Snakeskins Playlist.

Snakeskins

Dead Paint

Going back to Hogwarts in January meant picking the real issues of their stay back up. Not potions essays and Quidditch tactics, but the disappearances:

The Bloody Baron was gone, along with Peeves the school poltergeist.

After Christmas the ghosts themselves were hard to find and unusually quiet, brief in their appearances. This applied to everyone except Nearly Headless Nick from Gryffindor- sort of. He was intolerant towards Slytherins and would vanish straight through walls if he saw anyone in green coming near him, but Arthur did see him hovering over students from his own house and chatting quietly with them at least once a week.

It was a little bit insulting, but the teachers had adopted the position that the Baron was probably just hiding down at the bottom of the lake and would come back eventually. He was a Hogwarts ghost, specifically a house representative. He would be back, they were sure of it.

Arthur just really wished the Baron's return could have been the day Nearly Headless Nick broke his vow of silence against Slytherins. Because not only did he do that, but he chose one of their potions lessons down in the dungeons to make his move. It was rather like a cold slap in the face.

"Kirkland..."

Professor Slughorn had nodded off behind his desk while letting them work on vats of swelling solution. It was review before they'd move onto new content for the semester, which was strange because they'd already reviewed it before Christmas, but since everyone was quite confident in their abilities on the Slytherin side of the room no one protested or pointed out this obvious lapse in the syllabus.

"A suspicious name to carry, even worse to go asking questions with." Sir Nicholas came right in through the classroom wall, drifting with hands clasped behind his back before he promptly dropped to the floor like he suddenly had weight and mass. This was an illusion, because he walked straight through Eliza Gamp's desk, finding Arthur with his black eyes before taking off into the air again and drifting back between the Gryffindor students where Albus Potter nervously shuffled trying to escape the inevitable dousing of cold ghost essence.

He rose up again at once much like a whale breaching through a wave or a massive owl spreading its wings over a nest to protect the students behind him. The display was a mystery to the children but Arthur looked away and saw Italy watching him very closely and maybe even fingering the end of his wand.

"Have I done something, Sir Nicholas?" Arthur asked.

"No," The ghost answered, reedy voice high and almost offended as he washed over another Gryffindor and the boy performed a full-body shiver with his tongue sticking out as a reaction to the feeling. Sir Nicholas didn't notice, his chin wagging a bit too much where the wide ruffs around his neck weren't doing a very good job of keeping him secure. The ghost's hands were still clasped as he floated up in front of Arthur, and he could feel Scorpius gripping the back of his robe where their potion smelled like it was starting to burn. "But that's precisely the thing, Mister Kirkland. You're a boy."

"I don't fancy I'd look that great in a skirt." The twitter of nervous laughter from the other slytherins made the jab worth it, but the ghost came so close to him as a result that Arthur felt his nose going cold.

"The Kirkland I knew was never a boy..."

"That sounds a bit crazy, don't you think?" Even nations were children for at least a little while. Perhaps never babies, and often not young for very long, but still. They had their time. "Are you here to tell me where the Bloody Baron is, or should I get back to my brewing, sir?"

"I can assure you, Kirkland, when I find out where he's gotten off to, you won't be on my list of people to tell first."

"What's wrong with the name Kirkland?" He then demanded, sensing that the ghost was getting ready to vanish. The affronted look on Sir Nicholas' face made Arthur regret asking.

"A blunted axe, Mister Kirkland. A blunted axe."

It took several letters home over January into February pestering Wales before a new owl arrived alongside Scotland's mangy, angry familiar. A brown barn owl with inquisitive green eyes and a great love of being petted on the head brought a letter from his other brother, and inside was the patchwork story written in multiple different inks showing how many times Wales had forgotten to finish it. Executions had a habit of blurring together once you were around for more than a few centuries, but when the reason was a noble from your king's court transfiguring a noble lady's front teeth into a giant tusk, things tended to stick.

