we can find the light we lost - [Dean]

Really, why Justin had only just thought of this idea was beyond him. It was such a wonderful idea! It had come to him in a letter to Luna, thanking her for the button and informational pamphlets about the various highly-elusive creatures she and her father always seemed to be on the lookout for. She had mentioned she had seen Dean Thomas while she was traveling and the name stirred up all kinds of sweet and lonely memories for Justin. He wondered how he was doing now, and then he wondered how everyone was doing now. There were so many people he had known and befriended and now he didn't know where even a quarter of them were! Sure, he saw Ernie and Hannah and Susan all the time, as well as the other Hogwarts students who snagged Ministry jobs but the others? The Hufflepuff had a sudden urge to know, to be sure everyone was getting on okay.

So he had asked Luna to send him Dean's address, and he sent an owl off to ask if the other boy was interested in meeting up and catching up over some food. Justin was elated when he got a response in the positive. They decided to meet at a small cafe in Diagon Alley, not too far from the tattoo shop where Dan worked. It was a casual kind of place, nothing too ostentatious or fancy but they had this drink called Berry Milk and unbelievable tiny cakes and Justin had a terrible sweet tooth.

Dressed in a navy long-sleeved button shirt, a pair of dark brown khaki pants, and grey Converse high-tops, Justin sat at a table for two, practically vibrating with excitement. It didn't see like long before he caught sight of a familiar face making it's way through the crowds. "DEAN!" the Hufflepuff called, waving enthusiastically. Unlike most of his friends and classmates, the war hadn't dulled the young man's bright hazel eyes or easy smile. He still had his toussled dirty-blonde hair, and he still couldn't manage to grow a decent patch of facial hair, so he remained clean shaven and youthful-looking. He was taller, more muscular, but he hadn't changed much from the Justin who had kissed Dean on the train before the world exploded.

Once the former Gryffindor was in front of him, Justin launched himself forward, hugging him tightly. "It's so good to see you!" he exclaimed, holding onto Dean as he continued in his usual fast-paced ramble. "I'm sorry I didn't keep writing letters or find you sooner but when everything ended I went back to school but you weren't there. I saw you after the battle so I knew you were okay but then Luna, I talk to Luna a lot actually, she said she saw you and then I realized I wanted to see you and here you are!" He finally relinquished his hold on the other man, stepping back to look him over.

"You look good," he told him earnestly, then flushed slightly. "Sorry, not in like a flirty way but just it's good to see you." He felt the need to clarify since the last time he and Dean had a meaningful interaction, Justin had kissed him. Dean was actually his first kiss with another bloke, his second kiss ever. He wasn't interested in Dean like that anymore, although he was still as handsome as ever. Justin had changed and now all he wanted was to reconnect and find new old friends. He waved Dean towards the free chair, sitting back down in his seat. "What would you like to drink? They make this drink with milk and berries and it's delicious but they make coffee drinks and tea too."

Justin smiled at Dean from across the table, beaming happily. "So what have you been up to? It's been, oh, at leas three years since I last saw you."

@Dean Thomas

He had received a note out of nowhere from Justin Finch-Fletchley. In it, he explained that Luna had given him the address. She hadn’t said anything to Dean, which was so like her. Either it had slipped her mind or she’d wanted it to be a pleasant surprise. It was a pleasant surprise. He’d been sulking, waiting around for Riley and getting no answer. This space thing was harder than he’d anticipated. So the meeting with Justin would be a much-needed distraction, this walk down memory lane a refreshing break from the present.

Dean got out for lunch and wandered down Diagon Alley, into the café where he got sandwiches sometimes. It was crowded, all the inhabitants of the alley on their lunch break. But Justin was already there, had gotten them a table. He saw Dean first, and called his name over the chatter.

