Dean Thomas (![[info]](https://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} artistdean) wrote in ![[info]](https://www.insanejournal.com/img/community.gif){kind=small} finnigans_rpg, |
Dean looked at Gwenog sitting down, so poised and so defiant and he wondered if he could even get up the courage to stand. There were extra people here today, there often were at this time of year, and even though he knew everyone had signed the confidentiality agreement he couldn't help but be nervous. He'd written down what he wanted to say, but he had a feeling it wouldn't go quite as he'd planned it. How he'd written it was pretty dry and it had skimmed so many of the personal details, so he'd written heading instead, things that he could talk around. He'd kept the text though, because there was every possibility he'd get lost. He took a shaky breath and took to his feet, eyes fixed on his parchment, even though he wasn't quite seeing it.
"My memories of the battle at Hogwarts aren't all that reliable now. I've had dreams and nightmares about them so many times I'm not one hundred percent sure what's real and what my mind has constructed to smooth over the gaps. I know that up to the point I arrived my war was unique, and I don't just mean that because I think I'm a special wand spark or something, I mean my set of circumstances aren't the same as anybody else's. I ran away for my seventeenth birthday because I could see what was coming. I grew up as a muggle, didn't find out that my father was a wizard until years too late for it to matter. I hid in forests and sometimes muggle towns, and I befriended other wizards I ran across, and goblins too. It wasn't easy. One of my new friends was killed letting me get away, meaning that I'm standing here now.
"I did get captured eventually, by Snatchers, but it turned out that they captured Harry, Ron, and Hermione right after my group and by the time we were rescued and went into hiding I had no wand. I know that much. I know that rescuing us from the hands of Death Eaters cost the life of a good being, and the torture of a brilliant witch, and the lies of someone unexpected." He could feel the threat of tears already and the tightness in his throat, but he had to go on.
"My nightmares started when I was in hiding, before the battle even begun. I had no wand and no contact with the people I loved and nothing to do but relive what I'd seen. And that was more than enough for one life already. It didn't stop me wanting to fight though, didn't stop me wanting to change the world. I was like Jones over there, I'd come from a world that didn't approve of my skin colour into one that didn't approve of my blood and I can't help either. I like to think if I was in the muggle world I'd be fighting there too, but I'll never know that because this is my world."
He pressed his lips together for a second and glanced around the room, eyes lingering for a few seconds on Seamus and briefly on some of his other friends. "When I arrived at Hogwarts it was the first time since August that I knew for sure that some of my friends were still alive. Already by then I don't think any of us were the people we'd been before. And that's where it starts to get really uncertain. I know I punched people, kicked people, killed people. I know I got a wand from someone in a mask that I at least knocked out. I know I did some of it with my best friend at my side. I remember being terrified. I remember not knowing if I'd survive the next five minutes never mind the night. There were spells flying everywhere and I lost my friends at some point. I know the place where I'd learned about my world was falling around my feet and that the place I'd assumed at eleven was the safest place in the world because there were wizards to defend me was being torn apart because people are just people and they can't leave each other in peace." Tears were welling in his eyes now, and he was gasping at each breath. Vaguely he saw some people making motions towards him but he brushed them away with a gesture.