[WWW] innocent world [harri]

early january 2002

It had always amazed Dean, just a little, how large the market for practical jokes was among wizards. Not that they weren’t hilarious, of course. But while Zonko’s Joke Shop, say, had been an amazing place to visit for someone new to the possibilities of magic, Dean had never been tempted to spend all his money there the way some of his friends had been. He’d just never imagined he’d have a use for Dungbombs or biting teacups. Muggles were a lot less accustomed to absurdity, he figured. The way they thought about things was different. At Hogwarts, children gave their enemies antlers and ear hair. At muggle school, kids just punched each other in the face.

That said, Dean was glad the wizarding world was such that the Weasley twins had been able to make a living doing what they were interested in. He was intimately familiar with the pressure to pursue a real career. Fred and George hadn’t been immune to that, but had they been muggles their business would be niche at best. In Diagon Alley it was the centerpiece.

Dean passed the shop’s exuberant storefront daily, but these days he really only went in to check up on friends. A little more often now that Ron was there—Dean had always been closer to him than George, it was easier to justify. He thought he might check up on them again now that Dennis was gone and he worked only half the day on Mondays. But when he got there he sort of started to regret it. Though the appeal obviously wasn’t limited to youth,  Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes was always much emptier when school was in session. The bell on the door announced his arrival and Dean was very conscious of being the only customer there. He bit his lip. Maybe he should have come a month ago, just because this shop was so much more alive when it was full of kids. When it was just him, the place felt sort of off, sort of sad.

Dean nodded distractedly to the pink-robed girl who appeared to greet him, and then he looked back, blinking in surprise. “Oh, hello,” he said to Angharad Hughes, giving her a pleasant smile. “Have you worked here long?” Dean didn’t think he’d seen her there before, and he hoped he hadn’t just accidentally confessed to overlooking her. “I haven’t been here in a while,” he added in explanation. Shrugging quickly to shake off his awkwardness, he glanced at the nearest display. “Er—got anything new in?”

@Angharad Hughes

Being just a shade over five foot certainly had its drawbacks – one in particular was reaching tall shelves comfortably. Angharad was certainly thankful that she could use magic freely now, or stacking the Skiving Snackboxes would have been a lot more of a mission. As it was, a simple levitation charm and they were uniformly filing themselves away as she restocked one of Weasleys’ biggest sellers.

It felt good to have something to do with her day. To have a job. Admittedly, she’d started working here after the holiday rush so might have thought differently before Christmas, but it was good  to ease into it. Get herself familiar with everything in the shop before Easter or the summer holidays. George had kindly given Angharad a few sample products to be better acquainted, and she’d spent her first week exploring the store as she tidied and stocked, eager to prove herself as worth the risk. Second week in and she had started having to find things to do to occupy her time. It was quiet with all the students back at school, but she was sure the post-Christmas lull also had something to do with it.

A soft tinkle announced someone entering the shop and Harri fixed a warm smile on her face, smoothing her magenta robes as she approached the door. “Hi, how are—oh,” she stopped before she’d really gotten a chance to start, surprised by the face that had greeted her. She hadn’t seen the former Gryffindor since her fifth year, before he and several other muggleborns had had to go into hiding or face Azkaban. Angharad hadn’t known Dean well as such, but they’d been in Dumbledore’s Army together and he had dated Ginny. “Hi Dean.” her cheeks quickly flushed a soft shade of pink, magnified by the colour of her uniform. “Um, no I only started last week.” She answered him readily.

Harri’s warm brown eyes followed his gaze briefly before flicking back up to his face. “Oh, um. Well I don’t know what’s new since you were last in but there’s some cool new fireworks and some additions to the Skiving Snackboxes but—“ she paused, ”—unless you’re having a party or trying to get time off work I’m not sure they’re up your alley.“ She rolled her lips in an awkward smile. “What, um, what are you doing with yourself these days?”

“Hi, erm, Harri?” Dean made an apologetic face and pointed at her sort of weakly, hoping he was correct. She was at an awkward level of friendship, the sort of friend-of-a-friend he could recognize by face but tended to forget about unless directly reminded, and he didn’t have any faith in any of the things he thought he knew about her. “Wow, congratulations, then,” he said. “Seems like this would be a hell of a place to work.” He glanced again at the back. If Harri had been someone he didn’t know, he’d have asked whether Ron was in, but now it felt sort of tactless. But he didn’t really feel an urge to end the conversation. And either way he’d have to find some thing or another to buy (to justify his presence as much to support the business).