Justin came around the table and threw his arms around him before he could sit down. “Hey,” laughed Dean, patting his back. “No, yeah, it’s good to see you too.” It was weird to think that the last that had passed between them was kisses and a couple flirty letters. It had been so long since then. Justin didn’t seem to have changed much. He wondered if he himself had changed. It was hard to tell those things. “I didn’t even know you and Luna were friends,” he said as he sat. Luna probably thought it was either obvious or not worth mentioning. “Yeah, we met up in Italy. She was searching for Heliopaths.” He smiled fondly. “You know how it is.”

He waved a hand. “Oh, I’ll just have some coffee.” Justin was asking him what he’d been doing all these years and he shrugged. “Art school, mostly. Lately I’ve been doing tattoos.” He looked up at Justin’s eager face. “And you, you’re at the Ministry, aren’t you?” He was glad bureaucracy hadn’t done much to beat the idealism out of the man across from him.

Justin was beaming at Dean like he was the best thing he'd seen in weeks. "Oh, we send letters back and forth," he replied with a nod. "It can be months sometimes between letters, but you know how Luna is. She gets word of Heliopaths or Skeezy Snufflers and she's off to the ends of the earth at the drop of a hat." The Hufflepuff was one of the few who took Luna seriously when she spoke of weird animals no one seemed to think existed. Justin figured that muggles thought that magic was all made-up and since it turned out to all be true, why shouldn't his Ravenclaw friend's magical world be any less real? "Did you manage to find any?"

The waitress took Dean's order, turning to Justin with a smile. "My usual," he told her with a playful wink, making her giggle. As she walked away, he turned his attention back to his friend. "Art school? I didn't know you had a knack for art," he replied, eyes wide with delight. "You must be really good. Not everyone can make art people would want to have on them permanently. Do you have any favorites you've done?"

He nodded in response to the other man's question. "I am," Justin replied with pride. "I work in the Muggle Liaison offices." Justin loved his job but it wasn't his only passion. "I'm going to school, too. Law school, magical that is. When I get out, I want to open up my own non-profit. One to help muggle kids like us better integrate into the wizarding world. There's just not enough resources for them and their families. I mean, I know the Ministry is trying its best but a single visit from a representative right before they go into Hogwarts isn't nearly enough."

About then, their drinks arrived. Dean's coffee steamed gently in the cool air. Justin's drink was a tall glass of their berry milk: mashed raspberries, strawberries, and blueberries in foamy milk. It was purple-pink swirl of bubbly goodness. Justin pushed his glass towards Dean, smiling brightly. "Want a taste? Berry milk. It's delicious. I get mine with extra strawberries."

Dean nodded knowingly. “Yeah, we hadn’t seen each other in ages. I thought we were just going to get coffee or something, you know, catch up, but… Well, I probably should have expected.” He was too normal to predict someone like Luna. “Anyway, it was a fruitless mission,” he said. “A bit discouraging, actually, but she seemed fine.” He smiled and shrugged.

“Really?” he asked after their orders had been taken. “That’s all a lot of people knew about me.” He’d been known through other people in school. Seamus’s friend, Ginny’s boyfriend, Harry Potter’s roommate. The bloke who could draw was his only individual identity. People used to get him to do Herbology diagrams for group projects and banners for parties. It made him feel interesting that Justin hadn’t known that, that he’d seen something else in him.

He looked down at his hands under Justin’s praise. “I never thought about it like that,” he said. “I mean—I guess. Mostly it’s been friends, that I’ve done. Dennis—Dennis Creevey—he was one of my first, I like his. He just sort of let me go at it.”

Justin explained his line of work, and Dean nodded. That was much more impressive, to him. Actually trying to do good for the world. “I wish we’d had that,” he said. “But maybe we sort of need it the other way around too. People are growing up in a world full of muggles and they haven’t got the slightest clue…” It had always mystified him, how insular the wizarding world was, how it had managed to exist all these centuries within yet separate. Maybe that was why joining it had been so difficult. He loved magic, but he didn’t want a place in a community of ignorance.

