I can't hide beneath my sheets [Dennis]

He slept better than he was expecting to, once he could sleep. Thoughts had kept pricking at his mind, keeping him alert: awareness of the boy on the couch, awareness that they would need to interact again. Dean began trying to plan it out in his head, what he would say if Dennis did this, what he would do if he woke and the boy was gone. But eventually, enough waiting with his eyes closed led him into heavy sleep.

When he woke he had almost forgotten, lazily wrapped in the vestiges of some dream, and lay for a while. It was Sunday and late morning, he had no alarm and could lie in as long as he liked. But he remembered Dennis when he heard creaking from the next room, like someone was walking on the old floorboards, and nearly had a heart attack.

Dean looked out the window from his pillow. It was overcast and could have been drizzling, but no longer was the weather wild like the night before. Someone determined enough could surely return outside. The question was whether Dennis had that particular determination.

He rose, not bothering to change from his t-shirt and sweats but running a hand over his hair as he went to the door.

Dennis would probably cringe to know how much of a responsibility Dean felt for him. How much he wanted to keep him out of trouble, make sure he got all the good things he deserved. And Dean didn’t know why he felt it, why he was so invested in this one life. What was he trying to be? An older brother? He couldn’t be that, not for Dennis.

But he could be a friend, and he would do his damnedest.

When he emerged from his room, Dennis was folding his blankets. Dean paused a little, looking at him as he looked up and looked back at the sound of the door.

“You don’t need to worry about that,” he said, giving him a small, kind smile. “Good morning.”

@Dennis Creevey

When Dennis had woken up, it had been because of how quiet everything was, and that said a lot about where he’d been sleeping recently. You’re at Dean’s place, he reminded himself gently. The boy had rubbed his freckled face and sat up, pushing his sore body out of the couch-bed. He’d moved into the kitchen like he was walking in a dream; slow, directionless, and without any sort of real destination. Dennis washed his face in the kitchen sink and drank some water from the running tap with cupped hands. When he’d stood again, with a freshly damp face and a less dry mouth, the teenager had looked around at the house in the morning light, comparing it all to his memory of the same place from many months ago.

The Gryffindor boy had quietly opened Dean’s cupboards and looked at what food he had here, and whether he bought plain mugs or patterned ones and whether he had tea or coffee in the cupboard. He spotted the toaster and kettle – both plugged into the wall – and the small stack of videos by the TV. Dennis’ body was on autopilot, his soft brown eyes taking note of these things as he moved on to look for something more. He wasn’t quite sure what it was, but as he searched and snooped in a daze, Dennis couldn’t help but wonder what Dean’s life was like now. Who he saw and when, what motivated him and why.

He’d always been a curious boy. When he was a small child, Dennis had been destructive in his curiosity. He’d fallen down drains and out of trees, always trying to climb higher, or lean a little closer, or get a better look. He’d dug up plants and gone through cupboards and left a trail of destruction behind him, and he’d done it all with his brother. When he’d been a young teenager, Dennis had bubbled over with excitement every time a new spell or potion was brought up in class. He’d poured over textbooks for fun, blissfully unaware of his painfully obvious display of his lack of knowledge about magical things.

Nowadays, Dennis’ curiosity was channeled rather differently. He didn’t have the focus or concentration for learning (something that frustrated him to the point of clenched fists and broken quills), or the naivety and excitement that had once driven him to light his kitchen on fire as a young child playing with a gas stove for the first time. Nowadays, his curiosity drove him to take hundreds and hundreds of photos of people, and when they were developed, the boy would look at them and wonder. What have you lost, he’d think, and, where did it go?. He entertained a rather morbid sense of curiosity, wanting to know both what people were made up of and what things had hurt them.

He wondered all of those things about Dean now. Dean had been on a run for a year too, not that they’d ever talked about it. He’d lost friends and fought demons and he hadn’t gone back to Hogwarts for his NEWTs. Dennis guessed that it was because he hated the place, but maybe he was just projecting. He thought about all of this as he put the couch back together methodically, replacing the cushions one by one and folding the blankets the way his mother had taught him, his body on autopilot. Dean’s entrance made him jump, startling him out of his thoughtful reverie. He glanced up at the older boy, his expression blooming in a relieved smile. A hint of pink touched his cheeks, a sheepish remnant of his earlier snooping.

“It’s fine,” he said with a small shrug, folding blanket in half one more time before laying it on top of the others. Dennis ran a hand through his hair, aware that it had been some time since he’d last looked in a mirror. He’d learned to shave with magic – not that he could grow a real beard anyway – but he was sure he looked disheveled and perhaps a bit patchy. Dennis was a little jealous of Dean’s artsy, metropolitan vibe. His handsome looks and cool demeanour meant that he always looked good. The boy scratched his bare chest self-consciously then rested his arm across his stomach, his fingers coming to rest on the large patch of skin on his right side that felt a little different to the rest. He’d gotten burned at school a month or so ago. Hurt like hell. He’d let them heal it when they’d all gotten back to the castle, but the skin had scarred and he hadn’t let anyone magic that away.

