Dean Thomas felt like a hero. Sadly, it was not anything like the flourish of trumpets and air-kisses all around and rose petals under his feet. No, Dean was at the most unpleasant stage of the heroic path–the feat itself.
To say the truth, he had pitifully rarely got any roses or trumpets. Take for example his Quidditch career. Dean was the youngest and the most scoring Chaser in the North American League. Damn, he was the only scoring Chaser there, but that changed nothing. Even with him being now the star of the team, he had probably less fans than Hogwarts' stadium used to gather when he had played for Gryffindor. And in the UK he was simply nobody. No wonder, given that the NAQL team was invariably eliminated from every international tournament at the very first stage. In fact, the only one who really hoped to win was Mr Andrews, Dean's team owner and coach, and also the league's president. Almost complete Squib from his birth, he was a passionate fan of Quidditch and was willing to spend all his immense fortune just to make the national team world-class. Alas, his enthusiasm was not enough to overcome the century-old tradition of the New World's Wizarding society, shortly formulated as "first of all we are Americans". In the US, wizards and witches lived among the Muggles, enjoyed all the Muggle tech advances and generally preferred Muggle ways, including Muggle sports. Quidditch was hardly more popular than soccer, and only a hopeless optimist could expect it to rise anytime soon.
Dean Thomas was no optimist. Nevertheless, he deemed the chance given him by Mr Andrews the best in his life. With it, he had finally persuaded his mother to return to America and was able to make sure that she and his sisters not only lived an easy street but also had their whims fulfilled, within reason. And he could indulge some of his own whims. Dean affectionately patted the Mustang on its sun-heated fender.
After all, he had had nothing else to do, so what harm could be there if they wandered some country roads for an hour or two? Unlike that ridiculous couple, he was not in any haste. Dean shot a side glance at Lovegood, her nose buried in the map, and his attempt to return to good mood failed again. All that was badly unnerving. When descending an air-stairs at Heathrow, he could not have guessed that just in a few hours he would find himself on some God-forsaken road to nowhere, accompanied by two downright losers. Even if he had imagined any encounters with former schoolmates, there would definitely be neither Lovegood nor Longbottom in them. Nothing adventurous, spontaneous or weird.
But at first everything had gone according to the plan! Until Seamus announced through the Leaky Cauldron's fireplace that today was not a good day for a visit because he had until next morning to care for a sick paternal grandmother who didn't tolerate any magical stuff, so… When the Muggle grandmother behind Seamus' back said rather clearly "Accio strawberry bowl!" and ruffled her grandson's hair with a perfectly manicured dark hand, Dean had politely promised to come over next day and said goodbye.
To take offence was no use. Just as to try and put into Seamus' head the right view on the best friend's obligations. The optimal decision would have been to get wasted right there at the Leaky Cauldron's counter, and thus to pass time until next morning. Dean could have done exactly so, if only he had not left the Mustang in the Muggle part of the city.
When Dean had just agreed on a meeting with the treacherous Finnigan, he had been imagining colourful details of a trip to a place like Brighton: salty wind in their faces; frisky Muggle gals in crop tops or gay-coloured sundresses hitch-hiking at the roadside; a sunset-painted sea; cold beer on the car's bonnet… Or maybe Deauville instead of Brighton: all the same but with the gals babbling something incomprehensible in French so they wouldn't even have to invent witty replies.
In fact, Lovegood was wearing just that kind of a sundress with flower patterns, and most of the time one could not comprehend what she was saying, but that was not exactly what he had hoped for.
With their meeting postponed by Seamus, they would not have time for Brighton, much less for Deauville, as Mr Andrews had never been especially generous with leaves and Dean was to return to the base in two days. Again, the optimal decision would have been to hand the Mustang over to the rent-a-car agency and to go back to the bar and to make the best use of the time remaining while there was an opportunity to rest from the training routine. Had Dean done it, by now he would have been in a state wherein he wouldn't give a slightest damn that he was again alone in that bloody London and that absolutely nobody cared for him there.
But Dean hadn't. Instead, he had decided to change some money at Gringotts and carelessly walked into Diagon Alley. And bumped there right into those two.
