Dancing With My Father's Ghost

DANCING WITH MY FATHER'S GHOST

Author Note: This begged to be written after JK Rowling mentioned on her site Dean and his origins. Since it's now doubtful that that storyline will ever surface, I felt sorry for Dean and decided our favourite Gryffindor artist deserved a fic of his very own. So, without further ado, I present Order of the Phoenix through the eyes of Dean. The title is derived from the song Dance With My Father by Luther Vandross.

Prologue : Of East End Boys and West End Girls

31st August 1995

The Attic, 302 Westbury Avenue, Barking, East London.

Mum gave me this diary thing this afternoon. Said since I was a "growing young lad blossoming into manhood" (HOW embarrassing?!) I'd need somewhere to write all my deepest darkest secrets during the year. It's pretty cool of her, actually. At least she doesn't, like, want to read it or anything. And it's maroon and blue - Hammers colours!

So yeah. I'm Dean Thomas. No fancy middle names like Igor or Maximilian, just Dean. Plain old Dean. I like it that way. I'm fourteen at the moment, but I'll be fifteen on Boxing Day. That's a really wicked day to be born on 'cause it means double presents. Well, it doesn't really, but I like to think so. I'm good at art and I'm a massive Hammers fan. I used to go to all the home games at Upton Park when I was younger with my stepdad Alex. I don't anymore though ever since I went to boarding school in Scotland. Still, I try to keep up with how they're doing and stuff and I always make sure I have the latest team poster on next to my bed at school.

I go to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry - cool name, huh? It's well bizarre though because all my family are muggles, and I mean all of them. I guess I was just lucky. Mind you it doesn't mean I'm useless - Neville, a mate of mine, is pureblood for as far back as he can trace and he's really bad at stuff- especially potions. But Hermione, on the other hand (she's a girl in my year) is muggleborn and is just wicked at everything. Dunno how great she'd be if she didn't study all the time though - seriously, she defines the term swot. She's got better, though - she's pretty cool sometimes, actually.

I'm in Gryffindor house - the lions! We are the best house by far, like at everything. All the houses have different personalities and we're dead cool and brave and stuff. We always save the day. It was kind of weird though, because when I got sorted the hat kept banging on about stuff like I might be put in Hufflepuff because that was my destiny or it was in my bloodline or some random thing. I didn't pay much attention though because I'm muggleborn and no-one in my family ever went to Hogwarts. Stupid hat. I bet it gets well bored stuck in Dumbledore's office so it makes stuff up to make things interesting and to weird us all out. But yeah, Gryffindor's well cool.

There's four other guys and me in fifth year as well as the girls - but they're girls and so dead boring. First there's Seamus, who's my best friend. He's Irish and he's well cool. He's a massive Quidditch fan like all his family. They're wicked too - they live in a really nice house near Connemara which is in Galway. I went on holiday there last summer. Seamus is a right laugh and we do everything together. There's Neville too - I talked about him before. He's nice, just a bit daft. Terrified of Professor Snape too. But then we all are. Nah, Neville's alright. Ron Weasley's another guy - he's got bright red hair and loads of freckles, just like his family - all nine of them. He has five brothers and a sister. He's cool too and a legend at chess. In our first year he even won house points for it!

And then there's Harry. I know I said Ron was a legend at chess, but Harry really is a legend. When he was little he defeated this evil dude which made him, like, mega-famous so he was brought up as a muggle. Then he came to Hogwarts and still does loads of really wicked stuff, defeating bad guys and all that. He's well shy about it though and hates anyone talking about it. I dunno if we'd ever say it to his face but secretly Seamus and I are kind of starstruck by him. But he's a good bloke, and really normal usually. Actually, when he's not off on some hairbrained quest to rid the world of evil, he's kind of boring. But I can say that cos I know him. Most of the Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws think he's some kind of hero every day of the week - which makes me kind of a hero by association... it's pretty neat to be honest.

“Dean? DEAN! Tea's on the table, come on before it gets stone cold!”

Dean snapped the brand new diary closed and started for the stairs. Tonight was his last night at home before heading off to King's Cross tomorrow in order to take the train with all his classmates for his fifth year. His mum had promised to cook his favourite meal - chicken curry and rice with chocolate fudge cake for pudding - and he could smell its aroma permeating the house as he ran down the wooden stairs into the large kitchen that was the nerve centre of family life in the Thomas household.

The scene that met him as he entered the room momentarily brought tears to his eyes. Not only had Mrs Thomas made her extra-famous chicken curry just the way he liked it - not too dry, with plenty of spice - but the large table looked to be groaning under the weight of poppadums, onion bhajis, naan bread, mango chutney... there were tall glasses of mango lassi for his four siblings and himself and a glass of wine each for his mum and stepfather. This year, they'd really outdone themselves. And best of all, above the table was a large banner bearing the legend “GOOD LUCK FOR FIFTH YEAR, DEAN!”, festooned with glitter and sequins and bearing the very obvious artistic stylings of his youngest sister Jasmine, who was very proud that she could use a paintbrush now. Dean grinned widely and plopped down in the seat next to his eight year-old half-sister Nina, who was resplendent in Dean's old Hogwarts robes and a paper wizard's hat, brandishing a wand fashioned from a straw and talking very fast at their mother.

“I can't wait to be nine next month but I really want to be eleven 'cause then I can go to Hogwarts with Dean and that would be really cool and then we might be in the same house - oh, hello Dean, I saved that seat especially for you - and I would get to do all the really wicked things they do there like twanky-figgy-ration and play Quiddup... Mum, do you reckon I'm a witch?”

Mrs Thomas smiled at her daughter and kissed her forehead. “I don't know, my love... we'll have to wait 'til your eleventh birthday, won't we? After all, we never knew Dean was a wizard until his letter arrived,” she replied, ladling fragrant curry and rice onto plates which were then passed around by Sebastian, Dean's junior by three years. Sebastian, like Dean, was a huge West Ham fan and was most aggrieved that Dean wouldn't be accompanying him to any matches until the Christmas holidays.

Dean took in the bustling scene in front of him and sighed contentedly. It was nice, he mused, to be at home with his mum and Alex and Baz, Nina, five year old Jasmine and the newest addition to the Thomas clan, baby Adam. He was lucky too, he felt - Alex was his stepfather but dad to the rest of them, and yet Dean never felt like he was different or unwanted by Alex, who had taken Dean under his wing as soon as he had started seeing Dean's mum. Dean didn't know his real dad, who had walked out on his wife and month-old Dean with no warning one blustery January night, never to be seen or heard from again. Still, Dean didn't mind all that much - after all, he had reasoned long ago that his father obviously didn't care that much about him if he managed to walk out without a backward glance, and so Alex was a far better dad for loving him like his own children.

And as the Thomas family raised their glasses to Dean and drank to his good luck for the coming year, Dean felt that, really, he was the luckiest East End boy in the world. A wizard with the best family on the planet... who, he wondered, could really ask for more?