"What I'm saying is, I guess I shoulda been a bit nicer and let him have the sword instead." Yes, Wales, maybe that would have been the nicer thing to do. No wonder the Gryffindor House ghost hated him, but it was his brother he should have been intolerant of- England was innocent!

By the time Valentine's day passed them, Arthur could tell that Italy was plenty fed up with their lack of progress. Either he wanted an answer for the Bloody Barron, Peeves the Poltergeist, One-Eyed William and several other ghosts students claimed they couldn't find around the castle anymore, or he wanted access to those scarred paintings.

Considering Valentine's was marked by the shrill screams of two more paintings and an abrupt end to the red-pink-and-white festival that Sunday afternoon, Italy's preference as far as the mysteries went was obvious.

"We're confined to the common room so I don't know what you expect."

Italy didn't answer him where the twelve-year-old boy was reclined in a green chair in the dungeons, fingers drumming on the polished wooden knob at the end of the arm-rest. Higgs was with his brother and Scorpius looking at Quidditch numbers from the national teams, and Gamp had excused herself to go write a letter home. It gave Arthur and Italy a bit of relative privacy in the crowded room, but the other nation wasn't about to suggest a game of cards or chess to pass the time.

In fact, he had a particularly grim look on his face, one Arthur didn't appreciate because it made him think of a time long long ago when Italy had been almost that same size and worn exactly the same face. Spices had never tasted so bitter as when they'd passed through Venetian hands.

"What are you thinking?" Arthur asked, sitting up a bit straighter when he realized Italy's silence was backed up by the way his brown eyes seemed half out of focus. They didn't follow him when Arthur moved, but darted off somewhere else like he was about to turn his head, irii floating back into position a moment later. He was still drumming his fingers, but his impassive face didn't shift when Arthur drew his wand and flicked it several times with the random lights on the tip like he was drawing for a game.

Arthur pointed his wand at an abandoned snap card resting on the table, it gave a loud pop, and while he terrified one of the first years, his friend didn't react.

"What are you doing?" Dropping his voice to a hiss, Arthur stood up and walked over to the chair, nudging Italy's hand off the arm-rest and hiking a leg up so he could sit on it next to him, looking down like they were having a conversation when there was clearly no communication. Brushing a few wayward strands of cat-hair off his own robe, Arthur stopped when he saw the nest of white hairs on the front of Italy's robe, but a quick glance around the common room told him the cat was nowhere to be found.

"You didn't-"

He jumped up and immediately went down to the second year dorms, ripping the covers back off Italy's bed before marching straight back upstairs to the common room.

Italy was still practically comatose, and Arthur stood fuming in front of him for the next several minutes, wand in his hand and arms folded tersely as he waited. It took a wretchedly long time, and then as suddenly as he'd fallen into his trance, Italy took a deep breath though his nose, blinked his eyes, and seemed to tense up all at once before stretching his shoulders back and limbering up all at once with a great big yawn.

Arthur made sure to wave his wand directly in front of the idiot's nose, a threatening green afterimage following the tip and getting the other nation to tense up suddenly, shoulders pressed back and one foot braced on the table in front of him.

"Don't ever do that again." Arthur hissed.

"Do what?"

"Where's your cat?"

Italy smiled with a satisfied turn of the lips, head nodding to the side before he shrugged. Before he could lie and say he didn't know, Arthur got a foot up on the chair and took Italy hard by the collar, jerking him up and ignoring the pouty look he put on. He was too two-faced for his own good sometimes.

"If you get caught doing magic like that then this whole thing will be over before you know it." How did Italy want to explain a low level possession spell? Arthur didn't care that Gino, as a familiar and centuries old, had probably been completely willing to go for a stroll around the castle with Feliciano looking through his eyes. It wasn't about animal cruelty, it was about the animal being found out by a professor, caught, and the spell sensed before it could dissipate properly. No second or third year child at Hogwarts could use distance magic like that, it wasn't only beyond their skill and focus level, but no doubt banned as well.

