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When he was eleven and being petrified by the basilisk he'd thought for sure he knew what dying felt like. Dying was each of his fingers going numb and stiff, his legs locking at the knee, his arms getting stuck at the elbow. Dying was his lungs refusing to inflate and take in more air, needing to blink and not being able to, actually feeling his heart stop beating, and, finally, blackness like a huge hand being brought down over his eyes. Dying was terrifying, to be sure, but also fairly quick and relatively painless.
He knows now that dying is nothing like that at all. Dying is falling and being unable to see anything because his robes have flown up over his face. Dying is surprisingly hard when hit at extremely high speed. Dying is suddenly being surrounded by freezing cold, gasping stupidly in shock, and sucking water down into his lungs. Dying is his throat shutting up tight like a steel trap and knowing exactly what's happening to him but not being able to do a damned thing about. At fifteen, he realises that dying, his own death to be specific, is really a lot like drowning.
It all happened so fast that he's not entirely sure how it happened at all. One minute he was jogging up to a group of older students and the next he was here. In the lake. Drowning. The only thing he can think is that he must have stepped off the edge of the cliff. Just... stepped right off the edge. But then he thinks, no, no, people don't just step off the edges of cliffs without noticing. But they must do, mustn't they? Because he's here, isn't he? Yes, he is. No escaping that fact. He's really quite glad, as stupid as it may seem to care at this point, that the cliffs are not as high here as in some of the other areas and that this part of the lake has none of those sharp, jagged rocks jutting up out of the water. He imagines that being smashed to bits on a sharp rock would be even worse than drowning and, really, this is bad enough as it is.
What a shame, his mum will say, dead at fifteen and probably never had a kiss. Only... no, his mum won't say that, his mum will cry and sob and be heartbroken because her son is dead (well well, good morning, I thought I'd be needing a brass band to get you out of that bed). But someone's mum who is just like his mum will say that. Because to them, the hopeless, helpless romantics of the world, the readers of Mills & Boon novels and watchers of Meg Ryan films, the little girls who never quite stopped believing the fairy stories in which true love conquers all, The First Kiss is the most important moment of your life. One cannot and must not go without lip to lip contact for any longer than absolutely necessary or one is not truly living, one is merely stumbling, blind-like, through the darkness of a life without the shining light of love to guide the way. Or something like that. So... what a shame to have died and never have been kissed, someone's mum will say.
And, honestly, it is a shame. But not so much because he's dead and never been kissed, it's more that he is dead because he was trying to get kissed. Not actively, mind you. Not like at that exact moment or anything -- there were no kissy faces or smacksmacksmack noises as he stepped right off into nothing. It's just that... it was Harry (not now, colin). He had been talking to Harry. Harry who makes him so incredibly nervous just because he's Harry. Harry who is attractive and athletic, courageous and charming. Harry who is exactly the sort of person that anyone in their right mind would want to kiss. And that is why he was not paying attention to where he was putting his feet and that is why he fell and that is precisely why he is now dead. Or dying. Whichever you like. And that's what the big shame really is. Because, if he wasn't... sort of a bit of a romantic himself he wouldn't be in this stupid-arsed situation in the first place. If he was just a regular person, he wouldn't be thinking about perfect first kisses and how to get one. If he was just a normal person, this never would have happened.
I should have learnt to swim, he thinks. Because no one is going to save him, he's sure of it. He is as sure about that as he is about the fact that he's in the damned lake in need of saving to begin with. It's not that he doesn't want to be saved, no. It's just that there's no time -- no time to get help, no time to find him. He would very much like to be saved, really. It's not like this is how he pictured his last moments -- surrounded by ice cold water, feeling it press against his eyelids and slip into his ears, rush into his mouth and up his nose, his arms caught up in his robes over his head and his shoes seeming to weigh a tonne each. No, this is not at all how he imagined his last moments would be. He'd always rather hoped he'd go like his Great Aunt Margaret (ah, yes, thank you, my dear, I just cannot see a thing without them), who died in her sleep at the ripe old age of eight-four. Or even like his granddad's friend Ned Barges (fucking hell, why don't you just sit, boy, got a problem with your bits or something?) who'd been sixty-two when he kicked it while watching Countdown one afternoon. He'd always imagined that he'd be... old when he died. Not fif-bleeding-teen. And he'd never thought he'd drown. People who don't swim don't think they'll drown, you know. That's the reason they don't swim, after all. To avoid drowning. It makes sense if you think about it.
