20 Random Facts about Seamus Finnigan
Title: 20 Random Facts about Seamus Finnigan
Author: l3petitemort
Rating: hard-ish R
Warning: some smexing here and there, of both the het and slash variety
Word Count: 3,645 (i know. they're more like vignettes than facts... ha.)
Disclaimer: i own nothing.
Author's Note: written for round five of the harry potter random facts fest: hp_random_facts.
20 Random Facts About Seamus Finnigan
001.
His birth had put the fear of God into his mam's Muggle midwife.
At his da's insistence, his mam had agreed to forgo the magical Attendants (mostly to teach his da a lesson), and Seamus entered the world wailing in fury, bright red magic crackling around his tiny body. The cool, collected midwife had shrieked and nearly dropped him from her capable hands. The only thing that had kept Seamus from cracking his soft, newborn skull on the floor was his mam, who lunged forward, dripping in sweat and still in terrible pain, to rescue him.
She brought him to her breast as the midwife looked on in embarrassed horror and kissed his angry magic away. After conducting all of the usual newborn exams and finding nothing wrong, the midwife blustered away as quickly as was proper. Seamus's mam giggled after her, nursing her baby wizard as her husband stared at them both, looking Confunded.
"Looks like he takes after me," she'd said to him with a wink. "Though he's certainly got your temper."
002.
Along with his da's temper, Seamus had also inherited a certain inscrutable charm, though nobody could ever figure out from whom.
He mastered it early in life, when he learned that glancing at his mam a certain way -- up through his long eyelashes, bottom lip between his teeth -- could get him out of just about anything. She cottoned on after a bit, and it stopped working, but by then it was too late for most of the rest of the feminine world (and a surprising percentage of the masculine one, as well.)
Sometimes, however, his charm was entirely unintentional, and Seamus quickly discovered that it could get him into trouble just as easily as it could get him out of it. For example, losing his virginity at the age of fourteen to his Muggle best mate's pretty mam was, as far as Seamus was concerned, an accident. A rather happy accident, mind you, but an accident nonetheless.
He had knocked on her door looking for her son, and, upon seeing it was him, she suddenly required help getting something off of a high shelf in her kitchen (nevermind that Seamus had a centimetre on her at most.) Before he knew it, she was half-naked and backing him towards the table. It had lasted all of three minutes once they had gotten down to business, and then she had pinched his cheek merrily and sent him on his way.
003.
It didn't stop there.
Professor Trelawny had once given him a Saturday evening detention for highly dubious reasons, and when he showed up to her office, she stunk of sherry and appeared to have forgotten to put on undergarments beneath her overly sheer dress.
Using his strongest persuasive powers, he had managed to escape with most of his dignity intact by offering to write dirty lines of her choosing. Shirtless. While sipping scotch.
Afterward, Professor Trelawney's voice would drawl suggestively as she instructed the class to stroke their crystal balls, and Seamus's cheeks would turn an alarming shade of scarlet as, behind her enormous glasses, she dropped him a wink.
004.
Like most of the rest of his class, Seamus was fair rubbish at Divination. He was, however, very good at Astronomy.
This was mostly due to the fact that he had held a particular fascination for the sky since he was small. Some of the happiest memories from his childhood were of laying out in the garden with his da, who would point out the different constellations and tell him the stories behind each one as Seamus inhaled the unique combination of licorice and aftershave that was his father's scent.
Seamus's favourite constellation was Vulpecula, a faint group of three stars that is difficult to see unless one is acutely observant. Its name translates into The Little Fox. He suspects that this is why his Patronus takes the form of a fox.
005.
It is Seamus's love for the sky that spurred his strange and beautiful friendship with Luna Lovegood. They were both chronic insomniacs and night-wanderers and would often stumble upon one another in the wee hours of the morning, out of bed when they were not supposed to be, and sit together in the dewy grass and stare up at the stars.
At first, they did this in relative silence, but they eventually began talking and discovered that they had much in common. Luna, also, knew every constellation, but she had her own versions of their stories, and Seamus liked to listen to her interpretations. She eased his homesickness and made him laugh, and he took her exactly as he found her and asked intelligent questions.
006.
Though Seamus was not short on experience upon meeting her, it was Luna who taught him most of what he knows about sex, and she did it in one night.
She was not like most women, and she was not taken with him in the same way that many of them were. She was, however, taken with him in her own way. His response to her kiss -- which was initially meant to test a theory -- surprised her, and she pulled away and said, "I didn't think you liked girls. Your energy, you see."