But he didn’t want to make out like he knew more than Justin did, it was surely the opposite. Their drinks arrived before he could apologize. He curled his fingers around his warm mug, but Justin offered him a sip of his purple milk. “Oh, er, no thanks,” he said. “It’s yours.” Truth be told, Dean wasn’t the type of guy who would drink berry milk, much less in public. He sipped his black coffee slowly.

Justin smiled, nodding solemnly as Dean described their unsuccessful search. "Luna's more resilient than people think," the former Hufflepuff replied. "And she's always hopeful of the next adventure. It's amazing, really." Justin admired his Ravenclaw friend's persistence and dedication. She never doubted herself or what she believed in, at least not in any way he had ever seen.

"I've always been a bit a bit scattered," Justin said with his usual ease. "I'm sure I saw your work loads of times and never realized it was you." His smile got a little wider. "Gryffindor always did have the best banners when we had to make them ourselves. I'm guessing that was you, then? If I ever decide to get one done I'll make sure to come to you." Justin was alright at drawing, nothing spectacular but decent. "Dennis?" he asked, intrigued. "I remember he was back at school my last year. How is he? He seemed... how is he?" It was hard to imagine what Dennis went through. Losing Colin, well, it had to have been hard. Justin had a younger brother and sister and he couldn't fathom a life where he lived and they did not. It was almost unthinkable.

The young man listened to his friend's thoughts on the wizarding world, smiling broadly and nodding along, excited. "Yes, yes! There needs to be a kind of exchange of ideas. Wizards can't live isolated forever. Someday, and it'll be soon, the two worlds won't be so separate anymore. Then there'll be trouble. We'll need a better understanding of, well, everything. Muggle studies is a recent addition to Hogwarts and I don't know if the other schools even offer it at all." Justin would need to study up on a lot of things before he could get his ideas off the ground. "But right now I'm just an average Ministry worker and law student. This is all just cities in the clouds, as my mum would say."

The Hufflepuff shrugged his shoulders with a smile as Dean declined the berry milk. Justin still had a sweet tooth, and he preferred drinks like this to the more acceptable adult drinks of tea and coffee. He imagined that most people found him a little silly but he wasn't too concerned. He liked who he was and his friends like Ernie and Dean and Luna accepted him for who he was. Besides, he could be very serious when he needed to be.

"Are you working today?" he asked, curious. "I'm at school today, so I have time until I need to be back for my next class."

“Word of mouth helps,” said Dean, nodding. “Also helps that there aren't many tattoo shops in magical London.” There wasn’t much choice of where to do things in the magical world. That was one of the reasons he had considered leaving the country, to find a place with a void he could fill.

Dean looked at his hands at mention of Dennis. “He’s… I won’t say well, but you know.” He gave a soft laugh. “How many of us are well these days?” And as far as hits went, Dennis’s had been very hard. Much harder than his own. Who had he lost in the war? A few older men of no real relation? An old schoolteacher? His parents, his sisters, his close friends, they had all been safe. No wonder the boy couldn’t stand to be around him. He couldn’t have understood.

Solemnly, Dean shrugged. The thought of muggles knowing of wizards had troubled him during many bouts of consideration. The system right now rubbed him the wrong way: the memory manipulation, the lack of cultural understanding. But was it any better than the alternative? The appearance of people with magic powers would shake society to its core, causing unimaginable conflict as the existence of a perceived superior group always did. The world had enough problems with differences. It didn’t need any more.

Thinking about it just made him uneasy. This was why he left things to people smarter than him, more learned than him, who could maybe figure out solutions. People like Justin who were making it their life’s work.

“I had class in the morning and I’ll be working after,” he told Justin with a sigh. “Things are busy these days.”

