Written for Round One of the All Year Long Competition.
Prompts: Romantic Pairing: Seamus/Lavender, Genre: Romance, Object: an old photograph, Dialogue: "What made you change your mind?", Word: explain
If You'd Been There
He loved Dean, of course he did. He was his best friend and the only boy he'd ever kissed. He'd do anything for Dean – die for him, anything – but Dean wasn't here. He might be dead for all Seamus knew.
That probably just makes it worse, Seamus thought miserably to himself. Because there wasn't really a way to justify this.
Dean wasn't there when Seamus needed him, but she was. She sat with him in the train carriage as the Hogwarts Express huffed towards Hogwarts – but it wasn't the Hogwarts he knew. It was darker, more dangerous… terrifying. Dean, for the first time since they'd started Hogwarts, wasn't beside him in the compartment to share in the emotions of the first day back at school.
Instead, Seamus had no one to smile at but Lavender. Because he needed to smile; he needed to pretend he wasn't scared, and he needed to be able to reassure someone that everything was going to be okay, because that was what he did. If he couldn't do that, he was going to fall apart.
And Lavender smiled back; a shaky smile, but a smile nonetheless. We'll get through this, she seemed to be saying. And he believed her.
That was the start of it all. Because as much as Seamus loved Dean, and worried for him constantly, there was a lot to be said for a person who was actually, physically, there. All he had of Dean now was a few of his drawings and an old photograph that he kept under his pillow.
But of Lavender, he had her company. He had her whispering in his ear during class, the ring of her voice at the table during breakfast, and the promise of her company whenever he felt like it. He had the touch of her hand on his arm when he came back from 'detention' with bruised and bleeding skin and the soft sound of her pity as she helped him bandage himself up. He had more of her than just a memory.
And slowly, things began to change between them. He never meant for his stomach to flutter when she smiled at him, or to look quite so forward to spending time with him. It just happened.
He felt guilty, on the nights when he took Dean's now-crumpled picture out from under his pillow and stared into his smiling, youthful face. It was from their fifth year. It had been taken a few weeks before their first kiss, back before they'd had that stupid fight and broken up for nine months. When Seamus thought of that fight now he wanted to punch himself; he hated thinking about all the time they'd missed out on. Time was so much more precious now than they'd ever imagined it could be.
But when he was with Lavender, he pushed it from his mind. Her presence brought light into the now-constant darkness; it lit up the gloom and banished both his guilt and his fear. She made him hope.
Despite his feelings for her, despite his guilt over Dean, despite the light touches and the coy looks that passed between them, nothing really happened for a long time. They spent time together, they talked, and they danced a dance of subtlety and flirtation. But that was it.
Neville asked him at one point what was going on between the two of them, and Seamus answered with a quite honest "I don't know". Neville took the hint and dropped the subject, but it left Seamus thinking. He hadn't realised it was so obvious to anyone else; that made it more real somehow.
He didn't even know if he could let anything happen with Lavender. It would be technically cheating, even if no one at Hogwarts knew he and Dean were together. He felt guilty enough that he had feelings for her; he couldn't imagine what it would be like if he actually did something about it.
He still hadn't decided what to do when matters came to a head. They sat in the Gryffindor Common Room as the fire petered out, their friends and housemates having retired long before. They'd been conversing earlier as they were wont to do, but now Lavender was reclining on the couch, her eyes staring vacantly at the ceiling, while Seamus gazed into the dying flames in the fireplace.
"I think I might go to bed shortly," Lavender said in the direction of the ceiling. "It's getting a little late."
"Yeah," Seamus said. "I was thinking the same thing."
But neither of them moved.
Then, out of nowhere (although it wasn't out of nowhere, because hadn't they been leading up to this for months?) Lavender said, "You should come with me."
"What?" Seamus said, taken off-guard. "To your bed?"
"Yeah," Lavender said almost coyly. "You want to?"
Yes,a part of Seamus wanted to say. A very large part. But there was another part, the part that still ached every time he looked to his left in class to find Dean's usual seat empty, reminded him that he couldn't. That he shouldn't.
"I can't," he said, standing up. "I wa-" He began to say that he wanted to, but stopped himself. "I'm sorry, I can't." Without looking at Lavender, or even in her direction, he fled up the stairs.
The first thing he did was head to his four-poster. He planted himself on the edge and fished under his pillow for what he knew was there. His hand touched on the familiar texture and he pulled out the grinning face of Dean.
The boy in the picture looked so happy. He had no idea what Seamus was so close to doing. What he still wanted to do.
But he also had no idea of what was coming. He was fifteen; only two years younger, but a mere child after the hellish time the pair had had lately. If Dean was indeed having a hellish time.
How would I even know? Seamus wondered. They couldn't risk staying in contact while Dean was on the run; for all Seamus knew, Dean could be dead. It was a thought that should have made him even more sure of his decision to leave Lavender sitting there in the common room… but somehow it didn't.
If Dean found some pretty boy while he was running around out there, Seamus's conscience asked, would you be okay with Dean cosying up with him?
He ignored that question. He didn't like the answer.
The quietness of the dormitory was almost overpowering. For six years it had been filled with the snores of five other boys; now Harry, Ron and Dean were on the run and Neville was being forced to hide out in the Room of Requirement, for fear the Carrows would take the opportunity to rid themselves of him. It was unnatural and disconcerting, being alone in this room.
Seamus wanted a warm body to cuddle up with; he wanted someone's touch to distract him from the awfulness around him. And sure, Seamus wanted that person to be Dean, but Dean wasn't here.