But then it all sort of makes sense if you think about it, doesn't it? That he'd die by drowning because he was too afraid to ever learn to swim. That he'd die because he was trying to talk to Harry. That it would take dying for Harry to notice him. Because Harry has most certainly noticed him now, hasn't he? It's not every day someone just drops off the side of a cliff right in front of you, is it? No, that's not particularly common, not really an everyday, ho-hum sort of thing. Yeah, Harry's noticed him now. Should have thought of it ages ago, he thinks, wasting my time with all that rubbishy talking, wasn't I?
What had been the last thing he'd said? Right before he'd fallen he'd said... what was it? Oh. 'Hiya, Harry'. Not 'all right, Harry?' or 'hey, Harry, how's it going?' or anything even remotely cool-sounding. Hiya. Like an absolute tosser. What had he been thinking? He could hear it in his head now, over and over again, hiyaharryhiyaharryhiyaharryhiyaharry. Christ, no wonder Harry always rolled his eyes and breathed hard out of the side of his mouth when he saw him coming. No wonder Harry always had other places to be and other people to see whenever he was about. No wonder.
He hates me, he thinks. And then, this is so shit. I'm fucking drowning and he can't fucking stand me. He flails wildly at the thought, trying to... do something -- get loose of his robes or miraculously break the surface or possibly just sink faster, he doesn't know. But he flails. Until he's twisted his arms up even tighter in his robes and chest is screaming with the need to breathe and his head feels like it's going to explode. Flails and kicks hard. And kicks. And kicks some more. Until his right shoe catches onto the back of his left, pushing it loose and then off.
His dad made him get the shoes (good, solid shoes, son, all a man needs is a pair of good, solid shoes). He'd wanted a pair of new trainers, cool ones like in the adverts, but they'd not had the money for it. Not for both him and Dennis anyway and their parents always tried to make everything equal between them. It annoyed him -- pissed him right off, to tell the truth. I'm the oldest, he'd think, shouldn't I have better than him? Isn't that my right as older brother? And then he'd feel disgustingly guilty about it (I'm glad we've both got magic, it'd be awfully boring to not have anyone to talk to about it during the summer, like it wasn't real or something). Because they've never been that sort of brothers, have they? They've hardly ever fought and, because their parents treat them exactly the same way all of the time, there isn't any real sibling rivalry or what have you going on. No, not especially. They've always got on quite well, to be honest.
So, in the name of brotherhood, he took the ugly black lace-ups and a pair of plain white trainers as well and didn't pout or glare or make a fuss. Because that's just what he did. Always. That's what his parents taught him to do. Be happy with your lot in life because you could be loads worse off. You could have no food to eat or no roof over your head, you could have been born in some country where sheep are used as currency and there was no such thing as crisps -- it can always be worse so be happy with what you've got or maybe you won't even have that anymore. It was an unspoken rule in their house -- maybe the only real rule at all, because it wasn't exactly like he and Dennis were... rebels or anything.
Now, though, he wonders what his dad would have to say about the cool trainers he'd wanted. He wonders if, now that these were the shoes he's died in -- now that one of them is most probably sitting on the bottom of the lake and the other is holding on just barely -- how his dad would feel about the trainers? Would it still matter that they were five times more expensive than both of the pairs he'd got put together? Would it matter that they'd have probably fallen to pieces in three months while these shoes he got, even at the bottom of the lake, will last at least ten or twelve thousand more years? He can't decide but, since he's dying and all, he reckons that it doesn't much matter.
