#epxten

@epxten

it’s a poorly concealed secret that hongbin’s hobby is photography. he adores it. it’s his favorite form of art, of self expression, of seeing the world. there’s something so intimate about stills, about a certain moment captured forever, never to be lost to the motion of the previous moment or the next. truth be told, hongbin much prefers muggle photography to wizards’, because there is little separating a photo from a video in the wizarding world, even if it has its merits- though he hadn’t discovered this until ten had gifted him his first muggle camera. 

hongbin, at first, had been quite skeptical of it. not because he felt it would be inferior- but rather because it was entirely unlike anything he’d ever experienced. how could he have? for all hongbin’s fascination with muggle things, it was quite difficult to get his hands on any such item without incredible bribery. 

thankfully, ten had surprised hongbin with a gift more precious than he’d realize in that moment (though he’d nearly teared up even then, all naive excitement and wander and thankfulness). 

that was years ago, back when they’d first met. his camera had seen a lot, captured a lot, kept a lot of precious memories hongbin’s own mind would come to distort as it lost itself to time in ways the photos never would. 

it wasn’t until the summer of his fifth year that hongbin had learned to develop film (he’d been under the impression that his photos were trapped inside his camera, confined to pixels) and he’s not turned back since. 

today he’s brought some photos with him, the precious few he’d developed with a loving touch and the careful precision of someone who learned through trial and error- which felt a bit like heartbreak, due to hongbin’s dramatics. his smile refuses to fall, steps giddy as he searches for his friend, the very subject matter of his photos. there are a couple of shots that are particularly near and dear to his heart, of smiling faces and tender moments between friends who have nothing but time on their hands and the world in front of them.