Seamus just shrugged, more confused than anything else, and Luna said, "You're like me, then! You like both! Isn't it fun?" and her face broke into the prettiest smile Seamus had ever seen.
There, in the grass, under a funny-coloured moon, she stripped them both down to nothing. Everything about her was warm, and she sank down onto his cock with a delighted little shimmy. Her eyes went wide and excited, and she said, "Oh! You're so big! I can feel you everywhere!" Her childlike thrill was disconcerting at first, but Seamus decided very quickly that he loved it.
She rode him joyfully, grinning down at him in the dark with the moon in her hair, and she taught him three very important things: she taught him that he really, really, really liked to watch (Luna leaned back and spread herself apart with two fingers as their bodies came together, utterly unabashed, and said, "See?" He did see, and he came very near to choking on his own desire); she taught him that he really, really, really liked to be talked to (Luna narrated everything that she felt, and it never sounded dirty, precisely, just ridiculously sexy), and she taught him how to make a woman come (Luna twined their fingers together, and wet his thumb in her mouth, then brought his hand down to her clit and showed him how to move.)
When she came, she came laughing and moaning at the same time, and she licked his come from her fingers like chocolate when it dripped onto her thighs, and it was surreal and lovely and strange.
It was the friendliest sex that Seamus had ever had, and it was the memory of her laughingmoaningorgasm that brought his silver fox leaping from his wand for the first time.
They only did it once, but they giggled together about it rather often.
007.
The memory that Seamus used to conjure the Patronus that saved Harry, Ron, and Hermione was a much more recent one. It was his memory of Dean stepping through the portrait hole in the Room of Requirement earlier that day, alive and whole and real; the way Dean's skin felt under his hands; the way his pulse pounded, strong and sure.
That memory was so fresh, so intense, so powerful that he felt that he could have cast a thousand Patronuses with it, and that they would have come bounding out of his chest instead of his wand. Dean.
(Seamus credits that night with Luna with one more thing: making him stop and think about why it was that, whenever he tried to envision his future, it was always Dean's face that he saw. Wise, wise Luna, who saw the curious creature of Seamus's soul before he did.)
008.
Actually, Seamus was almost placed into the same House as Luna.
The Sorting Hat had argued with itself for nearly a minute as Seamus sat, small and overwhelmed, on the stool. It had briefly considered Hufflepuff (citing his essentially kind nature and his fierce, unwavering loyalty to those he loved), but had quickly cast that thought aside in favour of a fervent argument between Ravenclaw and Gryffindor.
Finally, he had been officially dubbed a Gryffindor after the Hat concluded that, though highly observant, curious, and mentally capable, Seamus was only likely to exhibit these traits when he was truly passionate about something. Otherwise, he was prone to daydreaming and had a rather wide streak of laziness (which also precluded a Hufflepuff placement).
His natural protectiveness and nerve had earned him a spot at the Gryffindor table. The decision had surprised Seamus, who had never considered himself particularly brave, but he was happy with it. It gave him a boost of self-confidence to think that there were pieces of himself -- good, strong pieces -- that were just waiting for discovery.
009.
Generally speaking, lack of self-confidence was not Seamus's biggest problem. In fact, he was, on occasion, a bit too confident. Coupled with the natural nerve the Sorting Hat had sensed in him, this was sometimes borderline disastrous.
During their sixth year, Neville accompanied Seamus home over winter break. In the course of their conversation one evening, Seamus discovered that Neville had never been in an automobile and decided to remedy the situation.
Seamus also decided that Neville would enjoy things more if he didn't know that a license was required, and that there were certain speed regulations that must be followed. He was right. Neville was thoroughly enjoying their much-too-fast, a-little-underage excursion right up until Seamus swore under his breath and muttered, "We're banjanxed now, mate. It's the peelers."
Neville barely had time to ask what the peelers were before Seamus slapped a hand over his mouth and hissed at him to shut his hole and let Seamus handle it.
Seamus first tried to handle it with his patented through-the-lashes gaze, but he quickly deduced that this strategy was not going to be effective. Things went rapidly downhill when both of them were asked for identification and were, of course, unable to produce. In a move of desperation, Seamus grabbed Neville's wand from beside his seat and Confunded the officer, then took off for home, Neville beside him in a fit of nervous hysteria.
