A Familiar Feeling
Street Fighting Man
Dennis Creevey
OOO
Dennis Creevey had never been a fighter, or a photographer, or a leader. He hadn't been anything, really, now that he looked back, other than someone who desperately wanted to be someone but wasn't sure where to start. He had gained fame among the students in his year on the boat ride to Hogwarts, when he fell into the lake, but all of that fame was quickly lost once people got to know Dennis. The only thing that they bothered learning about him was that he was muggleborn and overly excited about everything. What they didn't bother learning about him was that the only reason Dennis was excited about everything was because he didn't know what he wanted to be excited about in life. So he just became excited about everything instead.
First year was gone, and so was Cedric Diggory. The minute that Dennis heard the news of the boy's death, he experienced a familiar feeling. It was one where it felt like his stomach had plummeted and a group of flies had invaded his mind, buzzing everywhere and not making any sense. It was a feeling where Dennis couldn't move, not even if he tried very hard, because his brain was busy adjusting to the news. It was a feeling not too different to the one he had gotten when he had found out his brother was petrified, lying perfectly still in a hospital bed, kilometers away from home. Dennis hadn't realized it at the time, but it was the feeling that only came when he himself was changing, slowly realizing that the wizarding world wasn't as exciting and lively and happy as Colin had promised him it was. It wasn't only full of happy, orange spells that could make you laugh uncontrollably, or beautiful creatures that had only existed in Dennis's bedtime stories, or good always triumphing over evil, no matter what. It was also a world that was full of bright green spells that created a dreadful silence, and large eyes with the potential to leave their victim dead on the spot, and teachers that weren't really teachers, but were escaped convicts that wouldn't hesitate to murder an innocent boy and destroy all good in the world.
The strange feeling had become a regular thing. It plagued Dennis when he left a session of detention with the words "I will not disobey a pureblood" written into his hand. It returned when he left his first DA meeting, Harry's words echoing in his mind. It came back stronger than ever when he read the Quibbler headline: "The Second Wizarding War Begins".
The feeling became permanent in what would have been the end of Dennis's fourth year. He had spent many months hiding in his grandparents' house, on the outskirts of London. Collin had left a few days ago, claiming that it was time that he fought in the war. Dennis had stayed behind, following his parents' strict orders to not get involved in this horrible, bloody war. Dennis wasn't a fighter, after all. He had once imagined himself one, though, back in his second year, when he would sneak out of Hogwarts to venture to Hogsmeade, his blood fired with passion and his wand ready to defend the wizarding world with his newly learned spells. That passion and energy was long gone, though. Because although May 2nd, 1998 may have been the time to fight, Dennis Creevey was not a fighter. He was just a boy who might have once fancied himself a great fighter. Those delusions were gone now, though; he knew that the war was finished, Collin was dead, and Dennis would still never know what he wanted to be in life.
Dennis abandoned the wizarding world. The people in it were too beaten down and broken from the war, and were too passionate about their liberty and battle scars. Dennis didn't have any battle scars, not any visible ones at least. He wasn't like the other wizards; he wasn't an ex-Hogwarts student turned Auror to help prevent another war, he wasn't a wizard who became a Healer because of the impact the war had on them, and he wasn't someone who turned into a teacher at Hogwarts because he wanted to teach the new generations to protect themselves. He was a seventeen-year-old boy who had lost his brother because of the wizarding world. He was a seventeen-year-old boy who was now going to leave behind the wizarding world because it held nothing for him besides lost dreams and dead family.
Dennis hadn't ever wanted to fight, hadn't ever wanted to be a strong wizard with bravery filling his mind. He hadn't ever wanted to join the thousands of wizards and witches his age that lined the streets of London, wands hidden as they prepared to go to fight. Dennis was ready to find a nice and quiet life on the outskirts of London in a sleepy muggle town, where he would just be free to play his music quietly in peace while rain quietly pattered on his windows. Dennis was looking for a life where he could burn his photos of the wizarding world, forgetting the days when he had wanted to be a street fighting man.
OOO
So that was the first chapter of Aftermath! I hope you enjoyed it, because I've already written the second chapter and would love it if you read that as well. If you liked the story, please leave a review. If you didn't like it, I'd appreciate criticism as well. If you were indifferent, than you can express your thoughts with a well-worded "meh" in the review section. Or, if you're daring, you can even capitalize the word an add punctuation as though it were a real sentence, like so: "Meh.". It's pointless, of course, but reviews tend to bring me joy and happiness and sunshine and rainbows and unicorns. But then Voldemort sucks the blood out of the unicorns, so I don't have those anymore.
Anyway, I'll just briefly explain the idea behind this story before I ramble too much. This was written for a challenge where I am given an album and turn it into a story. My album was Forty Licks, by the Rolling Stones, the most amazing band in the universe. The first song in the first disc was "Street Fighting Man", which was the inspiration for this chapter. The next song is "Gimme Shelter", one of my favorites, and inspired the next chapter. Basically, every chapter will be inspired by the according song. Now, don't think that this will be a story where every line is copied, with some Harry Potter things added in. It also won't be some story where I add the lyrics in italics and have little to no story line. Instead, I will have twenty (or possibly forty) one-shots, each focusing on a specific character after the war. The character, song title, and chapter title will be written at the start of the chapter, and at the end I'll announce the next chapter's song. As I said before, the next chapter is written after "Gimme Shelter". If you're interested, you can just type "Forty Licks" into Wikipedia and you'll get the track listing.
I recommend listening to the songs, because although you'll most definitely get the one-shots without listening to the songs, it would probably help. In general, these songs are great, so they would be nice to listen to even without reading the chapters.
Anyway, before I go on for too long, I'll just say that I hope you enjoyed this one-shot, and to look out for my next chapter, because that will be coming up quite soon.
Sincerely,
ItsOnMars :)
