~Anonymous
“They’ve seen us! Run!” The voice was high and panicked; Colin did not know which of his companions it came from, and he didn’t take the time to figure it out. He just ran.
He’d done a lot of this lately, running until his throat grew so dry that his breath could not escape his stinging lungs and his leg muscles were so taut they refused to move. He was good at running; he’d always been small and lithe for his age, making it easy for him to dodge the flurry of spells as he darted away.
He could feel the burning heat of the curses as they shot past his cheek, missing him by inches; it was absolutely thrilling. It scared the shit out of him, of course, but it remained just as exciting as the first day he had been chased after. The danger, the fear, and the will to survive soaked through the air around him as he raced forward. Without Apparation, the chase could last for miles, but usually the slow-witted Snatchers soon lost interest or vowed to catch them some other time. Sometimes, if they were feeling particularly devious, the Snatchers would Apparate about a mile or so ahead of where they were running, but Colin and the others had caught onto this early and would switch directions if they lost sight of the Snatchers.
“Colin! Colin!”
He heard Justin’s voice calling him, and he slowed his pace as much as he could. His legs carried their momentum a few more strides before braking to a stop.
“Are they gone?” he asked, now walking alongside Justin Finch-Fletchley.
Justin nodded, breathing hard. “They gave up the chase a while ago, which makes me think they have something bigger up their sleeves.”
Colin swore under his breath. “Henry’s far up the road.”
“Too far?” Justin eyed him meaningfully.
Colin hesitated, his mind buzzing as he tried to calculate how long it would take to reach their friend. “Yes,” he admitted, his eyes boring into Justin’s. But it’s Henry, he wanted to add. Though he’d only known the boy for the eight months since he’d left Dennis behind, he couldn’t imagine abandoning him.
Justin sighed almost imperceptibly. “We’ll try and catch up to him. Quietly, though. I have a feeling there’s trouble ahead.”
They quickened their pace, careful to avoid stepping on the crunching gravel that bordered the concrete path. Colin knew Henry, a daringly confident boy who would have been a fifth-year, could easily evade the Snatchers ” but he also knew that evasion was not Henry’s style.
Suddenly, there was a loud, shrill whistle from up ahead. “It’s Henry,” Colin whispered. “He’s warning us.” He brought his pace up to a sprint, ignoring Justin’s cries of protest behind him. He could see Henry’s longer, dark hair up ahead as the Snatchers approached him…
“Stupefy!” he yelled, sending a red jet of light towards a larger Snatcher who had the sulphur-like smell of rotting eggs. Henry threw him a grateful glance before Petrifying the Snatcher closest to him.
“I meant to tip you off with the whistle, not call you over here, Creevey!” Henry called, neatly blocking a jinx.
“What would you have done?” Colin asked sardonically; he could sense Henry’s grin now, even if he could not see it.
Henry laughed. “You know me, Creevey. I’d have saved my own ” “ His words cut short in an awful strangled noise that made the back of Colin’s neck prickle.
“Henry?” Colin called, unable to keep the anxiety out of his voice. He hexed the Snatcher who had been fighting Henry from behind, and turned around.
Henry’s face was an odd, pasty colour as he leaned against the trunk of a tree. With his free hand he gripped his left side as a dark, thick red liquid dripped from his fingers.
“Interesting,” he said calmly, as though assessing the weather.
Colin paled. “Justin!” he called. “Justin, get over here!” Absently, he wondered why Justin hadn’t joined the fray, but the thought slipped his mind as Henry slumped to the floor.
“What happened?” Justin’s words came in ragged breaths as he rounded the corner towards them. With wide eyes, he took in the scene before him.
“They hit him with something,” Colin said quietly, wishing he could say more than just the obvious. “We need to get out of here, Justin,” he added with a quick glance towards the unconscious Snatchers. They wouldn’t stay that way for long, he knew, and fighting with an injured Henry was near impossible.
“We need to put pressure on it,” Justin told him, removing his black pea coat and placing it over Henry’s wound. “Keep that in place, tightly,” he ordered Henry, albeit gently.
“Apparate us out of here,” Colin demanded once Justin had turned to face him.
“Colin, I can’t. I would if I could, believe me…”
“You can try, can’t you?” Colin spat. He knew deep down he was being unfair, that Justin had never been able to Apparate properly or confidently, but all of a sudden everything ” the danger, the fear, the severity ” had become suffocatingly real . For the past few months, they had meandered their way around the countryside, warning Muggleborns whose pictures had been plastered to the front page of The Daily Prophet that they were in danger. The most daring thing they had done so far was to rescue groups of Muggleborns from the Snatchers, but even then they had not come this close… They had always known to quit before it went too far.