“How’d you sleep?” he asked, shooting his friend a crooked smile and leaning on the arm of the couch. He rolled his shoulders back a couple of times, stretching his muscles and tendons in a way that felt good. “I was going to make breakfast, but I wanted to tidy up first,” he explained sheepishly.

Dennis smiled back to him, and Dean felt a hundred times lighter, unaware really that he had even been feeling heavy. But his friend seemed comfortable, seemed like he belonged here, or wanted to. Even if he still folded his covers. It was a relief enough that he hadn’t slipped out in the night.

"Oh, well, thank you,” he said, then looked down when Dennis mentioned breakfast. “I don’t know if I have anything breakfasty,” he said. “Haven’t really eaten it lately. Just sort of fell out of the habit, I guess…” He hadn’t eaten breakfast since he had someone to sit down with, he realized. Someone to notice if he did.

When he was alone his routines slipped into bare minimums. Little sleep, or too much. Food only when his stomach hurt. He just had a tendency to forget himself. Until now he hadn’t though about it. He only realized how much his life fell apart when it started to fit back together.

“I—I think I’ll make some coffee.,” said Dean, to do something with himself. “If you’d like any, or anything else? I can go shopping—“

He stopped short and stood there helplessly, trying not to be so overbearing again. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ll stop trying to be your mum.” He wouldn’t ask what that burn was, wouldn’t ask any more about what had happened at Hogwarts. He wouldn’t press Dennis. He’d let him come forward with what he wanted to, earn his trust. 

"So what do the girls think of that tattoo?” he asked, with a soft, lopsided grin. That sounded something more like what a friend would say. “Always like to hear the opinions, you know?”

Dennis nodded. He’d already checked and Dean didn’t have any eggs. It was a little disappointing; poaching a couple of eggs wouldn’t make up for turning up last night out of the blue, but Dennis had wanted to do something. Poaching eggs wasn’t especially impressive, but it was a relatively new skill that Dennis had learned when he’d done a rotation in the Hogwarts kitchens, learning and skill-swapping. One of the less horrible memories from the last few months. The boy scratched the back of his neck absentmindedly.

“Coffee would be good,” he answered with another nod. Dennis didn’t like coffee all that much, but he didn’t hate it. Hot chocolate seemed like the childish choice of drink, and he didn’t want Dean to perceive him as anything other than a fully grown adult. But… it didn’t seem like he had much choice over this. Dennis didn’t think that Dean was being mothering, and for some reason the adjective irked him, but he laughed it off instead, folding his arms together over his chest. “You’re fine,” he said, “I’m not that hungry.” His stomach chose this completely inopportune time to contradict him, however, as an audible rumble sounded from him. Dennis looked down, as if surprised, but then he just chuckled again.

“Okay, so I’m kind of hungry,” he admitted sheepishly, “We could go out? I have some money. Muggle money,” he clarified, as an afterthought. Dennis had sort of stolen some money from a few unsuspecting muggles. It had felt thrilling at the time, but afterward he’d just felt guilty. He didn’t have any wizarding money. The Creevey boys had had a vault opened for them at Gringotts when Colin had learned of his wizarding abilities, and their parents had deposited a little money in there, but Dennis was sure it was almost empty. Not that he’d checked, of course. Diagon Alley was too busy, too crowded for him to go there comfortably alone. “I’m easy, really. I’ll eat whatever.” A part of him just wanted to curl up on the couch with a whole pizza to himself.

Girls? Dennis snorted. No, there were no girls. No boys either, for that matter. Dennis felt like he’d been moving too much, too much shifting from here to there, to connect with anyone like that. Of course, Dean wasn’t asking if he had a girlfriend or anything like that (to which the answer was, decisively, no), but Dennis didn’t really put himself in situations where girls would see him shirtless either, romance or no. “I don’t think anyone’s seen it, mate,” he said apologetically. “Maybe Freya Trickett?” She’d been there when he’d quite literally thrown himself through fire to distract a group of inferi advancing on the blonde and her friends, and she’d only seen it because he’d practically burned half of his shirt off. Dennis felt uncomfortable referring to them as his friends in his head. “Sorry,” he added, but Dennis was smiling, humour in his eyes.

"How about you?" he asked, finally plucking up the courage to ask something like this; something normal. "Are you seeing anyone, or...?" Dennis felt uncomfortable about the idea - he imagined someone coming over to see Dean and pictured himself as the uncomfortable third wheel. The image made him feel pretty small.

“Alright then,” he said, “I’ll get it on.” He moved over to the counter, scooped grounds into the machine on autopilot. It was the most used appliance in his kitchen. As he pressed buttons, idly wondering how most wizards made coffee, Dennis assured him he wasn’t being a bother.

“I just don’t want to worry over you too much,” Dean said as he pulled out mugs. “I know you don’t like that.” He didn’t glance back, not caring to see Dennis’s face as he shared this. “It’s just, you show up out of nowhere, soaked through, and I worry, you know?” He shook his head and laughed, trying to brush the sentiment off. He didn’t mean to regard Dennis as a charge, anything less than an equal. But it was hard when he still remembered that excited little kid from Hogwarts. Still saw him in Dennis’s grown face.

