round and round [dean]

april 2003 | zonko’s joke shop

Wandering in Hogsmeade made him feel like a teenager again, aimless and bored and too comfortable spending his money. The candy, the butterbeer, the joke store. Seamus had no intention of buying anything (not that his intention not to buy had ever been worth much, when it came to stores as wholly unnecessary as this one. He’d come home with piles of this crap in his third year.)

He picked up a grotesque little grindylow figurine to tool around with; when he pulled a string on its back, its tongue and eyes and fingers bugged out and wiggled. “Look at this,” he said, holding the toy in vicinity of Dean’s face and pulling the string. “Pretty creepy.”

When the Weasley twins had opened their shop, right before their sixth year, much of the humour had been pretty morbid. A hazard, he supposed, of the impending war. He’d thought it was pretty funny at the time -- Why are you worrying about You-Know-Who?

He ambled toward the wall of fireworks -- mostly run-of-the-mill stuff, and a few of the fancy Wheezes kind -- and picked up a box of the Catherine Wheels, glanced wryly up at Dean. “God, remember these?” he said, grinning. “I think that was the best day of my life.”

He’d become a proper delinquent a few years later, in the DA, but he didn’t think he’d had quite the panache that the Weasleys had when Umbridge had been the worst of it. He put the box back on the shelf upside down and moved on, shuffling sideways around a clump of teenagers crowding the Stinkpellets.

“This was a dumb idea,” he said cheerfully. “I’m all tempted to buy this stuff and I’d have nowhere to put any of it. I don’t even hate my boss.” He glanced back over his shoulder to see if Dean was following -- “Anyone threaten you lately for chewing gum, or something?”

@Dean Thomas

Seamus working at the Hog’s Head finally gave Dean a reason to be in Hogsmeade, but he hadn’t gotten rid of the urge to pick up Honeydukes fudge as long as he was in the neighborhood. Doing some more situps was worth it. Pink-and-seafoam paper bag acquired and stuffed into his ratty backpack, Dean now wandered around the familiar shelves of Zonko’s. There was less danger of an impulse buy here.

His friend stuck a squirming little toy Grindylow in his face, and he grimaced.

They moved on to peruse the fireworks. “Maybe if you picked your clothes off the floor you’d have room,” said Dean, grinning. Seamus’s next question made him snort. “If you’re suggesting I toss a dungbomb at my gran, you may as well just murder me yourself to get it over with.”

“Should just send a package to Umbridge, wherever she ended up,” he said. Seamus had clearly been thinking of her. “Who knows, maybe if we’d hit her with a couple more fireworks we could’ve stopped her before she started sending Muggle-borns to prison.” Dean shrugged. “Of course, if whatever Hermione did to her wasn’t enough...” Curiously, he nudged Seamus with his elbow. “Did you ever find out what she did? I don’t think of it often enough to ask.”

Seamus laughed; “Oi.” He’d never met Dean’s grandmother, and what little he knew of her had thus far convinced him he probably never should. If she found fault in the way Dean dressed himself it was probably best she didn’t know how his roommate did.

“Think she’s still at the ministry?” said Seamus offhand, inspecting a battered box to see if it was discounted. His brain caught up to what Dean was saying a moment later -- “Wait, Umbridge Umbridge?”

He hadn’t paid much attention to the proceedings that had engulfed the end of 1998 -- deposing the Death Eaters and putting them in jail and whatever -- he’d been in Auror training, and by the time his day was done he was usually sick of hearing about the Ministry and the war. Seamus had just assumed that the Muggleborn Registration Commission, like Hogwarts, had been headed by You-Know-Who’s own.

He was jolted out of this line of thoughts when Dean elbowed him lightly. “Dunno,” he said, “Haven’t seen Hermione in ages. I think Lavender said once it was more about what the centaurs thought of her than Hermione.” Seamus had dropped divination after his OWLs, and had been a little too intimidated by Firenze to talk to him thereafter.

He frowned, though; now he thought of it, he’d known the Senior Undersecretary had been replaced. He’d just assumed it was Shacklebolt’s choice. It was one he’d have made too -- he couldn’t imagine how even Fudge could have stood her.

Dean stopped. It hadn’t occurred to him that Seamus would have missed this crucial update, but he guessed it wasn’t as if they talked about this shit. The only people he’d gone into enough detail with were people who it had already mattered to: Edith—Dennis.

“Oh,” he said awkwardly. “Yeah. It was her name on the summons. The way I hear it, she was in charge of the whole thing. The Muggle-Born Registration whatever.”

It was weird that Dolores Umbridge hadn’t come up in the last five years. Those were the good times. Fifteen-year-old Dean would never have believed it, but Christ, it had felt good to mount a righteous rebellion against someone without the power to murder you. And frankly, he and Seamus did a lot of reminiscing. Like they were doing right now—why the fuck would they be in Zonko’s if not to remember being fifteen?

