Notes:
I just felt like writing a Dean/Padma one-shot. Enjoy.
Dedication:
For ChainedDove, my lovely, wonderful, intelligent and caring beta, co-author and friend… I wish you all the best, hon!
Disclaimer:
Not mine. If they were mine, I would have somehow manipulated Dean into giving me art lessons, and I would be able to draw. I'm not able to draw. Nor are they mine. Mou…
* * *
There was something almost insulting about the sunshine that day. The sunshine, the birdsong… everything was wrong. This country was usually not this sunny. Figures… just figures that now, in this time, it would be so cloudless and balmy. Impertinently so, almost.
There was also nowhere to sit.
Sure, he almost always sat with Seamus and Parvati and Lavender and Neville… but not today. He knew what had happened. They, the boys… they all knew. Harry talked in his sleep, and he never remembered to cast silencing charms on the bed.
But he was more worried than they were about HIS return.
He glanced at his trunk, lying closed on the floor. Inside, there was a poster of the West Ham football team. Football had been his favorite sport, growing up. Football, not Quidditch. Hell, he'd never even heard of Quidditch until Hogwarts.
He was Dean Thomas, Muggleborn wizard.
Oh, it had never troubled him before. Sure, gits like Malfoy and his little bodyguards would sneer, but he had not bothered to let himself be upset with rot like that.
But if the Dark Lord was back… well, they all knew what types of people those Death Eaters wanted to eliminate.
He idly flipped through his sketchbook. Pictures of the Gryffindor Common Room, his home away from home. Pictures of Harry, Ron, Neville, Seamus… his friends. His best friends. Pictures of studious Hermione, with her face buried in Hogwarts, a History. Pictures of Harry and Ron playing chess, the latter with an uncanny calculating expression on his freckled face. Pictures of figures zooming around in the air during Quidditch games. Caricatures, most of them rather rude, of the Malfoy brat and Professor "Grease-ball" Snape.
The door to his compartment opened, and Parvati… wait, it was not Parvati. Padma, the Ravenclaw Patil twin. Padma walked in.
"May I sit here?"
Dean silently shifted aside a little so that she could sit down, and cocked his head to the side slightly, looking at her.
She looked almost identical to Parvati, Except for her blue and bronze Ravenclaw tie, and the fact that there was a little birthmark, a speck of dark stardust, in the center of her left cheek. And her eyes were more solemn than Parvati's. Dean was an artist. He noticed these things.
She looked at him expectantly, and he gave her an automatic, bland, disarming grin. "I'm Dean Thomas. You're Padma, right?"
"Right," Padma nodded. "You're from the same house as my sister."
Now it was Dean's turn to nod. She continued, "How're you people doing, with the…"
He knew what she was talking about. He-who-must-not-be-named. Back. She was a Ravenclaw after all… and hadn't their seeker been dating Diggory or something?
He shrugged, "I wish that the Ministry wouldn't be so…"
"Bloody stupid?" she finished for him. He glanced at her in surprise, and gave a weak laugh. She smiled somewhat. "Well, it's true…"
They sat, mostly silent, sometimes talking of random things. Classes. Teachers. Family. The differences between their Common Rooms. Dean idly doodled on his sketchpad as she talked about Charms, her favorite class. She had beautiful hands.
The snack trolley came, and both of them bought a few chocolate frogs. They ate in silence. But it was not a horrible, ringing silence. Or even a particularly uncomfortable one. They didn't know each other that well. But they were not complete strangers. It was all right.
Her braid. She was gazing out the window. He made his strokes very carefully. The braid was shiny, the light playing on it as if on a black woven rope. There. Her tie. Her nose, slightly upturned. The little freckle on her cheek. Shading. She had dusky, golden-brown skin. A tie.
The train gradually moved on, and at last, slowed, then stopped. Padma stood up, and, somewhat stiffly, proffered a hand. "It was nice to meet you."
He shook it, somewhat embarrassed. There was ink staining his fingers, but she did not seem to notice, or mind. Perhaps she was used to this sort of thing, in some way. She was a Ravenclaw, after all… the house that loved learning.
She picked up her purse, and walked out of the compartment. At the door, she paused. "Owl me over the summer, we can talk some more."
He nodded, and she walked away to find her sister.
In mid-July, Padma Patil received a note from an owl that she did not recognize. She opened up the envelope, and brown eyes widened slightly. Her face looked back at her, pensive, serene, slightly melancholy. But there was a little smile playing at the corner of the lips.
It was initialed in the corner. A little scribble. "D.T"
Padma smiled to herself for a few moments before returning to her Charms homework.