Dennis’s stomach growled then, and he reluctantly admitted how hungry he was. “We could go somewhere, that sounds good,” said Dean. He hadn’t been out for breakfast in ages. Not since early in the war, hiding out in small villages with one restaurant and allegedly famous sausages. He could use better memories. “Don’t worry about paying,” he said automatically when Dennis mentioned his money, but then thought better of it. “I mean, if you stay long enough I wouldn’t mind a bit of help, but today it’d be my treat.”

He nodded as Dennis scoffed at his question. He should have known he had other things on his mind. Dennis’s adolescence hadn’t been like his, it had been marred irreparably just as it was beginning. “S’pose it doesn’t matter who sees it,” he said. “It wasn’t for anyone else, after all.” He matched Dennis’s good-natured smile.

His answer to the question once turned back to him was the same as Dennis's, he snorted. “Nah,” he said, “not lately.” No relationships, anyway. He’d had nights with others, mostly trying to get @Pierce Lachapelle out of his system. “Met someone,” he said after a pause, wondering whether to say it. “But nothing came of that. Bad timing.”

As he mentioned it he wondered what to do about the things Pierce had brought out in him. The wanderlust that had grown insatiable. But he couldn’t leave now, could he? Not now that someone depended on him. That was a tie he wasn’t willing to cut.

Maybe he could leave the place to Dennis, eventually. Eventually, when he was in the place to take it. But they weren’t near enough that place yet, so Dean kept quiet.

"Should we go?" he said instead. “I think there’s someplace close, we could walk.”

Dennis shifted uncomfortably when Dean mentioned being aware of Dennis’ dislike of being fussed over. He was glad that the older boy had his back turned to him when he said this. Dennis felt another stir of irritation at the idea; he wasn’t a child. He didn’t come here looking for a parent. The idea of Dean feeling obligated to look after him made him squirm. He didn’t want Dean to think of him as a little kid. “You’re fine,” he said dismissively. The boy pushed himself up and grabbed the shirt he’d dropped on the floor the previous night with one hand. He went to the small bag he’d brought with him from Hogwarts and stuffed it in there unceremoniously, before rifling around for another one. The boy pulled out a simple white t-shirt and pulled it on over his head before finally pulling on his denim jacket. When he was done, Dennis moved back to the couch and leant against the back of it to listen to Dean talk about his love life.

“Oh, okay. Damn.” Dennis had a kind of wary curiosity when it came to romance and sex. Seeing his yearmates cast secretive looks at each other as their fingers brushed or seeing them kiss in clandestine nooks between Hogwarts’ grey brick walls made Dennis wistful and nostalgic and sad. The boy hadn’t been in positions with girls or boys or anyone where he felt comfortable enough to even really talk about any of that stuff, let alone actually try it. When the boy was thirteen – in his last year at Hogwarts before leaving – some of his friends had crushes on girls, and maybe one or two of them had “dated”, but at thirteen, Dennis really wasn’t there yet. He’d been more interested in quidditch and hanging out with his friends and studying all the new and wonderful things Hogwarts’ classes were offering him. The next few years had seen him so disconnected from his peers that romance wasn’t really an option. Dennis hadn’t even ever kissed a girl. Reflecting on this fact made him cringe internally. He was legally an adult, and so desperate to be taken seriously… But he hadn’t even done the things he knew “men” were “supposed” to do. Could he really blame Dean for not always treating him like an autonomous equal adult?

A part of him wanted to ask more, but another part of him didn’t want to hear anything about Dean’s romantic life at all. He couldn’t seem to consolidate Dean in this context – with him; and the Dean who dated people and slept with them and went on dates. It made Dennis uncomfortable for some reason beyond logic, so he let it go. “Yeah, that sounds good,” the boy agreed, moving into the kitchen and accepting his mug of steaming coffee with a smile. Dennis sniffed at the dark liquid, trying to remember the last time he’d drank coffee. Maybe he liked it now? The boy lifted the drink to his lips and blew across its surface lightly. “I’d kill for some bacon and eggs,” he added absentmindedly. Luckily, Dennis hadn’t exactly been starving while he’d been without a place to stay. He wasn’t incredible when it came to spells and charms and things, but he knew enough to fool muggles out of a few pounds, and he’d been able to eat well enough for the most part. Yesterday had been a bit of an exception, but that was largely due to the hours he’d spent walking around in a daze looking for Dean’s apartment block.

The boy stood in silence for a little bit, leaning against the kitchen counter and blowing gently at his coffee. “Freya Trickett and Kerr Regan broke up,” he said matter of factly, as if either of them were remotely interested in that sort of gossip. Last time Dennis had been here he and Dean had talked a little about various friendships and couples happening at school. Dean knew some of the kids there still, or he’d at least known their older siblings or cousins. There were so many Tricketts and Regans that the names should be familiar, at least. “There was some drama with Danny and Freya, too. Kerr punched him in the face in the common room.” Talking about Danny was strange, he thought. He missed his old friend. Maybe if things had been different, he’d be the one making out with Freya Trickett in the prefect’s bathroom, and Kerr would have hit him instead.

