Colin is eleven and he has yet to master the art of making moving pictures. When he sees the finished product, he smiles because his idol, Harry Potter, has been captured perfectly in the foreground, but then his eyes roam around and they land upon a girl with messy red hair and freckles in the background. She seems to be shy.
With a jerk he remembers that he has seen her in his classes and that means she is in his year.
Maybe he should try talking to her. See that if they could be friends.
Colin does not know why his cheeks burn scarlet at that thought.
He does not talk much to her, mainly because he is too shy and afraid. He thinks he would surely do so the next day. All the days pass by and one day, he finds himself petrified.
Months later, when he wakes up, he finds her staring at him with clear concern, and quite suddenly, he is very aware of his burning cheeks, dirty and sweaty clothes, and trembling lips.
"I am really sorry for what happened to you, Colin," she tells him in a most solemn voice and immediately turns to leave.
'Wait!' he wants to shout, many questions spilling from the brim of his tongue, but his neck chokes with the rush of air and Colin curses himself.
He stays for the summer to cover up all the classes he has missed, and Professor McGonagall tells him that the attacks had been carried out via Ginny. Now he understands why she had cared to visit him and why her voice had been so solemn.
The next year, he manages to talk to her in a real, proper conversation, without any silly stuttering or revealing his Irish lilt.
Ginny has been avoiding his glances all year long, and one day he decides to put his courage to good use to stop her after Potions. She stares at him nervously with uncertainty.
"Look," he begins awkwardly, "it was not your fault, okay? Will you stop avoiding me already?"
Oh, he has said it. He has finally said it. Lord help him...
Her neck bends down ever so slightly. Colin contemplates running away and pretending that it had never happened.
"Okay," she whispers finally, and for an infinitesimally small moment he thinks she is whispering because she does not want to converse with him, but then she smiles and everything really is okay.
He smiles back radiantly.
Over the rest of the year, they go through millions of photographs of their icon together, giggling and laughing.
When they are not going through his collection, they talk about their families and troublesome siblings. Sometimes Luna joins them, and since she has not got any brothers or sisters, she just listens to them with a dreamy smile.
They have become the best of friends.
In his third year, Colin realises that Ginny likes Harry a lot more than she lets on. Her case of admiration is not platonic like his at all.
The way her cheeks flame with a lovely crimson tinge when she talks about him, tells him a lot more than it should.
Somewhere, he feels himself cracking along a heart line. He sighs wistfully.
On a cold November morning, it is announced that they are organising a glorious Yule Ball. Third years are only allowed when they have found a willing fourth year to take them along. For all those who would not have found a date, the gates to Hogsmeade would be kept open as some kind of consolation.
Colin knows he will be unable to score a date, and he finds himself hoping against hope that nobody asks Ginny so that they will be able to go to Hogsmeade together.
His hopes are shattered twelve days later. It goes like this:
The day is plesantly warm for December and he finds himself finding Ginny. Colin has practised his little speech in front of the mirror over the sink in the bathroom and he is utterly sure that he will be able to do it.
He spots her sitting alone and working diligently in the Muggle Studies classroom and he slips onto the bench beside her with ease.
"Oh, hi!" she says as she glances up from her parchment.
"Hi! I..."
Ginny's eyes are focussed on his and it is a really delicious sensation, but there is also a pit of fear in the bottom of his stomach and a creeper made of dread strangulating his neck.
"I just wanted to ask if you'll help me with my Charms essay today in the Library?"
He wants to punch himself. 'You fool!' he wants to yell at the top of his lungs.
"Of course! How about at 6 o'clock in the Library?"
"Oh yes, it's absolutely fine. Thank you so much!"
Colin runs away at top speed.
That evening he waits and waits and waits with a stack of books and a satchel filled with a completed essay on which he had needed 'help'. Perhaps he will be able to say it now.
She does not turn up.
Later he learns from Dennis that she had been busy talking with Neville Longbottom (of all people) because he had asked her to the Ball.
Colin spends his Christmas by having an epic battle of nonmagical snowballing against Dennis and Luna. This is not his worst Christmas by any means.
His brother and friend tackle him to the ground and use his ridiculously long scarf to tie up his hands to his lean frame. They laugh at him amicably.