"Maybe," He answered with a sickeningly self-satisfied tone, a hand around Arthur's and telling him to let go. Arthur relented, but he made a point of tossing Italy back against the chair. "But I didn't get caught." Watching him settle back down in his seat, one ankle up and resting on his other knee. He still looked too damned comfortable reclined like that. "And I found what I was looking for."

The idiot cat spent the night trapped outside the Slytherin dorms and was less than thrilled when one of the seventh years opened the door the next morning and the damp, shivering animal bolted inside to find Italy's bed and wake them all up with its caterwauling. But none of that could shake Italy's smile off his face.

He'd found the paintings.

"You're going to get caught."

"Then I'll get caught." Feliciano didn't really want to go around Hogwarts with its spooky halls in the middle of the night, but he also couldn't justify spending another year away from home and work without any answers to show for it. "You're coming with me, right?"

"Absolutely not!"

They kept it a secret from Scorpius, which was really really hard since he was always with them and had a lot more to say now that he was both on the Quidditch team and doing a lot better. They won their second match against Hufflepuff in February, and that was the day Feliciano made his move.

It was easy when the common room was exploding with streamers and silvery confetti, upperclassmen belting out songs and England so distracted by the jumping and laughing that Feliciano slipped out the common room door and was on his way. It was still late afternoon and he carried his book bag with him hanging under one arm, the perfect excuse if he was caught wandering the halls alone instead of being in the common room celebrating. There was no rule against going through the school during the day either, but Feliciano did pick up his pace when he heard unfamiliar voices elsewhere in the stone corridors. A lone Slytherin, second year or not, could still become a target.

Under his influence, Gino had found a locked door and hidden beside it in the shadows while professors hurried by and spoke. He knew which floor it was on and had passed by it several times already just getting to classes, detouring with England glaring at him and muttering bitterly under his breath about just waiting for the end of the year to talk to the Headmistress. Feliciano wasn't having any of it.

He wanted to know if the trend he'd started noticing, the similarities pieced together after hours skimming through library books about the castle and its history... He wanted to know if all of that was real, or just an illusion he'd been conjuring for himself.

So before he found the door that looked like almost any other door in the school, big and heavy with split wooden panels buffed with faded polish and the creak of wrought iron hinges, Feliciano made sure to tap the stones on the nearest hall corner twice with his wand, setting a charm there and walking down the rest of the corridor, past his destination, and setting another one like it. A simple little enchantment that worked like a trip-wire. He'd be able to feel anyone coming and know to either hide or flee.

Then he turned his attention on the lock, muttering the simple words to open it first before gritting his teeth at the heat that ran down his wand's black body. Sliding one foot back to brace himself, he felt threads of magic shooting down through the ancient wood, pushing back like he was going to lock horns with it before his power pushed around and through, out-maneuvering the enchanted block and smashing through the lock with a dusty rattle.

The handle gave under his hand and with a single look back at the daylight through the windows, Feliciano shut the door behind him, sealing himself in darkness.

The room was dark and cluttered, an abandoned classroom with chairs up on desks and white sheets tossed over piles of abandoned furniture. The stale air smelled like dust and the door gave a heavy clunk as the lock settled back firmly into place. Scattered under the shuttered windows and propped up against the walls were what Feliciano had been searching for: paintings.

Dead paintings.

It was a little unreal. Wizard paintings took on a life of their own that complimented the desires of the artist. They weren't like photographs that took a snapshot of a moment and relived it endlessly in a cycle. A painting could collect memories like dust, wander the mysteries of their ornate backgrounds and visit the frames of friends and colleagues on other walls. Portraits of famous wizards often learned as much about themselves as they could, but with a distinct awareness of their own purpose and the fact that they were not the person themselves, merely a likeness, a flattery, a kind, happy memory.

A dead painting, in the wizarding world, was a tragedy.