Dennis was working his way towards talking about the more important happenings at school, but jumping straight into we all thought we were going to die seemed a little morbid, so Dennis thought he’d start with something a lot easier. “Jess Russell and Egan Enders are together. And Keela got co-captain. Freya’s captain of course,” he added, as an afterthought. "Not that quidditch really kept going after, you know." The boy sipped his coffee and was reminded of why he didn’t like it. Too bitter, he thought. He took another sip. “For Christmas they had us all on sleeping bags outside to look at these northern lights kinda things. Charmed to stay warm, of course. And we still had exams, even though we were all trapped in there. I dunno how the actual OWL exams will go though.”

Dean listened to the coffee drip as Dennis dressed, looking down at his own bare feet and threadbare sweatpants. He’d have to remember to dress himself before they left. But leaving Dennis, even for the time to toss on some trousers, didn’t feel like something he wanted to do.

Dennis tried to express sympathy, and Dean shook his head. He had no expectation that his companion would or should care. But he had gone and led them into these formalities, and he regretted putting Dennis in the position to have to respond to his love life. “I guess I should be glad that’s the worst thing that happens to me these days,” he said. That had been something the war had instilled in him. Things could always be worse.

He jumped, remembering the coffee, and rushed to pour it. Handing Dennis the unchipped mug, he took a large sip from his own, burning his tongue but wanting that energy, that rejuvenation as quickly as possible. “We’ll get some,” he said as Dennis mentioned how much he was craving food. “I’ve just got to get dressed, and, well…” He wished he hadn’t jumped so quickly to make them coffee. He had to stop doing things just to do them.

And then Dennis was telling him strings of names, people he vaguely remembered as being Hogwarts students, having heard about from the younger boy as they talked late at night. “That sounds like Hogwarts,” said Dean, picking out the punching anecdote because he felt like he should respond. He’d had his share of public embarrassment in the common room, after all. But this meant nothing to him. He wasn’t sure how much it meant to Dennis. The boy was interested in people: their lives, their relationships, their sorrows. Perhaps he was collecting Freya Trickett and Kerr Regan into some kind of important part of him that Dean couldn’t fathom.

“I thought of you, at Christmas,” said Dean at the mention of it, acutely aware of how sappy he was being. “I guess—I don’t know if you’d have gone home anyway. But still, being trapped in there, and we had no idea what was happening to you…” He shrugged. “Just felt like a sad time to be there. I’m glad they tried to do something.”

He noticed Dennis making a face into his coffee and held back a fond smile. "You don't have to drink that if you don't want it, you know,” said Dean. “I know it’s not everyone’s thing. You haven’t got to be polite.” Taking another sip from his own mug, he grinned. “We’re mates, right? We can be as impolite as we want.” He hoped Dennis would loosen up eventually. Get closer to the way he’d been last summer. Surely it would take time again, but he wanted him to know it didn’t have to.

Dennis remembered Colin making him and their parents promise that the boys would be able to stay at school for the Christmas break during his fourth year; Colin had always been curious to see what the castle was like during that particular holiday. Dennis had felt a little betrayed by the idea at the time. He’d always felt like Christmastime was for family. It hadn’t mattered in the end, though. The brothers hadn’t gone back to school in the September of 1997, and Dennis had experienced his first Christmas at Hogwarts only a couple of months ago; trapped and alone. He hadn’t liked the patchwork quilt of blankets sprawled out against the snow, or the chatter, or the steaming mugs of tea. For Dennis, who was prone to social anxiety, it had all been a bit overwhelming.

The Christmas is for family idea had morphed over time, too. Dennis still felt like, for whatever reason, it was an important thing for them to all be together. At the same time, though, the mousey-haired boy hadn’t felt comfortable around his parents for some time. That was what happened when you stayed away from your parents for a year and only saw them after your brother was murdered, Dennis thought. Where was home now, he wondered. Was it here? Was Dean his new family? Could one summer spent together qualify him for that? Dennis didn’t like the idea purely because he was sure that he didn’t have anything to offer Dean. Dean was cooler, funnier, kinder, handsomer. Dennis would always be in his debt, even if only for the friendship itself. He resolved to only stay here a couple of nights before moving on. “I thought of you too,” Dennis admitted, looking at his coffee rather than look at Dean. He could tell a slight shade of pink had graced his cheeks and he hated it.

“Yeah it was pretty shitty,” he agreed with a quick nod, pleased to move past that uncomfortable train of thought. “They seemed pretty enthused about trying to keep up morale, so there was like a camp out and lots of food and stuff like that. Some people were happy.” Maybe it would have been a better time if Dennis had had some real friends. Of course Danny and Jeremy and Kerr and Freya were all friendly towards him, and the seventeen year old was sure they’d welcome him back with open arms if he’d been anything but awkward around them for the past year and a bit. Danny and Jeremy in particular seemed to glow with youth, Dennis thought. They were pranking Slytherins and making out with girls in bathrooms and getting up to all kinds of mischief, even when the dome had gone up. When Dennis thought about it, he felt jealous, then sad. He couldn’t help it. He felt like he’d stepped out of their world and didn’t know how to get back.

