. Dean was scared for...

He was scared for Seamus. For what was happening in his absence. For if he was alright or if something – something terrible had happened. He wanted to see him, just to see him, so badly that the constant ache for it was almost a comforting companion.

In his first weeks on the run, Dean regretted that he'd chosen to leave both Seamus and his family more times than he could count. As he confronted no one, happened across none that threatened him directly, his flight seemed more and more like a baseless precaution. One that Dean was growing increasingly frustrated at instilling at that.

Until he ran into the Snatchers.

Dean hadn't known that was what they were at first. The clutch of wizards and witches had quickly remedied his ignorance on that matter, however, with a brief, introductory monologue before demanding he name himself. Dean, being the ignorant fool that he was, had tentatively told them.