[UNEDITED]
A/N: This was written for the rare/weird pair challenge by OCDdegrassi on the HPFC Forum. The pairing in this is Colin Creevey/L. Moon. Moon is not an OC. In fact, she was a student in Harry's year whose full name was not heard during the sorting. The class list showed her name beginning with an 'Lil-', so I am assuming it to be Lilith. You can verify these facts on the HP Lexicon. This is the first story for this ship. What shall I name it? CoLith?
A/N 2.0: I am only 16! I may be writing stories for a long time, but I have only recently started to publish them, so consider me a beginner. Negative flames harm beginners like me! Understood?
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In Memoriam
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She is the littlest one of them all in her year - plain, old Lilith Moon, the one whose Hogwarts letter had come the most late, 15th August in fact. She's the chestnut haired, grey eyed girl who is a shadow in the shadows, the one who is rarely seen on the path to any kind of attention, the most peaceful and quiet of the Gryffindors - so quiet that even if you were listening intently, you wouldn't hear her nimble footsteps approaching you in the silence of the night.
She sits on her house's table in the the Great Hall beside the most famous know-it-all in her year, Hermione Granger and watches this year's sorting take place with her ever watchful eyes. Hermione is chattering on about something to Parvati Patil, but she isn't listening. Instead of that, she is watching a smallish boy with mousy brown hair with the ancient Sorting Hat upon his head. The boy looks very, very nervous and her talent for finding out the minutiae tells her that he is slightly quivering. After a few seconds the Hat shouts 'Gryffindor' and the boy hurries to his assigned house's table. She claps along with her housemates.
He sits across from her and looks towards her for a moment or two. He is still nervous, she can tell. She can always tell such things but nobody ever asks her. She's that isolated. Then he glances all over the table and the hall with the usual wonder struck look first years have. He sees her every now and then but doesn't do anything to start a conversation. It seems she will have to do something about it.
"Hello," she utters, somehow stowing away her constant veil of shyness "my name is Lilith Moon. What's yours?"
"I... I am Colin Creevey." He risks a brilliant smile and she does the same. "Well, welcome to Gryffindor, Colin." He just nods a little and both of them go back to staring randomly at random places and random faces. After a long while, sumptuous food appears on the clean table and then they stare at the delicacies laid out in front of them. 'I just talked to somebody on my will!' she thinks as she gracefully pierces her chicken salad with her fork and knife. He is fidgeting with his spoon and seems to be worried but she doesn't dare say anything further. She has gone through enough of social adventures in a single night.
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Over the course of past few weeks she has come to know that Colin Creevey not just loves photography; he lives it, breathes it like the oxygen around him. She has also seen with her very eyes that he practically worships the ground on which Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger and other 'celebrities' like Lockhart move upon. Not once has he spoken to her after his first night at Hogwarts. She hadn't thought him to be a follower like the rest. Maybe she has been proved wrong for once, though she is not sure about it as she has not talked to him even once during all those weeks.
It's evening and nearly dark as she stands in front of the Black Lake when she hears the distinct sound of footsteps approaching her from the behind. She doesn't bother to turn around. "Hey Lilith" he speaks lowly.
"Hi Collin. What do you want?"
"A photograph"
"A photograph?"
"Yes, of yours."
"Me? Why?"
"To keep you, as my aunt used to say, 'in memoriam'. Your were the first person who greeted me here and made me feel at ease. So yes, I want a photo of yours to keep you in my memory for a long time." His voice is calm and a very teensy blush is creeping up both of their cheeks. To say she is shocked would be an understatement. To say she wants to run away would be more like it.
"But I am no Harry Potter."
"It simply doesn't matter."
That statement breaks all her earlier beliefs regarding him. Maybe she isn't wrong after all. Maybe Colin isn't just a follower like the masses. He moves with the stealth of a cat, trying to determine the right angle to capture her heart shaped, rarely acknowledged but remarkable face which has been currently coloured a pale shade of amber due to the sunset. Messy brown hair frames it. At last he settles for the front view and clicks a perfect shot. She smiles a little for the sake of it and the blush on her cheeks makes her look like a nymph from the forests. "You know, you're making me feel like the actress I wanted to be." she says as he lowers his camera and checks on the lens. "An actress? Really?"
"Yep"
"Well I think you would have made a damn good one." Colin manages to reply. Lilith blushes even more and her cheeks are nearly as red as her scarlet scarf. "Thank you"
"You're welcome." He turns around, halts and then comes back right up to her. "Wait - wait - wait. You said that you wanted to be an actress. Are you a muggle-born too?"
