A/N: For all you Americans out there, football = soccer. Since Dean is supposed to be English, I figured he would call it football.
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.
Dean Thomas was hiding. Hiding from the world that was. Hiding from his parent's horrified expressions, from the letter that shattered the world. "You are cordially invited to attend Hogwarts Academy for Witchcraft and Wizardry.. Please meet the Hogwarts express....." His father's horrified voice had petered out after that.
"Is this some kind of joke?!" screamed his father, after he had regained his voice. They had decided it was, and went on with daily life, partly frightened.
Then had come the owls. Hundreds of them, carrying letters. His parents told Dean to stay in the house, barricaded the door; every time they stepped out the door they were mobbed.
"Mum.." Dean had said weakly, "maybe this isn't a joke." His mother had told him to be quiet and to go back to his room.
Dean's isolation was sealed when the representative from Hogwarts came. The wizard kindly (too kindly) explained all of Dean's "good luck" and said he would take them to buy school supplies. After he turned the cat into a pig, his parents fell back into stunned silence.
He found himself spending a lot of time on the football field by himself. He would spend hours shooting goals and running drills. As his parents distanced themselves from the "freak" (as his little brother so kindly put it), he went over strategies on a board in his room and packed his posters of Manchester United.
At Hogwarts, things were a bit better. He wasn't an alone freak, he was a wizard. Yet he still felt oddly separated from all the purebloods that he had befriended; they were friends, yet they couldn't understand what his life was like, being the odd one out. When he showed Seamus a football, Seamus pretended to be interested, then started talking about Quidditch.
Quidditch. What a horrible word. He had found it okay, but could not understand their fascination with it. He was good at it, but not brilliant. And after a time, he found that whenever they went to the Quidditch pitch to practice, he ended up practicing football on an abandoned pumpkin patch.
He used two sticks for the goal-posts and drew the lines in the dirt. He brought his football and imagined being a professional footballer. He had long ago given up his dream of playing for Manchester United- a wizard could not play on such a well-known Muggle team, the Ministry would not allow it. Still, when his mind wandered, he found that no matter how hard he tried, he still hoped that it could someday happen.
One day in his 3rd year, Dean realized he was being watched. He turned around and saw a short brown haired girl, Amy, a Ravenclaw whose last name he couldn't remember.
"You're a Muggleborn?" she asked timidly.
"So what if I am?" asked Dean coldly, tired of that question.
Amy gulped. "So am I," she said, then, almost imperceptibly, "can I play?"
Dean was shocked, and barely got out a nod.
She was the best player he'd ever seen. They played at a deadlock for an hour, with Amy finally winning at the very last moment.
She smiled softly. "Same time next week?" she asked. When Dean said yes, she kicked the ball back to him, and walked back to the school.
Amy and Dean played two or three times a week for the next month. Soon, word began to spread, and Muggleborns from all the houses came to play football, eager to regain some fragment of the world they had been forced to leave behind. Some were good, some were bad, but Amy and Dean took everyone, coaching them, and organizing teams. In the winter, they cleared the ground of snow and bundled up, but never stopped playing.
Eventually, a few half-bloods and purebloods joined the teams, surprised to find that there were other sports, perhaps even better then Quidditch. They learned to play, though Dean lost count of how many times he had to explain offsides.
In early June, Seamus joined the teams. He never explained why, but practiced obsessively, and became a pretty good player.
When Dean went home for the summer, to parents who wanted a normal son, and avoided the one they had received, he knew that the world hadn't shattered after all. It had simply been reborn.
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