This was the first and only time Seamus and Neville were cited under the Decree for the Reasonable Restriction of Underage Sorcery. They received a warning and two consecutive nights of pure, unabated terror: one from Seamus's mam and da, and one from Neville's gran.
Following the two consecutive nights of terror, however, they spent far more than two nights together hiding out in the Room of Requirement, laughing their bollocks off about the whole thing and wondering if they would ever live to do it again.
010.
They did.
Seamus does, in fact, now have a Muggle driver's license. His da insisted upon it for a number of reasons, not the least of which was the incident with Neville.
Upon obtaining his license, the first thing Seamus did was floo-call Neville and invite him out for a drive. He then proceeded to boggle Neville's mind by going through the drive-thru lane at McDonald's.
Along with his (currently suspended) Muggle driver's license, Seamus also has unpaid fines in excess of €1200 for speeding, ignoring traffic signals, and illegal parking.
This is why he generally prefers to travel by Apparition or floo, though he does maintain a peculiar affection for automobiles. (He was the only student in his dormitory at Hogwarts to have posters of sports cars on his walls.)
011.
Most of the other images that Seamus chose to display - both at home and at school - were created by Dean.
Dean was always his own harshest critic, and he grew temperamental and frustrated with himself when his work did not meet his standards. When Seamus caught him in the midst of one of his destructive moods, he was sometimes able to salvage the piece that Dean was on the verge of tossing into the bin, convincing Dean to hand it over by promising it would never see the light of day. (Dean was hardly ever able to refuse Seamus anything, which should have clued Seamus into his feelings much earlier than it actually did.)
The not-seeing-the-light-of-day business was more of a half-truth, however. During the school year, they did not technically see the light of day, as Seamus hung them over the headboard of his bed and kept his curtains drawn. When he went home, however, they saw a tremendous amount of light, as he papered the walls of his bedroom with them.
(His mam smiled, a bit sad and much knowing, and his father never asked. In fact, his father stopped coming anywhere near his bedroom when the art began to appear.)
012.
Much of the art found on Seamus's body was also drawn by Dean.
His first -- and most favourite -- tattoos are the ones around his wrists. Two blue serpents wind through his freckles, their forked tongues licking at the skin on the insides of his forearms. These serpents tell many stories.
They are for his mam, who makes much of the fact that she is descended from Druidic priestesses, and calls upon an ancient glamour of theirs to draw her small frame up to an imposing height when necessary. (Seamus knows now that her size was not entirely a trick of his seven year-old mind.)
They are for Neville -- brave, fierce, good Neville -- who defied Voldemort and pulled the Sword of Gryffindor from a flaming hat upon his head and slew Nagini in one stroke.
And they are for Seamus himself, who placed them there as a reminder: the shedding of skin, the rebirth after tragedy, the surviving of a war... and Beltane, which makes him think of Luna.
013.
For most of his life, Seamus has felt pretty evenly split between Muggle and Wizard. He slips back and forth between the worlds easily, and he gives much of the credit for this to his da, who worked exceptionally hard to ensure this.
In one aspect, however, Seamus has always felt more connected to the wizarding world than to the Muggle one: religion.
Seamus is not religious, and he never has been. He knows the rituals; he can pray the rosary; he was baptized - but it ends there. He harbors a quiet belief that Jesus Christ was a wizard (the water-into-wine thing was a dead giveaway, in his opinion) and that the Virgin Mary was a hormonal teenager with an admirable instinct for self-preservation and astonishing saleswomanship (he has met a few like her; Lavender Brown comes to mind.)
His mother's religion - which isn't really a religion at all; just a sensible code of ethics - has always just made more sense to him. The sacred resides in just about everything, really, and if you show it the proper respect, you can draw it out and make it sing.
(Seamus thinks that he might hold Luna so dear because she reminds him so much of his mam.)
014.
Luna holds Seamus equally dear, and through him, Dean as well.
When her husband's early death left her alone with nine-month-old twins, Luna came to them and asked them to be Lorcan and Lysander's godparents.
At first, Seamus found this odd and rather unlike Luna, but then he asked her why. Her reply was simple. "Because they're going to need someone to teach them how to be men, aren't they? And I couldn't think of anyone better than you two."
For only the second time since the Battle of Hogwarts, Seamus had cried.
015.
The only tears that Seamus shed at the Battle of Hogwarts were not shed during battle, and they were not shed immediately following the battle. They were shed that night -- or, really, the following morning -- when Dean and Seamus went to bed.
