Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter. But I think you already knew that.
He was only a boy.
He wasn’t particularly brave or intelligent. He didn’t seek fights or toss insults around like pebbles.
He had a brother who admired him, he had a father who supported him, he had a mother who waited eagerly at the platform at the beginning of each holiday and at the end of each school year for him to come home.
He was loved.
He was still the same boy that at age seven had given the ball he had caught during his favourite team’s final baseball game to his brother because he had been sick with the flu and unable to attend.
He was still the same boy that had risen with the sun each morning of his childhood to give his father company as he made his rounds delivering milk.
He was still the same boy that was amazed by the magical world and wanted to share his excitement with the world.
He was able to enjoy the simple magic of capturing a single moment in time, frozen forever within in a frame. The way a shadow casts hollows on a face, the way the sun reflects off the surface of a lake, the way a person looks at the one they love—he loved it.
He had a hero, one that he could touch and admire and capture. His hero never failed him.
He didn’t mean to die. He meant to go back home; back to his mother’s crushing hugs, his dog’s slobbery grin, the beautiful sunset he watched each night from his front porch.
He wanted to have a future. He had dreams of being a famous photographer, of capturing the raw elements of human life. He had dreams of catching each moment of his child’s life—their first steps, their first smile, the moment they were born—behind a lens.
He wasn’t meant to have been there that day. He was supposed to have been evacuated with the rest of the underage students.
He wasn’t meant to have died.
His death would not be remembered by many, would not be honoured nor declared a sacrifice, would just be one more name on the memorial among numerous others.
But he had a brother who refused to ever again touch a camera, a father who cried for days when he delivered milk bottles, a mother who still waited at the train station at the end of each year, peering into the distance, through the smoke and mist and rain, hoping that her darling boy would return this time.
He would forever be the son who never came home, the youngest student who died in the Battle of Hogwarts, the Gryffindor who leaped too far.
The end of his life was not captured nor recorded. There was no one to catch the brilliance of the spell cast in shadows, the graceful arch of his back as he fell, the ugly beauty of his broken body on the cold stone floor.
He was only a boy.
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