Disclaimer: I own nothing.

A/N: This was written for the Challenge of the Month at the Hogwarts Online Forum. I claimed the character Dennis Creevey with the prompt Walking Dead Man.

Awakening

The world was full of pain, grief, guilt, and Colin. Everything else was only shadow, insubstantial.

"Dennis!" a little-girl voice shouted joyfully. "My sister's okay! She's o - "

He turned around and saw her staring in horror at the body. "Oh," she whispered. "Oh, oh! Dennis... is that...? I'm so sorry..."

Anger formed out of the shadows for the first time, and he let it overtake him, pushing his own guilt away because that was just easier.

"You should be!" he screamed, feeling almost insane. "It's your fault he's dead!"

Dennis woke up in the middle of the night, drenched in sweat and shaking from yet another nightmare. For a second, he hoped that that was all it had been. Then he looked over at the empty bed across the room and knew that this hell was reality: Colin was dead. His stomach heaved, and he rolled out of bed, walked down to the bathroom, and threw up. A wave of nausea washed over him as the smell reached his nostrils, and now it was his mother he thought of, lying weak in a hospital bed after her chemotherapy. It wasn't fair; most kids never lost close family members at all, and he has lost two.

Splashing cold water on his face, Dennis accidentally caught a glimpse of the picture on the bathroom sink and, starting to sob, wished he hadn't. It was of their faces, Colin's and Dennis's, a close-up because Colin had taken the picture himself from an arm length's away. They were both smiling widely, putting their arms around each, unaware that one day they would be torn apart. Again, he was reminded of that day, of seeing his brother lying dead upon the floor, of the little girl who'd found the two of them there. Dennis felt a white-hot flash of anger. It was her fault he hadn't -

He stopped, taking a breath, and tried to focus on forgetting, on pushing it all away. He felt nothing; he remembered nothing. He was nothing. Glancing up into the mirror, he saw his own corpse again - the pale, expressionless Dennis whom he greatly preferred to the sobbing one. It was easier to be a Walking Dead Man than a living one, easier to stumble through the darkness and pretend he felt no pain than to live in the light, to see the truth clearly lying in front of him. In the dark, he could pretend it was not there.

He had tried to be a living man, instead of a Walking Dead one, but it was just too hard to write his friends, or go to the dinners Mrs. Weasley was always inviting him to, or even just smile back at his dad, too hard to be the Dennis he'd been before. He was only fourteen, for Merlin's sake, too young to have lost -

He felt nothing, he reminded himself firmly.

Not for the first time, he considered the third option, not life, or half-life, but death, true death, in which, he was sure, all the pain would stop. Then he heard his dad snoring in the next room and knew he couldn't go through with it. His father was already distraught about losing his eldest son so soon after losing his wife, and Dennis couldn't bear to add to that grief, couldn't bear to leave his father alone to face it. Or was he alone already? Dennis hasn't exactly faced anything.

Ignoring this new thought, he went back to bed. For a long time, he tossed and turned, unable to fall asleep. The scarlet and gold banner that Colin had hung in their room when he'd come home from his first year at Hogwarts flapped in the wind. It reminded Dennis of who he was, of who his brother had been: Gryffindors, brave and true and strong, forever... He let out another sob. In the end, Dennis hadn't -

Stopping himself again, he got up, and tore down the banner, shoving it under his bed. Out of sight, out of mind. He didn't want to remember.

Dennis felt nothing.

They were watching television, bored out of their minds, as they had been for the past year, when Colin had suddenly cried out.

"My D.A. coin, Dennis! My D.A. coin!" He checked the message on it and looked even more excited. "I told you he'd come eventually. He's Harry Potter, for Merlin's sake! Even You-Know-Who couldn't keep him out of Hogwarts." Colin stopped for a moment, evidently overcome by admiration for his hero, then went on, "Well, come on. Let's go."

"What?" Dennis asked, completely lost..

Colin had already started to leave the room. "Harry, Ron, and Hermione have gone back to Hogwarts and You-Know-Who and his Death Eaters are coming after them. They're fighting and I've - I've got to help, Dennis."

There were too many thoughts swirling around in his head to even try to make sense of them all, so Dennis didn't.

"Me too," he said, still confused, but going by pure instinct as he stood up to follow his older brother as he has done all his life.

