Disclaimer: You all know how this goes. I don't own the characters, I only fanfic 'em. Enjoy.

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Waking Seamus Finnigan
by: Mauvais Sang
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Chapter 1: The Awakening

Stragglers from a gray procession diffused through the mahogany frame, unsure in their steps and more unsure in their furrowed brows, a November drizzle fogging their meandering human souls: Is it death? Burial? Climax of another torturous scene in the drama of life, living, scurrying like filthy rats in a filthy rat maze? The void plateau, or the crass resolution?

I had been sitting here for a long time. Too long. Sitting in the dank, the rotten, the self-corrosion, where the sun would never bother me. I knew exactly what it was.

Most entered stony-faced carved like Moai, that wintry draft none too ingratiatory, another sound reason for their sombering visage, followed their flapping black tails and chilled shoulders of peevish patrons. On a rare occasion, where one would slip and forget their time and place, he would drink, speak, joke, and be merry, all but a moment he allowed himself a smidgen happiness before a sepulchral realisation would pull at his spleen and silence his laughter. The sepulchral realisation. Our sepulchral realisation.

A few stray wisps of dandruffed snowflakes rode their cloaks as they filed in alone or with a fetter. Even though they arrived at inconsistent intervals, it was not difficult to discern one party from another: lassitude cracked at the edges of their brow and corners of their poached lips. More so revealing was the fact that I knew who I was cautiously sifting for, and who I was not.

The pub was bustling with noise, but the Babel of tongues were ashen and gray. I listened for some relevant trace of dialogue in my simulation. Hood over my head, I rubbed at a lone flake until it melted into the wooden table below, keeping my eyes lowered. My boots rattled the jittery table as both my heels bounced anxiously. I wanted to lose myself in the rattling, melt into the table as the snowflake did, and disappear. Not all of our wishes can be fulfilled so easily, though.

"Jack Frost's a wintry bastard, isn't he?"

No answer.

"Crack a smile at least, won't you?"

"Don't bother. He's been like that since we came in. Ever since he was lowered, actually. We found him pissed drunk. He won't get out of his bum mood. The epitome of self-pity." A female voice interjected.

"You can't blame him. It hit him pretty hard."

"It hit us all pretty hard. It's no excuse for him to be a steaming clot."

"Can you show some empathy?"

"Why? You'd like to hear me bawl my eyes out? Tear my hair out? Throw myself into a bed of flames? Did you expect me to do that for you, Michael? Things don't work that way."

There was some careful selection of words before he answered. I was taken aback as well. The table stopped jittering as myself, and some adjacent individuals who had noticed their heated voices, listened closer.

"Gin, that was low. Don't sa--"

"Don't call me Gin."

"Ginny. That hurt."

"Well, we're all hurting now, aren't we?"

"Gin!"

"Ginny."

"Ginny, please. Don't."

"There's nothing to don't."

"I don't want to talk like this."

"Like what? There's nothing to talk like."

"Like the way you're talking to me!"

"You? There's a way I have to talk to you now?"

"I didn't mean it like that!"

"Like what?"

"Nothing."

"No. Say it."

"Nothing!"

"No! I want you to say it!"

"I just thought that since we copped off you'd talk to me differently!"

The screech of the barstool legs smearing against the solid concrete floor shrilled throughout the pub, heads turning with it. The bustling of tongues ceased and now there was two people left acting on this desolate stage.

"I wasn't right that night. It was nothing."

"No it wasn't. It was something, Gin, you felt it, I felt it, we felt it together. We had something, and we still do!"

"Don't call me Gin!"

"Ginny. Please."

"I want you out of here. Now. Out of my sight. I don't want to see you, hear you, know your name, I want you gone, now."

"Gin, you don't mean that."

"Out. Now."

"Gin! Ginny!"

"I said leave!"

"Gin--"

"Leave!"

I glanced up a little, careful to not let too much of my face peek behind my mood, seeing the act for the first time. The two were standing in the middle of the stage as the rest of the pub froze in time, their mirrored profiles facing me, a hunched over man between them oblivious, one staring ruefully at the other: the redhead was firm in place, mouth slightly ajar, bottom lip thundering in fury, brows severely arched, the dark-haired boy was watching for cracks of reluctance, desperately searching, his brown eyes worried and anxious. What sign of frailty he so forlornly wished to find was left unfound and he quickly turned to leave the pub, afraid of further damage to his pride, and the redhead was left with the resounding boom of the door as the dark-haired boy slammed it, slamming anger, frustration, and his loss with it.

The pub returned to its raucous as the redhead began to sob, the confusion of tongues enveloping exponentially as she drowned in the empty noise. I lowered my face to the table again. Watching for flakes. Listening for sounds. Hoping for resolution. I would only succeed in maintaining the voyeur's game.