It was hard to believe now, but for a moment Dean had felt something like joy when he recognised Neville Longbottom in that lamppost fella wearing Muggle clothes. After all it is really sad when your homeland has forgot you altogether, even if you have never had any particularly warm feelings towards it. So Dean had been glad to be able to say hello (just hello!) to a former classmate, and he had let his guard down. Instead of pretending to be really busy and put a quick end to the short, non-binding conversation, he had made a mistake of mentioning the agreement foiled by Seamus. A big, grave mistake! Immediately Neville had felt responsibility for his schoolmate and–which was much more important to him–for his brother-in-arms. It seemed that the seventh year in Death Eater-occupied Hogwarts did have an influence on him. Used to being the resistance leader inside the school, he had never got rid of a habit of patronising the DA members as their ex-commander. Even though Dean had spent that year all by himself in the woods and wastes, on the run from Snatcher gangs, and had never been subordinated to him, he had seen a problem, however petty and insignificant, and turned again into the Wizarding World's Defender and Saviour No. 2. And Lovegood, who had just emerged from a small shop, did not hesitate to suggest a solution: "You can join us at Harry's birthday party. Surely he'll be happy to see you!"
At that moment Dean had made the second (or third?) unforgivable mistake. Instead of simply declining without any explanations or justifications, he had made a florid speech of how happy he would have been to accept their kind offer if not for the Mustang that absolutely could not be left unattended for such a long time.
"But that's brilliant!" Neville had exclaimed. "We could ride your car together. And I was worried that Spei Certus," he had proudly held up a pot with a strange-looking plant, "could be harmed in the Floo network. We know it doesn't stand Apparition, that's why we went from Hogwarts by train…"
Even then it had not been too late to give those two a polite refusal and to go his own way, leaving them and their pot to their own fate. If only Lovegood hadn't been wearing that short spaghetti strap dress… If Longbottom hadn't been beaming as if he had just heard that Potions were excluded from the school curriculum forever… And most important, if Dean himself hadn't been longing to escape some place far from Diagon Alley, even better far from London…
All in all, there was no one else to blame. Although the desire was overwhelming! Which only made him more annoyed. Really, what had he been thinking of when listening to Lovegood's vague explanations of how she had once travelled from Ottery St. Catchpole to London by Muggle transport? Or when he had felt content with a five-year-old road atlas from the rent-a-car agency?
They had crossed Surrey smoothly enough, if one did not count Neville's tense face, its hue comparable to that of young mandrake sprouts. Or mature sprouts? Dean could not say for sure, having thrown Herbology out the door the day he had received his O.W.L.s, and Neville himself was not in a state to use his naturalist's eyes. And Lovegood, with her perpendicular world-view, was also not someone to ask such mundane questions. Instead of an answer, one could get a half-hour lecture on the habitat and behaviour of Dwarf Bouldermunches.
Anyway, who cared for the shades of green? The key fact was that Dean had decided to leave the M3 and go around Southampton by country roads in order to take a shortcut and to give Neville some rest from the noise and speed of highway. It had turned out to be a pretty good rest, because after just a mile the Mustang got stuck in the middle of a cow herd. Lovegood, suddenly almost an ordinary teenage girl, had squealed and clapped her hands, Neville had been gradually returning to normal, while Dean, his head down on the steering wheel, had for the first time asked himself the question of what the tattered Grindylow had he plunged into another adventure–a thing that he had vowed to avoid until old age.
They were standing before what was a bridge on the map and a gap-toothed row of old concrete piles in reality. So the question resonated in Dean's head, persistent like an alarm bell. Why had he let chaos invade his life again?
"Well, what we are gonna do?" Longbottom said, looking far less confident than in Diagon Alley in the morning.
A little bright side it is, to knock the disgustingly heroic manners off our Rikki-Tikki of Gryffindor, thought Dean.
