Colin Writes

Colin lay awake in his dormitory, watching the clouds roll past the moon through the window. Another night and he couldn't sleep. He listened to the sounds of his dorm mates as they slept. Aidan, just off to his left, took deep, slow breaths. Roman, a little further left, snored lightly. "Pointless. This is pointless," Colin said softly as he tossed for the millionth time that night. Morpheus obviously wasn't coming for him any time soon so he pushed his feet over the edge of the bed and stood on the cool stone floor. He wrapped himself in his robes and grabbed his satchel of parchment, quill, and ink and headed down to the Common Room. "A bit of writing always helps me get to sleep," he said to nobody as he silently slipped out of his room.

Colin sat in one of the most comfortable chairs facing the fire and pulled his writing utensils from his bag. He always found incredible inner peace when he wrote. There was something about pulling fragments from his mind and putting them on display that was soothing. After he settled in his usual position, he finished setting his items in the proper places. Parchment laid across his Potions text, quill and ink sitting on the small table by his side, Colin was ready.

...Ron walked to the steps leading to the dorms from the common room and was followed by Colin's gaze, the last line read. Colin wet the tip of the quill with his lips and stuck it in the ink bottle as he tried to remember where he had been heading when he left off the last time. "Oh yeah," he said as he started pulling his quill across, leaving his meticulous handwriting behind one sentence at a time. Each line was well thought out and played with before it was allowed to be put to ink.

Colin watched as the redhead climbed the steps, wondering what he was up to. It was not like him to leave Harry's side unless it was absolutely necessary. Colin shrugged. "I should follow him up there, but I can't," Colin said to himself, a little broken inside. He watched the others in the common room scurrying around and getting quite excited about the coming match against their arch-enemy Slytherin. Seamus was excitedly talking to Hermione and Ginny, waving his arms around in grand gestures. Ginny smiled kindly and Hermione gave him a look of near disbelief. Whatever he was talking about didn't seem to ring true to either of them.

Colin left his corner of the room and headed toward the steps to gather his warm robes from the dorm. The weather had taken a rather nasty turn for what was supposed to be late spring. The temperature was normally in the low seventies by now, but today it was barely into the forties. Colin looked back and saw that his departure went unnoticed and he frowned. Even Dennis was too engrossed in the festive atmosphere to see him leave. He slowly climbed the stairs and entered his dorm. He knelt down in front of his trunk and dug the heavy robes out and tossed them over his shoulder. He stood up and almost started back downstairs but stopped. He suddenly didn't want to go back down there. Not now.

He sat down on the end of his bed and sighed. For the last two years now he'd had a major thing for Ron. Sure, he'd been a rabid fan boy over Harry for the first two years, but he outgrew that phase. He had decided it was simply a hero-worship thing, nothing like what he felt for Ron. He wished regularly on any star he could find that someday Ron would notice he was even drawing breath. Even a passing glance would do, really. "Alone forever, I guess," Colin said dramatically as he flopped back on his bed.

Colin stopped and reread his writing. Something about it didn't quite work for him but he wasn't sure what it was just yet. The grammar was fine, that he knew. He'd always gotten high marks on his compositions before he'd arrived at Hogwarts and it was something he still prided himself on. His Potions essays may not always be remotely correct, but they were certainly well written. Colin decided to skip it for now and come back and edit it at a later time. It wasn't like this was written in his journal, no, certainly not. Only pieces he had gone over meticulously and reworked at least a dozen times were put in there.

He doodled in the corner of the page for a moment or two while he tried to figure out where to take his little story next. This was something that he went through with nearly every story he had ever written. He could easily write the beginnings and the ends, but he always had problems linking the two. Colin found that highly ironic. Finally he ceased his doodles, which on closer inspection looked highly like a stylized capital 'R' and 'W' inside a stylized heart.

Colin pulled himself to his feet and headed back down to the common room. He wasn't overly excited about it, and had it not been the annual Gryffindor-Slytherin contest he'd have simply stayed up here. Before he rounded the last corner he heard the voices and they were all excited and talking loudly. He searched the room for Ron but caught no glimpse of him. He sighed again. His usual chair in the corner was calling him and he answered. The chair gave him a good view of the room, allowing him to watch how the rest of his Housemates interacted.

His watching was interrupted when someone in the crowd announced that they should head on out to the pitch. Somehow, the talking became even louder and more excited as the group headed for the door. "I guess I'd better go too," he thought and joined the end of the line. He still hadn't caught a sight of his Ron. "Perhaps he's ill?" He mentally shrugged as he stepped into the hallway and followed the herd outside.

It was again break time. Colin set his equipment aside and made his way to one of the tables at the rear of the common room. He reached into a cupboard over the table and pulled a red and orange mug out and set it down. He grabbed a pitcher from the table, forever enchanted to contain nice warm cocoa, and filled the mug nearly to the top. Topping the cocoa with a handful of plump marshmallows completed the task. He sipped and found it as perfect as always. Simple things in the wizarding world like this would never cease to amaze him. He'd still be heating the milk back at home. Colin grinned as he walked back.

