Colin sighs, and wades his way through the paperwork. It balances on the side of his desk usually, but today it has decided to fall. He reaches down and picks up a piece of paper, and frowns and pushes it into his pocket. Swiftly, his shoes move through the mess of his office at the Daily Prophet. Pictures litter the floor, and slowly float downwards from the neat pile they had been. That is until Colin throws them on the floor in anger.

His prized camera sits in place of pride on his desk, on the two square inches of desk denoted to it amongst all the calamity. He sighs and sweeps everything back into a bundle on his desk. His camera is hidden from view, and again, Colin is ashamed.

Sighing, he walks down the hall mopping his brow. He approaches the front desk of the Daily Prophet and takes the paper out.

Anger runs through his veins as he looks at the name printed on the paper. The sweltering heat of the office is nothing compared to the heat that is flushing his face. His face is fevered, and his fingers scrabble impatiently at the scarf on his neck, and the gloves that thicken his fingers. He’s boiling, inside and out in this infuriating, stuffy office building.

He clenches his hands and thumps them down on the counter. The polished counter top is marred by the marks of sweaty palms, but Colin doesn’t care, he keeps on gesturing to the paper and yelling. How dare they, he says. How dare they invade his privacy?

The receptionist is cool, calm and collected. She says in snippy, icy cool tones that Colin’s boss is nowhere to be seen. And really, she adds, it’s not his problem.

Wherever there is news, there is Colin needed to take pictures.

He turns on his heel, wrenches open the front door, and is hit by a blizzard. He ignores the look being thrown at the back of his head, and steps out into the frigid cold with his hands jammed deep into his pockets.

---

He pushes through the door to the apartment that he shares with Dennis. There are books and clothes strewn across the lounge, but Colin sits down tiredly, rubbing the heels of his palms into his eyes in frustration.

Harry Potter. The two words that he had least expected. Colin had been told - no, conscripted - to take potentially incriminating pictures of Harry Potter.

His childhood friend, former schoolmate, former idol.

Her frowns and wipes his hands on the cushions. He picks up a magazine, and splashed across the cover is something that Colin is disgusted with. A picture that Colin took, in order to save his job. He’d been so angry. So, so angry. But he’d taken the picture, because his job at the Prophet had depended on it.

Harry is wildly trying to avoid the camera, but he doesn’t succeed. Colin was hiding in the bushes. He had to do his job. The snow is still falling serenely as he throws the cover down on the coffee table.

But still, he’s angry. He hurts. It’s a dull ache inside of him – because he loves Harry. Loves. He adores him. Idolises him. Harry Potter. The picture is black and white, but etched into the pigments is Colin’s pain. The awkward angle, the blurred image. Certainly not his best picture, but Colin doesn’t care. This was a matter of getting the job done, not about producing quality work.

Dennis enters the room and Colin is spent. He looks at his brother’s mousy brown hair and small features, and turns away. He is haggard, old inside. Too many thoughts have worn down his body until he really just feels like an empty, guilty shell inside.

‘After Potter again, Colin?’ snickers Dennis. But Dennis doesn’t understand. Dennis doesn’t know the extremes Colin goes to for Harry in his mind. Colin doesn’t like him physically. It is his mind he admires. It is the inside – the morals, the courage, the immunity – that Colin truly adores. Colin rules his life by standards. He is constantly thinking, will this action discount me from ever being loved by Harry? If I do this, will Harry hate me? He sobers, and thinks forlornly that now, there is no chance that Harry will love him. No chance, because he has broken Harry’s trust.

He stands, staring at the worn paint on the blue door to the apartment. The last thing he remembers is analysing how the paint peels back from the sculpted edge of the wood and curls down to meet the peep hole that Colin has stared out millions of times, hoping that one day it will be Harry Potter’s bespectacled face staring back at him.

He doesn’t know how he comes to be on the streets of London. He vaguely remembers slamming a door. Screaming and yelling, pale, white faces poking out from the neighboring windows curiously. But Colin doesn’t care as he scuffs his toes on the concrete paths. The grass is wet, heavy with the evening dew, and the street lights flicker on and off ominously as he nears the pub that he used to call his home. His camera case bounces against his hip, and Colin wonders furiously what prompted him to bring it – what was it that convinced his subconscious that the root of the problem could be the solution?