Dean looked up at the shelf she’d indicated, watching the colorful packaging flash. “I’ll tell you a secret,” he said with a light chuckle. “I never much fancied those. Too…hardcore for me, I think.” He recalled the twins vomiting in the common room and made a face. “I didn’t want to go to the trouble of actually being ill. I’d rather have just skipped class.” He’d done so, in fact, with some frequency.

“I do like the fireworks, though,” he said, wandering over, fingers drifting along the edge of the display. “Wonder if I could come up with a reason to set some off.”

The blonde smiled toothily, nodding a little abashedly to affirm he’d gotten the right name. She could understand him not being really sure – they ran in similar but not the same circles after all. “Thanks!” she gushed, “I was really lucky that George—” she stopped herself, pivoting the sentence in her head quickly, “—had a vacancy.” She was lucky, and terribly excited to be here, really. Especially when she actually had customers to talk to – or, well, was Dean a customer or more of a friendly face? Did it matter? “It is pretty interesting.” She ended, a little more quietly.

Harri pressed her lips together, smiling again as though unable to contain her own secret. “Yeah, I suppose – I think I only ever tried a nibble of a Fever Fudge and that was enough for me.” She grinned. The former Hufflepuff looked around the shop briefly before adding, “Not really sure how I feel about helping kids miss lessons but, if I said I hadn’t done it myself I’d be lying.” A sly little smirk crept across her lips before her face fell a little more serious, “I feel like we had more excuses though, some of those professors...”

Angharad followed Dean over to the fireworks stand, glancing up at him as he looked at the display. “They’re brilliant, aren’t they?” She paused, “When the muggles do Guy Fawkes, in my hometown, they set fireworks off the castle ramparts while everyone stands on the banks across the moat to watch – it’s wonderful. It’d be great if they could use some of these,” she smiled wistfully, “but it might be a little obvious.” She turned to face him fully, smirking, “Got any castles you can commandeer for a night?”

Dean laughed cheerfully, remembering the hilarity of dicking around with the likes of Umbridge before how actively sinister she’d turned out to be, and abruptly cleared his throat. Most of their professors weren’t really funny subjects after thinking on it for half a second. Not to mention that to his knowledge, Harri had seen the worst of things at Hogwarts while he hadn’t. He felt awfully stupid, but then again, he figured, he was standing amid the creations of people who’d believed in fighting darkness with humor. “Definitely our moral duty,” Dean agreed with awkwardly measured amusement and solemnity. “Wish we’d had something like these when Lockhart was around—were you there for him?” He shook his head. “Would’ve liked to see what he’d do. Probably tell us we all had some rare Amazonian disease he knew how to cure.”

When Harri spoke again, Dean took his hand off the fireworks and looked back at her. He liked that she had a memory of muggles, enough to bring it up at least, even if it was only from the place of a spectator and of an event that was hard to ignore. It still wasn’t something a lot of wizards he knew would have said. “Yeah,” he replied. “Sort of a shame, but maybe they’ll get close someday on their own, you think?”

Dean grinned back at her. Her expression had become unexpectedly fierce, and he liked that too. “Castles?” he repeated. “Don’t make me laugh. Don’t imagine they’d be out of place at some DA thing, though, I guess.” He turned back away from her and took another step through the displays, pretending like he was still doing something. “If we had someone like Harry Potter in on it, people might not even be angry about fireworks in the middle of the night for no reason.”

Harri smiled, trying not to beam too widely at Dean’s mock seriousness. “Yeah, he was the Dark Arts Professor in my first year.” The blonde replied politely, absently wondering if Dean thought she was really that much younger than him. “Probably,” she let out a light laugh, “Madam Pomfrey was not a fan of his… wandwork.” She offered him a funny little smile. “I suppose at least we had Lupin after him.” She looked away, kind of staring into the middle-distance as she reflected on arguably their best Dark Arts teachers’ fate.

“Maybe,” she replied hopefully, “They do a pretty good job of it considering they don’t have magic.” She commented as if a fireworks display was a measure by which to assess how advanced a society was. Belatedly, she recalled Ginny once mentioning that Dean was muggleborn. Her cheeks flushed pink in mild embarrassment, hoping she hadn’t offended him in any way.

“Mhm,” Harri’s expression was somewhere between a sly grin and an innocent smile, “You never know, a lot of them are just abandoned ruins now. Well, in Wales they are.” She added the last bit for clarification. At the mention of the DA and Harry Potter, Angharad felt a sort of tug in her chest. It had felt good to belong to something and have a purpose, she missed that. She bit her lip thoughtfully for a moment before asking in a lowered voice, despite them being the only ones in the shop, “Does anyone still meet up?”