“Fuck,” said Dean. “Wonder they’re all still standing, the centaurs. That woman could’ve wiped anybody out, and if they’d actually done something to her…”

He sniggered in spite of himself.

“You’re putting me on,” said Seamus, “The whole thing?”

This seemed a far greater betrayal than the ones his mother sometimes mentioned sadly -- the neighbours or friends who’d fallen easily into the new regime -- if only because Dolores Umbridge, to him, belonged so strongly in some stuffy pink office, lording over throngs of insolent insubordinates. There’d been no threat left in Dolores Umbridge and her shrill temper once he’d met the Carrow siblings.

It was about perspective, he reckoned. He hated how much of that he’d lost -- he wished he talked to more of the old crowd more often. It seemed like every day he learned something new that made him feel fully moronic.

He put the fireworks box back on the shelf and wandered away, inexplicably uncomfortable. “Few of them showed up for the battle,” he said seriously, but he grinned at Dean’s snigger. “Like what, shot her?” he said. “Reckon they just wanted to scare her. More trouble than it’s worth to kill someone like that.” He flipped a deck of Exploding Snap cards over in his hands.

“Y’know, the Weasleys sell, like, normal decks of cards,” he remarked; he glanced up at Dean with a grin. “First time I went in there I found them sittin’ in the back going for like, two sickles. Absolutely mad.” He replaced the cards on the shelf, moved two feet to the left. All of this did nothing but make him miss everybody from those days, poor Fred Weasley as much as everybody else. “Be nice to see everybody again,” he mused. “Won’t be ‘til the wedding, I think. Don’t reckon too many would go to whatever shite the Ministry’ll do next month. I know I won’t.”

No Ministry event was ever going to draw the whole DA -- most likely the closest they’d get would be their own parties. Seamus picked up a nose-biting teacup and dangled it from two fingers, close enough to his face that its teeth snapped desperately at him. “People buy china for newlyweds, don’t they?”

“No, ask anybody.” Dean shrugged. “Honestly can’t believe I’d never made a joke about it before.” Seamus would’ve had to have been present for that, of course, he thought bitterly before he could squash it. But that wasn’t fair. Seamus had been more distant than Dean had expected after leaving school, but having a standard didn’t feel fair nonetheless.

He chuckled, remembering the display of Muggle magic stuff. “Believe me, I’ve seen it.” He’d spent more time than was reasonable for a grown man at Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes—it had been one of the places in the Alley he knew he’d never fail to find a friend. The little shelf of Genuine Muggle Artifacts had made him feel like he’d gone out of his mind. “I’ll never get wizards,” he said. Not when this shit still made him feel like a befuddled alien.

Seamus moved on to remind him of the anniversary. “I dunno,” said Dean sheepishly, stuffing his hands in his pockets and looking away. “I thought I might make an appearance.” He was never sure how to interact with the government at this point—as if he had ever been. But he wanted to see the best in things like this. At the very least he thought a couple hours of dress robes and solemn speeches wouldn’t hurt him. He didn’t want to make Seamus feel stupid for not wanting to go, and was considering the best way to reassure him of this when the noise of crunching china drew Dean’s gaze to where Seamus was baiting an angry teacup.

“Unfortunately I think that might make me look bitter.” Dean tightened his lips in a rueful grin. “But Christ, what are we meant to get them?” The thought of buying Harry Potter a set of hand towels or silverware was laughable, let alone that Dean had no idea what wizard traditions were on the matter. “I wouldn’t even know where to look,” he said. Did Diagon Alley do wedding registries? “Think I reckoned I’d be a bit more grown-up by the time my mates started getting hitched.”

I’ll never get wizards, Dean must have said that -- or something to that effect -- dozens of times in the time Seamus had known him, and Seamus never knew quite how funny he was meant to find it. Before the war it’d just been an intrinsic trait of Dean’s, like his height or his steady reliability. It felt like it should be more serious now, even when -- ostensibly -- it was about the same crap, like floating candles or exploding cards. He grinned anyway.

“Make an appearance?” he echoed, tearing his attention from Exploding Snap to Dean, who looked so solemn with his hands in his pockets that he couldn’t help half a laugh, picturing his friend turning up in dark sunglasses and his collar turned up, lingering ominously at the edge of the event. “Makes you sound like a celebrity.” He supposed they were famous in a sense -- Rita Skeeter had recently called him a lesser member of Dumbledore’s Army -- but he still couldn’t fathom either of them as the sort of people to make appearances at events.

Seamus wouldn’t mind waiting another couple of months to see the crowd again, though; he’d never felt right remembering the war in dress robes.

