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

~*~*~

One of the things that they never tell you when you're growing up is that sometimes, something that you've held onto, known for most of your life, can change in what feels like an instant.

I assume that it changes gradually, like one of those Polaroid pictures that my sister still likes to shake even though everyone knows it doesn't speed up the process. It changes slowly, and you don't even realize it, but suddenly you look down and it's a picture. Clear and colorful and distinct.

Some things are like that, I think.

~*~*~

I've discovered in my short life that there really are no words to describe Seamus Finnigan, although you'd think, from all of the talking that he does, that there'd be at least a few.

But, there aren't.

He seems to defy being tied down by anything: words or pictures or elegant description. I still remember the day I met him. Although explaining it will never do him justice, it's a story that I like to tell.

~*~*~

I went away to Hogwarts in a mass of confusion, bewilderment, and pure terror. School had always just been school, but suddenly it was going to be a way of life. My dad had told me that it would help me on my way to becoming a man and Don't you even think about crying.

The thing was, though? I wasn't. Not really.

My mum just sniffled quietly and slipped me a twenty pound note. Even years later, she can never quite keep straight the fact that English currency would do me no good where I was going, but, I think it made her feel better anyway. She hugged me with tears in her eyes and whispered, "Keep it in your pocket in case you need it."

So, I did.

As I boarded the train that would take me to school, I kept my hand in my pocket and a tight hold on that note. The first thing I noticed was that no one else was wearing their robes yet. They'd mentioned in the long letter that wizards wore robes, so we'd had to have mine special ordered from a strange place two towns away that the tall wizard had told my family about when she visited our home with the letter. So, then I felt lonely and dumb. I kept waiting for one of the other students to point and whisper, "Who brought the cool kid?"

I fought my way down the corridor, trying to look smaller than I was. I had always been tall for my age, and here it seemed to be a hindrance rather than something to be proud of. I felt like I was swimming upstream in a mass of tall weeds that were pulling at my legs, arms, and robes.

I'd peeked into every compartment and kept being thrown out with rude comments like, "No firsties!" "Out, little 'un!" and "Get thee to a mirror, boy!"

As I walked toward the end of the corridor, my throat was prickling and I kept scrunching my nose against the tickles that were shooting toward the backs of my eyes. I again touched the note from my mum and told myself that eleven was too young to have to navigate things in the world on my own and I wished I could be back home drawing pictures for my little sister that always got me noticed by everyone even though I never signed them.

I was startled out of my stupor when what appeared to be a tiny freight train hit my elbow, knocking my hand out of my pocket and nearly bowling me over.

"Kid! Get your arse back here!" yelled a voice that seemed too incongruously loud not to be coming from any visible person. The tiny kid ducked into a luggage corner behind me and hissed, "Don't tell them I'm here, okay?"

"Wha-?"

"Just don't, please? They're gonna tear off me arms!" he pleaded, pulling me in front of him.

"Okay," I agreed, turning back to look down the way he'd come.

Two solid redheads stalked down the corridor, followed by a tall black kid - the first I'd seen so far on the train. "Hey. Hey!" one of them yelled at me. "Have you seen a tiny Irish kid run through here? He was talking and then knocked into us so Lee's tarantula escaped and then he took off."

"Fred, hush. You know he pushed us because you asked him if he'd seen a pot of gold-"

"How was I to know that he'd take offense to that? He was wearing a Kestrals t-shirt."

"Not all Kestral fans like to be reminded that their Seeker has two gold balls for-"

I shook my head and tried to speak. "I-"

"Well?" one of the twins - I thought they must be twins because their scowls were identical - heard me and turned back with a curious, but predatory look.

I looked at the black boy behind them, hoping he might believe me and call off the redheads in a grand show of skin-colour solidarity. "I think he might've got off the train."

The tall kid looked at me strangely. "What do you mean got off?"

I swallowed, "I, uh, I think I saw a blur run through here but..."

The redheads had stopped looking around at this point and were just staring at me.

I felt a strange jolt of courage go through me and I stood up taller. "Umm, you do mean that tiny little kid with sandy hair?"

"Yeah," the three nodded. I felt the kid shift behind me and I willed him to be quiet.