He skips off the guttered kerb and onto the road. The dirty streets of London become dangerous in the part he is briskly walking through, his legs pounding their own rhythm, their frustration, on the cobbled path. His feet walk numbly without assistance from his mind; it’s too far away. It’s concentrating on finding one person, on seeking out one special person.

He enters the heavy, damp pub. The air is thick with heat, and Colin’s back is cold as he enters the pub slowly, dusting off his hat and jacket from the late December snow. It blusters in, and he receives filthy looks from those huddled within their own deluded worlds as they imagine the heat they’re soaking up from the pitiful fire in a small grate in the far corner.

He nods at the barman, and the barman, having seen Colin before, steps forward wordlessly. He shows him upstairs to a bedroom, and suddenly Colin is no longer driven. He lies, dead tired on the bed, and buries his face in his hands.

‘What am I doing here?’ he cries to the empty walls, peeling of their paint and shabby in their appearance. ‘Am I in love? Am I deluded? Or am I simply tired?’

But the walls do not answer him. They gaze blankly back at him as he stares, unfocused, out the snow-splattered window. The flakes gather on the windowsill and fog up the reinforced glass. Unseen trains and buses pass through the hidden Muggle streets below, and it is finally his ragged breathing that lulls him into a state of self-security and tiredness as he finally collapses, fully clothed on his bed.

Tomorrow, he decides, will be the day he goes to Harry and asks for his forgiveness, and possibly, his love.

---

The snow is still slick on the cobbled streets. It’s falling, and melting as it hits the stones warmed by the winter sun. As Colin steps out into the sunlight, he feels as if the sun is melting the cold, frigid exterior of his heart. The frigid and frozen casing that caused him to take such a picture.

Colin is in two minds. He admires Harry. He half wanted to take that picture, to be that close to him. He felt guilty pleasure in balancing that camera in his hands. He had considered turning and fleeing, but as the warm sun cascades onto his shoulders, Colin decides to put all guilty, pleasurable thoughts behind him.

He kicks a small pebble across the street and cracks a smile as it bounces and lands at the door to Flourish and Blotts. He squares his shoulders and steps inside.

A bell tinkles overhead, and Colin is drawn out of his focused reverie. The books. The smells. The people. He searches through the late-Christmas shoppers bickering and fighting. Amongst all the frantic witches and wizards, only two people in the entire shop are calm. Colin balances the camera he brought under his arm protectively as he shoves his way through the crowd.

His jacket catches on a woman’s elbow, and his eyes break contact with the back of a jet black head, and he is lost. But as he apologises to the woman and she turns back to examining the blurb of a thick book, he is amazed to find Harry looking straight at him.

Colin’s face lights up, but the glee dies in his heart as Harry scans vacantly over the tops of the shopper’s heads. He bends down to his books again, and Colin is determined to move his way through the overflow of people.

He reaches up to touch Harry’s arm, and falters. Colin stares into Harry’s eyes as he turns around. At first, Harry’s eyes widen and he starts to brush off Colin’s arms. But then, as if by a miraculous chance – he grins with recognition.

Inexplicably a smile beams across his face, and Colin feels himself melt inside. Not in adoration, but admiration. He suddenly realises exactly what had been lying dormant in the back of his thoughts. He – Colin – doesn’t love Harry. Colin admires him. He admires him for his courage, his personality – honestly, Colin believes he is everything he himself cannot possibly measure up to.

‘Colin,’ said Harry happily. Colin beams, and envelopes Harry in a hug. It feels different, now. He doesn’t love Harry, not in that way.

Fantasies come and go, thinks Colin as he pats Harry on the back and chatters merrily about the Nargle infestation. But, the admiration will always come before the adoration. As Harry questions Colin about his photography, Colin hangs his head, disappointed. He wonders, does Harry already know that Colin took the picture?

Colin can see in Harry’s eyes the forgiveness. He can see the hurt, but he can see that Harry is ready to forgive him, in the deepest sections of those wonderful, entrancing eyes. Harry nods, and Colin is gone. He is floating, free. Freer than he had ever felt. There are no longer any standards. Colin breathes, and it feels free. It feels like his own breath, and as he sees Harry’s gaze upon him out of his peripheral vision, he smiles.