Having been either on the run or imprisoned for much of the year before, Dean wanted nothing more than to be back in his bed at school. They curled up beside each other in their old dormitory, and the first time they touched each other, it was gentle. It couldn't have been anything but: they were both wounded and exhausted and numb, and all they wanted was warmth and comfort.
The second time had terrified them both.
The year spent in a constant state of vigilant terror; the year spent tending injuries and rallying the D.A. and taking blow after blow after blow had hardened Seamus immeasurably. It had damaged him more deeply than he had even realized, until the thing had seized him and made his brain flash white and made him bruise and draw blood and come in a violent haze of sobs and savage hollering.
For hours afterward, they both shook as though they were freezing, gripping each other like drowning men.
It was then that Seamus knew that it was love between them, because he would have understood if Dean had either throttled him straight into Hell where he belonged or left him naked and bloody and ferocious and horrified there on the bed.
Dean did neither.
016.
The second time after that that Seamus cried had been when his da had passed away.
Their relationship had been very close when Seamus was young, and he had always been a solid, dependable, responsible father. There was never any doubt of his love for his son.
As Seamus got older, however, his relationship with Dean had caused a rift in his relationship with his da. It was a difficult thing for his father to accept, and though Seamus's mam had worked hard to encourage them to look past their differences, it hadn't been easy for either of them.
Despite all of it, Seamus had stuck by his father through his illness and had been there when he passed away.
Somehow, Luna's affirmation of his masculinity had helped to heal the parts of him that still ached with unsaid things, and Seamus cried as much for his own father as for the honor of being entrusted with Luna's children.
017.
Seamus and Dean never had children of their own, but they looked on Lorcan and Lysander as theirs, and between the six surviving Weasleys, there was never a shortage of someone small, warm, and dirty to bounce on their knees.
During the holidays they spent with the entire Weasley family, Seamus noted -- with just a little satisfaction -- that Percy's daughters were lawless little hellions, rather more like Fred and George than their father. They were actually more dangerous, as they had clearly inherited Percy's methodical, exacting mind.
Lucy was Seamus's particular favourite (something about her cheeky grin reminded him of himself), and on more than one occasion, Percy had chewed him out for "putting ideas into her head." The truth was that the ideas were almost entirely Lucy's, and Seamus, having many more years of experience, just helped her to refine them. Her bat-bogey hex rivaled her Aunt Ginny's by the time she was four.
018.
Age did not diminish Seamus's uncanny and accidental ability to charm women out of their knickers.
Unfortunately for Lucy Weasley, however, age did give Seamus the wisdom, the scruples, and the self-discipline to turn women away.
When she cornered him in her grandmother's bedroom one Christmas Eve when she was sixteen -- Seamus had gone to retrieve Hermione's jacket for her, as she had been called out to an emergency -- he had, as politely as he could, removed her unsettlingly Percy-like hand from his groin and explained that he was both old enough to be her father and happily settled-down.
That had not stopped her from whipping off her top, however, which made for quite a scene when Ron walked in to see what was taking so long. Having known Seamus for most of his life -- and Lucy for all of hers -- Ron had just laughed and told his niece to kindly put her tits away, as the only round bits of flesh that interested Seamus were considerably smaller, wrinklier, and saggier than the ones on her chest.
Seamus socked Ron in the arm; Lucy smirked; Ron retrieved his wife's jacket, and all was well.
019.
The following Christmas, Seamus had the misfortune to wander half-drunk into the bathroom and, once again, discover Lucy Weasley in a compromising position.
This time she was bent over the sink with her skirt up around her waist, none other than Seamus's darling fourteen year-old godson Lysander directly behind her.
To his great dismay, neither of them looked particularly perturbed when his face appeared in the mirror over their shoulders.
Seamus was three seconds away from blowing a gasket when he had a flash of memory involving his own fourteen year-old self, his mate's pretty mam, and a kitchen table.
Instead of knocking both of them senseless, he told them they'd better hurry up, because a line was forming outside the tiny bathroom, and Percy was at the front.
(He would have liked to have stayed for the show that followed this announcement, but decided it would be much more effective if he simply walked away.)
020.
In an unusual move, Dean, Seamus, and Luna all walked Lysander down the aisle at his wedding several years later.
It was not to Lucy Weasley (though she was there, and winking salaciously at both the groom and his godfather.) It was to Hugo.
