Snapshots and Thundersnow
Chapter 3: The Shutterbug

"Quite a peculiar one, here, but it may just be right. Balsa wood and unicorn hair, ten inches, quite bendy. An excellent wand for charms... and hexes if that's your fancy. Go on, give it a wave and we'll see... ah yes, perfect!"
Colin stared out the window, watched Dennis running about in the yard. Usually he would've been down there with him, playing, laughing, doing what kids were meant to do. He mused on the fact that he still considered himself a kid. Was that telling him something?

His wand was on the other side of the room, stuffed at the bottom of his trunk so he wouldn't be tempted to use it. He usually had to do that. It was a lot worse this summer... he sighed and kept watching Dennis.

Dennis was lucky. Dennis was still... untainted. But Colin kept seeing those awful glowing eyes through the lens of his camera. The basilisk... and blackness...

And now the person who had controlled the basilisk was on the loose. Sure, he had been last summer too. Colin had spent that summer pretending nothing was wrong, because... well, it was easy to do.

It wasn't that he'd believed all that stuff about Harry being insane, but when Lord... Lord You-Know-Who hadn't done anything, it was so simple to pretend he wasn't out there. Colin wasn't sure if Dennis understood the situation, and he was quite certain their father didn't. He'd ignored it. He'd gotten away with it.

Lord You-Know-Who at the Ministry of Magic, the panic in the Daily Prophet, were making that more difficult this time around. And Colin would've actually felt better—he was part of the DA! He knew how to defend himself!—if it weren't for a certain Ministry law that said he couldn't do magic right now.

He wanted to practice the spells they'd learned. Just in case. Dennis knew a lot more defensive magic than Colin had after his second year, but the fact remained he had only been in Hogwarts for two years, and he couldn't practice either. That left Colin the most powerful wizard in the Creevey household...

That meant if any Death Eaters came knocking, they were all dead.

Had he just thought that? "No way!"

"Colin, is everything all right?"

Oops. He'd yelled a little too loud, perhaps. "Everything's fine, Dad."

He glanced over at Dennis' bed, then sat back and turned his attention to the window again. Dennis himself was kicking a football around. He claimed he was going to try out for the Gryffindor Quidditch team next year. Colin had thought about... that until discovering he was afraid of heights. But he grinned. It'd be fun to see Dennis play...

Assuming he made the team.

Assuming he was alive to make the team.

Colin shook his head violently to get rid of that thought. Maybe it would be like last summer. Maybe, Lord You-Know-Who wouldn't do anything.

I sound like a little kid.

Colin wanted his wand. He wanted to practice. He just wanted to be a good wizard, and have fun, and take pictures... pictures.

He took his camera from the desk next to his bed, raised it to the window, and took a picture of Dennis just as he was trying to kick the football. He wound up missing, landing flat on his back. But he was laughing—always laughing. Colin grinned. Maybe he'd develop that picture in the Muggle way. After all, it just wasn't fair to make someone fall down over and over, even a photograph.

As he returned the camera to its place he caught his own reflection in the window. Still tiny, mousy-haired, and with a wide smile, but for a moment it didn't look like him. There was something too serious lurking in the eyes. Lord You-Know-Who was never far from his thoughts...

Even if he didn't come here (he probably wouldn't), he was after Harry. Colin couldn't imagine a wizarding world without Harry. He shook his head. Maybe he was growing up, but he wasn't going to get over his admiration of the Boy Who Lived any time soon. He giggled, remembering how he'd all but stalked the poor wizard his first year. (Harry probably had rather resented that, really. Colin liked to think he exercised more moderation of late.)

It was all too troublesome to dwell on for a whole summer, Colin decided finally. He was fourteen, and he wasn't going to be fourteen forever. Enjoy it while it lasts.

He cast one last, longing glance towards his chest with the wand inside, then darted out of his room, downstairs, and outside. "Dennis!"

"Colin!"

The football took him square in the face, but he went down laughing.

The first attack came two weeks in. The next, a week after that. Another came right after and then they stopped for awhile. The Creevey brothers read about each in the Daily Prophet. Of course, both had a healthy skepticism for anything the paper said, but it was the only source they had.

All of the attacks were on wizards, and none on anyone Colin had ever heard of, though the paper mentioned one as being a member of the Order of the Phoenix. Bad. Very bad. But no Muggles had turned up dead or missing, none that Colin knew of anyway...

