The strange bird-like creature flew through the mist away from the Earth, a heavy thud resonating through the air every time it flapped its wings. It flew for miles, until the Earth was millions of miles away and the sun was a mere speck of light in the inky blackness of the night. It flew until the sky slowly lightened to a bright white. A boy stood in the whiteness, no more than sixteen. He was alone. He stretched his arm out to the side and the creature landed on his forearm. It grasped three sheets of parchment in its claws, which crackled between the scales of its feet and the soft wool of the boy's light grey robe. The boy gently pulled the trapped parchment until it came free, and sat down cross-legged. The creature shuffled over to sit on his lap, and the boy leaned over its shoulder to read what he now realized were three letters in handwriting he recognized almost as well as his own.
Dear Colin,
I feel a bit silly writing this letter. My therapist said it would help, though. With the grief. My therapist is very nice. She's called Susan, and she looks a bit like Aunty Angela. She's a muggle, but she knows about magic, so it's easier to talk about it. I assume she's a Squib – how else would she know about us? She said I should make these letters short but to the point – cut out the drivel you don't need, as she says. I suppose this counts as drivel in her eyes, so I'll stop now. She says she won't read the letters because they're private; they're between you and me. A lot of us have therapists now, even Harry Potter. I know, just imagine! The Boy Who Lived needing a therapist. I can just imagine your face, your jaw on the floor, your eyes wide, reaching for your camera to photograph this unexpected development in Wizarding history. You'd make a big deal out of it, I bet. It's not such a big deal to the rest of us. They're calling Harry the Boy Who Won now that he's defeated You Kn Voldemort. Everything's changed, Colin. Everything's still changing, and I wish you were here to see it. It's all you fought for and more.
I'll write again soon.
All my love,
Dennis x
Dear Colin,
So much has happened since I last wrote. We've both received an Order of Merlin, for one. Mine's Third Class, but yours is Second! It was for "valour and bravery on the battlefield and giving the ultimate sacrifice for the good of the people". Mum was in tears, she was so proud of you. We all are. I laminated the certificate and fixed it to your grave with a permanent sticking charm. Dad put the medal on the shelf in your bedroom. No one's touched your bedroom, not even to tidy. It's exactly as you left it, all your clothes everywhere, drawers hanging open from when you packed to go to Hogwarts for the last time. It's been hard, so hard, without you here. I feel like an empty shell, like your death sucked all the happiness from me like a Dementor. Writing to you is helping a little, I suppose. I can finally say what I wanted to but never got the chance to before you died. It's so final, isn't it? Death. I like the idea that you are somewhere warm and safe, reading my letters in comfort. Susan has told me to limit my letters, because it turns out her uncle works in the Department of Magical Creatures at the Ministry, and apparently they've found this creature that can travel between this world and the 'afterlife'. They call it the Mortis Nuncius, which is "death's messenger" in Latin. They think it's a cross breed between a Thestral, a phoenix, an owl and possibly something like a vulture. Susan says her uncle refused to tell her anything else except it can only carry light weights like letters, but from the testing they worked out that about three pieces of parchment is the limit, so I will have to keep my letters brief. They say the creature delivers the letters but never brings replies. I hope this reaches you safely. I wish you could write back.
Until next I write,
All my love,
Dennis x
Dear Colin,
Life is moving on here. I am happy about that, but at the same time I wish it wouldn't. We are all recovering slowly, and it no longer hurts quite so much to think of you and your camera. You always were inseparable from your camera, Colin. I only realized that last week, because Susan said I should make a scrapbook of our years at Hogwarts. She thinks it will help. I started looking through your photographs – you know, the ones you kept in shoeboxes under your bed. The moving ones. And it took me a while to realize, because there are so many of them. So many, yet so few have you in them... I think we all know why that is. You were so good with that camera of yours, Colin – I think you would have become involved with the media, had you lived through the War. The Daily Prophet, maybe, or the Quibbler, or a muggle nature magazine. You would have been the best photographer around, I know that much. I wish you had taken more photographs. I wish I had more photographs of you. But most of all, I wish the Death Eaters hadn't taken you from me with their elitist ideas and cruel ways. It hurts so much to think you will never come back, Colin. Every morning I wake up, and it is as if I have forgotten it all. And then I remember, and it breaks my heart to think that I will never see your cheesy smile, never see you click the little button, never see you alive again. My only hope is that wherever you are, the messenger creature I told you about will find you and deliver these, and you will know just how much I miss you. I hope someday we will meet again, although not for a while yet if all goes as planned. If you could only remember one thing I have written in these three letters to you, make sure it is this – I, Dennis Creevey, promise you, my brother Colin Creevey, that I will never forget you. I will try my hardest to move on and recover, but I will never, ever forget you. I love you.
I hope you are happy, wherever you are.
All my love,
Dennis x
Tears dripped off the end of the boy's nose, staining the already tear-spattered parchment anew. He sobbed quietly into the creature's stiff feathers. The sound was muffled in the whiteness, and the creature let out a low squawk that was somehow comforting. The boy slowly reached up and yanked out a lock of his dirty blond hair and placed it between the creature's claws. "Take it to my brother, Mortis. Take it to Dennis." The creature cawed again and, using the boy's knees as a springboard, launched itself into the whiteness. The boy watched as the creature faded into the mists, but he never knew that the hairs in its claws turned to dust long before it returned to the Earth.