It might have been boredom that made them decide so quickly - without caution, planning, or fear - but it was mostly testament to who they were. The Creevey brothers were forever forgetting to look before they leaped, to think before they acted. They fell quite a lot, but they always managed, somehow, to get back up again. That they wouldn't this time was unfathomable.

Colin insisted that he could take them both to the Hog's Head, like it said on the coin, through Side-Along Apparition, despite the fact that he was underage, didn't have a license, and his only experience with Apparition was sneaking into some of Twycross's lessons for the sixth years in his fifth year.

"Colin!" Dennis exclaimed, starting to realise how dangerous what they were doing was. Simply getting into Hogwarts was going to be incredibly risky. "We're both going to be horribly Splinched. There's no way you can do this - "

"I can do it," Colin said firmly, "because I'll have to."

He sounded so determined, so set in his plan that Dennis knew there was no use arguing. He couldn't shake the bad feeling in his stomach, however. Could he really duel with Death Eaters? Did he want to? He wasn't even sure if Colin could, but he never bringing up the subject was fruitless. It would have been easier for Dennis to kill You-Know-Who himself than change Colin's mind once he'd made it up. Besides, he didn't want to look like a coward. Being in Gryffindor had always been very important to him and his brother.

It took Colin nearly a half hour to work out how to Apparate into the Hog's Head, and in those thirty minutes, Dennis's anxiety only grew. He couldn't do this; he was too young... He could tell that Colin was getting nervous too. His face was a wall of concentration, but whenever he looked at his younger brother, the wall crumbled. In the end, Colin did manage to get them both to the Hog's Head relatively safely, although both lost their eyebrows in the process and Dennis very much wanted to throw up.

The Hog's Head was full of people, some of which gave the Creeveys grins and waves as they bustled around the pub.

"I did it!" Colin exclaimed, sounding shocked. "I actually - "

"You here to fight?" the bartender growled at them, looking annoyed.

Colin nodded and told him proudly, "We're from Dumbledore's Army."

The man rolled his eyes, mumbling, "Of course you are... Young hotheads..." He looked doubtfully down at them. "How old are you two, anyway?"

"Seventeen," Colin said, then added softly, so the man wouldn't hear, "Almost."

"Fourteen," Dennis whispered.

"Fourteen!" the man exclaimed. "Are you out of your bloody mind, coming to fight You-Know-Who at fourteen? You'll be killed in about two seconds, lad. And you," he turned on Colin, "his older brother, I suppose?"

"Yeah," Colin muttered, looking suddenly ashamed.

"Letting your brother come here to fight - you shouldn't even be fighting yourself!"

"Maybe... maybe you should stay here, Dennis," said Colin. He looked a little pale, but perhaps it was the lighting.

"But - " He stopped, and they fell into silence. Dennis wasn't sure what to say. He didn't want to be a coward, but he really didn't want to go fight. The man, whoever he was, was right - he had no chance against the Death Eaters.

He would always regret that he hadn't demanded to go, no matter what, hadn't been a true Gryffindor like his older brother. Perhaps then he would have gone to fight with Colin; perhaps they'd still be together. Instead, he trailed into silence and wasted the precious seconds that would have allowed him to escape from her, from the fate she gave him.

Slowly, things got better. Living didn't seem so painful, the nightmares all but stopped, and the memories - they didn't fade, exactly, but they receded, loosened their grip on him. He no longer had to shut himself down at every second to feel no pain.

Going back to Hogwarts was one of the most difficult things he had ever done because the school held so many memories - good and bad - of his brother. Colin had died in the school, but he had also lived in it. Sometimes, Dennis would still look, almost unconsciously, for his brother in the corridors or the common room, before remembering that he'd never see him there again. It was hard, too, watching seventh years like Ginny Weasley, Demelza Robbins, and Ritchie Coote enjoy their final year at Hogwarts, knowing that Colin should be among them. He could feel their eyes on him, sometimes, could feel their pity burning into his back. He never turned around to look at them; Dennis didn't need pity. Worse was when would slip and call him Colin. It was always a terrible moment, when they realised their mistake, and horrified, attempted to apologise to him. Dennis would smile, lie that it was fine, and wish that they would all just leave him alone.