Seamus smiled.
Author: l3petitemort
Rating: hard-ish R
Warning: some smexing here and there, of both the het and slash variety
Word Count: 3,645 (i know. they're more like vignettes than facts... ha.)
Disclaimer: i own nothing.
Author's Note: written for round five of the harry potter random facts fest: hp_random_facts.
20 Random Facts About Seamus Finnigan
001.
His birth had put the fear of God into his mam's Muggle midwife.
At his da's insistence, his mam had agreed to forgo the magical Attendants (mostly to teach his da a lesson), and Seamus entered the world wailing in fury, bright red magic crackling around his tiny body. The cool, collected midwife had shrieked and nearly dropped him from her capable hands. The only thing that had kept Seamus from cracking his soft, newborn skull on the floor was his mam, who lunged forward, dripping in sweat and still in terrible pain, to rescue him.
She brought him to her breast as the midwife looked on in embarrassed horror and kissed his angry magic away. After conducting all of the usual newborn exams and finding nothing wrong, the midwife blustered away as quickly as was proper. Seamus's mam giggled after her, nursing her baby wizard as her husband stared at them both, looking Confunded.
"Looks like he takes after me," she'd said to him with a wink. "Though he's certainly got your temper."
002.
Along with his da's temper, Seamus had also inherited a certain inscrutable charm, though nobody could ever figure out from whom.
He mastered it early in life, when he learned that glancing at his mam a certain way -- up through his long eyelashes, bottom lip between his teeth -- could get him out of just about anything. She cottoned on after a bit, and it stopped working, but by then it was too late for most of the rest of the feminine world (and a surprising percentage of the masculine one, as well.)
Sometimes, however, his charm was entirely unintentional, and Seamus quickly discovered that it could get him into trouble just as easily as it could get him out of it. For example, losing his virginity at the age of fourteen to his Muggle best mate's pretty mam was, as far as Seamus was concerned, an accident. A rather happy accident, mind you, but an accident nonetheless.
He had knocked on her door looking for her son, and, upon seeing it was him, she suddenly required help getting something off of a high shelf in her kitchen (nevermind that Seamus had a centimetre on her at most.) Before he knew it, she was half-naked and backing him towards the table. It had lasted all of three minutes once they had gotten down to business, and then she had pinched his cheek merrily and sent him on his way.
003.
It didn't stop there.
Professor Trelawny had once given him a Saturday evening detention for highly dubious reasons, and when he showed up to her office, she stunk of sherry and appeared to have forgotten to put on undergarments beneath her overly sheer dress.
Using his strongest persuasive powers, he had managed to escape with most of his dignity intact by offering to write dirty lines of her choosing. Shirtless. While sipping scotch.
Afterward, Professor Trelawney's voice would drawl suggestively as she instructed the class to stroke their crystal balls, and Seamus's cheeks would turn an alarming shade of scarlet as, behind her enormous glasses, she dropped him a wink.
004.
Like most of the rest of his class, Seamus was fair rubbish at Divination. He was, however, very good at Astronomy.
This was mostly due to the fact that he had held a particular fascination for the sky since he was small. Some of the happiest memories from his childhood were of laying out in the garden with his da, who would point out the different constellations and tell him the stories behind each one as Seamus inhaled the unique combination of licorice and aftershave that was his father's scent.
Seamus's favourite constellation was Vulpecula, a faint group of three stars that is difficult to see unless one is acutely observant. Its name translates into The Little Fox. He suspects that this is why his Patronus takes the form of a fox.
005.
It is Seamus's love for the sky that spurred his strange and beautiful friendship with Luna Lovegood. They were both chronic insomniacs and night-wanderers and would often stumble upon one another in the wee hours of the morning, out of bed when they were not supposed to be, and sit together in the dewy grass and stare up at the stars.
At first, they did this in relative silence, but they eventually began talking and discovered that they had much in common. Luna, also, knew every constellation, but she had her own versions of their stories, and Seamus liked to listen to her interpretations. She eased his homesickness and made him laugh, and he took her exactly as he found her and asked intelligent questions.
006.
Though Seamus was not short on experience upon meeting her, it was Luna who taught him most of what he knows about sex, and she did it in one night.
She was not like most women, and she was not taken with him in the same way that many of them were. She was, however, taken with him in her own way. His response to her kiss -- which was initially meant to test a theory -- surprised her, and she pulled away and said, "I didn't think you liked girls. Your energy, you see."
