To Be A Magical Boy

Epilogue

"... that we really don't mind if you want to. You know that your old room will always be there. You know both you and Seamus are welcome at any time."

Dean smiled into the phone, the mobile one he'd gotten for the very purpose of calling home because Eoghan, though half-blood and son of a Muggle that he was, didn't have one at his place. He would admit to enjoying the freedom of being able to call his mum, Andrew and his sisters whenever he wanted to. Whenever he needed to.

"Thanks, Mum," he said. "But it's fine. Eoghan said he's fine with us just staying here for as long as we want. We were hoping to move into our own place sometime, though."

"Your own place?" His mum sounded surprised but still slightly pleased. "Well, that's a big step. Are you sure you could afford something, the both of you?"

Dean shrugged, leaning back against the kitchen counter. Eoghan's house was relatively small, the kitchen contained and cluttered with appliances, and the fridge splattered with notes pegged beneath magnets. It was familiar now, had become so after months of living in it. It almost, almost felt like home.

"We should be fine," Dean said. "Seamus is pretty steady with his work and I've got that interview for at the gallery that's looking pretty promising. We were thinking of just leaving it till we were more sure what was happening with all that."

"Oh, but that's wonderful! How exciting! Would you like Andrew and I to come and have a look around with you?"

Dean almost blurted out an abrupt "No!" but managed to bite his tongue at the last second. It wasn't that he didn't appreciate the offer, because he did. It wasn't that he didn't want to see his parents either, because he loved seeing them and made the effort to visit every other day. It was simply because he and Seamus had agreed that they wanted to do it themselves, entirely themselves, and it might have been foolish to think so but Dean quite liked the independence of doing just that.

Since the Battle of Hogwarts as it had now been formally dubbed, Dean had been thriving on the independence. Or perhaps isolation was a better term for it. He hadn't quite been able to grow accustomed to the presence of so many people around him after months of time with barely a handful. With the exception of Seamus, of his few friends that he kept in contact with from school and Eoghan who had readily welcomed him into his home, everyone seemed just too much.

Dean didn't want to go back to Hogwarts. He didn't want to go back to a place he hadn't attended for nearly a whole year, to complete an education he didn't really need and to step the corridors of a place he'd seen so much that still plagued his nightmares with horrifying memories. Seamus hadn't either, had actually been muted in his translation of his feelings on the matter when he'd admitted them to Dean, and Dean was more than happy for the both of them to put the school behind them.

Hogwarts held some good memories for them both, held many good memories, but right them the bad outweighed the good too heavily. It just felt too soon.

So they moved in with Eoghan. It was an escape of sorts, because Eoghan lived about as far away from Hogwarts as they could get while still living in Britain. Dean liked Eoghan, had come to like him more since he'd started living with him, and was only inclined to move out because he felt the urge to get his own space. A space he could share with Seamus because, as they'd decided, where one of them went the other would definitely follow.

The war had been a solid blow to them all. In many ways, Dean knew he hadn't recovered from what had happened. He knew, and not only from Seamus commenting on the fact, that he spoke less than he had, that he felt the urge to see his family more – if only ever briefly – like a compulsive urge simply because he could. That at times he lost himself in his drawing and painting and few things could drag him out of it.