Until now.
“I’m sorry.” Justin sounded truly distressed. “But I don’t want to risk the chance of Splinching him or you.” His eyes surveyed their surroundings. “We can move him on foot. I’ll carry him.”
Colin nodded numbly as Justin propped Henry up on one of his shoulders. Raising his chin towards Colin, he added, “Lead the way.”
It had been three hours, and Henry’s complexion still hadn’t returned to its usual colour. Justin’s coat was now completely drenched, though Colin knew that didn’t matter to him now.
Henry’s eyes were closed. Every so often, Justin would lean down and place his first two fingers in the crook of Henry’s neck, feeling for the steady pulse of life beating faintly, but surely, under his skin. It made Colin sick every time he did this, and he would turn away pointedly. There was death and dying all around them, every day, and he knew he should be thankful it hadn’t touched them yet. But sitting there beside Justin, not knowing whether Henry would be laughing with them tomorrow, made it difficult for Colin to muster up any gratitude.
“Why didn’t you come?” he asked suddenly, in a voice that sounded too hoarse to be his own.
“I did come,” Justin argued gently. “I came after Henry””
“You know that’s not what I meant.”
Justin was silent for a few moments. “I did follow you,” he answered. “But… Colin, I’m not a fighter. I never have been. And frankly, I think I would have been more of a hindrance than a help to you back there.”
“We’ve been fighting this entire time,” Colin said, though his voice had lost some of its initial biting anger. “We’re playing our part.”
“We haven’t been fighting, Colin. Not really.”
The words hit him like a sharp slap. “Then what have we been doing?” And if we haven’t been fighting, he wanted to add, then the past eight months mean nothing.
Justin bent down to check Henry’s pulse before continuing. “We’ve been mucking things up a bit, but none of it’s made any difference.”
“How can you say that?” Colin’s voice rose as he felt his face flush in indigence. “We’ve saved Muggleborns.”
“And given them what? We don’t even know if they’re still alive. They could have been picked up by the next batch of Snatchers or unable to take care of themselves in the forests. For all we know, Colin, they could be no better off than they were before.”
“But…” He was drowning in his own argument, unable to keep his mind from recognising the truth in Justin’s words. I could’ve stayed with Dennis, he thought bitterly. It would’ve been the same thing. And now that he let himself think about it, he realised that there was no way the three of them could have survived for so long if they had truly been engaged in the war.
“You’re a fighter, Colin,” Justin told him matter-of-factly as he leaned against the large rock behind him. “You want to make a difference. You are going to make a difference, some way or another.” His words hung in the air like an echo; Colin shivered, wrapping his arms around him. The evening wind was nearly as chilling as Justin’s words, seeming to bite through the thin layer of Colin’s shirt. He glanced at Henry, realising with a sharp pang that Henry looked a thousand times colder than Colin felt.
Justin seemed to understand this at the same time. “This was all I had,” he said, pointing to the blood-soaked pea coat that draped over Henry’s middle.
“I have something,” Colin murmured, thinking of the straw-covered scarf he had stolen from a Snatcher not too long ago. He opened his backpack quickly and rummaged inside; the faraway pink clouds of the sunset did little to help him see.
Abruptly, his fingers enclosed on something small and warm, sending the heat travelling up his arm. He frowned, abandoning his search for the scarf, and pulled out the small object. In his palm lay a glowing Galleon.
“Dumbledore’s Army,” he whispered to himself, the ghost of a smile twisting the corners of his mouth upward. He flipped the coin over with his index finger and thumb. Harry is here, it read. We are fighting.
He stared at the Galleon for a few moments before closing his fingers into a fist around it. It was a battle ” a real battle. There was something different about the way his heart began to thud in his chest this time, something that set this fight apart from the many others he had participated in against the Snatchers.
He stole a glance at Justin, who was now gripping tightly to Henry’s shockingly white hand, and he knew instinctively that Justin would not come. He would stay with Henry, keeping him safe and possibly alive as the world around them moved forward. His goal had always been to come out of this war alive, to be reunited with his family in the end.
Colin did not know if this would be the final battle, or even an important one in the grand scheme of things. But as he said his good-byes to the boys who had become his family in the past months, he realised it did not matter much to him. He would have done something, and it would all be worth it if one day, Dennis could count down the days to September first just as excitedly as they had once done together.