When he was eight, Colin Creevey received his very first camera from his grandfather. He took millions of snapshots with it within the first seventy-two hours.
A week later, his grandfather died of heart failure.
The only thing Colin had left were the hundreds of pictures he'd taken of his grandfather. His grandfather talking, his grandfather reading, his grandfather eating, his grandfather walking the dog, his grandfather realizing that he was being photographed, his grandfather scolding him for taking ridiculous pictures, his grandfather chuckling at the amusing print that had captured him with one eye open and the other closed, his mouth half open.
Since that day, the day Colin'd dumped his grandfather's favorite self-portrait type picture in the hole in the ground after the coffin had gone in, Colin never went anywhere without his camera.
Colin believed that if he didn't take pictures, things would be forgotten. Things would be missed. Things would be lost.
Pictures mean memories, his grandfather had told him when he'd been presented the camera, a red bow on the top. A person wants a lot of memories, so they're going to take a lot of pictures.
When he got to Hogwarts, it was no different. He took pictures of anything and everything, the magic a million times more magical because he was a Muggleborn. He had millions of prints of people doing every action in the book, from eating to talking to laughing to crying to reading to glaring to pouting to being in love to thinking and everything in between. Millions of shots of just various things, like the talking portraits and the bubbling cauldrons filled with steaming potions of all colors, the floating candles and wands shooting unyielding jets of light.
Colin loved pictures. They captured everything.
As he walked through the corridors, his camera swinging at his side, his wand out, people's screams echoing in his head, images of fallen comrades and fallen foes fresh in his mind, he wondered if he should be taking pictures of this. Of this war, that had been started over people like him and his brother –people who weren't from magical families.
He decided against it as he carefully stepped over another body that was laying in the hall. No one would want to remember the pain that this war had brought. No one would want reminders of death and hurt.
He vaguely recalled the Death Eater he'd stunned earlier. It had been a man, just a few years older than he, Colin, himself.
Colin would never kill.
He couldn't resist grabbing his camera, lifting it to his face, and peering through the lens, his finger clicking the shutter button a dozen times a minute, prints falling around him, floating behind him as the magical prints did.
Colin turned the corner, the screams immediately growing louder, and realized he'd just walked right in the middle of the action. No one noticed him for minutes on end as he continued snapping pictures, his obsession with capturing every moment shining through.
And then someone noticed the skinny sixth year boy who was taking pictures of all things.
Colin got a picture of the look of death in the Death Eater's eyes.
He got a picture of the Death Eater's wand hand raising.
He got a picture of the green flash hurtling towards him.
He didn't get a picture of the camera being knocked out of his hands as he fell to the ground.
Colin never got a picture of the light leaving his eyes.
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