Disclaimer: The characters and past events referred to in this fanfic belong to J.K. Rowling. She chains them up at night, but will occasionally let we little people take them out for a play and give them back to her. Draco, I imagine, enjoys the chains.

Chapter Eight

A Dramatic Entrance

Eyes travelled over the four seventh year students as they moved from class to class and whispers echoed in their wake. Hogwarts was suddenly full of students with nothing better to do than stare at Harry and co. as they moved through the halls.

'You'd think they had nothing better to do than stare,' Draco murmured between third and fourth period.

'Welcome to our life!' Ron said.

Things hadn't gotten much better by lunchtime. Ron, Hermione, Harry and Draco all fell into place along the Gryffindor table across from Seamus. 'You four really do know how to make a scene, don't you?' he asked no one in particular.

'We're not doing anything!' Draco said. 'What are they all so interested in anyway?'

Ron, who Harry had noticed had take the place as absolutely far away from Draco as possible, said, 'Well you and Harry obviously.'

'Everyone around here has grown up knowing you two as mortal enemies,' Hermione put in. 'Now you're in the same house and eating lunch together all chummy can you really blame them for taking an interest?'

'Well some of us are taking much more than just an interest,' Seamus said, nodding towards the Slytherin table. Harry looked in their direction and, different from the looks of curiosity and surprise the rest of the school were giving the quartet, the Slytherin table were shooting scowls and stares at Malfoy.

'Looks like you're in for it when any of them get you alone,' Ron said to Malfoy, making precious little effort to hide the glee in his voice.

Hermione made to scold the red head, but whatever word had begun to make itself out of her mouth quickly morphed itself into a yelp. The big doors to the entrance hall had been flung open and when Harry spun around with the rest of the school to see who had made the rather impressive entrance his eyes met with the picture of a woman on a mission.

'Oh bloody hell,' Seamus said, turning even whiter than usual.

'Seamus Finnegan!' the woman bellowed. Seamus shrank into his seat. 'Seamus Finnegan!' the woman yelled again.

'Can I be of any assistance, Mrs Finnegan?' Professor McGonagall asked the woman sternly.

'That's your mum?' Ron asked the top of Seamus's head, astonished.

'Yup,' came the muffled reply.

'Where is my son?' Harry heard Mrs Finnegan ask through clenched teeth.

'Why don't you wait outside in the entrance hall and I'll bring him out to you?' Professor McGonagall suggested.

'No bother,' Mrs Finnegan replied, 'I won't be long.'

Seamus, who had apparently heard Professor McGonagall's suggestion and thought it was a good one, had begun to rise from his seat before he had heard his mother reject the idea. He froze like a statue of someone with a terrible stomachache when his mother's eyes rested on him.

'Seamus!' Mrs Finnegan roared over the silence of the great hall.

'Yes ma'am?' Seamus choked out. His voice was only a shadow of it's normal self, but everyone in the great hall could hear it.

'What do you think you're doing leaving me that note and coming back to Hogwarts against my express wishes! How do you think that makes me feel! What did you think your father and I would do when we realised what had happened!' None of these were questions. 'Get your little butt over here NOW!' she screamed.

Seamus jumped up and ran to where his mother and Professor McGonagall stood.

'We're leaving!' Mrs Finnegan said. She spun around, and nodded a quick good-bye to Professor McGonagall and made her way to the door. She only took a few steps though before everyone in the hall realised that Seamus wasn't moving, and though Harry would have thought it was impossible, the silence grew thicker than ever.

'I won't leave,' Seamus said.

Mrs Finnegan stopped in her tracks and turned, slowly, to face her rogue son. 'We're leaving Seamus.'

'No … you're leaving, I'm staying. I won't leave Hogwarts … this is where I belong.'

'You belong at home with your father and I, because that's where I say you belong.'

'I'm not leaving,' Seamus said, a little louder this time.

'We've been through this Seamus. It's not safe here anymore … Hogwarts is a target for … for the Death Eaters. Dumbledore himself was killed here last year, and I won't have you in this place when even Dumbledore wasn't safe here.'

'I'm not leaving.'

'What … you think you're safer than Dumbledore was? You think you're going to be able to fight off the Death Eaters when Dumbledore fell to them?'

'No … but I'm not leaving either.'

