Every Flavor

Seamus was a very confusing boy. Dean had decided this a long time ago, probably around the time they had first met, when he had stumbled across a boy sorting his Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans into rows of potential flavors across the floor of an empty compartment on the train. He'd been completely bewildered by it, almost moreso than he had been by the boy with the struggling frog or the bossy girl who'd asked him what house he was supposed to be in or the way several people were pressed up against one compartment door whispering "Harry Potter!" over and over like some sort of chanted spell.

Dean pondered, wondering if he'd thought that Seamus' sorting ritual had been weirder than the squid his second-cousin Lee had brought to the station to mate with the giant squid in the lake. Now that was a tough choice. At least Lee had learned his lesson and, well, while he hadn't exactly mellowed out over the years, he had definitely become less weird. Unlike Seamus.

"Dean, what do you think?" Seamus demanded. "Does this look like one of those cornstarch ones or is it egg whites?"

Come to think of it, Seamus still did that at least once a week when his mum sent him his weekly care package.

"I don't know. Why don't you just eat it and find out?" Dean asked, lips curving into a smile in anticipation of Seamus' reaction.

"I can't just eat it! I haven't sorted half of them. You can't just pop one into your mouth when you still have half a bag to sort." Seamus swatted Dean's hand. "And stay away from my graham cracker bean. I don't want your charcoal covered hands soiling my nearly arranged beans."

Dean laughed. "You sound like your own mum," he informed the Irish boy.

Seamus looked indignant. "My mother is a very feminine lady and I will not have you implying -- wait, you weren't. You were implying that I'm like her, not the other way around. I'll have you know that I am a very manly man who--"

"Who sorts his Bertie Bott's religiously," Dean finished, eying the color-coded rows of beans.

"Well, yes," Seamus replied. He scooted over a murky green-brown pond water flavored bean to make room for another eight-week-old strip of bacon-flavored bean. "But there's nothing wrong with that."

Dean swiped the graham cracker flavored candy before Seamus could stop him and grinned while Seamus scowled at him. Seamus replaced the graham cracker with a fresh bread flavored piece, covering it protectively with curled fingers as Dean eyed it hungrily.

"You're not stealing any more. Not until I've got them all organized! Go draw or sculpt or whatever it is you artist types like to do."

Dean grabbed the fresh bread (and a chocolate pudding, two caramels and one vanilla mocha) and ran off towards the common room.

Seamus chased him. Dean had longer legs and more stamina since he'd joined the Quidditch team this year while Seamus' only exercise was the arm-waving and screaming he did at all of Dean's Chaser antics. So, really, this was all very unfair, Dean thought as he lay on his back with an angry Seamus straddling him and stealing his Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans one by one from his mouth.