The boy sipped at his coffee again, waving a hand at his friend. When he lowered his cup, the boy wiped at his mouth with the back of his denim sleeve. “No it’s good,” he insisted, giving a crooked smile at the we're mates, right? part. It was bitter and too milky, but Dennis swallowed the liquid down with ease. “Should I bring some of the photos I took to breakfast?” He’d only plucked up the courage to ask because he wanted to steer conversation away from the coffee thing. People looked at his pictures all the time; he was used to it by now. Apparently photography was a hobby that people felt entitled to be involved in when people they knew partook in it. But Dennis probably wouldn’t have offered to anyone other than Dean, just because he didn’t think his pictures were particularly good or particularly interesting. He never wanted to come off as too eager. “They’re not that good,” he explained, scratching the back of his neck and glancing out of the kitchen window, “But there might be some interesting stuff in there.”

“Really?” The thought touched him, and he hid his face in his mug. Had he really been that influential, that meaningful? Maybe it meant nothing really, and Dennis had a different conception of Christmas than he did, but Dean wanted to think of it as the highest of compliments.

He smiled at Dennis’s description. “Can’t blame them, I guess,” he said. “I don’t imagine morale was very high.” He’d have hated to be a person of authority in there, someone who had to maintain a sense of capability, inspire hope when they were no more hopeful than anyone else. It reminded him of what the DA had done at Hogwarts during the war. Maybe it was a good thing he wasn’t there then. He wasn’t sure he had that strength.

Had Dennis been one of those people, after the beasts had started coming? Going out every day for the good of other students, being strong, solid? Dean looked at him, leaning against the back of the couch. He was proud.

Of course, maybe Dennis was just naturally sacrificial. He waved off Dean’s concern about the coffee. Dean shrugged. If Dennis wanted to force himself to drink it, that was his business. But at the next, tentative words, he smiled. “Yeah,” he said, “I’d love to see.” He was glad Dennis had offered, because he’d been interested but would have never dared ask. A lot of people were secretive about art—and he got the sense that for Dennis his photography was more of a diary than an exploration of aesthetics. Dean felt privileged, allowed into some little bit of Dennis’s private world, and he was grateful. Maybe he was starting to get through.

He had finished his coffee quickly. He set his mug down on the counter, cleaning it out with a charm. “We should go soon, if you’re hungry,” he said. “Just let me get dressed.” He waved briefly and slipped through the door separating the rooms.

In his bedroom Dean pulled on a pair of jeans and, after looking quickly at his closet, picked out his favorite shirt. He tried to go as fast as possible, getting frustrated when his sock got stuck on his toes. Though it was silly. How much trouble could Dennis get in? Still, Dean hated to abandon him. He wondered how he would be able to leave him here while he went to work tomorrow.

He threw on a jacket for the February chill and rejoined Dennis in the front room. “Ready?” he asked. “I am anytime you are.”

 “No, it wasn’t,” Dennis replied flatly. Morale hadn’t been very high at all. Being trapped at school potentially forever while things like potions ingredients and food and yes, film and even foundation ran out did that. Everyone had gone a bit stir crazy, he thought. Dennis wondered how the first years had coped with it all. He didn’t associate with the underclassmen very much. A memory of Freya Trickett bribing first years with honey pops and sugar quills to do menial tasks for her came to mind. For some reason, that made him smile.

Dennis took another long sip of his drink, making sure not to show his distaste at the bitter flavour. He nodded when Dean said that he’d like to see the pictures. Most of them weren’t very interesting; just pictures of people talking or eating or joking together. A part of him knew that it was sort of creepy to take photos of people without them knowing about it, but he did it anyway. He caught private moments and quiet conversations, exchanged glances and hidden smiles. The boy wondered if his yearmates thought that it was weird or creepy. He wondered if they’d thought that about Colin too.

His friend disappeared into the bedroom and Dennis considered tipping the rest of his coffee down the sink. Deciding against it, however, Dennis tipped his chin up and swallowed the rest of the dark liquid, placing his mug on the kitchen sink when he was done. The boy moved back into the lounge room on autopilot, swapping his dirty white socks for some plain black one. He rifled through his duffel bang, emptying it of many small, palm-sized boxes before finding the one labeled ‘September – November (2000)’ and another; ’December – January (2000-2001)’.

Dennis was quite good at minimizing and enlarging spells. He’d had to be, to be able to store the amount of photos he took and not fill up a whole vault at gringotts. Colin had had so many photos stored in a similar way that Dennis hadn’t even seen them until he’d returned to Hogwarts and had been able to ask one of the teachers to do it for him. He remembered sitting in his bed in his dorm with the curtains drawn about, his expression somewhere between smiling and crying as he fingered through the stacks and stacks of photos. The Gryffindor pocketed the little black boxed he’d pulled out and quickly pulled on some pale grey sneakers with brown laces, which he tied in a double knot.

