Disclaimer: Harry Potter does not belong to me, but I do own Eloise.

Rating: T (for now)

I. Portrait of a Girl

Her life began in the year 1900 and ended in 1916; however, nothing about Eloise Westenberg's life could ever be considered that black and white. She lived many times, across many years, and died many times as well.

. . .

I remembered nearly everything about my former life. I remembered the sound of the students gossiping over breakfast; I remembered the sound of the students cheering over Quidditch matches. Beyond the walls of Hogwarts, the memories faded. I couldn't recall my mother's face or the sound of my father's voice. Somehow, I couldn't even remember the names and sexes of my siblings, if I had any of them at all. I died of some disease, something about my hands and feet, perhaps about my fingers and toes. I went to sleep in my bed and woke up in a frame.

My story seemed entirely unique, but there were hundreds of others just like me. They inhabited the portraits that lined the walls of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Some of the paintings were quite beautiful, with bits of nature and background elements; other paintings were barren and quite creepy, lacking any feel of humanity. I liked to think that I had a rather friendly disposition, not unlike Giffard Abbott or Basil Fronsac or the talkative Termeritus Shanks. They were really the only ones bold enough or polite enough to speak to me, the newest of the Hogwarts paintings.

At first, my painting hung in the entrance hall for all of my fellow students to see. My housemates, all dressed in yellow and black, would stop to wave or chat between classes, each interaction ending with a sympathetic frown and a promise that they would return the very next free moment. I lived for the moments when my former roommates stopped by to tell me how much they missed me or how much that I had missed, being stuck in my golden frame. I thought that those moments would continue for the duration of their years, but they changed and matured while I stayed exactly the same. I wore the same white dress and kept the same wavy, red locks. They grew breasts and got boyfriends; they snuck out at night to make out under the stars. They lived.

Five years later, the groundskeeper moved my painting from the entrance hall to the trophy room. From that point on, it became a sort of game. My painting would inhabit a hall or a room for so long, then another painting would move in, and the groundskeeper would return to move my painting to yet another place. Each move took me further and further from the eyes of the public. From the entrance hall to the trophy room to the third-floor corridor—none of the students recognized me anymore and the professors had better things to do than stop and talk to the remnants of Eloise Westenberg.

By the 1930s, my painting hung on a drafty wall near the rear of the library, overlooking the entrance to the restricted section. Other paintings had important jobs, such as guarding secret passages or protecting information. I had no job but to stay out of the way and take up an empty space where a moth-eaten portrait of the Middle Ages once hung. My temporary job had been to catch students sneaking into the restricted section, but within a couple of years of the move, another painting—one of Valeria Myriadd—was placed within the shadows of the restricted section. It made no sense for me to play the role of the rat, not when Valeria had the better of our personalities.

I listened to students whispering between the stacks of books, catching snippets about the war and a man named Gellert Grindelwald, but none of it meant much to me, not within the safe walls of the school. No one smiled at me or spoke to me, and not a single student asked for my assistance with locating a textbook or any number of their class assignments. For the first time, I understood why the groundskeeper moved the paintings around so often. We lost hope, we lost the desire to exist, and we let ourselves go with time—we longed for our former lives with such force that we destroyed the ghost of a life we had left. I was finally thankful for my shadowy place on the wall. I spent most of my time being miserable.

And then he appeared.

A/N: What do you think of the introductory chapter? Review. Send me a message. Let me know what you think. I'm posting for feedback.