Prophet Colin

"I was caught up to paradise and heard inexpressible things, things that no one is permitted to tell."

Harry Potter can do anything, Colin confides to his younger brother when he's come home for Christmas. He leans over the small space between their twin beds and bathes in the lampshade, long after their father has gone to bed. "All wizards and witches are able to turn teacups into mouses and back again or levitate feathers or disappear and reappear, but Harry Potter can do more than that!"

He lets Dennis shift through all the pictures he's taken, feeling slightly smug with privilege – it wasn't everyone that got to take photos in Hogwarts, but Prof. Flitwick had kindly enchanted photos to pop into view when Colin snapped his fingers above the paper and return when he gave the photo a firm shake. Dennis stops at a candid picture of Harry smiling with his friends that Colin's very proud of.

"Everyone looks so happy," Dennis says wistfully.

"Yeah, it's really great there," Colin murmurs, cradling the picture onto his lap. "Sure, bad things happen, but they get stopped like that!" And here he punctuates with a loud snap. Dennis glances nervously at the door, then grins at his brother's boldness. "People regrown bones with magic, and they can protect themselves with magic and they can even fly with magic."

"Do they get sick?"

"I guess," Colin murmurs, carefully putting the photos away, now innocently blank. "The muggles do, anyway, nothing serious. I bet they don't know what cancer is, though."

Dennis stiffens at the word, while Colin busies himself by climbing back into his bed properly.

"Our headmaster's really old." Colin yawns. "Really, really old. I think he's 200 years old." There's one picture in his hands still that he holds high to reach the light and smiles at. "Professor Dumbledore's really great, too. And we have a teacher that's fought zombies and and ghouls and vampires! Everyone's great!"

"You're lying!" Dennis exclaims.

"Where do you think I've been all this time? St. Brutus?" Colin teases. The picture in hand then goes under his pillow, his glasses to their shared nightstand. He yawns again, much longer, and Dennis finds himself yawning back. "I'm going to be like Harry Potter," Colin murmurs, eyes closed, giving in to exhaustion. "I'm scared of a lot of things, but I think of Harry Potter and I can do anything."

"Me too," Dennis vows solemnly. "I'm going to be like him, too."

Colin extends his arm and Dennis meets his palm-to-palm, his hand seeming to have grown in the months between. "You'll see what I'm talking in two years – two years," Colin promises as brings his arm back under the warmth of the quilt. "You'll be in Hogwarts with me in two years, all right?"

Dennis nods enthusiastically before falling fast asleep, with dreams of wands, broomsticks and floating, glowing bulbs.