Dean didn't hate Harry, as much as he felt he had the right too.
There was surely some unwritten rule about not dating your roommate's ex girlfriend, especially within a month or two of them breaking up. But he had seen the way Harry had looked at Ginny throughout the year and couldn’t really blame him. And Gin had looked a thousand times happier and more relaxed in those 3 weeks she’d been dating Harry. And really, if Harry really was the saviour who would end Dean’s need to be on the run just to protect his mum and sisters, then he couldn’t begrudge him a bit of happiness. Still, it didn’t make him feel any less awkward, sitting there in his ex- girlfriend’s brother’s house, with two of her brothers and her other ex- boyfriend, along with a woman who was definitely a Veela that he vaguely remembered from his fourth year.
Unfortunately, Harry didn’t look nearly as awkward to see him as he’d have thought (he remembered those few weeks last year and the way Harry had tried to avoid him as much as possible, as if to avoid hurting his feelings) but Harry didn’t look much like the boy he’d met on his first ever night at Hogwarts anymore. Quite frankly, he looked like shit. He supposed he didn’t look too much better, but Harry was truly unrecognisable as the boy who’d spend the last few weeks of their sixth year unable to stop beaming, and laughing, even when not in the presence of Ginny.
At the time of their break up, he had blamed Harry. Even though deep down he knew Ginny had been honest when she said she didn’t care that Harry seemed to have finally noticed her (Dean had a habit of pointing it out during all their arguments), it hadn’t helped when Ginny had lost her head at him and Seamus when they’d been imitating Harry’s hilarious fall in that quidditch match. That had been an almighty row, but it had given Dean his first insight into the parts of Ginny he could never really understand- and that had been half the problem with their relationship and maybe why he was so insecure about Harry’s feelings for her in the first place. Dean didn’t, couldn’t, know what had happened in her first year that led her to being so secretive around others, but Harry definitely did. Dean didn’t know what had happened in that Ministry battle after his OWLs that Ginny refused to talk about, but Harry definitely did. To him, Harry falling off his broom had been funny, once they knew no lasting harm had occurred but Ginny had not seen it that way and finally let loose some of the things he’d been aching to know.
“I don’t understand why you’re so mad, it was a joke!” Dean had shouted at her. What Ginny had bellowed back had been far more than he had expected.
“That’s the point- you don’t understand! You’ve never had to fight fucking Death Eaters! You’ve never been trapped, injured and then seen Harry chasing after Bellatrix Lestrange, alone, knowing Voldemort is going to be there soon! You’ve never had to just sit there, useless, knowing that the chance your friend is about to be murdered is too high, while you’re desperately trying to stop fucking brain tentacles from strangling your brother, and your best friends are unconscious! That’s why it’s not funny to joke about Harry falling! I see him falling and it’s like Voldemort’s there all over again; he could have died!”
That was the most he’d ever heard about the whole Ministry affair, despite having heard even Neville, of all people, whispering about it to Ron. There wasn’t much he could argue back with to that, except that it wasn’t his fault he didn’t know about that since no one ever included him in those conversations! How could he know just how many times Harry had come close to death? But that hadn’t been the right thing to say either, since Ginny had snapped that perhaps he should be grateful he could live his life stressing over nothing but schoolwork and what to have for dinner. Really, he should have seen their break up coming after that. She’d made it clear he didn’t know the important parts about her, and had made it even more clear that he never would. He couldn’t really blame her for that either, he supposed; there were certain things about him that he would never tell her, that only Seamus knew.
Still, none of that mattered now. Ted and Dirk had been killed, he’d been left with Griphook for company, then in what seemed like a whirlwind, had been captured by Snatchers, dragged to Malfoy Manor, along with, it turned out, Harry, Ron and Hermione, who no one had heard anything from in months. He’d heard Hermione’s screams as she was tortured, Ron and Harry’s screams as they heard Hermione, and suddenly Luna Lovegood was there and the man who sold him his wand seven years ago. And then if that wasn’t enough, a random house elf had appeared and taken him to a house on the beach, where a man who had the same hair as Ron had come running out with his wand directed at him. When he’d only just got his bearings, there was a crack and Ron was running into the house carrying an unconscious Hermione while Harry was crying over the house elf, who seemed to have been stabbed. His attention had been stolen away from all of that by a gorgeous blonde vision who had come over to him, to take the goblin from his hold and guide him into the house. He only managed to look away when he saw the wedding band and realised that Ginny’s brother had married the Veela from the Triwizard Tournament at some point in the last 3 years and he hadn’t even known. There had been no room for awkward feelings in those first few hours, but after that, as things had settled down and everyone but Ollivander and Griphook had gathered in the lounge to exchange stories, Dean hadn’t been able to help feeling hopelessly out of place, and had to wonder just how he had managed to find himself in this situation.
