pauraque_bk | Fic a Week 31 - The Railroad That Went Nowhere

The background on Dean Thomas is awfully interesting. If I ever knew about it, I must have forgotten (though frankly I've forgotten more about the HP series than most people could bear to know).

++

G, gen, 370 words.

The Railroad That Went Nowhere

When Dean was very little, he used to see a train that no one else saw. It was always on the track he could see from the kitchen window, and it was black and red, much brighter than the regular old gray trains that were usually there.

"Choo-choo," said Dean, pointing.

"There's nothing there, dear," said his mother, trying to shovel more peas. "Open the hangar!"

"I see it too, Mum," said his sister Jace, who was a bit older.

"Jacey, please," Mum sighed. "Don't encourage him."

It was some years later before Dean realised that Mum really couldn't see that train. She could see the others, just not the one with bright red windows and smokestacks.

There were other things, too, that other people couldn't see. Sometimes people flying, and sometimes odd-looking clouds. Jace was the only one who defended him when their younger brothers made fun, saying he needed glasses, and later calling him mad. She would hold her head high and say she could see it too, and stick her tongue out at them.

When Mum took him to the doctor, who made him look at charts and things, and when he saw the grim worry in Mum's face when the doctor said his eyes were fine, Dean began to figure he just shouldn't say he saw things anymore, except to Jace.

As they got a little older, they were inseparable; she'd tell stories for him about animals that talked and people that flew; they'd run around in the yard and play at that until it got dark. He never wondered if cats really talked to her or if it was made up. She said it like the stories were true.

When he was eleven, when the letter came, he showed it to Jace even before he showed Mum.

"This is how come we can see things other kids can't! It's magic, and there's more people like us..."

But Jace didn't look happy or excited. She looked stunned for a bit, and then her eyes were shadowed with hurt. And it dawned on him -- horribly too late -- that Jace was thirteen already, and no letter had ever come for her.