A dead painting was more than water seeping down the canvas or age turning the frame to a brittle mess. It wasn't the nails coming out the back end of the portrait or careless dollops of paint across lace cuffs and rays of sunshine. A dead painting was something destroyed, not damaged, something torn apart and killed on purpose, murdered like anything else strangled to death.

Professors had whispered about knives, children had wondered about swords or scissors. The other paintings cowering in the halls lived in the anxiety that they were next. What Feliciano found as he pulled back sheet after sheet was different. He lifted and moved frames so he could set them on the floor with his wand aglow and ghost lamps cast to hover overhead so he could see...

He found nail marks.

He saw brutal tears.

No clean slashes, but rough, raspy pulls across the canvas that bled magic at his touch and caused the sheets to curl and regress when he stroked them, looking for the cause. These weren't haphazardous slashes with a knife or blade, not the way oils and pastels rolled up like beads down callous scratches before finally nails took and hands began to rip and shred.

It screamed strength and determination, a crime of unbearable passion when turning the dead frames over one by one showed more damage pushing through from the painted sides, the outlines of hands and nails clawing and scratching to get through the paint.

But it was while he was on the backsides of those portraits and paintings that his other reason for being here reared its head.

Abello.

The artist's name for this one, a vineyard now devoid of colour, its revelers mutilated and grey on the barren ground, the wine just a black stain over rotted food.

Nicolosi.

A dove with a broken neck, its cavnas hard to uncurl where the rips had caused the old paint to curl and crumble back on itself. The castle in the background was in ruins, the poet laying under a dead tree with his quill fallen and broken beside the bird, face completely scratched off.

Sapenti had captured a historic event, a visit from Merlin to Rome where great gifts of wand-lore had been traded to help King Arthur and find a consensus about what to do with the fabled sword.

Merlin had flung himself on the sword now, Rome was in ruins and Feliciano had to put that one back before he made himself sick. He couldn't handle the sight of his capital, even a centuries old rendition of it, defiled with skeletons hanging out windows and happy markets collapsed and abandoned.

He scratched the names into the little notebook kept safe in the breast pocket of his school uniform, meticulous as he recorded the size and age of each painting, prepared to go back to the library and cross-reference this information against what was in the school's books. He'd have more time there, it wasn't wise to do it now as he picked another dead painting up and set it back in the place where he'd found it.

The next one made him pause.

He almost thought he read the name wrong.

Kneeling down carefully, Feliciano tucked his notes aside so they could dry, the paper rasping over the dry back of the canvas. He gestured to pull one of the ghost lamps down next to his shoulder so he could see, and then dipped his quill down the deep neck of the bottle.

He traced the flourishing F tucked into the corner of this painting, and then let his hand follow-through and carve Vargas on the back, cutting through the dust and age as the black ink soaked down and permeated the material.

There was a deep, rasping breath underneath him, a shiver of struggling breath before he almost knocked the ink well over and grabbed the frame hard enough to drive splinters into his fingers.

'Papa... P-papa...!'

"Shh, shhh, Belladonna..."

He was disappointed in himself for not remembering, he was angry with himself for not knowing how this had even happened. Feliciano couldn't remember giving one of his own pictures to Hogwarts, it must have taken a journey through other hands to get here. When he turned it over, the grey sky bearing the memory of brush strokes for fluffy white clouds. The bottom half of the canvas was gone, the Gondolier dead and Venice's waters stolen away. There was only the rounded top of a column resting in the far left corner, ribbons snipped and fallen in the dead air where the second subject of the painting was clinging.

Quite literally clinging, because Feliciano could barely see the ashen marks and memory of yellow paint where a gold fan had once fluttered with teasing romance. Her balcony was broken, her dress scratched away, face hidden behind the posts of her balcony and a wash of green silk- now white, from her curtains draped like a burial shroud.

