Pairing: Cedric/Dennis.

Rating: PG-13.

Disclaimer: No copyright infringement intended. Characters owned by J.K. Rowling.

Summary: Written for Rescribo, a remixed version of 'Scope' by Twi.

(1991)

Wizard photographs are like standing between two mirrors. That’s why there are none pressed between the pages of Hermione’s transfiguration textbook to show her parents when she goes home that first year at Hogwarts.


(1992)

Hermione’s understanding when Colin asks whether she can magically develop photographs for him. The boys from his dormitory have given him the instructions but, to a man, they’re terrible at Potions. The ingredients are easy to procure so she has little trouble, absently handing over a flask in the common room one evening as she chews her Quill over Transfiguration homework. There’s a complicated textbook open on her lap, filled with cramped writing and detailed blueish diagrams, and she looks harried, so Colin just thanks her and walks away.


(1993)

Ginny takes Hermione’s hand in hers. The skin is soft because she’s just twelve years old, though her nails are hard and bitten down. “You have to see this,” she whispers, and it’s amazing. The patch of wall hidden by the canopy of Colin’s bed is bright with colour. There are a thousand faces that wave within frames, smile, jostle their friends, pout, blush, simper, or even cry.

“So what?” Hermione shoots back defensively, because she can still feel the weight of potion in her hands.

Ginny knows, so she shakes her head and scratches a nail across the bedpost. “It’s not right,” she says.




Colin’s room at home is even more thickly covered with photographs. He has to keep it locked in case his parent’s friends happen to try the door. “A life-collage,” Colin’s mother, a kindergarten art teacher at the local school with profound ideas, pronounces. “Life flattened out.”

But it’s Dennis who’s the most fascinated, shuffling through the pictures underneath the fluttering lights of the Christmas tree with reedy carols in the background. The stories about Hogwarts have percolated the pictures somehow, they’re not just pictures. They’re miniatures of the people themselves. At night Harry’s stabbing a basilisk even though Dennis has never seen one, and just before he wakes up he sees a grainy wood frame edging the dream.


(1994)

Wizard photographs tell you more than you ever wanted to know. When Dennis sees Cedric Diggory in the hallways of Hogwarts or brushes past him because he’s late for Charms, he feels a shiver at how disquieting it is how much he knew about him even before he knew his name. For instance, Dennis knows that if he offered him his hand and said hello, Cedric would tilt his head to the left and smile slowly and say his name like a spell. Dennis knows when he’s angry, or just a little upset, and he recognises the strange expression of mixed elation and fear after he’s asked a girl out and he doesn’t quite like it.




Later, when Harry brings the body back, Dennis averts his eyes and thinks it’s not real. It’s limp around the mouth and slack: the most grotesque thing he’s ever seen. Dennis climbs up to his brother’s dorm that night and pulls back the curtains. There are more pictures of Cedric this year because he’s a Triwizard Champion-- but then, so is Harry. That’s why Colin doesn’t even notice that has Dennis pulled off a photograph of Cedric where he’s smiling lopsidedly over a glass of pumpkin juice. The orange stain of it at the corners of his mouth and the sloppy robes and wisp of unkempt hair at his temple are very much alive. That’s why Dennis doesn’t even stand when Dumbledore makes his toast at the leaving feast, because he only raises his glass to dead people.


(1995)

The photographs coming to life in the shallow reddish pool of potion is the same kind of magic that Tom Riddle used to splice himself into ink and paper. It takes a little soul each time and that’s why the photographs of dead people are a little emptier than the others-- but Dennis doesn’t know this. Now he carries the picture in the pocket of his white shirt, against his chest and the living sound of blood in his heart, and when he takes it out, Cedric smiles.