"Oy, Thomas! Get your scrawny arse over here and help me with this shite!" Seamus Finnegan said irritably. By all rights, he should have spent the day on a broom, playing a rough and tumble game of Quidditch with his old classmates followed by a half dozen or so pints at the pub. But no, he was out in the hot sun, performing manual labor for free.
Dean sauntered over, an indulgent smile on his face. "You calling my arse scrawny?" He laughed, a deep, rumbling sound that came up from his belly and managed to elicit a grin from Seamus every time he heard it. He loved the wanker—and not in some stupid, pansy-arse way, but like the brother he'd always wanted—and knew he'd lay down his life to help him.
Dean, of course, took the bait. "Your arse is flatter than a firstie's tits, my friend. Besides, Luna happens to love mine." He waived his wand, steadying the piano as Seamus (who'd finally mastered Wingardium Leviosa) now that the pressure was off levitated it into the magically expanded moving van.
"And a good thing, too," Seamus said, releasing the spell with a flourish. "Because se's going to be the only one loving your arse for the next hundred years or so, while I will be happily shagging every-"
Dean interrupted, wiping his sweaty face with the hem of his tee shirt and grinning. "While you will be the same pathetic, lonely tosser you've always been, Finnegan. Spare me your illusions about your sex life. You're just jealous."
Seamus picked up a cold bottle of butterbeer from the chest. Opening it with his teeth and taking a long swig. "Well, who of us would have guessed that Loony Lovegood would turned into such a fit bird, anyway? And by the time it became apparent to the rest of us, you'd already blinded her to anyone else's charms."
"Just because you were blind, deaf and dumb-"
"Well, I wasn't lucky enough to be locked in a dungeon with her—"
Dean shook his head, "But you were locked up in the room of requirement with Lavender for weeks, and still managed to lose her to Neville Longbottom, of all people. You're never going to live that one down, mate."
"Aye," but that's because she never forgave me for kissing that French bird at the Yule Ball, and anyway, you didn't have any competition with Luna. It was a choice between you, a goblin and a very old man, wasn't it?"
Dean, shaking his head and grinning, climbed into the van to bind the piano in place, and Seamus, who'd made his point, went looking around for any carefully packed boxes they might have missed. Of course, the bizarre and fascinating objects lying around the house, one of which nearly took off his fingers, another of which insulted him, often distracted him. He made good progress, however, as Ginny and Luna had picked up most of her things on the first trip, that very morning. Finally, lacking anything better to do, he allowed his curiosity to lead him up the spiral staircase to the top floor of the house, only to be confronted with something that had rubbing his eyes in disbelief.
While he was still trying to wrap his mind around what he was seeing, he heard heavy footsteps pounding up the stairs and a panicked voice calling out, "Seamus! Don't-"
Dean stopped in the doorway, horrified, as he found his friend lying across Luna's childhood bed, collapsed in paroxysms of laughter. It was pretty much his worst fear coming to life, for his fiancée's ceiling was covered with a larger than life, anatomically correct painting of Dean, reclining on a bed, wearing nothing but a smile. A frame had been painted around the portrait--a ribbon made up of the word 'love' repeated over and over again in tiny red letters.
Seamus finally calmed long enough to draw breath, wipe his eyes, and take in his friend's face, which was completely drained of color (no easy feat, that.)
"Never going to let me live this down, are you, mate?" Dean said in a horrified whisper.
Seamus' face split wide with a grin "Never in a million years, you wanker."