He had yet to exchange any words with Harry, as Harry had spent his days digging the grave for the house- elf he had found out was called Dobby (and he vaguely recalled that name from the D.A. meeting where they’d been caught out), and when he was done with the grave, he had been holed away with Ollivander and Griphook. Dean had gotten some basic details on their time on the run out of Ron, had found out how close they had been at one point but it was Harry he really wanted to talk to. He’d realised last year just how much there was about his roommate that he didn’t know, but while they were in this war together, fighting together, he needed to know exactly what was going on so he could fight for his own survival, and his family’s. Except then there had been that frantic knocking on the door, and Professor Lupin had come bursting in, shouting about his son. Dean had been beyond bewildered at why his teacher, who he hadn’t seen since his third year, had appeared in this little cottage by the sea in the middle of the war, and even more confused about why Harry, Ron and Hermione had looked so ecstatic to see him. Sure, Lupin had been their best defence teacher ever, and it was great to see him again, but he wouldn’t have said he was the person he would be happiest to see. And then he had been astonished even further when he heard Lupin ask Harry to be his son’s godfather - how did he not know that his roommate was that close to his former professor? Luna (who wasn’t even in the same house as Harry or Ginny and yet still seemed to know more than him!) had leant in to him and said how nice it was for Harry to have the chance to be the godfather his never was. Dean had been confused at that, he was under the impression that the only family Harry had left were his muggle relatives, until Luna had continued in her usual, airy tone that, “Yes, his godfather was Sirius Black, that’s why me and Ginny went to the Ministry in our 4th year. We had to go rescue him from You- Know- Who, but it turned out to be a trap and he died in front of Harry, He was really quite upset and grumpy about it, I’m surprised you didn't know. Of course, Harry is very private, and Ginny probably felt it wasn’t her place to tell you either, although she was close to Mr. Black as well and was very sad when he was lost.”
Dean couldn’t even begin to process that sentence. He was horrified that while he had been celebrating the end of his OWLs so obnoxiously, Harry had been grieving his fucking godfather and how had he not known that? There was also the fact that apparently Ginny had been close to this godfather, the one he somehow didn’t know existed, and yet not once had she even brought up the loss she must have felt. Then the familiarity of the name Sirius Black clicked into place and Dean really had to wonder if he had ever known Harry Potter at all because surely the fact that a mass murderer, who had gone so far as to sneak into their dorm with a knife, was Harry Potter’s godfather was something he thought he ought to have been aware of.
And it was with a kind of ache in his chest that Dean realised, no matter how angry he had been at that kiss between Harry and Ginny, no matter how much he wanted to blame Harry for the failings in his own relationship with Ginny, he couldn’t ever hate Harry Potter. He couldn’t hate that this boy even younger than him, who had suffered so horrendously in his life, who had lost too much to ever feel supported enough to share his upsets with more than a handful of people, had finally known happiness in those few summer weeks with Ginny Weasley. Maybe he could tell Harry that, let him know that Dean Thomas held no grudges against him, and perhaps in the revelry of Professor Lupin’s announcement, he could learn more about this godfather.
In the end, he never got the chance to talk to this Harry, the Harry he saw now that he understood he had never truly known him. Not until after that coin had burned hot in his pocket, and he had raced through the passageway behind Bill and Fleur Weasley, Luna by his side; not until after the walls had collapsed, and Harry had died, and then Harry had won , and the dust had settled, did Dean get to finally meet Harry Potter. Not the boy who lived, or the boy who stole his girlfriend, but Harry Potter, Dean’s roommate and fellow Gryffindor since day 1.