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Title: Photograph
Author: Relala
Beta Reader: Lady of Scarlet
The courtyards of Hogwarts are not a trustworthy haven at the hour of five in the morning, especially for a schoolboy not yet graduated from his Fourth Year. Each and every one of the students knew this simple fact—or at least the ones which listen during the Year's Beginning Speech by Dumbledore did. Everyone knew, most obeyed.
Some, however, were more prone to taking risks.
He slinked out into vacant corridors with camera in palm, pyjama robes rumpled and bare feet as well hushed as the rotting dead, with the firm, regular, heartbeat of those who have done such things a million times over without a care. He jaunted to the kitchens with clever eyes trained on the liquid swift shadows and left their sanctuary with the knowledge that death could be right on his heels. He didn't look back.
Some individuals might have said he was a fool, a thrill seeker, taking too many risks. Colin knew better than to listen to anything they mightsay. After all, even the most cautious and fastidious of persons risked himself each and every single day. Life, in and of itself, was a risk. Every thought anyone ever had, every emotion anyone ever felt, every single thing anyone did was a risk. The only option anyone ever really had was to throw the dice and hope for the best.
On that evening, almost a lengthy four years ago, Colin Creevey had thrown his dice in the hopes of good fortune. He had pressed his lips to the dice, kissing his chances with all the passionate tenderness of a boy his age, and wished for one—just one—decent photograph of his magnificent hero who had been horridly wounded in battle and marooned in the hospital.
The dice had not landed in his favour. He never even made it to his destination; his camera was melted down like candle wax to a flame. Yet his hopes of a photograph still remained.
Even to this very day, at five o'clock in the morning, his thin frame concealed behind the pathetic hell of a rubbish bin, he let himself hope. The Quidditch pitch was an utterly soundless testimony to the loneliness of beauty, dusted in a thin fog in the first blush of sunlight and hollow without its ecstatic fans, awaiting the arrival of its best known Seeker, Harry James Potter.
Colin waited with bated breath;his loyal flashbulb camera poised professionally at the skyline where he is beyond a doubt certain his hero will emerge. Who else could be coming out this early, taming a new broomstick according to the second year Ravenclaws, soaring through the air like an eagle?
A figure in the sky. Flash!
At last he has received his perfect picture, capturing the glory of a hero and wonderment of a splendid morning all at once. He beams brilliantly, gazing into the endless playground of the sky at his hero. A lanky boy mastering a broomstick in the much too early frostbitten air, orange-hair dancing in the chill wind, the pinkish glow from the sun bleeding into the world with tenderness as it illuminates the boy's passionate face—portraying all its perfections and flaws in a true show of heroism.
Ronald Weasley takes his breath away.
And from that moment onwards, Harry Potter is nothing more than a half-recalled dream.
THE END
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Revisions: Fixed baited breath to bated breath. (2-23-10)