Despite all this, he managed it. He didn't exactly graduate the top of the class, but then, no one had ever expected him to do that, even before Colin had died. He went to the Quidditch games, cheered for Gryffindor, played Exploding Snap with his friends, and dated a few (well, two) girls. In the end, he had fun and even stopped feeling guilty about that after a while. After he graduated, Dennis got a job in the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, and he liked it enough. He had tried his hand at being a reporter at the Daily Prophet, but - it wasn't for him. It just wasn't. Dennis had quit after two weeks.

By all appearances, he'd moved on, and Dennis reckoned he had, as much as anyone could, from losing their mum and their brother less than a decade apart. There were times, like when he'd had a bad day, or it was inching closer to the second of May or the fourteenth of June, Colin's birthday, when Dennis would look in the mirror and see his own corpse again. Or else he'd see a flash of long blond hair in the streets that reminded him of her, or two brothers playing together, or sometimes just the Picture Page of the Daily Prophet, and he'd feel like a Walking Dead Man again. He'd shut down and forget, telling himself that he felt nothing, nothing at all.

Dennis didn't think he'd ever stop being a Walking Dead Man, not completely, so he didn't even try. It was easier that way.

"Mr. Aberforth?" a young girl with a French accent asked, coming over to them from where she'd been sitting at one of the tables. She looked Veela, with her white-blond hair and glowing skin, but Dennis wasn't sure. She couldn't have been more than eleven.

"What?" he asked grouchily. "It's not time for you to go yet - they haven't evacuated the students."

"Oh," she said, rather nervously. "I zought zat zey were underage."

"That one is," the bartender, Aberforth, evidently, told her, pointing at Dennis, then, apparently losing interest with all of them, walked over towards the group of people who had just entered the pub, shaking his head and muttering under his breath.

"I'm seventeen," Colin told the girl, puffing out his chest. Dennis could tell he'd been offended.

"Almost," muttered Dennis..

"But maybe you should stay with Gabrielle," Colin went on, looking at his younger brother, "to protect her. After all, she's younger than you."

It was the way out that Dennis had been looking for. "Alright." Still, he wasn't sure that his brother should go either. "But - "

The girl looked a little affronted. "I do not need - "

Colin looked at her, and a look passed between them that Dennis did not understand.

"What?" Dennis asked.

"Nothing," Colin told him. "I'll see you later, okay? Stay with - " He looked at the girl.

"Gabrielle," she said.

"Gabrielle," he repeated. "Don't come to the castle until the Battle's over. You'll be evacuated with the other students."

"Colin," Dennis said, once again thinking of their mum. "Maybe you shouldn't go either."

"I have to," Colin told him determinedly. "I just - have to."

"Colin - "

"I'll be all right. See you later." With that, he was gone, disappearing into the crowd.

"Are you scared for 'im?" the French girl asked.

"Yeah," he sighed, looking after his brother. "I wish - " He shook his head, wondering how he could let his brother do something that he himself was so scared of. Surely, though, Dennis told himself, he would have gone, if it hadn't been for Gabrielle. He had to stay here, to protect her.

Gabrielle looked just as anxious. "My seester eez fighting. So eez 'er 'usband and all of 'is family. Eet makes me very nervous, especially for Fleur."

She continued in this vein for some time, and as he felt that his own nervous-looking face was not helping, he decided to put on a brave one.

"She'll be all right," he said. "Colin will protect her. He's a brilliant dueller!"

This was certainly true, at least in Dennis's opinion, and he relaxed slightly. Colin would be all right.

For some reason, this did not console her in the way he thought it would. She still looked worried, biting her upper lip and scanning the room at all times.

"How'd you get here, anyway?" he asked her. "Don't you go to Beauxbatons?"

"I was to start zis September," said Gabrielle. "Alzough, yes, I live een France. I was visiting Fleur because my parents were taking a day-trip. Ze war eez not so bad in France. I could 'ave gone with zem, but I wanted to see - " She blushed, then continued, "I wished to see 'Arry, Ron, and 'Ermione, 'oo were visiting my seester. By ze time I got zere, 'owever, zey 'ad already left. Zen we got ze summons and seence my seester did not want to leave me alone or know exactly where my parents were..." She shrugged. "I ended up 'ere."

"Oh." He nodded.