Dean chuckled. “Oh, no, I wouldn’t imagine,” he said, shaking his head. “She had enough on her plate without him going around taking people’s bones out—I saw that; most disgusting thing I’d ever seen.” He pulled a face, rather hoping it would make her laugh, and then let it fade into fondness. “Yeah,” he said. He wasn’t sure what else he could say, really. There was little disagreement between anyone he knew on the subject of Professor Lupin. For years Dean had considered the man sort of special to him, but he seemed to have been that way to everyone.

After a second he gave Harri a half a grin and stepped toward the next shelf, raking his eyes over the bins of joke sweets. “I wouldn’t know, I s’pose,” he said. “Hogwarts is the only castle I’ve ever been in—no, it and Versailles.” He’d felt some obligation on his European tour to stop everywhere he had known the name of prior.  “I always figured they’d all be like that,” he mused. “Can’t believe there’re stones left unturned, y’know—you can make a museum out of anyplace if it’s old enough, you’d think people would.” He snorted softly, considering that perhaps tourists had little interest in Wales, but stopped himself just in time from voicing it.

“Sometimes,” he said. “Birthdays, mostly. Last year for Seamus’s he got Aberforth to close early for us—not that he had any customers anyway, mind.” Dean laughed softly, sort of thoughtfully. “But it’s just  friends, more than an effort to, y’know, get us all together.” Their friendships all overlapped, but Dumbledore’s Army wasn’t as much as a cohesive unit these days. Bit of a relief, that they weren’t needed to be. There was no reason to want to get together and relive those days like thirtysomethings at a school reunion. But it also sort of felt like something that should be commemorated. Dean shrugged. He wasn’t sure how much he’d belong at a formal gathering of the DA. He’d been there when it was about O.W.L.s, not when it was about life and death. Maybe it was his imagination, but he could feel it—together with Seamus and Neville, for instance. Their friendship had something in it that Dean’s friendship with either of them would never.

“You ever try one of those daydream charms?” He tried to sound nonchalant as he changed the subject. “I always fancied those. Picked one up years ago when they were new, but I was seeing their sister at the time, and they weren’t really keen on selling me something like… Well.” He bit his tongue and laughed again. “Was just sort of curious what it’d come up with. I’ve never been too good at daydreaming—not really creative enough, I don’t think.”

Angharad grimaced at the memory of Harry’s arm flopping around like some sort of fleshy pink eel, a small giggle erupting out of somewhere in her chest at Dean’s expression. “Yeah, I didn’t see it up close but, to be honest, I really didn’t need to. It was so gross.” A light shiver ran down her spine. Growing back a few missing bones seemed pretty trivial, really, when Harri compared it with the transformation she went through every full moon, but somehow the idea of it was much more repulsive.

The Hufflepuff listened to him attentively, realising only now as she was with a familiar face just how much she’d missed social interaction. She nodded in agreement, “I suppose, but there’s hundreds of castles in Wales... I don’t think there’d be enough people to visit them all. I guess that’s probably why they’re all sort of... forgotten.” That seemed sad, now that she thought about it. Something once so impressive now left to ruin.

“Oh.” Angharad replied somewhat sadly. She shouldn’t be sad, or feel left out, but she was and she did. She’d been in the DA but it wasn’t like she was one of the core members. Not like Ginny or Luna. Or Dean, even. She was a tagalong – always had been, outside of her immediate clique, she realised now. “Well, that’s cool that you guys all still... see each other.” She smiled politely, busying herself with straightening up a couple of boxes that had been knocked.

The blonde turned back to face Dean slowly, her eyes narrowing somewhat suspiciously. She leaned against one of the shelves and folded her arms. “They didn’t let you buy one because you were seeing Ginny?” She asked with a hint of incredulousness in her voice. “What do you mean you aren’t good at daydreaming? It’s not hard, you just... think of something you’d rather be doing and, see where it takes you,” her cheeks flushed lightly as she finished, “just like a good book.”

She cleared her throat, a funny little smirk spreading across her lips, “To answer your question, no, I haven’t. But,” she looked around, despite knowing full well there was nobody else there, “I won’t tell if you want one.”

Dean clenched his jaw and glanced at his feet as Harri abruptly busied herself with her actual job. He shouldn’t have said anything. Well, she had asked, but he shouldn’t have made it sound so fun, at least. If he had worries of cliquishness among the DA, surely she felt it times a hundred. After all, he’d just two minutes ago had to make sure he had her name right before they started talking. “Oh, y’know” he said. “ Just school mates, nothing special, really.” He wasn’t sure what else to say, even though the pause felt uncomfortably thick.

