For some reason or another, some people have the misfortune of an inability to live life for themselves. Breathing is a natural reaction--air has no flavour; the sharp and brittle taste of winter melting on a warm tongue is lost to them; flowers in spring have no recognition other than that of stuffed noses from pollen allergies. An allergy to life is the most they can muster on their own.

Beyond that, they dig through trashcans for food they could experience, a taste so refined that the palate will explode and venture forth some feeling like a blind man seeing for the first time. They listen to the stories told by those who live, who love, who take chances: their eyes bulge at every instant, on some rollercoaster of a life built in the dreams of their peers. They choke on the reality of meadows in a foreign land with the same imprint of roots in the soil and veins of trees on their leaves.

Or they carry around a memory catcher, a dream preserver, a soul kidnapper.

A camera, craddled in the arms of a peculiar boy hiding in the shadows of the Hogwarts corridors. Could it be--sneaking around and dodging the watchdog portraits, skidding past the armour-knights and capturing the world while it holds its breath at the peake of midnight--he was living life? It almost felt like it, could almost be replicated in the jolt his body received with every tentative step on corridor floor, skipping between the beams of moonlight in some childish game.

The game was in finding a reality, snapping pictures at the outside world between leaps. Colin was at the climax of his nighttime discoveries, his mind buzzing in that same way a ten-year-old Butterbeer did. This was as close to life as he got some times, a smile on his lips as he slid to the end of the hallway, arms tucked to his body as he poised to take a picture mid-turn, sneak up on life and hope it wouldn’t flee. How many times he’d done this he couldn’t count, but the images were different at every turn, a new element that had gone unseen as details hid between the knees of armour or the frames of portraits.

Tonight went beyond a stray mouse chased by an armour; surpassed a funny looking creature with big ears muttering to itself down the hallway; even greater than the realisation that professors had sleepless nights in the days of looming war.

Tonight was love, an ebony hand curled around one of satin ivory he knew so well. It sent jolts of yearning pain through his veins, scorching through his innards and stopping only once it had bled through the pores on his skin in a tingling buzz of trapped bees. The epitome of his life, and his heart petals withering as he captured their tender hands on film. Was this life?

“We shouldn’t be out here,” Dean Thomas mumbled, but he made no move except to pull his hand back and wrap it around her waist. As it curled along her back, Colin snapped a picture. “It’s after curfew.” Leaning in closer, their noses almost touched and the camera made a soft click; Colin praised some god he didn’t believe in for giving him the perfect camera.

“It’s always after curfew.” Ginny’s whisper was soft and feminine, dancing along the air and cartwheeling between the sparse inches between the couple.

Their touches were gentle and knowing, her hand trailing his jaw line. She watched his handsome features as Colin watched her elegance, the camera capturing the moment Dean grinned at her innocent intimacy. “Yeah, but normally your brother doesn’t stir when I’m up out of bed.”

Colin’s camera went off, finding the moment that her hands went up to loop around his shoulders, catching at the wrists. She was too short for him, or he too tall for her, Colin decided. But it was only a nagging voice in his head saying that now, his ears hearing but his mind not listening as she laughed something about, “What’s Ron mattered in the past year?” Colin’s mind had frozen; he was no longer a sixteen-year-old boy anymore. In a way he’d become the camera, capturing their every moment and movement, wishing he was inside of it--even stuck in the static air between them; magical wavecurrents in charged energy.

“Well, he doesn’t.” Dean’s thumb played back and forth across her cheekbones, watching her. They were close enough to be kissing now, and Colin was there to capture it, holding in the grasp of his hands the film as their noses brushed against one another, their lips pressed against each other in a way of telling secrets with their bodies. Colin wondered what their inside world spoke, until their spell was broken, their embrace sliding apart, a river forking to become two seperate selves. Dean sighed and blinked his eyes open, Ginny’s lidded gaze locked on his, and Colin didn’t understand what was happening when Dean mumbled to her the words, “I love you.”

Three days later, Colin’s film was developed, pictures moving and shifting under his fingertips as he placed them into a photobook he’d labeled Memories. He slid in the photos of a moonlight corridor, slowly making his way through the paths of the castle until he stumbled upon two people he knew. He almost regretted capturing their moment for himself, and nearly regretted a photograph of Dean blinking his eyes open at the beauty before him; a photograph of Ginny’s moment of catching her breath. What he really regretted was charming the camera to imprint a phrase on every photo. Now he had two photos emblazoned with the words, “I love you”.

And they weren’t meant for him.