Seamus just shrugged, more confused than anything else, and Luna said, "You're like me, then! You like both! Isn't it fun?" and her face broke into the prettiest smile Seamus had ever seen.
There, in the grass, under a funny-coloured moon, she stripped them both down to nothing. Everything about her was warm, and she sank down onto his cock with a delighted little shimmy. Her eyes went wide and excited, and she said, "Oh! You're so big! I can feel you everywhere!" Her childlike thrill was disconcerting at first, but Seamus decided very quickly that he loved it.
She rode him joyfully, grinning down at him in the dark with the moon in her hair, and she taught him three very important things: she taught him that he really, really, really liked to watch (Luna leaned back and spread herself apart with two fingers as their bodies came together, utterly unabashed, and said, "See?" He did see, and he came very near to choking on his own desire); she taught him that he really, really, really liked to be talked to (Luna narrated everything that she felt, and it never sounded dirty, precisely, just ridiculously sexy), and she taught him how to make a woman come (Luna twined their fingers together, and wet his thumb in her mouth, then brought his hand down to her clit and showed him how to move.)
When she came, she came laughing and moaning at the same time, and she licked his come from her fingers like chocolate when it dripped onto her thighs, and it was surreal and lovely and strange.
It was the friendliest sex that Seamus had ever had, and it was the memory of her laughingmoaningorgasm that brought his silver fox leaping from his wand for the first time.
They only did it once, but they giggled together about it rather often.
007.
The memory that Seamus used to conjure the Patronus that saved Harry, Ron, and Hermione was a much more recent one. It was his memory of Dean stepping through the portrait hole in the Room of Requirement earlier that day, alive and whole and real; the way Dean's skin felt under his hands; the way his pulse pounded, strong and sure.
That memory was so fresh, so intense, so powerful that he felt that he could have cast a thousand Patronuses with it, and that they would have come bounding out of his chest instead of his wand. Dean.
(Seamus credits that night with Luna with one more thing: making him stop and think about why it was that, whenever he tried to envision his future, it was always Dean's face that he saw. Wise, wise Luna, who saw the curious creature of Seamus's soul before he did.)
008.
Actually, Seamus was almost placed into the same House as Luna.
The Sorting Hat had argued with itself for nearly a minute as Seamus sat, small and overwhelmed, on the stool. It had briefly considered Hufflepuff (citing his essentially kind nature and his fierce, unwavering loyalty to those he loved), but had quickly cast that thought aside in favour of a fervent argument between Ravenclaw and Gryffindor.
Finally, he had been officially dubbed a Gryffindor after the Hat concluded that, though highly observant, curious, and mentally capable, Seamus was only likely to exhibit these traits when he was truly passionate about something. Otherwise, he was prone to daydreaming and had a rather wide streak of laziness (which also precluded a Hufflepuff placement).
His natural protectiveness and nerve had earned him a spot at the Gryffindor table. The decision had surprised Seamus, who had never considered himself particularly brave, but he was happy with it. It gave him a boost of self-confidence to think that there were pieces of himself -- good, strong pieces -- that were just waiting for discovery.
009.
Generally speaking, lack of self-confidence was not Seamus's biggest problem. In fact, he was, on occasion, a bit too confident. Coupled with the natural nerve the Sorting Hat had sensed in him, this was sometimes borderline disastrous.
During their sixth year, Neville accompanied Seamus home over winter break. In the course of their conversation one evening, Seamus discovered that Neville had never been in an automobile and decided to remedy the situation.
Seamus also decided that Neville would enjoy things more if he didn't know that a license was required, and that there were certain speed regulations that must be followed. He was right. Neville was thoroughly enjoying their much-too-fast, a-little-underage excursion right up until Seamus swore under his breath and muttered, "We're banjanxed now, mate. It's the peelers."
Neville barely had time to ask what the peelers were before Seamus slapped a hand over his mouth and hissed at him to shut his hole and let Seamus handle it.
Seamus first tried to handle it with his patented through-the-lashes gaze, but he quickly deduced that this strategy was not going to be effective. Things went rapidly downhill when both of them were asked for identification and were, of course, unable to produce. In a move of desperation, Seamus grabbed Neville's wand from beside his seat and Confunded the officer, then took off for home, Neville beside him in a fit of nervous hysteria.
