This fic is intended to portray a Mrs Creevey with agoraphobia, and I apologise if there are any inconsistencies with the portrayal of the disorder.

– HBP – HBP – HBP – HBP – HBP –

It's been a long time since Mrs Creevey has been outside, and as she takes in the first breath of fresh air she looks around, remembering; the sky is much bluer than she remembers; the grass too green. Feeling the summer sun on the back of her neck, she turns her face to feel the golden rays play on her face. It shouldn't be sunny today, she knows that much. It should be stormy, sharp knives of rain should be stabbing at her skin while the wind whirls around her around stealing at her clothes and wispy hair. Because that's how she feels. There are knives plunging in and out of her heart and her head is spinning. There's a cold sweat on the back of her neck and her throat is so dry that she could swear that the world around her is on fire. Of course, when she looks, it isn't.

She feels like she's falling with every shaky step she takes, expecting her foot to fall through the withered grass into nothing, but the ground rises to meet the first pair of heels she's worn in years. It's easier than she'd thought, to leave the house, and yet in the same way it's harder. She wants, so badly, to run back, to cling to her bed-covers and hide underneath them, to leave the outside world exactly where it belongs – outside. But today is an important day. Today is the day that everything outside of the shabby two-bed terrace rushes in and there's nothing that she can do to stop it. Today is the day that no parent should ever have to face. Today is the day that Colin is buried.

There, in the middle of the garden is the sapling that Colin planted when he was ten. It's different, she muses, to see everything for real, and not just in photographs. Colin is - was - gifted with a camera, but his photographs are not the same as the outside world. To see the world through Colin's camera lens was to see beauty, but without Colin to frame and focus it, it is ugly.

Her skin is prickling, and her lungs work frantically, drawing air into her lungs faster and faster as with every step she moves away from the building that has been her sanctuary for more than eight years. Beads of sweat run down her neck, her pulse races, her legs become leaden, her feet slowing, and stumbling and then-

A hand, holding hers. It's nearly as large as hers, though she knows it belongs to someone much smaller than she, much younger. But this hand is not the hand she remembers. It came back to her with scars, and callouses, skin worn hard from long hours spent working. There are scrapes, and burn marks, all old now and healed, but these are not the hands she remembers. The hands she remembers were so small they could only grasp a finger. The hands she remembers were perfectly formed with soft skin, no marks at all. But Dennis has lived through a war now, she remembers. Dennis has fought like a man. Dennis fought like Colin fought. But Dennis came home.

It's wrong, she knows, that Dennis will overtake Colin in years. It isn't fair. She will never see Colin grow old. He will never marry, never have children. She'll never get to hear him laugh again, never get to see another photo he's taken. Why is it that Colin, so brave, so hopeful should be gone when she remains? Colin had so much to give to the world, and she has given nothing in all the time she has spent. No, that isn't true. She gave the world her two little boys, and now the world has taken them from her. Dennis doesn't speak as much as he used to, doesn't smile like he did before. She knows he misses his brother. She doesn't know how to help him.

She's never known how to help her sons, once they left. Once they grew up, big enough to leave the house that she has stayed in for too long. She wishes they felt the same as she. If they'd only stayed with her, would Colin still smile with Dennis? Or if she had been able to leave, if she could have been there, would she have been able to save him? Dennis has told her more than once that it wouldn't have helped, that she couldn't have helped. She doesn't have magic, like they do. She wishes they didn't have it either. Dennis hasn't touched his wand, he looks at it as if he expects it will explode. She remembers the first time he saw a wand, when Colin got his, he looked at it as if it were the best thing in the world, and his brother was God.

But they left, left her home, left the safety she knows lies within these walls, and now she is leaving it too. Because she has to go and see Colin, she has to go and watch as the child that she brought into this world is slowly lowered into the ground. A parent should never have to see this, but it is her duty to oversee her son's passing.

Her breath comes quickly now, short, sharp and shallow like knives stabbing into her chest, each intake of air less sure than the one before it. Her husband stands on her other side, gently cupping her elbow, guiding her towards the car that someone, someone kind whose name she can no longer recall, has organised for them. A friend of Colin's, Dennis had said he was, and she would be grateful, but Colin fought for his friends. If he hadn't made those friends, he would have come home, he would have been safe in her bosom.

It's Dennis who opens the car door, and pulls her inside. It's better, in the car. Quieter, and darker, and closer. She feels safer with walls around her, has done for many years. The car is not the same as the house, but it's better. Truly, she wonders what Colin would have said, to see his Mother finally leave the home, would he be proud of her, like she is proud of him? Like she will never be able to be proud of him again.

The kind boy who had organised the car meets them when they arrive, clasping hands with Dennis, murmuring something too soft for her to hear. And then he looks to her, squinting through his glasses in the bright sunlight. His arm replaces her husbands, and she is grateful. He feels her pain as well, between them there is too much pain, too much loss. There haven't been many words, in recent days, just harsh silence. The boy keeps up his soothing, stuttering recollections of Colin, and she is grateful to hear stories of her child that she has not heard before. To hear of the moments before those wonderful photographs that he had faithfully sent to her.

It is a wizarding tradition, she is told, that little will be said, at the- the funeral. Dennis will inscribe words into the gravestone, after the ground has been smoothed over. She can barely watch as her youngest son moves out of her grasp, burying her face in her hands, and then, sometime later, Dennis has returned, leading her to the headstone.

Mrs Creevey falls to her knees, wrapping her arms around the cold stone, still cold, so cold even in the bright warm sunlight. Here, she thinks, here is not a safe place. There is sky and there are no walls, and her heart is breaking, but- She will stay here as long as she can. She will stay with her child, with Colin.

– HBP – HBP – HBP – HBP – HBP –

It's been a while since I've posted anything, and I do intend to continue with my other fics, however this would not leave my mind. It's been a long year of university, and I'll be graduating with a First, which makes it all worthwhile. Hopefully, now that I don't have such an intense schedule, updates will be more frequent.