Harri turned back to him, but with a skeptical reply. Dean felt himself blush—it was something else he should have thought before saying, but for a rather different reason. He’d been hoping she’d just catch his drift and laugh. “Well, they were just taking the piss, I’m sure,” he mumbled, shrugging. “But I don’t think I wanted to fight ‘em on it even if it was a joke, like, I’ve got sisters, I knew how it was.” He exhaled a weak chuckle and curled his toes in his shoes. “I dunno.” If only Ron would pop out from behind a shelf right about now and save him.

But Harri didn’t buy his excuses about daydreaming either, and Dean couldn’t help but try to explain himself. “Don’t know what to tell you,” he replied, tossing a dismissive hand. “I just get bored, I don’t think about what’d be less boring…” He laughed, more earnestly this time. “I can’t roll my tongue up either, maybe it’s like that.”

She offered him a charm, and he didn’t get her drift for a couple seconds. Dean blinked and shook his head. “Oh, don’t be stupid,” he said. “I’ve got money.”  He smiled crookedly, responding to the mischief in her face. “Got to do this properly, haven’t we? You’ve just started, can’t be getting into trouble.” Dean winked at Harri. Trouble was almost always welcomed here, but he had the impression of George Weasley as a serious businessman if a serious nothing else.

“Merlin, you sound just like my brother.” She grinned and rolled her eyes. “Why do you all think we need protecting, hm?” She challenged him playfully. Though it had cost her one or two dates in her time at school, she really did appreciate how much her elder brothers cared about her. If only they could do so in a less invasive way. Still, she only had three older brothers to worry about – poor Ginny had had six. Five now, Angharad supposed, sadly. Every time she saw George she still half-expected Fred to be just around the corner.

“I didn’t know you had sisters, though.” She continued, glad for them to have something to talk about. “Did they go to Hogwarts or…?” She let the question trail off, belatedly remembering that Dean was muggleborn, and that there was a reasonable chance that his sisters had not inherited the magic gene, or that they had but had been caught up in the mess of the wizarding war. How could she be so stupid as to just barrel into that? She groaned inwardly at her own idiocy.

“Maybe.” She said meekly. Wondering if it was odd for her to spend so much time daydreaming by comparison. Perhaps that was down to not having a whole lot else to do. When one was cooped up inside for the best part of a year it was easy to let your mind wander to better things.

The former Hufflepuff frowned in confusion, then realised suddenly how he’d interpreted her offer. “Oh!” She said, flinging her hand up to her mouth, “No – I didn’t mean,” she looked around again, paranoid that George or Ron might be just out of sight. “I meant I’d let you buy one.” She blushed, her cheeks going bright pink. “I can’t lose this job.” She said honestly.

Dean looked away with a small, sheepish smile. It wasn’t the first time he’d heard those words. He’d started to judge how much he liked a girl a little by whether she told them to him. “Don’t worry,” he said. “Believe me, I’ve learned there’s no need for that well enough.” Not well enough to stop the instinct, perhaps, but at least well enough to feel bad when the thought crossed his mind.

Harri asked after his sisters, but by the time Dean looked back to her she had turned pink. Dean hurriedly shook his head and gave her a sympathetic half-smile. It wasn’t the first time he’d heard this either. “Nah,” he said. “They’re my half-sisters, really. My dad was the magical one.” He disliked making the implication that Darian Thomas wasn’t his father, but the explanations got sort of unwieldy if he tried to correct it. Dean was feeling already too conscious of the awkwardness they’d stirred up so far. “My family’s sort of… Complicated, I guess—but no, yeah, they’re not witches. Nor’s anyone else.” He tilted his head and smiled politely. “Your brother a wizard, then?” Having magic siblings had always sounded grandly unfamiliar to him, in sort of the way he’d thought of the wizarding world the summer he was on the cusp of joining it.

“Ah.” Dean felt his own cheeks grow a little warm as Harri explained herself. Just barely he stopped himself from commenting on their endless talent for confusing each other, imagining the joke falling flat. Better he just take it in stride. Dean looked to the shelf of daydream charms for a moment before selecting a box, then gave Harri a broad grin. “Well—that I could do for you.” He held up the little box with its gallant illustrated knight. “One of these, then. And then I’ll go look in on Ron.” He couldn’t remember if he’d told her his actual reason for being here. He’d forgotten it himself for a little while.