My Life With Dean, Or, How Disney Nearly Ruined My Relationship

~*~*~

Dean was well known around Hogwarts for his artistic ability. I should know. I was basically his bloody publicist. Not that wizards know about publicists. Or a lot of things, really.

But Dean did. He was from a family of muggles.

Which is really what got me into trouble in the first place. Damn muggles.

But I digress.

~*~*~

It began when he drew a banner back in first year of Potter for President for Harry's first Quidditch Game. He was so nervous - Dean, I mean. Well, I know Harry was nervous, too, but Ron always took care of Harry.

He took care of Harry and I took care of Dean.

That was how it always was. Everybody knew that. And Hermione took care of Ron. The thing was, though? Nobody took care of me. Not that I needed it, mind you. But I did notice.

So, back to that first Quidditch match. Dean had been so nervous because he didn't know how to draw Quidditch players. When I told him to draw the West Ham Football Team but with broomsticks between their legs he gave me such a withering look I had to check to make sure my eyebrows hadn't melted.

He did an amazing job. The banner was about six feet across and it took four of us to hold it. We held it high above our heads and we stood in the back row so we wouldn't block anyone's view and we screamed ourselves hoarse and Harry won the game. Some people told Dean that it was because his picture was that mesmerizing. Which wasn't really true - Harry won the game because he's an incredible Seeker - but I wasn't all that surprised that people were blaming Dean.

Dean even folded up the banner and gave it to Harry a few weeks later when he was upset about something or the other. Harry just looked at him - speechless, I think - and said, "Wow. Are you sure? Thanks."

Dean seemed so surprised at how pleased it made Harry. He was nearly embarrassed at how many times Harry thanked him. Dean kept saying, "I didn't really know how to draw Quidditch players, so I just drew that Lion, it wasn't my best, I could have done better..."

The thing was, though? Dean could draw anything; he just had to want to.

After that, people were always asking for pictures of this or pictures of that and Dean finally got so overwhelmed because he was too nice and would never say no and he was way behind in his homework. So I finally made him start charging and I dealt with all of the details for him because he was too embarrassed. Not exorbitant amounts of money: sickles, sweets, potions or homework. Okay, not homework because Dean blasted that idea out of the water the moment I'd mentioned it. But people would have paid him in homework if he'd wanted. He was that good.

But are you surprised? It was Dean.

Do you even know him? Picture the hottest guy that you know. No, not him - the hottest guy who doesn't even know what he has going for him. Right. That's Dean. Only Dean's better.

He still doesn't know it.

~*~*~

That was always the way it was. Dean just didn't get it. Everyone loved him. Everyone wanted his approval, his smile, his drawings.

Harry was like that, too. People followed him around and wanted to be with him and he just didn't get it. What is it about people like that that have absolutely no clue what draws others to them?

Someone told me once that the reason people are attracted to people like Harry and Dean was because they weren't aware of their draw. But that's bollocks. I mean, I know that Harry and Dean aren't aware of what makes them seem so special. But what would have fascinated people in the first place? Once you get drawn in, there's got to be something that keeps you there. And people stayed there with Dean.

Ron and I talked about it once and he couldn't explain it, either. It's something we both know but can't clarify, y'know?

But, the other people just don't get it.

Even Ginny Weasley - who was one of the only people that I could even stand being around when she was dating Dean - never quite got it. She and Dean went out for months. Months. That was longer than Ginny'd ever gone out with anyone. But they couldn't make it work.

She told me afterward that she never quite felt good enough for Dean.

The thing I never told her was that it's not about being good enough for him; it's recognizing that there is nothing you wouldn't do for him because it's like doing something for yourself. It's knowing that you'll work your whole life to become better and better because you know that he's going to do the same thing without even thinking. It's knowing that you judge every person you meet against him because he is everything you close your eyes and imagine in your craziest, Disney-est fantasies and he's right there in front of you. And he's listening to you like you are the most interesting person he's ever met and he doesn't ever want you to stop.

It's recognizing that he just is. And that's better than you could ever hope for, but you know you have it anyway and you feel lucky every day.

It's knowing that he could be your very life.

~*~*~

What?

Did I just give myself away?

Yeah, that was about the same moment that I'd realized it myself.

It was the whole Disney realization. If I'd not grown up half-Muggle I think I would have been fine. But one of the pieces of growing up muggle is the television/movie/pop culture thing. And with that thing comes Disney.

You know.

That whole, entire 'someday-my-prince-will-come,' 'happily-ever-after' bullshit. Yeah. They spoon-feed it to us from a young age until we can't meet anyone without wondering what our name will sound like next to theirs and what will they look like in thirty years. Then when we get a little bit older, those two things are accompanied by picturing them naked.

Which is one of the nice things about growing older. One of the few, if you ask me.

But along with this growing older comes the realization that things don't fall into neat Disney packages and that their whole company is based on a sham. A lie.

Soul-mate, meant-to-be, Magic Kingdom crap.

You know that it's not possible. What if your soul-mate lived his lifetime twelve-hundred years ago? What if the person that is your 'meant-to-be' lives in Trinidad and you live in Greenland (yes, I paid attention in geography) and you never travel?