When he was done, Dennis waited for Dean. It was only a couple of minutes, maybe, but the time stretched on and on and Dennis pointedly stared at his hands rather than glance, agitated, at the door every few seconds. He felt relieved when Dean came back out and tried not to let it show on his face. Stashing his wand in his denim jacket’s internal pocket, Dennis got to his feet. “I only have up until January,” he informed his friend quickly, following Dean out of the front door, “I didn’t know if you wanted to see the ones from before things got all crazy, but I just brought them in case.”

Dennis ran his hands through his hair again, and then rubbed at his eyes. He should’ve had a shower, he thought. Or at least looked in a mirror. Trying to catch his reflection in the window of a building they passed without Dean noticing, Dennis almost tripped over an uneven crack in the concrete. Catching himself, the boy blushed. “It’s a wonder I got out of there alive,” he joked, “two left feet.” Dennis wasn’t usually this clumsy.

They headed out the door, downstairs, out onto the street. It was indeed drizzling, but the air was crisp. Dean liked it that way.

“Whatever you want to show me is fine,” he told Dennis as they walked. He wondered if he ought to have brought portfolio photos, sketchbooks, shared some part of his life too. But the gesture wasn’t the same for him as for Dennis. Showing his work didn’t carry the same weight, the same intimacy. Drawing just wasn’t as meaningful for him. He drew because he was good at it and enjoyed being good at something, not because he needed to draw.

Beside him, Dennis tripped, and Dean shot out a hand automatically to grab his arm, steady him. “Careful,” he said, a grin playing at his lips. Dennis looked embarrassed, though, so he didn’t want to say anything else. He quickly let go of the boy and they continued to walk on together, quietly.

The walk was short. They arrived at the warm, homey restaurant, and Dean got them a table for two. The difference between the chilly air and the indoor heating was stark. Dean shrugged off his jacket and draped it over the back of the chair before sitting.

The way they were sat, across the small window table from each other, made it very difficult not to stare at Dennis. He sort of wanted to, too. Wanted to make sure, absolutely sure for the hundredth time, that he looked alright. But he looked down at the laminated menu instead. “You can get whatever you want,” he said, just in case Dennis was worrying. “My treat.” From the way he’d been acting he might end up getting the cheapest thing they offered anyway, but he wanted to make sure he knew he had options.

Dennis popped the collar on his denim jacket as they stepped outside. He immediately knew that he should’ve brought a scarf, but didn’t say anything because he was sure they were close to the place anyway. He could deal with this slow, seeping, mizzling cold for now. The boys moved in relative silence toward their destination. Dennis didn’t mind. The weather around them wasn’t very conducive to interactive conversation, anyway. Recovering from his little stumble, Dennis’ eyes fell on a sheltered muggle bus stop. He imagined what last night would have been like if he’d been outside somewhere, drenched, unable to remember how to dry himself with magic. Maybe he would have slept somewhere like that. The idea made him feel a little ashamed. Not for the first time, the boy wished he was able to apparate. Dennis was old enough to, and he had been for almost a year, but he wasn’t even able to cast more than a small handful of spells without speaking. So he’d decided to wait.

When they reached the place, Dennis felt goosebumps rise on his arms and across his chest at the welcome change in temperature. Had they been here before? There was something familiar about the feel of the place – homey, soft – that made him think that they’d maybe visited here last summer, but Dennis couldn’t be sure. He followed Dean to their table and copied his friend, shrugging his jacket off and hanging it on the back of his chair. He rubbed his arms a little as he took his seat, the indoor heating not quite working quickly enough for him.

Dennis scanned the laminated menu with eager eyes. He hadn’t been impatient before, but all of a sudden his body was reminding him that he needed to eat, and the hunger felt rather urgent. Every single item on the menu called his name, from the eggs benedict with mushroom and ham to the grilled haloumi, poached eggs, avocado, sourdough toast and spiced beans. Dennis shifted uncomfortably, swallowing as his mouth reacted to the food he imagined and the very real smells in the restaurant by salivating. Everything looked so good it was hard to pick just one. He scanned the price list too and decided to just drink water.

When the pretty redheaded waitress came to take their order, Dennis waited patiently for Dean to order first. When he was done, Dennis smiled. “I’ll have the eggs benedict thanks. With mushrooms. Can I get a hash brown and a side of beans with that too? Thanks.” He smiled at Dean across the table, feeling a little goofy in his excitement for breakfast. His eyes flicked back up to the girl as he spotted her across the other side of the room. He couldn’t help it. To distract himself, Dennis shifted his chair forward a bit and stuck his hands in his pockets, pulling out the two little boxes he’d brought. Under the table, Dennis drew a handful of photographs out, making sure no one could see as they changed in size from tiny stamp-sized things to full-sized photographs. The boy had a quick look at them and placed the pile on the table.