If they can be unfair, he can be too.
Colin loves the horrific look on their faces when he sits up and proceeds to bend down to retrieve his wand from his trouser pocket with his teeth. His eyes flash momentarily.
They realise what he is trying to do and begin throwing snowballs at him with a renewed energy. They hit him but they cannot stop him.
With the help of his left foot he throws open the shoe on his right one. Then he somehow manages to land his wand between the toes of his foot and raises his leg to rotate it while simultaneously murmuring the incantation.
Numerous snowballs tear themselves from the snow covered ground and race towards Dennis and Luna, who promptly try to escape their fury but fail in doing so by massive proportions.
He certainly had not needed any help with his Charms essay.
The sound of loud clapping breaks him away from his victorious reverie ,and he turns around to see Professor Flitwick approaching the three of them. Unbeknownst to them, he had watched the whole thing.
"Duelling is not permitted in Hogwarts." The man sounds grave.
Colin opens his mouth to protest but the small professor beats him to it.
"But since it's Christmas," he adds with a twinkle in his eye, "and you did some brilliant wandwork due to which nobody was really harmed, I'll let you off and give five points to Gryffindor."
Oh yes, this certainly isn't his worst Christmas by any means.
But he cannot help but wonder if it could have been even better.
During the next December, Ginny and Colin join the DA together. Dennis manages to do so with some good old lying and making a complete fool out of Filch.
She duels him in the Room of Requirement and he acts as if he is trying really hard to keep up with her tremendous speed. In spite of his best efforts, Colin is unable to disarm her. He does not know why he does not get the blasted spell. It is supposed to be easy.
With practised ease, she disarms him instead and sends a Stupefy towards him. He knows he has enough time to duck down, retrieve his fallen wand and create a shield, but he does not, choosing instead to let her revel in her little victory.
He hits the floor with his eyes closed and his lips twisted in a grin.
"I don't like that Corner boy."
"He's really good, once you get to know him."
"He is going to ruin you once he knows that you're just using him as a pawn to get Harry's attention."
Ginny huffs and gives him a cruel glare that makes him shudder.
"What's it to you? Why do you care?" she retorts.
"Because I am your friend and well-wisher! Because..."
Because I would like to take his place. Because I think I'm in love with you. I know it's stupid but it just is, and I am unable to do anything about it.
He is not able to bring himself to say it. He is too subtle to toss it into the open just like that. Besides, he is also too scared of outright rejection.
"Well, I can think what is good for me and what is bad, myself!" she scoffs and briskly walks away.
They do not duel together after that. Same goes for talking.
In his fifth year, he grows more lonely than ever. Dennis has got his own set of lively friends. People who call him names like 'Mudblood' do not help either. It seems that she has forgotten him too because she does not even return his glances. It also seems that she is still furious at him.
She has got her ultimate prize - the Jackpot.
He watches her and Harry from afar. He tries to ignore them but he cannot. He knows what they are doing in locked broom closets and abandoned crevices in empty corridors. He knows it far too well.
Colin busies himself in his Chemistry textbooks that he had insisted on taking with himself to Hogwarts.
A war is coming; he has to make preparations.
Ginny is not coming; he is not waiting.
He decides that cans filled with poisonous gas will be really good weapons against wizards who do not have a single idea about Muggle warfare.
The disaster of 30th June 1997 strikes the school with a brutal awakening.
On that fateful night, his brother does not let him leave the confines of their Common Room. When he is distracted by the sight of Ginny Weasley exiting through the portrait hole, Dennis very shrewdly Stupefies him before he can do anything.
The last thing he remembers before hitting the cool floor is his brother's whispered words: "Not tonight. You're still not ready to fight. Maybe some other night, but not tonight."
The next morning, Colin dresses up in a plain shirt and black trousers. He wears his Gryffindor tie and exits his dormitory.
The common room is silent. Almost everyone he sees is looking lost, terrified or on the brink of tears. He knows his days of coming back to Hogwarts are over now. He spots her in the far corner of the vast room and his legs automatically head towards her.
"Hello," he offers weakly, noticing that they are now nearly the same height.