"Oh!" Gabrielle said after a minute,, standing up and pacing. "'Ow can you stand zis?"

"She'll be okay," said Dennis in what he hoped was a confident tone. "I told you, Colin will protect her!"

She shuddered.

"Hey, look," he told her. "It'll be okay."

Since his reassurances seemed to have no effect on her, he tried to distract her. He told her all about Colin and his dad, about Harry Potter and the D.A. (she particularly seemed to enjoy those stories), and of his and Colin's plan to work at the Daily Prophet as a reporter and a photographer.

"Why ze Daily Prophet?" she asked. "Fleur says that eet eez very corrupt. She deed not like zheir coverage of ze Tri-Wizard. Also, zey do not much like 'Arry, yes?"

He grinned. "Colin wants to make sure that they never make fun of him again."

She laughed, and he felt quite proud of himself for getting her to, at least temporaily, forget about the danger. Soon, the rest of the students came through the passage, and Dennis and Gabrielle were evacuated with them. He continued to tell her stories, trying desperately to keep her worries - and his own - at bay.

He was scared for Colin, but in his heart, he never really expected him to die. No doubt that was why it came as such a shock.

Nearly eight years after Colin's death, he was sitting in the Leaky Cauldron, telling his mates some story, when suddenly, they all stopped laughing at once and stared fixedly behind him. Dennis knew that this behaviour could only mean one thing - a very pretty girl - so naturally, he swivelled in his seat.

In fact, she was much more than pretty - she was gorgeous. almost glowing in the dark pub. As she swept past them, she flipped her long hair, her expression haughty, completely ignoring all the gaping men, including Dennis, although he wasn't staring at her for the same reasons as the others. The sight of her was like a punch in the stomach. Gabrielle Delacour had changed a lot in the past eight years, but she was still the last person he'd ever want to see. He could not believe that she was here, of all places. The sight of her reawakened so many painful memories, revived so many terrible feelings - anger and grief and -

He shut himself down, reverting completely to a Walking Dead Man again. Dennis had not felt like this since the months right after Colin had died. Or perhaps, he had not not felt.

Finally managing a hoarse, "I have to go," he got up, walking stiffly, robotically. He didn't know what to do, where to go, couldn't even remember how to Apparate.

"Dennis?"

"Creevey, get back here!"

"Where the hell is he going?"

He heard his friends' voices as though they were very far away, but made no answer. Suddenly, the concept of Apparition came back to him, and he was halfway gone when he heard the sound of heels clacking and felt sharp nails pinch his arm. Gabrielle did not let him disappear into the darkness; she went with him, and he hated her all the more for it.

They landed in his own flat, and he immediately pulled away from her, revolted and angry and -

He felt nothing. She was nothing.

"Dennis?" she said, although it sounded more like Denise. He made no answer, only stumbled away into the kitchen. She followed after him and gave him a shake. "What eez wrong wizz you?"

"Nothing," he said stiffly, trying to convince her as much as himself.

"I did not expect you to look like zis, to still 'ate me so much." Gabrielle gave a short, humourless laugh, "I did not expect to see you at all, I suppose. I only just arrived in England, you know, two weeks ago." She looked over at him again. "But you do not care about zis, no?"

Dennis did not care much about anything at the moment. He walked up the stairs; again, she came after him. He wanted her to go away. It was too hard to be a Walking Dead Man while she was around, too hard to forget about Colin or keep his anger in check.

"Dennis!" she cried. "Stop eet! You are acting very strange, like one of ze... one of ze dead."

He looked back at her, meeting her icy blue eyes for the first time, although he quickly glanced away. He was struck but the similarity of this to his own thoughts. No one had ever guessed before.

"Zis eez stupid, Dennis!" cried Gabrielle. "So stupid! Why are you doing zis? And why are you not working at ze Daily Prophet? I zought eet was your dream, but Ginny told me - "

He was finding it more and more difficult to control his anger and hate towards this witch, this murderess. The Walking Dead Man that was him did not much care. Anger was much easier than -

He shut down that thought.

"I didn't like it," he snarled. "Is that all right with you?"

