Chapter Text
They always said school was hell; Colin Creevey just hadn't realised it could be this literal.
Screams rose in the haze, some of pain, more of grief and rage. It was impossible to tell who was winning. The Death Eaters had the advantage, the experience, the will to kill. The teachers and the children had desperation, drive, and the home ground. Hogwarts moved around them, battered and broken but guardian to the last, turning stairs, opening and closing doors, letting students back in who should have gone home—who shouldn't even have been at the school at all.
He'd come to war with a bunch of stink-bombs in one pocket and a collection of flashbulbs in the other; not exactly conventional armaments, but Colin knew the risks. He knew it wasn't all basilisks glimpsed through cameras and vanishing arms on Quidditch pitches, that Pomfrey could not fix all the strange and terrible with some simple, foul tasting potion. He knew Cedric; he had actually talked to the boy—mostly about the badges, admittedly, but still—and had photos of him, before and after. Colin knew this was real. Hadn't he made Dennis stay behind, as a good brother should? He knew—but he couldn't leave them. They had worked together. They had trained together. Harry had saved them all. How could he just let that go unanswered?
He was a Gryffindor, by God, and a Gryffindor never retreats, never backs down, not even in the face of impossible evil!
Like people who tried to curse children (never mind that he was one) and Colin leaped out over the rubble, snapping off stunners at the white masks—thanking them for that touch of melodrama, guys, it made it so much easier to distinguish the bad guys from the good—and rolling as soon as he hit the ground. Their return blasts sliced past close enough that he felt the heat but, like in Quidditch, close to the goal didn't score you anything. Not that all of his own shots had struck home, but he was going at least one in five, which wasn't bad considering half the time he couldn't see a bloody thing.
Rubble blocked the corridor again. Colin sighed and took off in the other direction, knowing better than to run but striding hard, eyes everywhere. It was a shame, really, not just the whole war thing but the way it turned out years of practicing finding the best picture—the most perfect composition in the shortest time, before opportunity was lost—didn't actually help all that much in a warzone. He was too used to seeing everything at once, looking at the whole picture, when he needed to pick out friends and enemies. Extraneous details kept slipping in.
Like, for instance, how nicely the stairs and smoke framed that hole in the roof, something to shoot slow and high contrast, print in black and silver gels. Like the way Victoria's portrait, empty now and with the frame burning, centred over those cracks, would have made the perfect fast full colour shot. Like the way the smoke, fire, and filtered spell-light made that section over there look like a dragon, or maybe a giant rabbit: a giant, deadly rabbit of death. Like how he'd turned the wrong way and was suddenly in open space, people rushing round him, people and things—statues and suits of armour, desks and wardrobes, all manner of things, everything come alive to fight. His fingers itched for his camera. He closed them tighter around his wand and doubled back.
Someone called his name, maybe. Colin wasn't sure and, in the rush, he couldn't see well enough to pick them out. Too many details, all at once—concentrate on specifics, he reminded himself. Death Eaters were for cursing. All the other people were for helping. He had to put everything else one side. Well, almost everything, noticing the missing steps was quite important, so, people and where he put his feet. That was it. His feet and--
Was that Blaise Zabini? Hadn't the Slytherins all left already? Dennis would have said that wasn't fair, but if you couldn't be sure of some of them, it made sense to Colin to send them all away. They would be safer that way, whether the 'they' in question was the Slytherins or everybody else. Anyway, he figured everyone who really wanted to fight, good or bad, would have done as he had done and sneaked back. He wondered which Zabini was. The boy was looking his way, annoyingly well dressed in the chaos, annoyingly photogenic too, and Colin raised his wand forgetting in that second that it wasn't his camera. Zabini was already gone, though.
Realising he should be too, Colin leaped over the missing stairs and bounded the rest of the way up, pausing at the top to gasp for breath. It came in smoky and filled with foul smells and he coughed and choked, stumbling for the corridor at the landing's edge and ducking down, hoping the air would be clearer below the smoke and above the dust. It wasn't particularly, but it was better than nothing was.
From this angle, he could see back and down through the gap left by the missing railing. There was a flash of platinum blond, presumably a Malfoy—he couldn't be sure it was Draco—and someone who looked so much like Dennis that Colin's heart froze before he remembered that this was impossible. He edged forward to get a better look, but there was a clatter behind him. Backing slowly towards the stairs, he looked around, trying to find the source, glancing down to check on the two he had just seen in case they were coming up. They were not, but there were Death Eaters now on the bottom landing, cutting off his retreat. Swearing under his breath, he moved the other way, towards the noise.
Towards, it turned out, one slim boy dragging a much larger one; clearly, he had been right not to be sure that was Draco below because he was entirely sure it was Draco right here. A deathly pale, singed, scratched up Draco and a--
"Goyle's hurt!" Draco snapped at him. Help me!"
Colin gaped at him, wand still at the ready. "Help you?"
"I don't have a wand; I'm not going to do anything. This isn't about Potter or the Dark Lord; I just need you to help me help my friend. That's what Gryffindors do, isn't it?" Draco spoke in the sort of deliberate way that attempted and yet completely failed whatsoever to hide any of the edge of panic and desperation in his voice. Still, it wasn't until the other boy's voice cracked in the middle of the haughty "please" that Colin's paralysis broke.
"There's a room," he started, because they were in the right seventh floor corridor, but Draco shook his head.
"We can't go there. There's a music room on the next floor. " He pulled at Goyle again, getting them moving. "We'll stay there, out of the way. "
Colin jumped quickly to his side, getting under Goyle's other arm, and they were back on the landing before he pulled them short. "There are Death Eaters on the stairs, we can't go this way. Death Eaters who are probably your friends and--! What am I doing? You're the enemy!"
"Ethical treatment of prisoners of war," Draco suggested, with unexpected humour. "I hear you people go in for things like that. Suggestions would be helpful. If you have a time-turner, we could nip back six months and order Goyle to diet. "
"If I had a time-turner, I'd go all the way back and stop any of this happening," Colin said. He pointed his wand. "Accio tapestry!"
One ripped its way off the far wall at his command and soared towards them.
"Ah," said Draco with the thoughtful tone of one who has just decided his newfound saviour wasn't so much a hero as a crazy person. "Of course; a tapestry is the obvious solution to ... almost nothing. "
"Shut up, Malfoy," Colin snapped, catching the cloth and quickly tearing a large strip off.
He pulled the flash bulbs from his pocket, dropped as many as he could fit onto the cloth and wrapped it around them, which went a lot quicker once Draco worked out what he was doing and took all of Goyle's weight. He hefted the makeshift grenade in his hand, wished fervently that he had practiced more Chasing, and chucked it down the stairs. A flick of his wand set it alight. Fire and flashes blazed and there were startled yells from below.
"Up," Colin hissed at Draco unnecessarily. The other boy had already started pulling Goyle towards the stairs up. Colin retook his position, helping with the carrying. Spells hissed below. More flashes went off, stroboscope, cutting everything into bright slices. The shadows of the remaining railing, sharp and black, cut across them—first this way, then that—making it hard to see. He caught snatches of Draco's sickly, determined face, of blood on robes, of steps, of burning portraits, all in short jumps, as if time itself was broken. Time and space and--
The eighth floor landing—technically a tower level now, Colin thought absently and bizarrely—was empty, but the corridor beyond it was not.
They were both startled to see each other. Perhaps the Death Eater recognised Draco. Perhaps he did not. Draco was saying something Colin couldn't hear.
Colin tried to raise his wand.
The man raised his first.
Everything burned away green.