Ginny nods in response and leans herself against the wall. She might not have replied with words, but has she responded, which means that yesterday's night's events have shaken her so much that she has forgotten her ire regarding him.
He has to say something - anything.
He always wants to say something, wants these useless feelings to evacuate his soul and go out into the open, but as each day rolls by, he feels that they are meant for nothing but a heavy weight attached to a noose running around his neck, slowly choking him until he falls to the ground in a heap of dead muscles and flesh.
"I don't know when we'll see each other next, Ginny and I just wanted to say that I...that I..."
She raises her eyebrows ever so slightly and tilts her neck to reveal an angry, red scar on it. He is distracted by the sight.
"I will always remember you," he breathes out finally, says these five words confidently instead of certain other five words that have been struck in his throat for what feels like an eternity.
"Me too, Colin, me too," she murmurs with the smile he has come to adore.
They - him and Dennis - they are on the run. The Snatchers, the Death Eaters, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, the Ministry - in fact, the whole world seems to be out to get them.
"I have always loved you," he tells the flower-covered meadow beside which they have pitched their tent in an adjacent lying thicket of oak trees. He tells this to the wild blue flowers instead of the girl he loves.
I hope you're remembering me, Ginny, he thinks. Because I doing a damn good job of remembering you and I sure as hell am not feeling happy while doing so.
Suddenly his brother comes dashing out of the woods. He is heaving, which means one thing - Snatchers.
"Colin, I think it's time we played another game of Pack Up, Stupefy and Run."
Today is 2nd May 1998.
And today pureblood elitists are going to learn a lesson:
All his life, especially in the past year, he has suffered enough, and today he is going to finish them all. So he tosses out a can from his trouser pocket and blasts it open to release the noxious gas within, forgetting that his chest is bleeding and rivulets of blood are escaping.
Men and women who had been cackling earlier start withering before his eyes.
He runs, wanting to kill as many as he could. His steps make him reach the entrance gate, and this is where one of them gets him. The jarring purple light hits his back and he is unable to do anything about it as his uncoordinated body rolls down the steps.
He tastes something in his mouth. The coppery tang confirms it to be blood.
So my guts are bleeding because I had the guts, he wonders and almost laughs aloud at his badly phrased sentence, but he does not because white hot pain shoots from his heart into his limbs. He is hysteric. His body is shaking like the weakly attached last leaf left on an oak tree caught in the middle of a tempest.
He thinks about Dennis and why he did what he did today. Colin is content to realise that if Harry Potter wins today, the wizarding world will be much more liveable for people like him and his brother. He knows he would not be there to see it.
The colours are all blurring into each and the sounds around him all merge together in one vast, noisy cacophony. Everything is foggy. Everything is hazy. His death is approaching, and accepting this, he closes his eyes and tries to grin.
A few seconds later, a girl finds him like this and shakes him up, yelling his name repeatedly. He opens his eyes and his confused mind registers a most unexpected sight.
Ginny Weasley is leaning over him, concern shining in her eyes. Her flaming red hair is a beautiful contrast against the grey sky. In his ending moments, he has the courage to cup her cheek with one trembling hand. She covers his hand with her own warm one.
"Ginny..." he rasps.
"You are not going to die, okay?"
Does he see tears? Is Ginny Weasley crying over him?
"You and I, we both know that that's a very big lie."
"No, it isn't!" She is cradling his head now. "You'll live. You've got to live," she mutters in desperation.
He just shakes his head sadly.
"Listen," he says, his voice now not much more than a whisper. It is so low that she has to place her ear right next to his mouth. He tells her something that he has heard a long time back in much happier days as a child of eight.
"There are worlds out there where the sky is burning, and the sea's asleep, and the rivers dream; people made of smoke and cities of song. Somewhere there's danger, somewhere there's injustice and somewhere else the tea's getting cold. Go on, Ginny. You've got work to do and live a life. Think about me when you're living your life one day after another, all in a neat pattern. Think about the insane fanboy and his far too old camera, with his days like crazy paving."
He coughs. Anytime now...
Tears are freely flowing down her cheeks.
"And know this, that I -"
His neck chokes with a rush of air, like all those years ago in the Hospital Wing.