"There aren't?" Justin asked, a little perplexed. "Huh, I guess the number of wizards is pretty small. Too many shops and there's not enough customers to go around." He wasn't the kind of person to rush off and get a tattoo, but the same thing applied for most magical businesses if he thought about it. In a city as big as London, there were tons of regular shops that all sold the same thing. Book stores, for example. But on Diagon Alley, there was only the one. "It must be hard to get a business up and running in the magical world," he mused as he drank his fizzy purple milk.

Justin nodded, understanding what Dean meant. He had a number of friends who had come out of the second war a little, well, different. Sometimes he almost felt guilty. He wasn't exactly the same person as he was three or four years ago; no one was, really. But he had been lucky, incredibly lucky. He hadn't even needed to go on the run like Dean or Harry or the others. He hadn't been sent to Azkaban like poor Tock. He had been relatively safe and well-taken care of in the Ward. He had returned to fight, true, but even then he had only a few cuts and scrapes to show for it. By some absolute miracle, he had made it through hell with his heart and hope intact.

The Hufflepuff let the topic drift away from the heavier things. He figured if Dean needed to talk about it, he would. But really, he probably had other people he was closer to if he wanted to get things off his chest. They were friendly, and Justin would definitely call Dean a friend, but they weren't close. Justin smiled at Dean's heavy sigh. "But that's good, isn't it? Being busy, I mean. If they're too busy, well, that's not good either I suppose but doing something is better than being bored."

"Do you ever talk to the others? From Hogwarts, I mean?" Justin clarified. "I've decided that I'm going to try and find as many people from our years as I can, and see how they're doing." He hesitated, wondering what Dean would think about what he was about to say. "I'm even trying to get in touch with Draco."

“Yeah, definitely,” said Dean. “I like being busy.” Ever since childhood he’d liked to have things going on, never been able to abide silence, and ever since the war it was a compulsion. He preferred to do than to dwell, to work than to wallow. That was what happened when he had time to spare, he started slipping under.

Of course, lately his schedule had cut into his Riley time, resulted in him not getting very much sleep. He had found himself wishing for more free evenings and late mornings to fill with silly, honeymoony romance. But that may well have been over now, he thought with a heavy heart. All the more reason to distract himself.

“Well, I mean, Seamus,” he said. “And the rest of the boys get together sometimes. But that’s about it.” Half his friends these days were muggles, the rest seemed to be older or younger. Not the old yearmates, the gang.

“Draco Malfoy?” asked Dean, as if there were any other Draco. “Did you ever even talk to him in school?” Most non-Slytherins had avoided, if not Slytherin house altogether, at least Malfoy. But he hadn’t really heard much of the man since leaving school. “Well, good luck,” he said with a little laugh. He was sure Malfoy had grown to be less irritating, but he had his doubts as to whether he was any more pleasant.

“I think it’s nice that you’re looking in on people,” he said. It had been a pleasant surprise when Justin had tracked him down. Of course, not everyone had the history with Justin that he had, but he didn’t imagine the Hufflepuff was disliked particularly by anyone.

Justin smiled broadly at the mention of Seamus, Dean's best mate from Hogwarts. "I'm glad you guys still get together! I still see Ernie all the time. We almost moved into a flat together but decided we both wanted more space than we could manage to find." Ernie had been Justin's best friend since the first day at Hogwarts and he loved him like a brother. "And I see Hannah and Susan, sometimes too. To just catch up and grab dinner sometimes." The girls had a harder time during the war, especially Susan. Justin would always remember the look on her face when she found out her Aunt had been brutally murdered. "We should all get together for drinks sometime. Catch up. I could stand to get out more."

He had a bit of a sheepish grin on his face as Dean mentioned Draco. "I mean, Crabbe and Goyle use to like to toss me in the air while Draco hurled insults. But other than that, not really." It was no secret that Justin had been picked on in school. His sweet nature and tendency to give everyone a chance often left him open to pain. "But I've heard that he's different. And I just... well, I think he deserves to know that he can have a second chance at making things better. Rebuilding bridges." Justin smiled and shrugged. "I'm likely to get me ass hexed to next Sunday when I show up on his doorstep, if he even remembers me."

