To Be A Magical Boy

Chapter 17 - Seventh Year (part 4)

Dean got an impression of a wide, open room, hanging curtains and the tapestries in the house colours and designs, hammocks strung from overhead. Then he heard his name shouted. Dean didn't get a chance to glance in the direction of the speaker, had barely clambered down from the passageway to Aberforth's, before the entire body weight of his best friend crashed into him.

There was no thought in the matter. No question and no hesitancy. Dean was wrapping his arms around Seamus before he even looked at him, and Seamus squeezed him in his own embrace around his waist so hard that it almost hurt. Dean was only dimly aware of the other surprised and welcoming voices around him because no one else mattered. He'd come to fight a war against Voldemort but more importantly than that, he'd come because of Seamus.

Seamus was saying something into his shoulder, his mutters muffled by Dean's jacket and the surrounding babble. Dean didn't really mind; he couldn't care less what anyone else was saying, and, disregarding that anyone might see him or what they might think because he just didn't care, he dropped his chin and pressed a fierce kiss to the top of Seamus head.

Was it sickening that, in that moment, Dean thought it was the most perfect thing that Seamus was just the right height for him to do so?

They didn't draw away from one another even slightly, though a mess of activity rapidly bubbled with Dean's arrival. He was vaguely aware of the excitement surrounding the similar arrival of Ginny, Fred, George and Lee Jordan not far behind him, but he didn't spare them a glance. He'd known they were there. They'd travelled from the Hog's Head one after the other.

It was only when George's voice, ringing out of the buzz of excitement, called everyone to attention that Dean had the presence of mind enough to raise his head from Seamus' hair. It was very, very hard to think of anything except Seamus still wrapped around him, the warmth of him in his arms and the knowledge that he was here, that he was alright, that he was, at least as long as Dean had a hold of him, safe. Because no way in hell would Dean ever let anything happen to him.

"So what's the plan, Harry?" George asked, and immediately a blanketing hush fell.

Dean glanced vaguely in Harry's direction, his cheek pressing into the top of Seamus' head and arms unconsciously wrapping more tightly. Seamus twisted slightly to glance as well but similarly failed to withdraw his embrace. As one, they and everyone else in the room stared at the Boy Who Lived.

For his part, Harry looked nothing if not a riot of distress and frustration. He was staring at Ginny as though she was an apparition. "There isn't one," he said shortly.

"Just going to make up as we go along, are we?" Fred said, grinning widely. "My favourite kind."

"You've got to stop this," Harry abruptly barked before swinging his gaze to Neville. "What did you call them back for? This is insane –"

"We're fighting, aren't we?" Dean spoke up, pulling only slightly away from Seamus as he drew Harry's attention. He pulled his fake galleon, inscribed with Neville's message, from his pocket. "The message said Harry was back and we were going to fight. I'll have to get a wand, though –"

'You haven't got a wand?"

Seamus abruptly yanked himself from Dean's grasp, drawing away to stare up at him in horror. As he did, Dean's gaze fell upon him and in an instant the rest of the room faded away. The ensuing words swirling around them faded. Despite the gravity of their situation, the battle that Dean knew they were about to fight and something about Ravenclaw and a lost diadem or whatever, he couldn't look away. Because Seamus... Seamus wasn't alright.

He looked like he'd been beaten within an inch of his life. A dark, mottled bruise stained half of his face, a sickly mixture of colours as though half healed and smacked into renewal once more. A cut sliced through his eyebrow, splitting it in too, and looked only newly made, while another curved down from his chin to his neck. His other cheek was puffy and swollen as though it had been only recently struck, the eye above it blackened. He was a mess, and it broke Dean's heart to see it.