"No," said Gabrielle. "Eet eez not, because I theenk that you would 'ave been a reporter if your brozzer had not died. I theenk you could not do it wizzout 'im - "

"Shut up!" he screamed at her, losing the very last of his control. He didn't want to think about this, not now, not ever. He hated the way she filled his nothing. "Just shut up! What's it your business what I'm doing with my life? You have to be the most insensitive person I've ever met, thinking you can just waltz into my life after you killed Colin?" He looked up her, disgusted at the effort it took him not to notice how pretty she was. "I hate you! I hate you!"

"Feel free," she snapped. "Most people do, and I am very used to eet. 'Owever," she stopped, and her voice softened as she continued, "I do feel bad for you, Dennis. If I'd lost Fleur in zat battle, I would have felt much ze same, I theenk. So I am sorry about Colin."

"It was your fault - " Dennis started furiously, trying not to care about how genuine her words sounded.

"Eet was not! I am sorry zat my sibling lived, and yours did not. I am sorry zat Colin died. I cried for 'im; I liked 'im very much. At some point, 'owever, you 'ave to move on - "

"If I hadn't stayed," he choked, unable to stop the words from escaping his lips. There was something about her - her directness? her aura? - that made it hard for him to be a Walking Dead Man. "Maybe I could have saved him."

She looked at him, sudden understanding sweeping her beautiful face. "Eet eez not your fault eizzer, Dennis."

"You don't know that," he said. "Maybe he'd still be dead, but maybe it would have been me, instead. Maybe we both would have survived."

"Colin wanted you to stay," she told him. "'Ow could you not know zat? I zought you 'ated me because my seester survived and your brozzer didn't, but you blame me because I stopped you from going with 'im."

"It was my fault!" he sobbed. "He died because of me, because I was too scared to fight. I was supposed to be brave like him, a Gryffindor, but - "

There it was at last - the light had been switched on and the truth, or at least, part of it, was laid out bare in front of him, no longer hidden between his hatred for Gabrielle, behind the Walking Dead Man that he forced himself to be.

"Dennis," Gabrielle said, sounding truly soothing for the first time that night. "You were, what? Fourteen? You could 'ave done nozzing against zose Deazz Eaters. You could not 'ave saved 'im. 'E wanted you to stay, wanted to protect you. Eet was obvious; 'e would 'ave found some excuse, in ze end, to leave you be'ind, even if I 'adn't been there. 'Onestly, I am not even sure why 'e brought you along at all."

"That was just Colin," he muttered. "He never thought before he acted, but he always considered me his equal. We did everything together, except - " He broke off, the tears rolling down his face. He did not know what to believe anymore.

"Colin eez dead, Dennis. 'E eez dead, and 'e eez not coming back." A tear slid down Gabrielle's face, and she looked almost surprised at it. "Eet was not my fault, and eet was not yours - "

"I was a coward!" he sobbed. "Such a coward!"

"You are a coward now!" she thundered. "Not zen, Dennis, but now! You cannot accept ze truzz; you are taking ze easy way out! Avoiding ze 'ard zings, like me and being a reporter - "

He knew she was right, but -

"I didn't deserve it," he said, not knowing where all this was coming from. He had not realised how much he had been hiding from himself. "Not when Colin didn't get to be a photographer with me - "

"You 'ave to move on!" she shrieked. "You 'ave too!"

"I can't!" he screeched, his hands over his ears, wishing she would leave.

"Coward," she said, taunting him now, in his face. "Be brave, Dennis. Like Colin. Like you. For Merlin's sake, look at me, Dennis!"

He shuddered and removed his hands from his face, and there she was, an inch away. The things he had kept at bay for so long had caught up to him. Every nightmare, every feeling he had squashed away - Gabrielle had led them back to him.

"Wake up," she told him softly. "Wake up and do somezzing."

"Gabrielle," he whimpered, saying her name for the first time. "Gabrielle."

It was as though everything had frozen, and Dennis has to decide between the truth and the lies, the easy path or the hard one, nothing or something, cowardice or bravery, life or death.

Gabrielle was still right in front of him and he didn't know what the hell to do, so he just kissed her, not because she was Veela, but because he had made his choice, damn it all.

Dennis was going to live.

A million thanks to DoubleCaramel (Karla) for giving me some much-needed help on this story, and to Tat1312 for letting me "steal" her ship from the last collaboration.

I'd really appreciate some feedback on this one!