Their father didn't understand a lot of this. He did know Lord You-Know-Who was back, Colin and Dennis had both attempted to explain. (Dennis seemed to have more or less grasped the severity of the situation when the attacks started.) He was worried, but more for his sons than himself. Colin wasn't so sure this was the proper order.

After all, they would be at Hogwarts. Harry Potter and, even more importantly, Dumbledore would be at Hogwarts.

One thing their father did seem to fully understand was Colin's agitated state. Not that he wasn't usually rather hyper, but this was different. Lacking any good idea of what to tell his son, Mr. Creevey had decided maybe a distraction was in order. Perhaps a bit of responsibility would calm him down...

Thus it was with great anticipation, and no small amount of relief at having made it through the summer, that Colin strode through the Leaky Cauldron and out into Diagon Alley. Dennis was right behind him and in a matter of moments they were both running up the street, headed for the Magical Menagerie.

Colin didn't want an owl. Sure, owls were useful and all, but... owls also spent most of their time delivering mail, or in the owlery. Colin wanted a pet that would actually be with him most of the time.

The multicolored snails were intriguing, but probably a bit of a bore once you got over the novelty... and the poison slime would be a hassle. Besides, there were some people at Hogwarts with pets other than the usual cat, rat, or toad, but a streeler was most likely pushing it. He left Dennis to gape at a Fire-Crab (the lady behind the counter warned that he was far too young to be allowed to own one) and went to look over the cats. A small gray kitten caught his eye, and he spent a rather long time deciding he wanted something with... less developed claws.

That took him to the puffskeins, which Colin found thoroughly creepy for some reason. He made good time to the other side of the store, stared at the toads long enough to resolve not to get one, and moved on to the next row of shelves.

Curled up in one of the cages was a tiny rodent, fast asleep, its rather furry tail curled around its head. The plaque on the shelf declared it a dormouse. As he stared at it, the dormouse opened its eyes and stuck its nose out of the cage. Colin hesitated a moment, then scratched it below the chin.

The dormouse had obviously taken a liking to him. And while his brother would probably wonder why he hadn't gotten something more impressive, a small animal that could go everywhere with him was exactly what he'd been looking for, wasn't it?

"Dennis!" he called in a low voice, not wanting to disturb any other animals. "Go get dad! I found what I want!"

Dennis opted to come see for himself first, and the look he gave his brother was a bit on the incredulous side. "A... mouse?"

Colin grinned. "Why not?"

By the time his father got there to buy his new pet, the dormouse had a name. "I'll call you Snapshot. Just Snap, for short. Is that okay?"

He could've been imagining things, but he thought Snap nodded.

The only spot on the train was in a compartment with a shaggy-haired Slytherin. Colin guessed him to be a sixth or seventh year and was careful to ignore him. For that matter, he and Dennis were ignored right back. They spent the time discussing classes, Lord You-Know-Who (Dennis had taken to calling him Lord Thingy), and Harry Potter.

Probably three quarters of the way through the trip, talk turned to the DA. "He'll almost have to keep it going, though, won't he?" Colin mused aloud. "That Umbridge woman didn't teach us anything! What's the new teacher meant to do, give us two years of class in one year? Harry'll keep teaching us."

"Cool!" Dennis was grinning. "I can keep working on my Patronus!"

Out of the corner of his eye, Colin noticed the Slytherin boy giving Dennis a rather odd look. Dennis had followed his gaze. Realizing he had their attention now, the boy seemed slightly uncomfortable, but then it was gone and Colin decided he'd just imagined it. "Can you really conjure a Patronus?"

Dennis went a little red, but nobody would ever accuse him of being bashful. "Well, it's just some silver smoke now, but..."

Colin sort of hoped the Slytherin would stay focused on Dennis—his own Patronus wasn't much more than a silvery wisp, either. That or it was a flobberworm. And really, it was bad enough for the Slytherins in his own year to be obnoxious, now this one came along and—

—Nodded sagely. "It's a start." He turned back to the window, and if he had any further interest in their conversation for the rest of the trip, he didn't show it.

Soon enough train pulled to a stop, and the brothers managed to get a carriage with a few other third-year Gryffindors. Colin forgot about the conversation soon enough.