“So these are early days,” he explained. Some of the photographs moved and some didn’t. One of them showed a bee flapping its wings in slow motion; another was a picture of the castle. Most of the photos were of people, however. Dennis surreptitiously poked the moving photos underneath some of the others so they wouldn’t draw attention when that striking redhead came back. The boy looked at them with interest, methodically glancing at one at a time, surveying it and returning it neatly to a pile he’d created. Dean was looking at a photo of two boys – a slytherin and a gryffindor – taking a quiet moment alone by a windowsill in the Gryffindor common room. “Oh did you hear about the common room thing?” he asked, raising his eyebrows as he spoke, “the Slytherins were with us and the Hufflepuffs were in Ravenclaw tower. Something happened in the lower levels of the castle, some kind of explosion or something.”

It had been the start of it all. People had gotten hurt and some had left to go get treatment at the hospital before the dome had gone up. He wondered where they’d gone or what they’d been doing. “It was pretty messy, actually. Lots of those kids lost their stuff, you know. And having Slytherins in the Gryffindor tower…” The boy shook his head. Whoich staff member made that terrible decision? “…Well, y’know. There were lots of spats.” Dennis shrugged, still smiling as he poked through the pile. His photos weren’t beautiful or amazing pieces of art. They were just frank, simple things. Moments caught that spoke for themselves, lacking in artistic framing or touch.

This was the first time since he’d shown up that Dean had seen Dennis look so excited. It made him wonder how poorly he’d been eating before this. He returned Dennis’s smile, though. He was glad to be able to do some small thing for him, give him something he needed. Amused, he caught Dennis’s eye as the boy looked back from the retreating waitress, and opened his mouth, about to make some joke about getting her his number, but then he realized he didn’t really have one.

Thankfully, by then Dennis had begun to pull out pictures. It had slipped Dean’s mind that some of them would surely move and that this was probably better done in his flat than in a public muggle restaurant. He glanced around subtly to make sure no one was watching before looking down at the growing pile, picking up one on the top.

“Really neat,” he said. And it was, the way Dennis could identify moments, things that meant something. He looked down at the boys in his hands, watched one lean in close, and smiled.

"Well, it seemed like it went alright for some people,” he said, jerking his head down at the photograph he held. “You make any friends?” Dean sort of wished he’d had to be closer to the Slytherins when he was at school. The only ones he’d really interacted with were the likes of Draco Malfoy, antagonizing him unprovoked, calling him rude things. The rest of the house had surely been okay, but he’d ignored them. Take Tracey—maybe if he’d known her better in school, their epiphany would have gone less uncomfortably.

He picked up photos, subjects varying wildly, until he spotted their waitress out of the corner of his eye and hurriedly helped Dennis clear off the table. He passed his stack of photographs back to his friend under the tabletop as their plates were set down. He thanked the waitress, and watched Dennis awkwardly follow suit.

After she was gone, Dennis wasted no time digging in. Dean grinned. He’d refrain from asking any more questions until the boy had stopped his stomach from rumbling.

Any Slytherin friends or any friends at all? Dennis kept this joke to himself. Self-deprecating humour was only okay up until a point, and after that people started worrying about you. “Yeah I guess,” he said with a slight nod. “There was one guy I talked to a bit.” Dennis had unintentionally split his life into two; the time before he and his brother had gone on the run, and before Colin had died, and the time after. The Gryffindor boy hadn’t been friends with Oliver before. He hadn’t really been friends with any slytherins back then. As a kid, he’d been pretty friendly, but the boy remembered house tensions being a little more intense when he’d been an underclassman. He’d heard a lot about nasty Slytherins from Colin, and it had tainted his view. Even now that Oliver was probably his best friend at school, Dennis had a hard time shaking the idea that the worst people were sorted into that house. The prejudice ran deep.

“This guy named Oliver. I made some other fifth-year friends too. They all seem so young…” Dennis shrugged again, “I guess they are young. It’s weird to me that they cant do magic outside of school, but most of them are better than me at it.” Dennis chuckled, mostly to himself. He was only half-joking here. The beginning of the year had been pretty good for him academically, actually. He hadn’t been at the bottom of his class anymore. The boy wished (again, as this was something he wished for often) that his schooling hadn’t been disrupted. Where would he be now if he had the enthusiasm and zeal for transfiguration that he’d had when he was thirteen? Where would he be if he still had the curiosity and passion that let him pour over potions textbooks for hours and hours just for fun?

Their waitress appeared again and Dennis quickly made space in front of him for his eggs. Magical food isn’t all that, he thought, staring down at the most delicious meal he’d ever laid his eyes on. As the girl turned to leave, Dennis cleared his throat. “Hey, umm, would it be alright if I got a chocolate milkshake? Thanks.” He watched her go, wondering what the girl’s life was like and how she’d feel if she did see one of the photographs move. Then he wondered about how magical-muggle relationships really happened. At what point did one reveal that they were magical? And how would the muggle take it, after a long stretch of being lied to about such an impacting and important part of the other person’s life? Dennis shook his head at himself as he tucked into his meal, revealing his eagerness with big too-fast bites and barely any time to breathe.