What then?

So, with adulthood comes the realization that the pretense that you were brainwashed into believing isn't necessarily true and you need to restructure your whole belief system. Not too easy, that.

You see, wizards don't have to deal with that. They don't have all that Disney-crap to deal with. They don't have to reconcile this childhood ideal within the real world.

It's just different.

More realistic.

Safer, if you will.

~*~*~

The first picture he ever drew for me was the most exquisite thing I've ever seen. And I'm not even that good-looking.

It was a portrait of me from a day when he thought I'd been bored in class. McGonagall knew not to put the two of us together, so we had to be separated in class from fifth year on. She said we talked too much.

The truth was that I talked too much. Dean just let me.

But he'd drawn the portrait and when he gave it to me he said that when I was bored in class was the only time that I stopped talking long enough to draw me. He said he'd been wanting to draw me for a long time.

"It's not really anything," he said. "Just... you've never asked for anything. You've never needed anything. You've never needed anyone to do anything for you." And he looked almost nervous.

"I just wanted to do something for you," he said.

And then I think I finally knew.

Because I'll tell you a secret, that portrait he drew? I hadn't been bored, I'd been thinking about him. That's why I looked like that.

Professor Huvara saw it and said it was "truly inspired" and submitted it to Witch Weekly. They put it on the cover the following month.

People had said I had an inner glow. That certain savoir-faire. I just thought I looked blurry. But I figure that most people see me as blurry because I don't ever stop moving for long enough to be clear.

Suddenly I had fans. So many people at Hogwarts started coming up to me and wanting to be near me. And guess what? They were all coming after me because of some Disney-based fantasy of me being their perfect man and solving all their problems. And they were probably all picturing me naked. I suddenly had all these girls following me around and wanting to do things for me and I couldn't care less.

All because Dean had drawn a picture of me glowing because I was thinking about him.

Ironic, huh?

Or maybe not ironic because I'm never quite sure what that word means.

~*~*~

The whole publicist thing really comes from that.

I mean, I'd started out as his manager and stuff during first year when he couldn't say no to people who wanted him to make drawings for them.

It was the same thing after that bloody magazine came out. Publications were owling him left and right, asking to commission him for this and that and the other thing and it was such a pain.

I finally used a dislocation spell to keep the owls away from him and just drop the blasted letters in a place where I could take care of them later. He refuses to own an owl to this day. But that's fine because we just use mine.

~*~*~

After the whole picture debacle was when the Disney problem came in full strength.

You're supposed to associate these big, strong Realizations of a Lifetime with hearts and flowers and multi-colored lights and fairy godmothers. I don't have a fairy godmother. Well, Uncle Claude is like one, but that's just when he dresses up for church.

So, even though I spent my entire waking existence thinking about Dean and wanting to be with him, I was still waiting for The Sign.

The time when you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that that's the person you are going to spend the rest of your life with. Which, by the way, is a whole other problem that I could go into, but I'll spare you for now.

So, the other part of me was thwapping the Disney part of my brain and saying things like: Get a grip and What the fuck? and Oh my god, he's pretty!

And most of me was just trying to stop picturing him naked.

By then I'd decided that I was probably insane and should just check myself into St. Mungo's and have them lock me up.

But then Ron called into the common room that it was Games Day and why wasn't my green Irish arse the first one on the courtyard.

~*~*~

So that created a whole other problem because I wasn't feeling too much like myself anymore. Or rather, I was feeling so much like myself that it was scary.

Games Days were stupid, really. Which, I think, is why we did them. One can only take so much talk of doom and exams and porridge. It became a tradition during our third year and no it wasn't my idea.

Okay, it was. But only because no one else thought of it first.

Dean and I always stuck together because he couldn't see really well and I spent all my time listening to myself talk so I could never hear anyone coming and we always used to get caught. But when we work together we're nearly unbeatable.

We ended up squashed together behind a flowering Juniper plant during a game of Hide and Seek and Dean was suddenly looking at me funny.

Not funny ha-ha, like I'd told a joke, but funny like he didn't know when I'd suddenly turned into a garden gnome.

And then he said my name twice, very quiet, like he was saying it for the first time - Seamus... Seamus - and I don't think anything I've ever heard in my life has ever sounded better than that.

And in that moment I forgot my name and my eyes stopped working and I couldn't hear anything. The world had gone completely Dean.

We didn't win any games that day.

~*~*~

Were you thinking that I was going to give you all of the sordid details?

Those are private. It's mostly none of your business.

I will tell you this: The first time Dean kissed me it made my toes curl.

And on nights that he's away I pull out the memory and wrap it around my lonely body for warmth.

It always works.

When he touches me I can barely breathe and it hurts when he pulls away. And he tells me things that I didn't think anyone could ever know and it has only made me cry once.

Well, once in front of him.

Because I finally believed that he was a better person with me. Or at least he believed he was. And that's when it finally made sense.

It's all in your perception. And what you choose.

And thank heavens I realized that before my Disney-infected child brain took over and questioned it.

~*~*~

Thank you for reading. ♥