“Maybe a little bitter,” he allowed, replacing the teacup on its saucer. “Ron might get a kick out of it, though.” Dean’s next question gave him some pause -- of the two of them, he may have been more knowledgeable about the odds and ends of wizardry, but definitely not weddings. He still couldn’t picture Ginny and Harry getting married.

“I dunno,” he said. “There’s a cookware shop in Diagon Alley my mam likes, self-sharpening knives and shit, but like -- do you reckon Harry and Ginny cook?”

Dean had expressed this sentiment a handful of times too -- they all felt a little young to be getting married or whatever -- and Seamus imagined they’d feel the same way for years. He’d already wasted his first years of adulthood trying one thing after another, and Harry and Ginny had just barrelled straight into careers and gotten engaged; Seamus still didn’t know if he thought they were moving too fast, or if he was moving too slowly. Bit of both, most likely.

“Honestly mad,” he mused, “Don’t know where they got the confidence to decide what they want for the rest of their lives, and shit. I couldn’t do that if you put a wand to my head.”

“What, you don’t feel like one at these things?” They were always surreal to Dean. If you’d gone back to 1995 and told him that joining a secret study club would put him on a path toward heroism, he’d have scoffed. But friends of Harry Potter were now…not household names, exactly, but known to more important people than Dean felt entirely comfortable with.

Seamus brought up Ron; Dean snorted. He thought even Ron wished better on the newlyweds than finger bites. At least, he seemed more keen on Ginny with Harry than he had with Dean—Ron had barely spoken to him their entire sixth year. “You think he and Hermione are next?” he asked Seamus, mostly joking. Hermione more than anyone Dean couldn’t imagine marrying young. But they were barely even young anymore, were they? He realized this with an uncomfortable slosh in his gut. Sometimes he felt he and his peers were much older than they really were, but times like this they felt much smaller.

“You always need some good knives, I guess.” Dean couldn’t imagine Harry or Ginny in the kitchen, but the time they’d spent living together had been catered by a hundred house-elves so who was he to know? “I dunno,” he said. “I mean, they’re busy, I s’pose.”

He inspected the price on a box of fireworks and set it back down. “This is stupid,” said Dean. “Harry’s already got loads more money than both of us put together anyway.” He chuckled amiably, careful to make sure he didn’t sound bitter about it, even if he sort of was. “Maybe we’ll just show up with some whiskey—feels like they’d be fine with that.”

It was true that all the Ministry stuff -- galas and memorials and whatnot -- made Seamus feel more watched than he liked to be, more celebrity than he wanted to be. “Don’t feel like I should, I guess,” he said; “Not like I did anything worth the attention.” He glanced back at the decks of cards, in bright rows along their shelves, making a half-subconsciously grotesque face.

“I don’t know if I can imagine them getting married either,” he said thoughtfully. “But, I mean, I guess five years is a while, right?” Maybe it all felt so quick because he hadn’t had much in the way of permanence in the five years since the war -- loafing around at the Hog’s Head, at six months, was one of the better streaks he’d had with having the same job.

“Yeah,” laughed Seamus, “Auroring and shite.” Harry and Ginny would have far better excuses than Seamus did for not cooking, anyway: Seamus worked in what technically had a restaurant, though he had yet to see Ab serve anything more involved than pretzels, and was usually at home all day.

He grinned at the reminder of who they were talking about -- Harry with his Firebolt and his snowy owl. It eluded him still how Harry had dressed like such a mental case out of uniform. “Ogden’s or the muggle stuff?” he said; it was a debate his mum and dad had all the time, jokingly over dinner (magic doesn’t belong in food, his dad liked to say.) The thought made him homesick.

“Look at us,” he said, a twinge drily, “We’ve managed a real adult thing.” Not quite yet, he supposed -- they had Spellotape at home but Seamus didn’t think he’d ever felt the need to buy wrapping paper -- but it felt like an accomplishment. He almost sighed at how sad that was; a sigh would have been even sadder, though.

Dean bit his tongue. Seamus tended to worry more about this kind of stuff than Dean did, he thought—whether you lived up to whatever people thought about you. He just shrugged opinions off, himself. Maybe he’d needed to do more of that to get by, or maybe he was just less sensitive, or maybe both. But the fact remained he sure didn’t understand this shit as much as he wished he did. He didn’t think anything he had to say would help.

“Sure is a while, I guess,” he said when the subject changed. “People get married in loads less time than that.” Looking at it this way, Dean had no idea how Ron and Hermione had made it this long. No stronger bonding agent than shared trauma, he figured. He watched Seamus dig around in a bin of candies and wondered whether he and Susan had something of the same.

There was no one left to share his own.

He considered his whiskeys. “Both, maybe,” said Dean. “One from me and one from you.” The muggle and the magical, respectively, of course. “Or just go in on some real expensive old bottle—see if we can tell the difference.” He looked out the shop window, where the chimney of the Three Broomsticks could be seen down the winding lane. “Let’s go for a drink after this, alright? Now it’s on my mind.”