Some things just should not change. If Longbottom officially resigned from the post of the most losing loser of their year, who would take this unenviable honour? Dean strongly suspected that he was next in line. Well, maybe together with Malfoy, a good candidate in his miserable state compared with the airs and graces of the past. But Dean was not willing to share anything with Malfoy, so he felt paradoxically better seeing Neville's face clearly confused. It meant that the unshakable foundations of his existence still held, just like those stupid piles: while they stood, it did not matter that the bridge floor had long crumbled or been transported elsewhere. In case of need the bridge could be rebuilt with minimal effort. Longbottom was a loser; Lovegood, a weirdo; Harry, a hero. These were the immutable piles of his abandoned and dilapidated bridge.
That one, sloping under the current, must then be his best friend Seamus.
"We could levitate it to the other side," said Lovegood, pointing a finger into the Mustang's dashboard.
"Or Transfigure something into a new floor…"
Whoa, that's my idea, thought Dean. Although, sounded by Longbottom, it had lost all rational grain.
"Or dry the river up and simply cross it?"
For a moment Lovegood seemed to emanate Egyptian desert heat. Even the air around her quivered.
Some Sekhmet, Dean thought. He shook his head, driving away a long-time-ago vision of Luna in the Lion Hat.
"Shrink, lighten and carry over?.."
"Okay, stop it!" Dean intervened in their questionable brainstorming. "We're not Transfiguring or levitating or drying anything."
"Or we could charm it to fly like the Weasley car," Neville would not quiet down. "And to get to our destination by air. Remember, Harry and Ron in the second year–"
"Like you know how to do that! Ginny has told me how complex those charms were and how long it had taken Mr Weasley to apply them…"
The name had escaped his tongue. The name that he had been trying to erase from his memory all the year past. That he had been trying not to recall all this day, ignoring the fact that he was going to her voluntarily. Harry's birthday, Longbottom's manipulations, his own Londonophobia were good excuses to tell others, but deceiving himself was a skill Dean had not yet mastered. That was probably the true source of his bitterness: doing what he was not meant to do, realising that fully but not admitting it to himself–it wasn't easy to refrain from pointing fingers! He had made Neville responsible for them having left the highway and zigzagging those mud tracks which had several times led to dead ends. Naturally the cause was that oaf of Longbottom and not Dean who had got his licence only nine months ago and felt unsure with left-hand driving and wanted himself to have a rest from the speed. And the goosy Lovegood was guilty of not having GPS built into her blond head. Though it did not stop her from bombarding Dean with an insane amount of absurd advice…
"So what do we do?"
First of all we're Americans, decided Dean for himself and for the Mustang. He got back to the driver's seat and commanded:
"We go back and look for a way round."
Of course it was a bit frustrating to go back because of such a petty obstacle: it was not even a proper river that blocked their way, but rather a brook, although it ran in a deep ravine. Maybe they could find a flatter bank and ford the streamlet, but was the Mustang fit for such feats? To create a new bridge seemed now all the crazier idea. Dean had certainly rented such a gorgeous car not to leave it to the mercy of two half-educated experimenters who had most likely never levitated anything larger than travelling trunks.
He stroked reassuringly the Mustang's rough dashboard upholstery, as if promising not to let anybody hurt the car. As soon as he had seen the magnificent dark-red convertible standing forlorn in a far corner of the agency's parking lot, he had immediately and irreversibly fallen in love. Despite all the clerk's attempts to dissuade him from taking a left-hand-drive and not-so-new car, he had held firm. He and that Mustang were so alike: both strangers in this land, both born to ride free but pushed upstage; actors who had played their role and were now forgotten. They were meant to keep together. Dean was even starting to consider buying the car from the agency where it would rot to dust in obscurity.
"Where now?" asked Neville, getting on the back seat.
"To the latest fork," said Dean, while concentrating on managing a U-turn on a narrow strip before the bridge. "We'll look what the signs there say."
"Do we really need the signs?" said Lovegood, sounding surprised. "We could just choose the way by the rule of the maze–always turn left."
"We must now have London to the left," grumbled Dean. "Your rule is good only for going back to the start."
"Right," she said calmly, once again putting behind her ear a strand of hair blown off by the wind. "And starting anew."