"He's too little to be going to school. I bet he got off to go home with his mum. He probably snuck away when she was crying over her baby going away to school and tore through the train getting into everything he could before the whistle blew."

All three of them looked back at me with serious faces, so I continued, "I mean, did he even tell you that he was a student?"

They paused, appearing to consider all I'd just said, so I held my breath.

Suddenly, one of the redheads broke into a grin and snickered. "You must be right. No one that small could go to Hogwarts. They'd get sucked into one of the trick stairs and have no way of getting out."

The other twin elbowed his brother. "Yeah, or you'd be the one to put him there."

"One time, George. Can't I live anything down?"

"Well," interjected the quiet one, "you did do it to the Defence Against the Dark Arts Professor's son."

"You think that's why they don't hire parents anymore?"

They all laughed and I relaxed slightly, thinking they might have forgotten all about me.

"Hey, thanks, kid," one of them said to me as they turned to walk back the way they'd come.

"It's Dean," I called to them, feeling taller. "Dean Thomas."

"Thanks, Dean," one of the twins called back. I could feel the kid behind me hiss in relief.

"Mate, you were brilliant back there," he said to me when we found a compartment near the end of the train that obviously had become a haven for other nervous first years, as they said nothing when we opened the door.

I walked into that compartment with a swagger that I'd only seen on trophy winners on the telly. I even walked in first.

"Thanks," I grinned.

It was funny because all of my friends at home were like me: quiet, reserved, not one for any sort of confrontation and here I was, thrown into the middle of one in my first day - no, first hour of being a wizard and my cheeks had tingled with excitement throughout every minute of it. I finally felt alive. Real.

I decided then that I wanted that kid to be my friend.

Apparently? Seamus Finnigan had already decided the same thing about me.

~*~*~

Have you ever met someone with whom you have so little in common, yet the things you don't have in common are so perfectly matched that you actually feel giddy?

Yeah, my mum didn't understand it either when I tried to explain it to her.

Oh, well.

~*~*~

One day early in our first year, Seamus caught me sketching something in the corner of my parchment with a pencil that I kept in my bag for when I broke my quills.

"Did you draw that?" he asked, breaking off in the middle of a story about turning all his mum's knickers into hairnets when he was eight years old and pissed off that she wouldn't let him have a pet.

"Yeah," I said, embarrassed. Did blokes not draw in the Wizarding world? I wondered. I was constantly doing stuff like that and I'd come to count on Seamus to point those things out.

"It's brilliant," he said simply before launching into the next bit of his story as though there'd been no interruption.

~*~*~

One of the things people don't realize about Seamus is that he remembers everything, though you wouldn't expect it from the amount of talking he does. People are always surprised to find out that he had heard what they were telling him even though he'd barely seemed to pause.

But then he does something days or weeks later that shows you that he did hear you - that he remembered.

It feels amazing.

~*~*~

On the eve of Harry's first Quidditch match, Seamus told the common room that I was going to draw a banner to support Harry like they did at Muggle football games. When I looked at him in surprise, he winked at me and pulled out one of his bed sheets that we'd torn in a rather violent wrestling match a few days before.

"But I don't know how to draw Quidditch players," I protested.

"Quiet, you," he grinned. "Just draw the West Ham football team, but with broomsticks between their legs. No one'll know."

I gave him a dirty look and momentarily considered drawing seven tiny Irish Leprechauns with "Finnigan" emblazoned on their uniforms flying around to see how he'd like it, before realizing that I really wanted to make a banner for Harry.

I hadn't drawn anything in a while and I'd missed it.

After I'd finished drawing a Gryffindor lion and colouring it with broad strokes, I wondered if he'd suggested the whole thing on purpose - if he'd somehow known that I really needed to draw again. But, after the match was over, people kept me so busy with things they wanted me to draw for them that I never even got the chance to ask him.

Which might have been what he'd planned all along.

~*~*~

In bits and pieces after that, my sketchbook ended up with a permanent place in my satchel. It's funny that Seamus ended up in a permanent place with me at school before my sketchbook did, but there you go.