"Yeah..."
"That's great! Why didn't you tell me earlier?"
"Because you really weren't anywhere near me and running after various people. What could I do?"
"Sorry about that but that's Harry Potter we're talking about! I had heard and read so, so much about him that I couldn't resist meeting him and clicking his photos for evidence that I have really meet him." She rolls her eyes mischievously. "Do you realise that you just sounded like a girl fed with amortentia?"
"No. Anyway, I want to know where you come from, what do your parents do and what school you went to. I want to know every detail! Come on, don't dismay me. You must understand that it is hard to come by muggle-borns." He blabbers on, growing nervous in the end.
She laughs. She laughs at his bewildered expression, his nervousness, his innocence and everything that is Colin. He doesn't understand why she is doing that. 'Her laugh - it is beautiful like the ring of the first note from a finely tuned piano' is the first thought that enters his mind. He quickly does away with that notion. "Where do I come from? I am from Abington Street, Plymouth but originally from Dublin. What do my parents do? My father died when I was young, so I guess he looks us up from above and my mother is a cook at the restaurant down the street." Here she halts for a little breath. "I am sorry about your father." he says in that breath's short duration.
"Don't be. Where was I anyway? Ah yes - What school I went to? There's no answer to that as I was home schooled." she finishes with a smile. "What about you?" she adds.
He scratches the back of his head awkwardly while strongly gripping his faithful camera in the other hand. "What can I say? I was Colin Creevey, the milkman's son before an owl zoomed through our small parlour's window and gave me a letter which stated that I was a wizard and that was when I understood the reason behind the strange things I did and...now - now, I am here."
"Are we friends now?" she asks suddenly and he's slightly taken aback by the awkward suddenness.
"Weren't we friends before?" he asks with a quizzical brow.
"I don't know but now - are we?"
"Well yes, of course we are!"
They shake hands firmly. It is tentative but it is something for the lonely girl and the starstruck boy and everyone knows that something is always better than nothing.
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This is a few months after that fateful evening. She rushes to the hospital wing, frantic on her heels. Her only friend has been petrified and lying like a statute in a bed in the medical wing. She tiptoes across the passage, like she always does and nobody notices her, like they always do. "Oh Colin" she whispers softly as she grips his frozen arm which in turn is gripping his camera.
"Why did you have to roam around? Couldn't you be happy with the Common Room?" she continues, whispering like before. The light from the windows doesn't do anything to wake him up, like it would have if he had just been asleep and not magically petrified. A single lone tear drop falls from her left eye and settles on his nearly lifeless cheek. The tear persists to sit there as she walks away noiselessly with sorrow and eons of loneliness filled in her heart. A few weeks later when he wakes up, he sees blinding sunlight and numerous dark spots prance across his field of vision and then - her - Lilith, standing by his bed. He reaches out his now free hand towards her and suddenly Lilith changes into Madam Pomfrey and then he realises that he has imagined the whole thing. Collin groggily shifts himself into a sitting positon by leaning his back on the pillow. Madame Pomfrey is going on about something and he can't make out the words clearly.
After a short while he understands that the old nurse is asking how he was feeling. "Just fine." She nods and goes away to the aide of Hermione Granger beside him. Colin is feeling dejected for not seeing her on waking up and he pulls the sheets over his head again. He doesn't want to get out, not yet. Maybe he would've if Lilith had been present but reality states she's not there and hence he drifts into a sleep. That evening, at the feast people see Hermione hugging Harry and shaking hands with Ron. Then they applaud for Hagrid's return.
They're so busy in these actions that all of them, except Dumbledore fail to see the Quietest Gryffindor Ever hugging the Cameraman Of The School in the far corner of the Great Hall. She tells him the whole story as they walk towards their noisy table and this time, they sit side-by-side. Colin is awestruck at seeing Harry and now that he has learnt that he killed the Basilisk, he can't help but throw a torrent of questions towards the boy. Lilith leans back in her chair and watches the exchange with an amused glint in her perse eyes and if her eyes had been camera lenses, she would have captured the scene with a small click and now she just smiles and smiles and smiles, content to watch Colin Creevey, her first best friend - alive.
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End of chapter notes -
I'll be adding more chapters, one for each year. I hope you liked the first installation.
And for the love of Draco Malfoy, leave a review on this story. Thank you.