"I love checking up with others. I've been trying to make sure I find people." He was a kind heart, and it showed in the care he gave to people no matter who they were. "Sometimes people just need to be found. They run and run but inside they just want someone around to catch them." He blushed, running his hand through his messy blonde hair. "I don't know. I just want to be the hand someone can reach for if they need it."

“Oh yeah,” he said, “’Course.” His relationship with Seamus, much less the others, wasn’t what it had been when they lived together ten months of the year, but he refused to lose track of the people he’d been through so much with. He wouldn’t let their friendship survive war, but not adulthood.

Justin replied sheepishly to his skeptical response to the idea of seeking out Draco Malfoy. “I—seriously, good luck,” said Dean. He had always had hope for Malfoy, even as teenagers, that he’d grow up someday and realize how damaging the culture and attitude he’d been taught had been, but he wouldn’t be forgiving enough to befriend him when he got there. It was a delicate balance his parents had tried to teach him to get along in a world that was sometimes hostile. Understand, but don’t accept. He wasn’t sure if he should admire Justin for being kinder or disapprove, but he figured if Justin wanted to give Malfoy a second chance, that was his prerogative. “I wouldn’t get your hopes up, yeah,” he said. “The impression I always got of the bloke is that he’s proud, y’know? I dunno, he might think you’re just feeling sorry for him or something.”

A few moments after he said it, he realized it was a situation he was intimately familiar with.

He hadn’t heard a word from Dennis since the boy had left almost a month ago. After he’d called him condescending, said Dean made him feel like a kid, like a burden. Riley’s disappearance he hadn’t understood as much, but clearly it had some of the same roots. He was trying to give them both space, let them come back to him on their own if they were going to at all. He didn’t think they were the sort of people Justin was talking about.

Some people must want someone to find them, to save them. And that was the sort of person Dean needed. Someone to whom he could be important, in whose life he could be meaningful. It was his own kind of desperation.

He figured Justin was better at this stuff than him. Maybe he knew how to express caring without condescension. He looked a little embarrassed as he admitted his desire to reach out, and it made Dean want to tell him emphatically that he shouldn’t be. “I hope people appreciate it,” he said. “They should—I’d be lucky if it were you trying to help me out.”

"My mum always says I'm a fan of hopeless cases," Justin said with a smile. "I'm used to getting a little roughed up for a good cause, believe me." Justin wasn't a fighter like Harry or Ron or Dean or Jane or Ryan, but he was fearless in his own way. He wasn't afraid to put himself out there, to be the focus of ridicule, or even violence, if it meant he had a chance at making someone's life a little better. It wasn't the typical Gryffindor kind of courage, but something a little more Hufflepuff.

Justin saw Dean's face shift slightly, knew he was thinking about something that made him unhappy. It was in the set of his jaw, the little lines that were suddenly there on his forehead. Justin was intuitive, and he could see something heavy was on Dean's mind. He wondered if seeing Justin after so long had brought up old, unpleasant memories. When Dean mentioned helping, Justin couldn't stop himself from saying something. "Do you need help?" He asked, earnest as only he could be. His wide hazel eyes were steady and serious. "You know you can ask me anything, talk to me about stuff."

He barreled on, trying to make the offer seem a little less weird and sudden. "I mean, I know we're hardly best mates or anything, and some things you want to keep to yourself, I know. People have secrets. But if something's weighing on you, if you just want an ear to listen, I'm good at that. If you need advice, well, I can try offering that too. But I can see there might be things shadowing you, and maybe I can shed a little light there. Maybe I can help make things seem a little brighter, if you think you can let me."

The Hufflepuff blushed and smiled. "Sorry. I say too much, sometimes. But the offer stands. You can talk. I can listen. Like friends do."