Dean could not understand her reasoning, and did not want to. So, in order not to clutter his brains up with Lovegood's meaningless ideas, he refrained from arguing with her. He had developed that protective strategy back when they had been living together in the Shell Cottage. It had been easier to keep his mouth shut without even trying to dispute her freaky claims, and (the key thing) without paying attention to her twittering on. Like that, Lovegood had been tolerable enough. At any rate, she had then been the only one who had cared for him a little, whereas Harry, Ron and Hermione had clearly been trying to seclude themselves to discuss their plans in private. Lovegood had not divided the Cottage's dwellers into ins and outs. Sometimes she had been even amusing. But in such moments Dean had somehow felt himself a traitor. Not that he had had any feelings towards her. Except maybe for one time when she had been practicing with her new wand in the front yard at sunset and her hair suddenly seemed fiery red… But that illusion had faded together with the sunset. Anyway, why should he be defending himself? By that time, he had long been dismissed and could freely admire hair of any colour.
I wonder what kind of relationship they have, thought he. No doubt, they would be a good couple. Especially for a circus.
The sign at the fork was no help, but Dean had already decided where to go. To the right and thus to the south, towards the highway they had made a mistake to abandon. To hell with foolish rules. He grinned, pleased with himself.
"So why did you leave to America after all?"
'Cause I didn't want to walk the same streets as my traitor daddy, thought he. To meet wizards of that age range, and every time–be it a shop assistant in Diagon Alley, a healer at St. Mungo's, a Quidditch coach, the father of a girl I like–every time to think that it could be him. A way to go insane.
"Better climate."
"That's right", nodded Lovegood. "They don't even have Wrackspurts there. I mean you don't."
Now Dean felt something resembling disappointment. For once he had felt an urge to tell someone why he did not want to live in England; to tell the truth, and to be understood, to have the other party agree that he had no better choice. Usually he simply said something like "My father left us when I was little, so I don't remember him at all, not even sure he was a wizard". But in fact Dean was almost perfectly sure. Too fairy-taleishly had that crook wooed the American art student, young and new in London. To hear her tell it, he had been a true Prince Charming, complete with a family mansion in central London. Though that could have been another tale that his mother was so good at. After she had once confessed that his father had left her before his birth, it was hard to trust her as he used to. He had strained his memory so, trying to recollect a little bit of something! And it had turned out that his parents had never even lived together.
"I just didn't want you to think bad of me!" his mother had wept after spilling it out by chance. "I was so young and silly, and he was so, so tragic and mysterious, like Prince Hamlet! He used to say that he rested his soul with me. That I'd changed him. And when he stopped coming, I couldn't believe it for a long time, I waited and waited… What had I done wrong? Why did me leave me?"
"Must've rested enough," Dean had said bitterly, still shocked by the revelation. "His vacation ended."
After a well-earned slap, he had forever closed the topic of paternity. He had ceased questioning his mother, ceased standing hours in front of a mirror, trying to guess which of his features were the gift of Mr Fake Name For Seducing Women Without Taking Responsibility. And at the first opportunity, he moved his family to the New World so that he never ever again had to think about it.
"Yeah," he said, "we don't have Wrackspurts there."
"Are you okay, Dean?" Lovegood said, looking into his face and brushing her fingertips on his right arm.
Who said that the most witchlike eyes were green or black? Dean had never in his life seen anything more mesmerising than those pale translucent whirlpools. To look into them was like gazing into the sky reflected in a lake surface, losing gradually the sense of up and down, losing the sense of reality, having one's head spinning…
"Don't distract me," he said through his teeth.
They had just entered another village. Hedgerows squeezed the narrow road from both sides, here and there forming a solid vault overhead. A tight green tunnel where any turn could hide a hay truck or a little brat on a bike.
"I only thought you could be hungry," she said, shrugging.
Oh, Dean was not just hungry! He felt a black hole in his belly, ready to suck a galaxy in. They had had a quick snack at the Leaky Cauldron, and later at a petrol station Dean had added a cup of coffee and a chocolate bar, but that seemed a lifetime ago.
"So?" he said indifferently.
"I'm hungry!" said Neville. He even put his pot in the corner of the seat and moved forward, his elbows on the front seats' backs.