"Ginny, come sit down." A new female voice appeared. It was light, airy, but held the tone that mothers held when a long-awaited child comes home with alcohol on his breath and a shattered heart to mend. Whispered cooing and soft words held the dialogue as the redhead continued to weep within herself. It wasn't too long before she had something to say.

"He's an idiot. He doesn't know what he's doing. He didn't know anything. I was stupid, stupid, so stupid. I wasn't right. I didn't insinuate anything when I wanted to see him. I just needed somebody."

"Oh, Ginny, none of us were right, and you were only doing what any one of us would do."

"So did you fuck some old bloke too, Luna?"

"No, that's not what I meant, I did not copulate with anybody or thing, but I meant it's natural to be lonely, and to call for help, and to have that call answered. Natural like the way snow flakes fall from those heavy, full bellies, we call clouds. There's no right way to fall. It just is."

"It was wrong. Wrong, wrong. I shouldn't've done it."

"I don't want to hear you yelling at snow flakes anymore. Have your butterbeer and they'll just melt away. Let's talk about something else."

She mumbled something indiscriminate.

"Hm? I couldn't hear that."

"Nothing."

"Ah, well perhaps the better to start a new topic with. Where is everybody?"

"Where were you is the better question."

"I was off admiring the shapes and tastes of different snow flakes. They each do a wonderful, delightfully distinctive dance on your palate."

"I should try it sometime."

"You should, the many different tastes you can taste in a single flurry is magnificent. Now, where did everybody go?"

"Angelina and Katie have gone off to the bathroom. Fred and George had to take care of some business next door. Cho, Padma, and Anthony are around somewhere. Terry's probably off with that sod. Hermione hasn't shown up yet and so hasn't Neville and Parvati. I don't know where anyone else is or if they're intending to show up. And Ron. Well. Ron's here. You can see for yourself."

"Ronald. Poor dear. He really shouldn't have had all of that alcohol. It really ruins his lovely complexion."

"Don't bother, Luna. He's a bloody mess. He won't answer. Hermione didn't show up with him. I haven't been able to see her since this afternoon, actually. I think it had to do with Ron's drinking habits. I'm happy Lavender isn't here though. She might try to make a move on him." She laughed a little, it sounded awkward through her thinning sobs.

"What about Seamus?"

Seamus. Me. Here. I was alarmed, and my heart beat faster. I listened more carefully.

"I don't know where he is."

"He has a room here doesn't he?"

"Had."

"Oh, well did you give him a friendly knock?"

"He's not there."

"Is he going to come?"

"I don't know."

"That's a shame. He's going to miss a lot."

"He'll have his reasons."

"I hope so."

The abyss, the failure, the destruction and decay, lay festering beneath me as I stared down at those beasts in their hundreds upon hundreds of accusatory eyes, screaming, wild, breeding in the filth of my umbrage, poised to consume my soul, body, my eyes to become their own, ears which hear only the worst of hexes, lips that taste only the foulest of waters--my life will make or break in this very moment, time will not stand still for any man, any virtuous of souls or virulent of beings--me, as I am standing on this gossamer of rope bridges, quivering in my wake, my own human weight snapping flimsy fibers at its anchors, ready to hurl me into that abyss so that I must run with the utmost of urgency to my cadaverous of fates or tumble beneath it. May I flee? May I escape? Or may I tumble and fall, arch gracefully into that supertemporal umbra of guilt, maddening, and torpor?

I sat, physically quivering in stressful anxiety, feeling blood pump from my heart and throb into my ears, brooding over this so-powerful choice. Heat stirred beneath my hood and sayings and sentences and yearnings flooded my head and almost escaped out of the edges of my lips before I caught them and beat them mercifully back into my throat, but they came back again.

I began to remember, as I sat there torn between wishing to shout and scream to Ginny and Luna, "I'm here! I've been here! I've wanted to be here ever since you clasped my shoulders in genuine coterie and reassured me a million times and once more that it will be okay!" and wanting to evaporate, to disappear, to sneak back upstairs, or out into the vitriolic cold and freeze, stop, suffocate, fall into that demon abyss, and simply die.

I remembered. I remembered it. I remember the coin, and the alarm, the haste, and the faces. I remembered Harry, and the night, and the empty space, and the breaths we took, and breaths we pushed. I remember how it felt when he asked me for my wand, and when I gave it to him, missed, ran for it, and just reached it. I remember the blood, the bodies, the bone, and his eyes. His eyes, flaming green, that asked me so many things, begged and teared, and made me beg and tear. The gasp and the rattling exhale. The flickering and the darkness. The void and the forlorn hibernation.

I remembered it all.

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A/N: I hope it was enjoyable. I'm welcome to any sort of comments. Too wordy? Too much dialogue? Too little? I'd like to hear it all.