Seamus expressed some sarcastic pride; Dean gave him a good-natured scoff in return. “Which adult thing is that again—hang round Zonko’s on a Saturday?” He grinned at Seamus. “Have a crisis about how all our friends have got it more together than we do? I think that’s a pretty standard one.”

Affectionately, Dean clapped Seamus’s shoulder. “Least we’ve got each other,” he said. “Solemnly swear, mate. Never to get my life more on track than you’ve got yours.”

“True enough,” said Seamus. “Seems like a big risk, don’t it? Who’s to say you know ‘em well enough?” His mind went to his parents -- they’d had him, by his age, but they definitely hadn’t been ready for marriage and a kid with each other. His dad hadn’t learned about magic until Seamus had started showing it. Sometimes Seamus felt like he didn’t know Susan well enough to even be her friend. They’d skipped straight past small talk into quarter-life-crisis talk; he’d only found out what her parents did after four months.

He followed Dean’s gaze out the window, tried to make out the distant, dreary blur of smoke from the Hog’s Head. “Two bottles,” he decided -- two adults going halfsies on a wedding gift looked sort of cheap when the two adults weren’t married -- and, “Christ, it’s been a while since I’ve been to the Three Broomsticks.”

He assumed this was what he’d meant -- Dean didn’t seem too keen on the grimy, gloomy Hog’s Head, and Seamus didn’t blame him, even if it’d grown on him.

“It isn’t that much of an accomplishment to have the falling-behind crisis again,” he said, “We do that every month.” Dean knew what he’d meant, though -- how comforting it was to be so understood -- so he grinned.

Dean already had his life more together, he’d thought so for ages, but he couldn’t muster any bitterness about that. “You’d better not,” he said. He put his box of Edible Erklings back on the shelf and stuck his hands deep in his pockets, looked back up at Dean and couldn’t help a smile. “I don’t know what I’d do if I came home and we were suddenly the sort who have books on the coffee table.” He scratched at the back of his head -- “Shall we? Don’t reckon I should buy anything anyway.”

Dean shrugged. “It’s a gamble, I reckon,” he said. “But I dunno, sometimes you just…feel it.” He looked at Seamus. Maybe it was how little he seemed to try to, but frankly Dean had always had a difficult time imagining his friend having a love life. He tried to be supportive and show an interest when he could, of course. Something about Seamus dating, though, always felt a little off. Susan Bones saw something romantic in this bloke? It was insane to him.

In Dean’s mind, they were a pair: Seamus was the friend, and he was the lover, and they were both shit at the other half.

He wasn’t drunk enough to keep talking about marriage, and thankfully, Seamus changed the subject. “I don’t go that much either,” said Dean, with a shrug. “Sort of forget how nice it is.” There were closer pubs now, and without a staff that had seen him grow up. “I always feel so weird asking Madam Rosmerta for a Firewhiskey.”

Dean looked around at the shelves one more time as Seamus turned to leave. “Sure you don’t want the Grindylow?” asked Dean with a snigger. “Long as you don’t put it in the medicine cabinet to scare the shit out of me when I go for a shave.” It made him think of Professor Lupin, too, too much for him to want it in the house, but Dean thought it was about time to wrap up the misery for today. He held open the jingling door. “C’mon, mate.”

[out]

“I sure hope so,” remarked Seamus, “I don’t reckon I’m smart enough to work it out meself.” Susan had been the one to initiate, not him -- Seamus had never been confident where it mattered, just impulsive where it didn’t. It was easy to get in a fight, easy to get up in arms, but it seemed like a chore to fall in love.

It wasn’t something Dean would get, though -- much as they’d discussed how hopeless they both were at all of this shit, love and growing up and all, Seamus hadn’t shaken the feeling that Dean at least knew what he was talking about. Even if they weren’t doing this right, Dean knew better what they were meant to aim for.

“Little weird,” said Seamus -- he rarely felt weird about it, since he’d been asking Madam Rosmerta for proper drinks long before he was allowed to drink them, for a laugh -- “Wonder if it’ll be crowded.” The Hog’s Head was no more popular during Hogsmeade weekends than normal, but Seamus imagined the Three Broomsticks was a different case.

He laughed, imagining the little grindylow with its waggling fingers, hanging in the medicine cabinet. “Nah, if I wanted to scare you it’d be cheaper just yelling boo,” he said, following Dean toward the exit. “Maybe I’ll get one for my mam, I could put a Father Christmas hat on it and sell it as an ornament.” Dean held the door for him and Seamus squinted up at the cloudy sky, glanced back at his friend as the door jingled shut, grinning. “I could get one for your gran too, just say the word.”

[out]