To Be A Magical Boy

Chapter 16 - Seventh Year (part 3)

Shell Cottage was a sanctuary. Settled on the edge of a beach within sight and sound and taste of the sea, it was quiet. Contained. Perfect, even. Dean had barely been there for a day when he decided that, were he to choose one place to stay for the rest of his life, it would be there.

It was a small abode, much like one of the many cabins Dean had briefly passed through in his time in hiding yet more open-plan. Wide windows gazed out at the sea that spread just beyond the front garden, pale walls enhancing the barest hint of sun streaming through the windows in the morning, and the furnishings tidy and refined in simplistically, beautifully functionality. It even smelled nice, the air clean and fresh with a hint of the salty sharpness from the beachside. But more importantly than that, it was safe.

"It's under a Fidelus Charm," Bill Weasly said when Dean asked how he and his wife, Order members that they were, could possibly think to stay in one place for so long. "My Dad's the Secret Keeper."

At Dean's uncomprehending stare, Bill explained. "It basically means that, unless he's the one to reveal the location, this place can't be found. It's safe."

Safe. Safe definitely meant something different to Dean these days.

For the first time in what felt like forever, Dean no longer had to run. He no longer had to hide. If even for only a short time, he was protected, and after what he'd just experienced at Malfoy Manor, what he'd just escaped with the aid of a house elf who had died in the process, Dean felt like he needed that. Dobby... Dobby had died. Days later, and though Dean hadn't known the elf for more than a few minutes he still regretted his death. He felt like he'd seen too much of it of late; Ted, Dirk, Gornuk, Dobby... How many more would he bear witness to rather than simply reading their minimally brutal eulogies in the papers?

Sitting outside in the wan evening light days into his retreat to Shell Cottage, Dean watched as Luna practiced with her new wand. Mr Ollivander had sent it to her that morning, Luna having lost hers when she'd been taken to Malfoy Manor, and she was keen to try it out. Dean couldn't help but feel envious of her. His own wand had been confiscated when he'd been captured by the Snatchers, and after depending upon it so heavily in the past months, after having the confidence that he could – and had – escaped and defended himself against nearly everything for the slim, wooden rod that had become a part of him, he felt like he'd lost an arm I its absence. Worse than that, even, because he couldn't perform a hint of magic. Maybe he could ask Ollivander to make him one too?

But he wouldn't. Not yet, at least, even if Dean longed for the weight of a wand in his hand. He remembered only too clearly how broken Ollivander had been in the manor basement – or dungeons, as they were – and how he'd only shattered further when they'd reached safety. Dean could understand that. What had happened at the manor... Dean had escaped the worst of it, had avoided the Cruciatus Curse that had been afflicted upon Ollivander and Griphook both, but still.

The hexes

The curses.

The spells that shouldn't be used like that, because they weren't bad spells. They simply did bad things in the hands of the wrong people. The very wrong people. Dean had met far too many bad, wrong people of late.

The Death Eaters in the Malfoy residence were just that. They'd had weighted Dean with violent strikes simply because he was an idling target still stung. Or maybe because he was a presumed 'Mudblood' as they called it, he wasn't sure which. Some of the effects still lasted – Dean was still having difficulty walking without a limp – and he doubted the nightmares would leave him anytime soon. Dean had found himself back in the darkness and claustrophobic walls of the manor's pseudo-prison every night since they'd escaped and it took him minutes of gasping and scrambling reaching for awareness after waking to remember that he was elsewhere.