To Be A Magical Boy

Chapter 18 - Seventh Year (part 5)

The Great Hall looked like a war zone. Or behind the scenes of a war zone, where the retreated, the weary, the injured, the – the dead were heaped in a weary and listless mass.

Dean had to remind himself that it didn't just look like one. It was one.

It felt surreal, even after the battle. Even after a seemingly endless amount of time in which Dean had fought with all his strength, casting with an unwieldy wand that just barely managed to serve him. It didn't feel right, that wand. It didn't work right. Dean had barely scraped through the chaos of fighting without serious injury. He doubted he would have survived at all had Seamus not been at his side the whole time. Dean doubted Seamus even realised how much he'd saved Dean's skin.

He'd changed, Dean saw. More than just the injuries he'd accumulated before Dean had returned to Hogwarts, the injuries that he'd healed. It was more than just the fact that Seamus seemed to consider them negligible when injuries had never been negligible in the past. It was one of the very reasons that Dean had carried around his Burn Cream for the last six years of his life.

Yet it was more than that, though. The change lay in the resigned determination with which Seamus committed himself to the resistance, seemingly reflexively jumping to his feet when Neville gave an order. It was the unconscious leadership that he'd adopted, that he hadn't acknowledged even when Dean had pointed it out, and was so casual that it was apparent that he'd assumed it countless times before. Seamus had never been a leader, and Dean knew he didn't want to be either, but he'd done it. He'd done it anyway.

And then there was the fighting. First in the hallway – Dean had been nearly as blown away as the Death Eater themselves when Seamus' spell had exploded – and then afterwards. Dean wasn't an exceptional dueller, or even a great spellcaster, and he knew Seamus wasn't either. It simply wasn't their speciality. And yet Seamus had gotten around that. He'd channelled what came naturally to him, and his explosions and crackling bursts of flame were utterly destructive and overpowering.

It didn't scare Dean. Seamus was fantastic. Even more fantastic because he'd protected them both throughout the battle through the use of what had once been largely accidental magic to him.

They'd fought and struggled, and detached terror had reigned. Dean still wasn't sure how he'd survived throughout the battle without being killed, let alone injured. It still seemed a miracle.

Some, however, weren't so lucky.

The mood in the Great Hall was sombre. Quiet, or at least it was when not split by the sobs of the injured – or in some ways worse, by those that mourned the dead. Because there were. There were mourners and dead everywhere, and as Dean trailed alongside the rest of the fighters through the destroyed doorway of the Hall, he was overwhelmed by the sight of them.

There were... so many. Dean drew his gaze around the hall, to the blankets and makeshift beds that had been conjured into existence, and he counted dozens. He wasn't sure how many were dead or how many injured, because it was hard to tell. Crumpled figures, heads bowed and shoulders shaking, sat alongside or leant over those spread on the beds. Dean stumbled to a halt just inside the doors at the spread beyond. It was one of the most horrible things he'd ever seen. All of it, since he'd first climbed through the passageway into the Room of Requirement and found Seamus beaten black and blue, to that point had been utterly horrible.

"Fuck," he heard Seamus whisper at his side and with a struggle Dean dragged his gaze to him. Seamus was a mess – probably as much as Dean was himself – with his shirt torn and sweat streaking his face, drawing lines in the grime that darkened his skin. A cut along his jaw had smeared dark blood down his neck. Dean remembered he'd nearly had a heart attack when he'd seen it in the midst of battle.