This was the first and only time Seamus and Neville were cited under the Decree for the Reasonable Restriction of Underage Sorcery. They received a warning and two consecutive nights of pure, unabated terror: one from Seamus's mam and da, and one from Neville's gran.
Following the two consecutive nights of terror, however, they spent far more than two nights together hiding out in the Room of Requirement, laughing their bollocks off about the whole thing and wondering if they would ever live to do it again.
010.
They did.
Seamus does, in fact, now have a Muggle driver's license. His da insisted upon it for a number of reasons, not the least of which was the incident with Neville.
Upon obtaining his license, the first thing Seamus did was floo-call Neville and invite him out for a drive. He then proceeded to boggle Neville's mind by going through the drive-thru lane at McDonald's.
Along with his (currently suspended) Muggle driver's license, Seamus also has unpaid fines in excess of €1200 for speeding, ignoring traffic signals, and illegal parking.
This is why he generally prefers to travel by Apparition or floo, though he does maintain a peculiar affection for automobiles. (He was the only student in his dormitory at Hogwarts to have posters of sports cars on his walls.)
011.
Most of the other images that Seamus chose to display - both at home and at school - were created by Dean.
Dean was always his own harshest critic, and he grew temperamental and frustrated with himself when his work did not meet his standards. When Seamus caught him in the midst of one of his destructive moods, he was sometimes able to salvage the piece that Dean was on the verge of tossing into the bin, convincing Dean to hand it over by promising it would never see the light of day. (Dean was hardly ever able to refuse Seamus anything, which should have clued Seamus into his feelings much earlier than it actually did.)
The not-seeing-the-light-of-day business was more of a half-truth, however. During the school year, they did not technically see the light of day, as Seamus hung them over the headboard of his bed and kept his curtains drawn. When he went home, however, they saw a tremendous amount of light, as he papered the walls of his bedroom with them.
(His mam smiled, a bit sad and much knowing, and his father never asked. In fact, his father stopped coming anywhere near his bedroom when the art began to appear.)
012.
Much of the art found on Seamus's body was also drawn by Dean.
His first -- and most favourite -- tattoos are the ones around his wrists. Two blue serpents wind through his freckles, their forked tongues licking at the skin on the insides of his forearms. These serpents tell many stories.
They are for his mam, who makes much of the fact that she is descended from Druidic priestesses, and calls upon an ancient glamour of theirs to draw her small frame up to an imposing height when necessary. (Seamus knows now that her size was not entirely a trick of his seven year-old mind.)
They are for Neville -- brave, fierce, good Neville -- who defied Voldemort and pulled the Sword of Gryffindor from a flaming hat upon his head and slew Nagini in one stroke.
And they are for Seamus himself, who placed them there as a reminder: the shedding of skin, the rebirth after tragedy, the surviving of a war... and Beltane, which makes him think of Luna.
013.
For most of his life, Seamus has felt pretty evenly split between Muggle and Wizard. He slips back and forth between the worlds easily, and he gives much of the credit for this to his da, who worked exceptionally hard to ensure this.
In one aspect, however, Seamus has always felt more connected to the wizarding world than to the Muggle one: religion.
Seamus is not religious, and he never has been. He knows the rituals; he can pray the rosary; he was baptized - but it ends there. He harbors a quiet belief that Jesus Christ was a wizard (the water-into-wine thing was a dead giveaway, in his opinion) and that the Virgin Mary was a hormonal teenager with an admirable instinct for self-preservation and astonishing saleswomanship (he has met a few like her; Lavender Brown comes to mind.)
His mother's religion - which isn't really a religion at all; just a sensible code of ethics - has always just made more sense to him. The sacred resides in just about everything, really, and if you show it the proper respect, you can draw it out and make it sing.
(Seamus thinks that he might hold Luna so dear because she reminds him so much of his mam.)
014.
Luna holds Seamus equally dear, and through him, Dean as well.
When her husband's early death left her alone with nine-month-old twins, Luna came to them and asked them to be Lorcan and Lysander's godparents.
At first, Seamus found this odd and rather unlike Luna, but then he asked her why. Her reply was simple. "Because they're going to need someone to teach them how to be men, aren't they? And I couldn't think of anyone better than you two."
For only the second time since the Battle of Hogwarts, Seamus had cried.
015.
The only tears that Seamus shed at the Battle of Hogwarts were not shed during battle, and they were not shed immediately following the battle. They were shed that night -- or, really, the following morning -- when Dean and Seamus went to bed.