Forcing himself to slow down, Dennis adjusted his little photo boxes and pulled a few more pictures out. “These are a bit later,” he explained, his mouth half-full of food. “like after the dome actually went up,” he swallowed, “there’s it crackling… That one’s the first time we went out to try and break through it as a group. There are some fourth years fighting an acromantula… Yeah, they’re all fine, don’t worry.” Fine was a relative term, but they were fine at least as far as the acromantula incident, anyway. Cast perfectly in their roles, the photo showed two little hufflepuffs standing behind two little gryffindors as they faced the thing. It was shot from high above, where Dennis had seen it from a window. Another student had already started running for help, so he’d snapped a photo before following in a bit of a daze.

NPC; Foxglove Sharpe

Tick-tock, tick-tock.

Behind the counter of the restaurant, a petite redhead didn't even bother to stifle the yawn. Her big honey coloured eyes watched the raindrops slide down the window panes with a certain amount of derision. Not only had Jonathan, her shit of an ex-boyfriend ditched her before Valentine's Day, it was grim outside. Consistently grey and barely above freezing, London was a particularly foul place to be. February was a long month.

She wrinkled her nose as she heaved a sigh. Her crisp white shirt was itchy and uncomfortably formal. Foxglove was used to hanging out in an eclectic mixture of band tee shirts and maxi skirts. The waitress uniform of a pristine shirt, short black shirt, black tights and sensible black shoes was…well, a bit dull.

Foxglove was a bright girl, if not a little uninspired. She turned seventeen on Christmas Day and she'd been working here for two years. She was comfortable. The restaurant was welcoming and it wasn't exactly hard work. When work wasn't busy, her  mind was. It was constantly ticking, flicking back and forth and whirring. She was saving up. For a car? For university? Nope! For a once in a lifetime trip.

She was going travelling. She was going to go as far as she could get before she ran out of money and someone had to come and rescue her. First stop was Machu Picchu. Foxglove had always had a fascination with the place. Maybe it was the breathtaking vistas shrouded in clouds and mystery or the blood soaked history of the Incas. Probably, it was the wild running llamas. She loved llamas.

Her big bright eyes flicked to the door as someone came in and instantly, she stood up a little straighter as her eyes fell on two handsome men. She let them sit and stooped, checking her reflection in the shiny coffee machine. Eyeliner? Jet black and perfectly winged. Freckles? Covered. Lipstick? Expertly applied and perfectly matching her flaming hair which was tied back into a sleek ponytail and secured with a length of black ribbon.

"Good morning," she said brightly as she meandered over to their table, smiling at who she presumed was the older boy, jotting down his order. Her eyes then slid to the younger boy and she smiled, her left cheek dimpling pleasantly. Hottie alert! "Eggs Benedict, good choice," she added, her upper class accent smooth as melted chocolate. "Hash brown and beans, coming right up," Foxy replied as she smiled at both boys and reached out to collect the menus. As she did so, she accidentally-on-purpose brushed her fingers across the younger man's as she took his menu. Turning on her heel, she sashayed across the room and disappeared into the kitchen.

Once the order was deposited, Foxy wandered back out into the restaurant. Leaning over a nearby table, she began to clean it. Half-heartedly, she squirted disinfectant onto the table and rubbed it in small circles with a wash cloth, careful to keep her pert bum up and outwards. She was still doing her job but she had more important things to do. For one, she was going to make Jonathan rue the day he ditched her for Kelly, that horrid cow with the terrible fake tan and even worse fake eyelashes.

Around, Foxglove went. Close enough to be seen but not close enough to cause offence. Looking up, she caught one of the boys looking at her and she smiled back, slow and sure. The thought that they might be on a date had momentarily crossed her mind but surely, he wouldn't be watching her so intently if he was gay?

It wasn't long before their food was ready.

Like a pro, Foxy moved from the kitchen to their table with ease, carrying plates like an expert and she assumed she was. Delicately, the plates were set down. "Anything else I can get for you two?" She asked but her eyes were focused on Dennis. Her hip was cocked, her head tilted suggestively as she smiled again. He had a nice face, she thought. Dark hair, a wide, inviting mouth. Her eyes dropped down the hollow of his throat and across his broad shoulders when the mention of a milkshake jarred her.

She had to admit, she was faintly disappointed. "No problem," she said as she deposited the cutlery and scuttled off. Once back in the kitchen, she took a napkin and her eyeliner pencil. Hastily and legibly, Foxglove jotted down her phone number. She signed her nickname "Foxy" and marked it with a kiss. She appeared again with the milkshake. It was overly large and crowned with a mound of whipped cream and chocolate sauce because she'd added extra. Plus marshmallows. And a chocolate wafer.

Placing it down, she rested it carefully on the edge of the napkin. Her phone number was brazenly visible as she smiled again. "If you need anything else," she said, pointing to the counter. "I'll be over there. Waiting for you to ask me out." With that, she offered a grin that showed all of her white and sparkling teeth as she retreated, her curtain of copper hair swishing, the faint scent of honeysuckle catching on the air.