After the Quidditch match, I spent a lot of time drawing things for other people. They wanted me to draw creatures or pets or the people they fancied. I spent so much time drawing pictures for others that I wasn't doodling and drawing for myself that much anymore. Seamus told me it was nice that I had a voice and actually knew how to use it.

When I told him that Irishmen weren't generally known for their wit and to be careful or he'd hurt himself, he laughed loudly and told me that the Irish wit was not something to be trifled with if one fancied keeping one's bits intact. I just snorted and went back to drawing another picture.

But I felt funny all of a sudden... like I was no longer just a loner or maybe the world was finally starting to make some sense.

Then Seamus started in on some other story about heaven knows what and I started yet another picture for someone else. I couldn't keep up with everything that people wanted me to draw, but Seamus just made a little grid on the last page in his notebook and kept track for me.

It was a good thing, too, because I'd started to become a little spooked by all the owls.

~*~*~

He kept getting me involved in things that I wasn't sure I wanted to do, but I always did them. Partly, I loved the glowing grins he'd give me when I did something particularly right, but mostly I just liked the feeling of being with him.

And he was so funny. He never stopped talking and he didn't seem to care how much I didn't know. Sometimes I'd just stare at him, dumbly, as he talked.

I couldn't believe that someone so fascinating could deal with me. I mean, what could he possibly be getting from it?

It wasn't so much that I wasn't interesting. It was just that everyone seemed to go to Seamus with their problems and questions and things. He was more apt to take some sort of action, whereas I just listened and sighed and nodded.

People came to me for drawing, but they went to Seamus for everything. Though I'm not sure he actually was aware of that because he just naturally talked to people without even realizing it. It almost seemed unconscious.

~*~*~

I have this theory that there are about eleven different kinds of people in this world and Seamus is six of them.

Which doesn't seem mathematically possible, I know, but Seamus transcends logic. Or reasoning. Or any simple approach to categorization.

He simply is.

And I still can't figure out what that is. You know?

~*~*~

I've realized that things are never quite as simple as you might want them to be. No one ever tells you how to live your life or what to look for or how it makes sense.

You can spend so much of your life building comic strips and painting beautiful portraits to try to make sense of the world. You can do it for years. But one day you realize there is nothing like listening to Seamus Finnigan tell you a story as though you are the best audience he's ever had and if he doesn't tell you this story right now bad things will happen because you need to know it.

It's nothing like having him finish the story and knowing that you feel that much more whole because of it and you wonder how you ever could have felt full or sated or even really existed before he told you. And then you wonder if anything could possibly be better than that.

Because listening to him just makes sense.

~*~*~

So, have you figured it out yet?

Can you can tell by how I've been talking this whole time that it was leading up to a gigantic declaration on my part? Well. I don't really know about that.

But I do know this: my stomach burns when he looks at me in that way and I always forget everyone else in the room when he's there. Everyone else just takes up space. Seamus takes up every bit of my consciousness and I don't even notice until someone tries to talk to me. He exudes life in a way that drugs and Camden Market and jumping out of airplanes attempt to mimic it.

I'm always exhausted after a day with him, but good exhausted, like you've spent a day sledding in the cold and you fall into bed at night, full of hot cocoa and silly jokes, hoping against all hope that the next day you'll awaken to a new canvas of clear, bright snow for you to make your mark on again.

He grounds me.

Which is odd for someone that doesn't know how to ground himself, but there you go. I could spend the rest of my life tangled with him, breathing the spicy scent of his hair and listening to him talk. Would you believe that I slept with two people before him - both girls - but the first time we got together, I knew it was magic.

And he'll absolutely kill me for telling you this, but the first time we made love he had tears in his eyes and he whispered these words to me, "It was always you."

Although I knew what he meant, I waited until later on, when he was asleep, before I let myself cry with the feeling of that.

~*~*~

There was a moment during sixth year when I thought that we weren't going to be friends anymore and it was then that I wished that You-Know-Who would just show up at Hogwarts and obliterate me and all of the other Muggle borns because I couldn't imagine why I would want to live a life without Seamus Finnigan.

Life wasn't worth living without him. At least, not for me.