"Accio!" Lovegood waved her wand and caught from the air a small green apple, clearly touched by worms at one side. "Oh sorry, Neville, I aimed at another… Dean, could you please stop for a moment? Okay, now… Accio!" She proudly handed Longbottom another apple, a bit bigger and yellower than the first. He dug his teeth in and champed it down, though still with a sort of grimace.
"How does it taste?" said she.
"Sour," said Neville. "But if we apply Ripening Charms on the tree–"
"Stop it," said Dean in his most grim and decisive tone. "Had I known that you were gonna raid people's orchards, I wouldn't go with you anywhere. What would headlines in the Prophet be like: The War Heroes Steal Muggle Apples… Breaking the Statute of Secrecy with that."
The war heroes fell silent, hopefully feeling ashamed. But as soon as the car started on, a little rain of apples struck them, one even hitting Dean's head.
"Spontaneous magic", said Lovegood innocently. "Are you sure you're not hungry?"
"I think I know this country," said Dean, as he stretched flat on the crispy carpet of dry light-green moss. "I must've hid somewhere here from the Snatchers."
Lovegood had Transfigured a splinter into a knife of sorts and was thoroughly shredding the ham they had bought before crossing the M27 and going deeper into New Forest. They had been pretty lucky to spot a small supermarket; before them laid miles and miles of the national park, and only in the end waited the feast at the Weasley house. Imperceptibly, Dean had started to believe that the adventure would end well. They would not get lost again in the tangle of the country roads, but would reach their destination and say happy birthday to Harry, and Dean himself would be able to kiss Ginny on the cheek in a friendly manner without looking like an idiot blushing with no reason. Those were his plans for today, but the sun was still high and they were not in any hurry. Anyway, there was no force in the universe that could tear Neville away from hunting rare herbs. While waiting for him to satisfy his Herbological itch, Dean had decided to give his eyes a rest and let Lovegood get busy with the food.
That oddball had found a huge burdock leave and donned it like a clumsy hat. She looked like a weird overgrown forest fairy, and it was only exaggerated by her fumbling with the food, which almost seemed to be some strange ritual.
Suddenly he remembered how she had brought some flowers to that elf's grave. Maybe it was because she was kneeling, or because the burdock hat resembled the one that he had conjured for Dobby (that's what his name was!), or maybe just because this was a day of unbidden recollections of the war that had turned out far less romantic than he had once imagined.
Dobby's death had proved not enough to make him realise that. When Neville had activated his fake Galleon, calling everyone to defend the castle, Dean had felt truly happy. He had been so exhausted by waiting endlessly for unknown, so eaten-up by worrying for his friends, that he had rushed to the fight without any hesitation, even though he had had nothing to fight with.
"Fortune favours fools," Seamus had commented when Dean had boasted his new wand won from one of the Death Eaters. And hugged him briefly, which had been better than a hundred passionate words.
But somehow Dean had expected more from Ginny. Even though he had seen her beaming when she had recognised Harry in the Room of Requirement while not noticing Dean himself at arm's length. Yet he had longed to hear her saying: "I'm glad you've survived." Just that. For he had come to Hogwarts to fight beside her, to protect her. They had never met during the battle as he had hoped, but afterwards Dean had immediately found the islet of red hair in the sea of heads. And when he had approached, he had understood at once that he would not get a joyful greeting, and that had had nothing to do with Harry.
At that moment his hopes had not mattered. She had been standing there in front of him, lifeless from the loss, biting her lips, trying either to keep tears in or to push them out. And he had only wanted to share his strength, to take on a part of her burden and of her pain. But again she had not needed him, even as a silent, nameless shoulder to lean on. To be spurned as a friend had turned out hundred, thousand times worse than to break up in the sixth year. If they were neither a couple nor even friends, what were they? Strangers? Acquaintances? Bother.
"Fellow Gryffindors, that's what you are," Seamus had said with a short drunken laugh, when Dean had opened up to him over a bottle of firewhisky. "In our House we don't share bad things with each other. She'll invite you to her wedding all right, but crying–that's a thing between her and her mirror. Or her pillow."
By contrast, Lovegood used to visit Dobby's grave to weep. Ravenclaws were so rational, if one could apply that word to a living example of perpendicular logic. She had grieved in a place meant for grief, while showing stiff upper lip the rest of the time. Dean had been too submerged in his heavy thoughts to think even once whether she also needed support and comfort.