And Lavender was.
Almost without making a conscious decision, Seamus found his feet carrying him out of the dormitory, down towards the common room. This is wrong, that annoying part of his brain kept insisting. But he was no longer listening.
If he'd found the common room empty, that would have been the end of it. He would have headed back up the stairs and gone to bed. But when he stopped just before the doorway leading out into the common room and looked around, he saw the tell-tale head of brown hair partially obscured by the back of the couch.
As he watched, Lavender rose and turned towards the girl's dormitory. "Oh," she said, when she spotted him.
"Yeah," he said.
"What made you change your mind?" she asked.
"We should go up to my dormitory," was all he said in response. He didn't want to tell her of his moral quandary, or share with her the details of his crippling loneliness. "It's empty. And besides, I can't get up your stairs."
She nodded, quickly and succinctly. She was so different to the girl he'd known for the past seven years. This would never have happened, before this past nightmarish nine months. She'd changed so much. They'd both changed.
She walked past him, while he stood rooted to the spot. Then she paused. "Come on," she said, holding out her hand.
He smiled faintly and took it, allowing her to lead him up to his dormitory. In some ways, she was still very much the same.
"What's this?" she asked a week later. Somehow she'd found her way back into his bed the nights following their first dalliance, in the same way her hand had found his as they walked down corridors together. Seamus didn't really mind.
But now her hand had found its way under his pillow as they settled down to sleep, and had touched upon a strange texture. Seamus watched uneasily as she pulled out the worn photograph.
"Care to explain why you've got a photograph of Dean under your pillow?" Lavender asked. Her voice was light, but it was the type of light that meant the situation was anything but.
Seamus attempted to shrug casually. "He's my mate," he said. "And I miss him. I like to keep the photo to remember him by, in case… in case he doesn't make it out there."
"I'm sorry you miss him," Lavender said, touching his arm gently. It had come to be a thing between them, touching each other's arm. It meant It's okay and I'm here for you. "But… why under your pillow?"
"It seemed the safest place for it," Seamus said. "I didn't want it to get lost or stolen."
Lavender hesitated. Seamus knew that hesitation. It was the pause she used when she was composing her thoughts; when she was figuring out how to word something.
He knew what it was she was going to say. She thought that it was inappropriate for a friend to keep a photo of another friend under his pillow. That it was something more suited to a girlfriend or boyfriend.
What Lavender did say surprised him. "You know, I caught him kissing Gareth Pewsy, once," she said almost conversationally. "By accident. I mean, they were by the Quidditch stands, so they weren't exactly being subtle about it. That was after he broke up with Ginny."
"Did you," Seamus said, his voice flat. It was the wrong tone to choose, he realised as soon as he'd finished his sentence. It was going to do nothing but further Lavender's suspicions.
"Is he gay?" Lavender asked.
"Bi," Seamus said. And then, partly because he was only confirming her suspicions and partly because he was sick of keeping everything to himself, he added, "We both are."
"I see," Lavender said softly. "And you two…?"
"Yeah," Seamus said.
"Did you break up before he went on the run?" Lavender asked.
Seamus didn't respond. Which was, in itself, Lavender's answer.
Despite the late hour, Lavender swung herself out of bed and stood up. "I see," she said. "I think I'm going to go back to my own bed tonight."
Seamus didn't say anything as she left. He was too busy wiping away the tear rolling down his cheek.
It was a few days before they got the chance to talk alone again; Seamus suspected that it was because neither of them were particularly eager to seek each other out. But eventually they were left sitting awkwardly together in the Room of Requirement with a heavy silence hanging over them.
Seamus took it upon himself to break it. "I'm sorry," he said.
Lavender looked surprised. "That's okay," she said. "I don't really blame you."
It was Seamus's turn to be surprised. He'd expected her to be hurt, or angry, or at least a little upset. That was what he knew of Lavender. This calm acceptance, however, took him off guard. "You don't?" he asked.
Lavender shrugged. "It's not an easy time for any of us," she said. "You must miss him terribly."
Seamus didn't answer. He couldn't answer. "That's not an excuse," he said. "For what I did."
"No," Lavender said. "It's not." She bit her lip. "You know I can't keep going with this now, right?" she said. "I can't be part of this. I'd feel like I was cheating on someone as well. And… I don't want to hurt Dean like this."
Seamus let out a low laugh. "You're a much better person than I am." She wasn't even cheating on someone and she was too guilty to do it. Didn't that just make him the scum of the Earth? He loved Dean and he'd betrayed him. Her admittance of her morality hit him like a punch in the gut.
"I don't think so," she said thoughtfully. "I just think that people break in different ways."
"What?" Seamus asked, confused and uncomprehending.
"Never mind," Lavender said. "I think I knew it wasn't going to go very far between us, anyway. I always felt like there was a part of you that you held back. I didn't really care though. We could be dead before the war's over. We can't afford to live with the expectation of tomorrow."
"That's… morbid," Seamus said, although for the most part it was a summary of the thoughts that constantly ran through his mind.
"It's practical," Lavender told him. She hesitated. "I might be poking my nose in where it doesn't belong, but for what it's worth, I hope it works out between you and Dean. I don't think you should let what's happened this year ruin it."
Dean had no reply to that.
It was only a month later that Neville led Harry into the Room of Requirement, and the battle was on. Seamus knew that Dean would have been called back to Hogwarts.
He only hoped he was still alive to show up.