When he is eleven, Sirius Black gets the flu. He spends two weeks in the Hospital Wing. In the mornings, Remus brings him scones, and after classes, Peter recounts the events of each day to the boy who missed it.
It is James though, who knows about the nightmares. It was James who had, in the early months of the year, sat up with Sirius when he couldn’t sleep, and ever since then had been woken up whenever they got bad.
It was James who snuck out of the dorm rooms every night for two weeks and slept on the floor beside Sirius’ bed, curled under the invisibility cloak. It was James who would sit, a comforting weight on the foot of Sirius’ bed, and wait until the other boy fell asleep. It was James who never left. For the first time in a very long time, Sirius felt that someone was going to take care of him.
When she is twelve, Hermione Granger is petrified. She spends months in the hospital wing. Harry brings her stories, stacks and stacks of books he would never read himself. He reads them aloud to her in the afternoons, balancing his lunch on his knees.
It was Ron, though, who couldn’t bear the thought of her, silent and unthinking, two things Hermione Granger never was. It was Ron who would wait for the others to be asleep, and then, slowly and silently, take the invisibility cloak from its careful hiding place. It was Ron would navigate the corridors, listening closely for the sound of the snake he wasn’t able to hear.
It was Ron who, unable to sleep anyway, would spend most nights on the cold floor of the hospital wing, underneath the invisibility cloak, reading Quidditch through the Ages. When she finally does wake up, next to the dog-eared copy of the only book Ron ever read willingly, Hermione feels, for the first time in a long time, that someone is looking out for her.
I know that when Colin Creevey died in DH, he was sixteen years old, but whenever I read the scene, I always imagine him as the excitable 11 year old Harry met in in his second year. And you know what? I think Harry does too.