Hogwarts Assignment #12
Photography: Famous Photographs
Task #10: Moonlight: The Pond - Edward Steichen (1904): Write about someone who likes to draw
AN Warning for depiction of life with a disability. AU in that Dean's father left when he was a child.
Dean Thomas did not always like to draw. There was a time when all the sitting involved with creating masterpieces would have bored him. Not that his friends actually know of that time, of course. Hell, Dean barely remembers life before the plague. It wasn't actually a plague of course; no the technical name is about a dozen syllables longer than it has any right to be, but the result was the same.
Where a happy, energetic little boy preparing for his first year of school and football tryouts had once stood, a husk came to sit. Weakness and pain, pain that had had him screaming once upon a time, kept him from the physical activities he'd so enjoyed in his early years.
The search for a diagnosis and cure was what caused his father to call it quits. The bastard just upp'd and left one day….
Thankfully, there was art. Where sports had once stood in the child's heart, art took its place. Ms Ellis, the primary school art teacher, had taken him in and offered an alternative to staring blankly as his classmates ran with wild abandon during recess. He learned how to draw images that were as life-like as they were fantastic. Images of his family going to the beach without a care for how far they have to park… images of himself pushing on his sister's stroller, not because he needs the support, but because that's what big brothers do… images of himself surrounded by friends in celebration rather than in upset that Dean hurt himself again. With nothing but some pencils and paper, Dean could escape into fantastic worlds, utterly unlike the one that he found himself in. Art became an escape that he never wanted to be rid of.
When Professor McGonagall comes to invite him to Hogwarts and later, Madam Pomfrey shares that she has a drink that can take all the pain away, Dean is excited. Of course, he is. Hogwarts is offering him the chance to be an utterly ordinary kid without a medical history a mile long, the chance to make friends who like him without any luggage attached. Dean'd be a fool to skip this chance.
That doesn't stop him from making extra sure to pack his art supplies in his trunk, however.
Maybe here, Dean's escape can become his hobby. He's already stepping inside a world filled with the fantastic, right?