'YOU WILL!' Mrs Finnegan screamed.

'NO,' Seamus yelled, almost as loud as his mother, 'I WON'T!' The boy was now standing to his full height, his fists clenched by his side, and a scowl that remarkably resembled his mother's was etched across his face. 'Don't you get it? This is my home now! This is where I can help fight against Voldemort the most!' The hall shivered at the sound of his name. 'This is where I'll learn to stand up for myself and to fight and to fight for good and not at home where you're afraid to even let me out of the house! You're always fighting for freedom and choice for wizards and witches, but when it comes to your own son …'

'That's different.' Mrs Finnegan said, red in the face but looking a little abashed.

'No it's not! Last week you lead a rally with hundreds of wizards and witches damning any force that would want to ban muggle-magical relationships but you won't even let me stay at Hogwarts! You practically spat in Voldemort's eye and said, "take that!" but it's too much for me to want to stay here to learn what I need to know to fight them in my own way. You're a hypocrite, and a fraud and … and I'm not leaving!'

Mrs Finnegan opened her mouth, and then closed it again, only to have it open, and finally close once more. She looked at her son through stern eyes. 'I didn't know … you never said that you felt … I always just assumed …'

'Would you like to continue this out in the entrance hall?' Professor McGonagall asked, and Mrs Finnegan nodded silently and swept out through the double doors. McGonagall followed, but Seamus didn't move for a moment, the apparent shock of what he had just done keeping him from heading towards the doors. When he did finally move Harry thought he saw the boy sway a little as he walked.

As soon as Seamus was out of sight the hall erupted in all sorts of tones, some people bothering to whisper, but most of them sharing their shock at the lunchtime interruption loudly and obnoxiously. Ron was amongst them.

'Bloody hell,' he said loudly so Hermione and Harry could hear him over the din. 'Now that's something to talk about!'

'What did Seamus mean going on about all that fighting for rights stuff?' Harry asked.

'Seamus' mum is a magical civil rights activist. Right now she's heavily involved in the fight against Voldemort's politics,' Hermione said.

'Voldemort has politics?' Harry asked.

'What … it's not just killing people?' Ron added.

'Of course it's not just about killing people,' Draco said, rolling his eyes at Ron. 'How do you think he got so many followers? Do you think he'd have convinced many people to side with him by saying that his main aim was just to kill anything that moves?'

'Oh, you'd know all about it then, wouldn't you Draco?' Ron said scathingly. Draco started and broke eye contact with the group, looking back down to his sandwich instead.

'Well he is right, Ron,' Hermione said. 'Voldemort started getting popular support by leading legitimate – albeit disgustingly amoral – political movements against things like muggle-magic marriage, muggle acceptance by the magical community. That's how he judged who he could trust to show his darker plans to. And so far as anyone can tell Voldemort is trying to take over the world and make a new world order, based on those original politics. Dumbledore and everyone else might be fighting against Death Eaters themselves, but people like Mrs Finnegan fight against what they stand for and against ignorance in the magical community.'

'I never knew any of that.' Harry said. 'I guess I never thought Voldemort had motives … just that he was off his nut.'

In the last few minutes of lunch break Harry, Ron and Hermione decided to check to see if Seamus was all right. They had heard several more small explosions of mumbled argument coming in from the main entrance while they were still eating, but it had been quite outside for some time now, so the group guessed Mrs Finnegan had left.

'Where do you think he would be?' Ron asked.

'Aren't we forgetting something?' Hermione asked as they made their way up the Gryffindor table. She turned around and ran back to where they had been sitting, grabbed Draco by the back of the shirt and pulled him off his seat. 'You come with us, Draco. All the time!' Draco and Hermione rejoined the others and they all made their way to the Gryffindor common room, in hopes of finding Seamus there.

They were in luck, and when they got to the boy's dormitory they found Seamus sitting on the foot of his bed, white, and staring at the floor.

'Seamus,' Hermione asked in a soothing voice, 'what's wrong?'

'I yelled at me maam,' Seamus said, transfixed by the piece of carpet he was staring at.'

'It was a hell of a show though, Seamus,' Ron said. 'You sure took the attention off us!'

'Yeah,' Seamus said, 'but I yelled at me maam.'

