InsaneJournal

Who: Dean Thomas and Seamus Finnegan
What: Talking about girls, vacation planning, et cetera
Where: The halls of Hogwarts
When: Monday, April 19, 1998
Rating: Low...some language?
Status: Log. Complete.

As soon as class ended, Dean caught up with Seamus--he'd realized halfway through the day that he completely forgot to tell him about Parvati, and it wasn't the kind of thing you could spit out in the middle of the Gryffindor table at lunch. Not only that, but they still hadn't decided what exactly they were doing over the summer, and while Dean could roll with spontaneity, planning their trip would be a welcome distraction from thinking about the looming NEWTs.

"Hey, Sea! Hang out for a sec, yeah?" He glanced pointedly at the group of Gryffindor girls ahead of them--he wanted to give them a chance to get around the corner.

At hearing Dean call out his name, Seamus stopped and glanced back at his friend, following the pointed gaze to the girls up ahead. Message clear enough there, they'd obviously done this before, so Seamus stayed back a bit to let the girls get ahead and around the corner. "Sure, what is it mate?" Just because it was a conversation best had without the girls right there, didn't really narrow it down all that much. It could just mean Dean wanted to discuss something that was private rather than specifically about any of the girls, or maybe there was plotting to do. More than enough possibilities.

Dean leaned against the wall as they let the girls get a head start, putting his hands in his pockets. "Might not be news," he said, though he was grinning. "You might already know." He glanced one last time down the corridor to make sure the group was out of earshot, then leaned forward, lowering his voice. "I think Parvati is seriously into you."

Seamus gave Dean an amused look for a moment before laughing. "Oh come on, seriously into me? Vati? Dean, I've been flirting with her for ages!" He smiled and shook his head. "Mate, if she wanted more than flirting she only had to say or give an indication. She has to know that. You sure you're right on this one?"

"Let's just say I've got a pretty good notion. Besides, Padma thinks so too, although I don't think Vati's actually straight-out said it to her." Dean wiggled his eyebrows. "You should have seen her when I was doing their portraits the other day and you came up." He put on an imitation of Parvati, sighing 'dreamily'--"Oh, Seamus..." All right, maybe he was exaggerating a little bit, but he was pretty sure he wasn't wrong.

The dreamy sigh imitation got another laugh out of Seamus. "What? You're not going to continue and sing my praises? It's not 'seriously into' unless you do!" He grinned shamelessly and shook his head. "Come on, really, what'd she say? Or are you going off what Pads says? ....Which you know, is actually valid. That or you two are trying to set us up, but I really don't mind if that is the case."

"It wasn't what she said, it was how she said it. I mean, what she actually said was that you shouldn't visit Padma at her internship or the shop might explode when you walked through the door, but trust me, girls don't normally sigh like that when they're talking about the path of destruction you leave." Dean elbowed him in the ribs. "Also, I think you just want to hear me try to do Vati's voice again."

He started strolling idly down the hall now that the rest of the class had cleared out. "I told Pads my suspicions and asked if I was wrong, and she said she didn't think I was though she didn't know for sure. I'm just saying, I'm pretty sure if you made a move in that direction, it wouldn't be turned down."

"I'll have you know that plenty of girls speak of my path of destruction with hearts in their eyes," Seamus countered with a slightly cheeky grin at the elbow. "But yeah I kinda do. The high pitch is really flattering on you." The cheeky grin got wider as he teased Dean before jumping to it and starting down the hall with him. It did fade into a more thoughtful look as he considered what Dean had said about Padma's thoughts on the subject. "So...make a more overt move rather than just flirting and I've got good odds? Hmm...I'd have to make it pretty clear it's not just a friend thing since we've been pals for ages, but doesn't sound like a bad idea." Seamus stuffed his hands in his pockets and gave Dean a cheery shrug. "I've made a move off much worse chances."

"So is this some new thing or have we all just...not noticed really before?"

"I know, they're always telling me I should sing falsetto more in choir." Dean grinned right back. "But yeah, you've made a move with no chance in hell. This is like...at least quadruple the odds."

He shrugged at Seamus's question. "I honestly don't know. I mean, it might be new, since Padma doesn't know for sure yet...you'd think if it had been the case for awhile, they would have talked about it already, right? I mean, they're always giggling about something, I have to guess they talk about that kind of thing regularly. I certainly don't remember her saying your name like that before, although then again I guess most of the time when I'm around her you're there too." He wiggled his eyebrows. "So what are you gonna do?"

"I keep telling you, Dean. That's your way to stardom," Seamus winked with his usual amount of cheek. "I don't know, I just always assumed they talked about everything you know? Like a twin thing. But you're right, you're right, me being there does tend to skew things, too dazzling for dreamy sighs," he joked with a laugh. "Come on Dean! What do you think I'm gonna do? Better than a chance in hell and it's Vati? Why not take a shot right? Worst I get is a no, then shrug it off and continue like usual."

Dean beamed. “Great, you two can get together, and Padma and I can hang out and say rude things about you while you’re too busy snogging to complain. Everybody wins! Oh--hey, speaking of hanging out with Padma and Vati, the girls wanted to do something big for the end of the year, maybe with fireworks. I thought you could probably oblige, and if not we have one more Hogsmeade weekend to get the supplies.”