He's still got his camera, he's glad of that. It's ruined, of course, but there's probably a spell that they could use to dry it out or something, some way to salvage it. Maybe Professor McGonagall (mr creevey, your attention please) will think to do that, he thinks, maybe she'll rescue my last photos. And then, oh, God, I hope not. Because he'd been mostly pissing about earlier, taking pictures of trees and birds and the castle, nothing amazing, nothing brilliant, nothing that wasn't done twenty times better by someone else years and years before he was born. He has loads of photos that are better -- that he feels say something or at least look cool -- that he'd rather have people think of as being his.
I should have taken something decent, he thinks, I could have, why didn't I? Because it hadn't mattered at the time, he knows. It wasn't like he'd known this was going to happen, it wasn't he'd planned it. He hadn't even planned to take any pictures today. He'd just not wanted to be inside, is all, and coming out to finish off a roll film was as good a way to spend the end of the day as any. That's all. But it was horrible to know that last picture he took was probably of some stupid, twittering bird. He can see it now, he's dead, everyone is gazing sadly at his last photographs, and then the bird shits. Right there, that is the entirety of his life's work, a bird shitting.
It's a bit stupid to think that, at fifteen, he could have a life's work, but then... not really, no. Because, all right, yes, it's only been fifteen years and, yes, the first five of them he spent being fascinated by the noises his arse could make, but it's still his entire life. And, since his dad had given him his first camera when he started Hogwarts, it's been pretty much his... thing. It's his thing, photography. The one thing that sets him apart from everybody else beyond the fact that he's a bit skittish and a bit strange (you're a fucking weirdo, creevey). The one thing that makes it easier to deal with the fact that he's a bit skittish and a bit strange.
He likes taking pictures and he's not bad at it -- quite good, really -- and getting better every day. He'd finally stopped seeing the world as one giant place but as single shots -- moments to be frozen the Muggle way or captured the Wizard way -- some time the middle of third year. He was getting an eye, his mum had said when he'd come home for the summer. Smiling and looking down at a picture of Ginny Weasley (colin? god, you scared the piss out of me) reading in the rose garden. She'd said it like she'd really known what she was talking about and even though it had probably just been something she'd heard on telly or read in a book, it had meant something. To him, it had meant something. He'd catch himself thinking it -- I've got an eye for photography -- and, even though he'd blush like an idiot for being so pathetic, he still felt... proud.
Proud, proud, proud, and now he's drowning. Properly drowning -- the water in the chest, water in the belly, limbs gone still, all hope gone sort of drowning. Or drowned, really. Because it's done. It's all done. He should have learnt to swim. He should have taken better photographs. He should have hugged his mum more often. He should have told his dad he loved him. He should have talked to Dennis about all those serious, adult things that older brothers are meant to talk about with their younger brothers. He should have kissed someone.
good, solid shoes, son...
brass band...
yes, thank you, my dear...
like it wasn't real...
fucking weirdo...
not now...
got a problem with your bits...
mr creevey...
colin?
colin?
colin?
"Colin!"
He's gagging on the water coming out of his mouth and nose. And then choking on some more coming in. He's dipping under and then back up above the water, like a buoy in a storm or a boy who's just drown and hasn't realised he's not dead yet. There's an arm around his middle and someone's legs tangling with his own and this is not the first time this has happened -- the dying and then not being dead quite suddenly. And he gags and chokes some more and wonders how many more times this is sort of thing is going to happen to him.
"You've got to--" down, up, sputter, breathe "got to ki--" down, up, sputter, breathe "kick your fucking le--" down, up, sputter, breathe, kick.
Kick, kick, kick. He coughs up some more water and he can't even see straight but manages to gasp out, 'can't swim', like it isn't already painfully, painfully obvious.