Colin found himself near the end of the bleachers, far from the prime seats along the centerfield line, but this didn't really surprise him. It seemed that he was always ended up right around this exact spot. Perhaps a few feet to the left or right, but always right around here. Never near Ron. Way over here. He wondered what would happen if he tried to squeeze up to the better seats. Maybe nothing, probably nothing actually, but he wasn't about to find out. It would mean stepping on someone else's toes and he didn't want to do that. He still saw no sign of Ron. He sighed.

The Slytherin team took the field from their end, getting a torrid round of boos from his side of the bleachers that drowned out the cheers from their own side. The Gryffindors soon came on the field as well and were greeted with a thunderous ovation. Colin felt the bleachers shake as his fellow students stomped and clapped. "Harry looks quite upbeat," he said aloud, but his voice was swallowed in the din.

Colin's eyes began to get heavy as he wrote the last paragraph. He set his parchment and book neatly on the table and rubbed his eyes. "I should head off to bed now," he thought, but was asleep almost before he knew it.

Ron awoke from an odd dream and found himself unable to nod back off. This was a very annoying thing that happened to him from time to time. He groaned and pulled a pillow over his face in a last ditch attempt to return to sleep. A deep, guttural snore from the bed of one Mr. Seamus Finnigan ended that hope as it caused him to dissolve into fits of laughter. He rolled his eyes and got up, wondering how Harry, Dean, and Neville could possibly sleep through that. Seamus as well, for that matter.

He briefly considered waking Seamus up and telling him to turn over, but memories of the last time Harry had done just that flooded into his mind. That was not a pretty sight. Instead, he pulled on his robes and decided to head to the common room where it would be nice and quiet at 3:30 in the morning. He hoped the clock was lying to him and that it was actually much later, but it wasn't. Being awake this early was nearly inhuman. He picked up his pillow and left the room to one more of Seamus' earth shaking snores.

He yawned as he stepped into the common room. Perhaps sleep wasn't that far off after all. The fire was looking very inviting as he sauntered over. "Hello, what's that?" he asked as he noticed Colin's things on the table. He came around and saw Colin curled up in the chair. He only needed a teddy bear to complete the picture of innocence. Ron couldn't help but smile at the lad. He'd never really said a whole lot to Colin in the last few years but it wasn't out of meanness or spite. He just didn't have much to say to him. Nothing more, nothing less.

Ron was about to sit when Colin gave a sudden lurch and swung an arm dangerously close to the mug of cocoa. He reached over and moved the mug further away from dangling limbs and noticed the stack of parchments next to it. He looked at the pile and couldn't resist picking them up. Ron sat back onto the couch and began leafing through the pages. He was instantly marveled at the preciseness of the script and noted how beautiful it was, like something lifted from the middle ages.

Colin sat at the table, watching as his fellow students filed in. The usual cliques sat at their usual tables. Ron, Harry, and Hermione took a seat in the midst of the Gryffindors, immediately engaged in conversation by those around them. Colin sat at the end, as usual.

Ron read the first page, then the next, and the next, and had soon reached the page Colin had left off on. By the time he reached that page, he already knew what was scribbled inside the heart in the upper corner. He looked over at Colin in a new way. Instead of the boy who had always been underfoot, he saw a terribly lonely boy. Instead of a flashbulb monstrosity, he saw Colin Creevey. He wasn't sure exactly what to think about this turn of events. Or perhaps he did.

Ron pulled the book and parchment from the table to his lap. He reread Colin's last few lines... Colin felt the bleachers shake as his fellow students stomped and clapped. "Harry looks quite upbeat," he said aloud, but his voice was swallowed in the din... and picked up the quill. With a steadied hand he started writing, taking his time to make his script somewhere near as nice as that already there.

"He does, doesn't he?" Ron asked as he stood in directly behind Colin. Colin's head jerked around in surprise and his jaw hung slightly open as he saw Ron. Ron stepped a bit closer and wrapped his arms around Colin's thin waist. "Oh! It's about to start," he said almost in Colin's ear. Ron felt his body lean back into his own, especially liking Colin's head resting in the center of his chest. "Sorry I'm late," Ron said as the Bludgers were released.

Ron put the quill down and set the parchment back on the table. He would have liked to have written more, but he was never all that good when it came time to put words to paper. He gently laid a blanket over the curled up Colin and briefly considered joining him in the chair but decided against it. That chair wasn't made for two. Or even one and a half, since Colin wasn't that big at all.

He grabbed a blanket for himself and stretched out on the couch facing Colin. Once he was nice and tucked in he squinted his eyes and loosed a fake snore that would have made Seamus proud. He watched as Colin jumped and woke up, looking around the room to find the source of the sound.

Colin sat up and noticed the blanket, then noticed Ron. His eyes immediately went for his parchment, hoping against hope that it hadn't moved from where he left it. Ron saw his eyes widen as he picked it up and begin reading what Ron had put down. It was nearly impossible to keep silent as a grin of joy spread across Colin's face. Colin looked at the 'sleeping' Ron and felt like he was going to burst.

Colin was torn in what he was to do next, so he simply acted instead of thinking. He crept over to Ron and pecked him on the cheek. Now it was Ron's turn to act without thinking. He reached a hand out from under his blanket and grabbed one of Colin's hands. "The couch is plenty big enough for the two of us," he said and scooted back to make room for the younger Gryffindor.