"So pretty much what you two do already just that we can snog and ignore you? Sounds like a definite win to me," Seamus grinned before almost stopping in his tracks at the next bit. "Wait wait, hold up, you guys didn't think I already had plans in place? Are you kidding? I've got big plans! Doing quite a few from scratch too, so I'll likely do a test run of those a few weeks before, maybe out over the lake. We'll definitely need more supplies though, I can only sneak so many potions ones really. Maybe I could get extra if I tell Professor Vance it's all educational too. I mean...it is."

“You didn’t tell me! I just assumed you were distracted with your busy schedule of flirting, Quidditch, and study group. All right, no, we can make this work--what potions stuff do you need? We can split it up between us, she’s more likely to believe it’s educational if I’m the one asking.” Fireworks would be pretty spectacular over the lake. “Do you already have a place picked out for the real thing? We thought maybe if we asked Professor Black he’d give us permission to be out on the Quidditch pitch after dark. It seemed like a good place to have a party, and to set off fireworks without burning anything down. But then again, the lake would reflect everything, that would be awesome...”

"When do I ever not have plans involving spectacular explosions? But alright, I've got a list I've been making. I'm pretty sure I've got enough for the tester ones, the real deal we'll need to get Vance to help and use some of our next Hogsmeade trip for. If she asks for plans to make sure we're not just screwing around with her precious materials, I've got some written out. Might help sway her." Seamus paused thoughtfully to consider the location. "See I considered the quidditch pitch, since it is better for parties, but the fireworks would look way better over the water, and there's some ideas I've found where I could have firework-like effects right on the surface of the water. More versatility and all, plus I guess we can sell it as being safer since it'll be over water? The profs might have to talk to the mer people about it or something. Think I should approach Lupin about the whole thing?"

“Yeah, probably, for something that disruptive. I don’t want the mer people dragging us under and drowning us right before graduation!” Dean laughed. “Okay, if you’ve already spent that much time on it, I think you should turn it into Vance as an extra-credit project. Can’t hurt, right?” Honestly, it seemed fair--Seamus was practically a demolitions expert by this point, it seemed like he ought to get some recognition for it. “We can divide and conquer with the shopping list when we go to Hogsmeade. I don’t want to spend our entire last Hogsmeade weekend buying supplies.”

"But what an end to the year that'd be!" Seamus laughed. He started ticking off points on his fingers. "Okay, Lupin for permits stuff, Vance for materials help, we'll hit up the shops at Hogsmeade and I'll try and get mam to owl whatever we missed or can't find. Besides, we've gotta spend part of that last Hogsmeade on your drawing thing. It worked so well last time!" Seamus paused at the fifth finger as he realized something. "...Oh wow, me and extra-credit, who'd have thought? I'm like a bonafide Ravenclaw! I'll fit right into Pads' crowd once that Polyjuice is done."

Dean almost choked laughing trying to picture Seamus as a Ravenclaw. “You’d sooner make a Slytherin! Anyway, now that we’ve got that planned...can we talk about where we’re going on our awesome portkey adventure? I don’t even care that it’s still a couple of months away, I want to think about that instead of NEWTs.”

Seamus gasped in faux offense, clutching his heart as if wounded. "Maybe we can't! A Slytherin? I'm hurt Dean, so hurt. How could you think so low of me?" He transitioned straight into a laugh after though and skipped a few steps ahead of Dean to spin around and walk backwards while he faced his friend and explained their great travel plan. "Okay! So we have to pick if we want to make our Awesome Portkey Adventure, I hope you can hear that capitalization, a tour of Central and South America, or Oceania and South Asia. I'm kiiiind of leaning towards the latter at the moment, but whatever we land on we should probably pick soon so we can figure out which places we want to hit. I don't think we'll need a strict travel schedule but some idea is good."

“No, you’d make a terrible Slytherin too. Just a worse Ravenclaw.” Dean shoved him, grinning. “Yeah, I think you’re right, let’s just pick one and go with it. If you’re leaning towards South Asia, let’s do that then! We should probably at least know where we’re going and in what order, if not how long we’ll spend in each place.” His mum would have a heart attack when she found out they were wondering unsupervised on some other continent, but hopefully, she wouldn’t know until after the fact. “We can borrow an atlas from the library and start working on our travel map, yeah?” The librarian was weird about duplication spells, but he figured if they were cast out of her sight, she never had to know.

"Yes, exactly! We'll figure out an order but time frames we can do later. And hey, if we hear of some cool place to stop along the way...then it's not like we have a travel schedule to fuck up. We'll set up a whole map beforehand with ideas." The more they discussed it and planned it, the more excited Seamus got. It made things feel real, and this would be the adventure of a lifetime. Even just thinking about all the possibilities had him grinning giddily. All at once he jumped up with a laugh and slapped Dean on the back before wrapping an arm around his mate's shoulders, giving him an excited shake. "This is going to be the greatest! Can't wait!"

Dean laughed, catching his enthusiasm. Everything was going his way lately--art school, maybe sharing a house with some of his best mates, and this trip was going to kick it all off. “It’s going to be the best summer ever. And considering some of the summers we’ve had, that’s saying something.”