"S'okay. Just don't sink again."
So he doesn't. He just kicks and kicks and kicks instead. Even though he's shivering and his legs feel numb and heavy, like they're not even part of his body, and it makes him so tired to even try. He kicks because over the sound of the water, he can hear the chattering of teeth and loud breathing coming from his rescuer and figures he's probably rather cold and tired as well. He tries to make his legs kick a little harder and a little more co-ordinated at the thought.
It seems to take forever but they finally make it to the shallows, he doesn't even bother trying to stand, just crawls to shore and collapses against the bank. He lies there, shivering uncontrollably, his camera underneath him, pressing into his chest, and his fingers and the toes of his shoeless foot digging into the wet dirt. He just lies there because he's not dead and he can hardly believe it. He is absolutely and completely not dead and it's so very strange because he'd been sure that that was it. But it wasn't it obviously so he just lies there, being not dead, until a hand grabs his shoulder roughly and rolls him over onto his back.
Now, if someone had asked him while he was being rescued who exactly it was he thought was doing the rescuing he'd probably have said Harry. Not because he had any reason to actually think it was Harry -- it hadn't been Harry's voice in his ear and the arm around his middle had felt bigger than Harry's had always looked to be -- but just because that was the natural, obvious answer. Because rescuing people, being a hero, was what Harry did. Harry was a hero, Harry saved people, that was just how it worked. If anyone was going to save someone, it would be Harry.
So it is a bit of a shock to see that it is not, in fact, Harry that is pulling him up to sitting position, but a half-naked, extremely wet, rather blue-tinged Neville Longbottom instead. His mouth is hanging open, he knows, but he can't help it. Just like he can't help himself from looking around the bank for... someone else. Anyone else. The person who must have really saved him because it just couldn't have really been Neville. He's a nice enough fellow, without a doubt, but he's no more hero material than Colin himself.
But, of course, there isn't anyone else, there's just him and Neville. Neville who is nice and quiet and more than little clumsy. Neville who says hello to him in the corridors between classes sometimes and doesn't seem to mind sitting next to him in the common room. Neville who is utterly sopping and shaking even harder than him. Neville who is wearing nothing but pants with a cartoon-type character on them and a pair of plain black socks. Neville who saved him.
He looks up at Neville's face, really honestly speechless for probably the first time in his life, and Neville just looks right back at him. "I th--thought you were dead."
So did I, he thinks wildly. But says 'I'm not' and 'you saved me' instead. And then leans in and kisses Neville. Right on the mouth. Just like that.
It doesn't last long, just a press of lips against lips, but it makes his stomach feel warm and wriggley nonetheless, and when he pulls back and licks his bottom lip, he can taste lake water. He'd have probably tasted lake water even if he'd kissed a rock, will probably taste nothing but lake water for a fortnight, but it doesn't really matter to him. Because it was perfect and it was right and it was all his. My first kiss, he thinks in a dazed sort of way.
Neville just stares at him, his eyes gone huge and round, his mouth hanging open now. "Wha-- uh-- oh--"
There are voices coming from behind them and, before Neville can finish, he twists around to see Harry, Ron, and Madam Pomfrey hurrying down the slope toward them -- Hermione with a black bundle that could only Neville's robes and shoes not far behind. He feels his heart jump at the sight of Harry, who looks so perfectly... perfect with his hair flying back like that and the concerned look on his face. But then a weird ache replaces the happy feeling. Because Harry hadn't saved him, Harry hadn't even tried. Harry can't even stand him. And he finds himself turning back to Neville and, in a rush, blurting out, "Can you teach me to swim?"
He doesn't know why, and he knows it probably all seems a bit mad to Neville -- the kissing and the swimming -- but it makes nothing but sense to him. Because he's not dead after all so he's got to be happy with his lot in life again, doesn't he? And since his lot is apparently almost dying in completely bizarre ways and kissing Neville Longbottom... well, that's not so bad, is it?