~*~*~

So, when he came to me the next day after breakfast and poked my shoulder, saying, "Hey, want me to ride broom-speed drills with you tomorrow before your Quidditch practice?" I nearly fell over in relief.

That day I missed the entire lecture during Transfiguration because I was watching him, sketching, trying to capture every bit of Real Life that seemed to hover around him like a halo. McGonagall wouldn't let us sit together anymore after fifth year because she said we talked too much. The truth was that I couldn't pay attention to her when Seamus was around.

He was far too interesting.

I didn't know what to do with the drawing I made, though; I was afraid that he'd think it odd me drawing a picture of my best mate and giving it to him. He might think we were girls or something.

So, I held onto it for all of thirty-seven minutes before it was driving me crazy and I pulled on his shoulder to get him to stop talking. When he turned to look at me, I stumbled through words like mud. "It's not really anything," I said. "Just... you've never asked for anything. You've never needed anything. You've never needed anyone to do anything for you." I felt so nervous. "I just wanted to do something for you."

He looked at it for a long time and didn't say anything. I could hear his breath and worried that I was about to lose my own. Finally, he grinned at me and said, "Looks a little bit blurry there, mate. Maybe ol' McGonagall ought to stick you near the window so you can have more light."

"If you'd bloody stop moving, maybe I wouldn't have to," I laughed, even as my stomach leapt in relief.

~*~*~

I didn't know how Professor Huvara got a copy of the picture, unless Seamus dropped it - which is probably what happened, as he can't hold onto anything for longer than a minute - but she submitted it to the magazine without telling either of us.

Weeks later, there was suddenly all of this hoopla when the drawing was published on the cover of Witch Weekly. We could barely talk to each other in the corridor what with all of the owls that started accosting me and the girls that started following him around.

Seamus took charge of everything and I don't think he realized how easily he did it.

He handled all of the owls and glared at some of the more fearless girls, telling them that if they didn't watch out, he'd really give them something naked to draw and oh, by the way, had they ever seen an Irishman with seven bollocks before?

And once, after he'd really given someone a talking to, he turned to me with his chest panting and his eyes widened with something indiscernible. When I cocked my head and asked what was up, he quickly told me it was nothing. But he was watching me with such a funny look. Not funny, ha-ha, but funny like he didn't know when I'd suddenly sprouted purple hair and cherub wings.

~*~*~

That afternoon we were huddled together during a game of Hide and Seek and he looked so distraught and he wasn't talking. I looked at him for a moment, unsure of what to do. Then something shifted, I don't know if it was the light or the oceans or simply the earth's gravitational pull, but at that moment I couldn't hear anything but Seamus Finnigan's silence.

I think I lost something that day. Not something corny like "my heart" or something out of a crazy romance novel; I lost the blurry reality of my world when I realized that it had been there the whole time, but finally I could see it. It was finally clear.

It was like those Magic Eye puzzles that just look like a whole mess of crap until you stare at it, or turn it just right and then something pops out in 3-D and nearly makes you fall over because of how clear, distinct and perfect it is.

I kissed him then. I whispered his name like air and pulled him to me with hands I didn't know could work without gravity. His arms trembled against me and I could barely breathe and the whole of the Gryffindor house had gone inside for supper before we left that space. The sun had gone down by then, and for some beautiful, perfect reason, I hadn't noticed.

It was everything I've never been able to sketch because it was so real and awkward all at once. The world seemed to settle around us when he pulled back and watched me with wide blue eyes.

~*~*~

You might say I'm insane because we're so completely different. He never shuts up and most people think that I never open my mouth. He's in constant forward motion and I sit back with my sketch book and watch. He thinks about Signs and I think about Real.

My mum says she knew because I finally started talking. But to me it's much simpler. With Seamus? I finally have something to say.

But no one - not even my mum - knows that there is actually something more powerful than what you think is right or expected. It's what you never thought you'd find on a cloudy day when the rest of your mates are hiding in places that you'll never look. It's the realization that nothing in this world is destined or meant to be or definitely the right thing to do.

Except when it is.

The thing is this: not once in your life do you ever have things spelled out for you. There's no guide, no reality, no Disney-fied happily ever after.

Except what you make of it.

That's all.

~*~*~

Thank you so much for reading! ♥