Having been either on the run or imprisoned for much of the year before, Dean wanted nothing more than to be back in his bed at school. They curled up beside each other in their old dormitory, and the first time they touched each other, it was gentle. It couldn't have been anything but: they were both wounded and exhausted and numb, and all they wanted was warmth and comfort.
The second time had terrified them both.
The year spent in a constant state of vigilant terror; the year spent tending injuries and rallying the D.A. and taking blow after blow after blow had hardened Seamus immeasurably. It had damaged him more deeply than he had even realized, until the thing had seized him and made his brain flash white and made him bruise and draw blood and come in a violent haze of sobs and savage hollering.
For hours afterward, they both shook as though they were freezing, gripping each other like drowning men.
It was then that Seamus knew that it was love between them, because he would have understood if Dean had either throttled him straight into Hell where he belonged or left him naked and bloody and ferocious and horrified there on the bed.
Dean did neither.
016.
The second time after that that Seamus cried had been when his da had passed away.
Their relationship had been very close when Seamus was young, and he had always been a solid, dependable, responsible father. There was never any doubt of his love for his son.
As Seamus got older, however, his relationship with Dean had caused a rift in his relationship with his da. It was a difficult thing for his father to accept, and though Seamus's mam had worked hard to encourage them to look past their differences, it hadn't been easy for either of them.
Despite all of it, Seamus had stuck by his father through his illness and had been there when he passed away.
Somehow, Luna's affirmation of his masculinity had helped to heal the parts of him that still ached with unsaid things, and Seamus cried as much for his own father as for the honor of being entrusted with Luna's children.
017.
Seamus and Dean never had children of their own, but they looked on Lorcan and Lysander as theirs, and between the six surviving Weasleys, there was never a shortage of someone small, warm, and dirty to bounce on their knees.
During the holidays they spent with the entire Weasley family, Seamus noted -- with just a little satisfaction -- that Percy's daughters were lawless little hellions, rather more like Fred and George than their father. They were actually more dangerous, as they had clearly inherited Percy's methodical, exacting mind.
Lucy was Seamus's particular favourite (something about her cheeky grin reminded him of himself), and on more than one occasion, Percy had chewed him out for "putting ideas into her head." The truth was that the ideas were almost entirely Lucy's, and Seamus, having many more years of experience, just helped her to refine them. Her bat-bogey hex rivaled her Aunt Ginny's by the time she was four.
018.
Age did not diminish Seamus's uncanny and accidental ability to charm women out of their knickers.
Unfortunately for Lucy Weasley, however, age did give Seamus the wisdom, the scruples, and the self-discipline to turn women away.
When she cornered him in her grandmother's bedroom one Christmas Eve when she was sixteen -- Seamus had gone to retrieve Hermione's jacket for her, as she had been called out to an emergency -- he had, as politely as he could, removed her unsettlingly Percy-like hand from his groin and explained that he was both old enough to be her father and happily settled-down.
That had not stopped her from whipping off her top, however, which made for quite a scene when Ron walked in to see what was taking so long. Having known Seamus for most of his life -- and Lucy for all of hers -- Ron had just laughed and told his niece to kindly put her tits away, as the only round bits of flesh that interested Seamus were considerably smaller, wrinklier, and saggier than the ones on her chest.
Seamus socked Ron in the arm; Lucy smirked; Ron retrieved his wife's jacket, and all was well.
019.
The following Christmas, Seamus had the misfortune to wander half-drunk into the bathroom and, once again, discover Lucy Weasley in a compromising position.
This time she was bent over the sink with her skirt up around her waist, none other than Seamus's darling fourteen year-old godson Lysander directly behind her.
To his great dismay, neither of them looked particularly perturbed when his face appeared in the mirror over their shoulders.
Seamus was three seconds away from blowing a gasket when he had a flash of memory involving his own fourteen year-old self, his mate's pretty mam, and a kitchen table.
Instead of knocking both of them senseless, he told them they'd better hurry up, because a line was forming outside the tiny bathroom, and Percy was at the front.
(He would have liked to have stayed for the show that followed this announcement, but decided it would be much more effective if he simply walked away.)
020.
In an unusual move, Dean, Seamus, and Luna all walked Lysander down the aisle at his wedding several years later.
It was not to Lucy Weasley (though she was there, and winking salaciously at both the groom and his godfather.) It was to Hugo.
Seamus smiled.