- - - - - - -

The rest of the day went off without too much of a hitch, though Seamus had taken to hanging around with the rest of them now, which meant that passing students now had Draco, Harry and Seamus to stare at. After dinner the group retired to the Gryffindor common room, and Harry pulled Hermione aside.

'Something's been bugging me about what happened this after noon,' Harry said. Hermione kept looking over to where Seamus and Ron had been left with Malfoy duty. 'Oh leave it Hermione! They're not gunna kill him in the five minutes it takes for us to have this conversation.'

'I wouldn't be too sure,' Hermione said. She pulled herself back from watching the oddly matched trio near the fireplace and focused on Harry. 'What was it you didn't understand?'

'It wasn't that I didn't understand something … I just didn't quite get it. Why is Seamus so adamant about staying at Hogwarts just to learn how to fight against people like Death Eaters? Most magical people will never meet a Death Eater – or at least not if we win this war – so why would Seamus be so adamant? Has he lost someone to the Death Eaters?'

'Well almost everyone has, I expect. But no one particularly close to him springs to mind. I just figured it was about standing up for wizarding rights.'

'Yeah, but I don't see Ron going crazy so he can have the right to marry someone with muggle parents. Why does Seamus take muggle-magical relationships so personally? Dean's not a muggle.'

'Well, Ron would care more if he got what was going on … or at least he had better care more if he got it. I expect Seamus takes it so personally because of the bigger picture of it all.' Harry gave Hermione a blank look. 'Oh honestly Harry, connect the dots. If Voldemort doesn't want a wizard to have the free will to decide to marry a muggle, what do you think his position on two wizards shacking up together would be?' The penny dropped, and Harry nodded. 'I mean … if Voldemort has this image of some perfect, macho, everyone is the same and everyone bows down to him world, it's not likely people in Dean's and Seamus' position would have a very comfortable part to play in that world.'

'No, I guess not.' Harry remembered the funny feeling he had had in his belly that morning, seeing Draco in just his pyjama bottoms, and he felt that Seamus' anger was justified.

'Was that all, Harry?' Hermione asked, casting another look to where Draco sat staring into the fire besides which Ron and Seamus were now playing a very active game of wizard chess.

'Yeah. Well …' Harry's eyes had also rested on Draco this time. 'Yeah, that's it.'

- - - - - - -

Draco had not had a good first day back at Hogwarts. When he didn't have Ravenclaws or Hufflepuffs giving him weird, questioning looks or talking behind their hands he had to deal with the terrible looks being shot at him by many of the Slytherins. Moreover, Seamus had neglected to mention at lunch that it wasn't only the Slytherins giving him looks of poison, but also many of the Gryffindors. It would take a long time for any of them to trust him.

One thing was sure though: Gryffindor common room was a heck of a lot warmer than the Slytherin one would ever be. A warm breeze danced across his cheek and the fire in the hearth warmed him in the large backed chair he sat in. Seamus and Ron were distracted by the game of wizard chess they were playing next to him, so he had time to contemplate Harry.

'What do you think our new defence against the dark arts teacher will be like?' one of the boys asked.

'Terrible, I expect,' the other said.

'What makes you say that?'

Draco watched as Harry talked over in the corner, the way his lips moved, the way he brushed his wild hair out of his eyes every now and then, the naïve look he gave Hermione as he seemed to have something fairly simple explained to him.

'You know I have a question,' one of the boys to Draco's right said, at the same time Hermione looked in his direction and Draco had to avert his gaze quickly.

'Yeah, what's that?' Ron asked.

'I understand now why Draco is in our house … but that doesn't explain why you three are hanging around him so much.'

'Oh, well …' Ron stammered out.

'Change of heart, Seamus,' Draco answered. He risked a glance back in Harry's direction.


Author's note:

YES i noe ... it's been months! but that's how long uni holidays are ... and without any need for procrastination i'm afraid attention to the finer arts dies (but i'm back at uni now ... so expect lots of procrastination and lots of chapters :P )

Also ... i noe this chapter dealt a LOT with Seamus, but i always liked him, and so i'm writing a bit more of his story because I want to bring him more into the lives of the other characters. Plus, every writer on this site has their own little eccentricities ... let Seamus be mine ;)

Cheers! and I hope lots of ppl review, old readers AND new :D

Thayle N