"Lovegood!"
"Hmm?" she raised her head, the make-shift knife frozen over the ham.
"I'm glad you survived."
"I'm also glad that you survived", she said seriously, brushing her hair away from her face with the back of her hand.
Dean sprang on his feet, turned to the bushes where Neville had disappeared, cupped his hands and yelled as loud as he could: "Neville! I'm glad you survived!"
"What?" Neville said, appearing from another side with a bunch of flowers in his hand.
"Time to eat, that's what," Dean said, embarrassed, and hastily snatched his sandwich from under Lovegood's hands.
"I think we'd better put the Spei Certus away from Dean," she said. "It seems he's inhaled enough already."
"Impossible!" said Neville. "Here in the open, and though the protective cap…"
Nevertheless, he carried the pot into the car together with the fresh herbs. Dean waved his wand, turning the burdock leave on Lovegood's head into a straw hat.
The map was changing its scale after Lovegood's wand movements, becoming more and more detailed. It was like skydiving, the thing that Dean's teammates had introduced him to: a terrain that looked a patchwork blanket from high above approached strikingly quick.
Lovegood had been busy with the atlas all way long, but Dean could not understand how she had managed it. In the US, a Wizarding patent for such a spell would cost a fortune.
"I think I know this headland," she said with her finger pointed at some spot on the coastline. "We're almost there, do you hear, Nev?"
"Huh?" Neville jerked his head up, shook his head to get rid of sleep, and sat upright. "Already?"
"We have no more than ten minutes to go. See that hill over there? Ottery St. Catchpole is right behind it. It's just I've never come from this side, there is a straighter road to the left. And over there is my house," she waved her hand further to the east.
Dean watched her animated face with mixed feelings. He was proud of both himself and the Mustang for having finally done it, but at the same time he felt inexplicably sad and justifiably worried. He would like to have to travel some more. He was even willing to do it again from the same start, to choose again the same turns. Or maybe, on the contrary, to explore something absolutely new. But in any case he would never let them levitate the car.
Lovegood half-rose from her seat, clutching its back with one hand and using the other to hold her hat from flying away. Sea-scented wind was whipping at her hair and the hem of her dress; she seemed to be rippling in it like a pennant on a yacht's mast.
"Yoohoo, here we are!"
"Yoohoo!" Neville echoed her clear voice.
"Come on, Dean, call them too! Aren't you glad?"
He said that he was really glad of course, what with being so tired and nearly starving. And it was a solid truth.
P. S.
"Hello, Mum? Mum, I'm at Heathrow! I'm okay, the flight's gonna depart on time. Yeah, I was settling something here… I'm saying, it's nothing, you'll see for yourself. Yeah, Mr Andrews let me. He wasn't too happy, but it was just a few more days. Don't worry, it's nothing crazy! I've just bought something. Listen, Mum, can you answer me a question? Did my father… my real father have any tattoos? Mum, I don't 'go again', please just answer! What? I see… I'm saying, I see, thanks. Okay, Mum, we'll talk about it when I come home. Love you too. Okay, they're calling my flight, gotta go. Bye!"
Dean hung up and went back to Seamus who was waiting for him in the terminal.
"So long, mate! Come again soon."
"I'll try. By the way, I've got things to do here."
"What things? That beautiful blonde of yours?"
"Not quite," said Dean, musingly rubbing his left forearm. "I just decided to follow that blonde's advice. Maybe the Hat Sorted her for a reason after all."
"Our Hat? At Hogwarts?"
Dean nodded and held out his hand.
"Say hello to your granny! Hope she doesn't get so sick any more."
"She won't," Seamus dropped his eyes, trying to look remorseful. "Maybe next time we go to Deauville all together?"
"You, me and your granny?"
"Yeah, and your blonde."
Dean shrugged and started off to the boarding. Somewhere, several hundred nautical miles away, under a clear and transparent sky, the wide blue palm of the Atlantic was gently rocking a huge cargo ship carrying a load of car containers.
All was not too bad.