His quill cut through the damaged paint and marked the full volume and burst of the dress, several fast, hard strokes that brought whimpers of pain from the image detailing the weight of the curtain and the hidden form of her head. He gave her substance and where her fingers had been mutilated the quill bit harshly and separated fingers from knuckles, completing the flat arc of her palm before it lifted away and he drew the moving arm and the lace cinched at her elbow.

"It hurts... it hurt so much...!"

"Yes, I know it does, my love. Just a little longer..." He whispered in his own language, not standard Italian but the dialect of the region this painting had flattered. She understood him and she cried openly when he fixed the lines of the balcony and scraped his quill up around the door and window leading to her little flat. He sketched wine and a deep pillow over the remains of a chair, and when she stood, face and body still obscured by the curtain, he drew her other hand again and gave her skirt a laced hem with the shadow of her feet underneath.

"Where is he?" Her voice was so soft that even when she cried Feliciano had to hunch down and place his ear over the window. "Where is my love? What's become of him?"

Her window and balcony only ever took up the top quarter of the painting, the rest of it was a shambled city and a great black void where the canvas was damaged.

"Tell me what happened."

"Where is he?"

Tell her the truth? There was power in being the creator of a work like this, but when Feliciano tried to cut his quill down across the interior of the room and paint a tall body with long limbs and a masculine frame, the ink beaded and refused to take. He couldn't draw something that didn't belong...

"Who did this to you?"

"He's gone? He's gone! No! No he's gone!"

"Wait- answer me!"

His pleas couldn't stop her. The curtain around her face bore a mouth left gaping in an agonized scream, the ink beginning to bleed out of the painted image as she twisted and spun with a wail on her balcony, the little woman devoid of colour and screaming like a tender animal having the life crushed from its body. The tension she put on the curtain made the rod snap and hit the floor with a clatter, and her wails ended when her redrawn dress crumbled and the ink wept its black, marring way across the image. She collapsed in a heap by the chair as it faded, her sobs beginning to quiet as her mangled hand held the white-washed fan in a limp grasp.

A few moments later she was entirely silent. An unfelt wind brushed the curtain from her face, and all that was left of the venetian maid was her fleshless skull screaming silently behind the curtain of academic ink. No more movement, the last of life surrendered for the sake of lost love.

He wiped away the blood with a handkerchief, reminding himself that it was only black ink, not red essence, and after he put the damaged canvas back against the wall, he dabbed away the fresh ink from his name.

Feliciano didn't go through the rest of the murdered artwork. He simply unlocked the door again and passed back out into the hall. His chest hurt.

He didn't care which way he went after that. He wanted sunlight and he wanted fresh air, but more than either of those he just wanted to be alone and to think. He had to process the pain of having one of his own creations, however old it had been, die right in front of him. He had to get through the insult and the deep-seated hurt of having Italian names in rapid succession come up in front of him as victims of vandalism, of brutality, of disrespect and anger- so much anger.

All of those names belonged to dead artists- some of their families still lived, but the artists themselves were beyond the veil now.

Beyond the veil, unlike the ghosts who were another mystery, less invasive and hurtful, but still lingering there on the very edge of everything else.

He was walking quickly, taking a flight of stairs up higher through the castle looking for a balcony or an open window, not even paying attention to where he was going as long as he kept moving. He could feel anger following him and he wanted to out-run it, anxiety reaching for his shoulders and forcing him around corners to get away from it. He didn't want a scene or to go back to the common room and sulk and cry until the emotions went away. What sort of message would that give to Scorpius who was supposed to be living the happiest day of his life after his Quidditch win? He couldn't take that from the boy, he'd gone exploring on his own and this was the price for it.

These feelings were a better punishment than-

"Accio!"

Feliciano stumbled to a dead halt in the corridor, baffled by what he'd just felt when something ripped his notebook out of his hand. The charm barely registered, it was just the absence of something he'd been clutching the entire way from the second floor that brought him to a short stop. It unclogged his ears that he hadn't known were ringing, and Feliciano turned at the sound of voices.

"There, that got your attention then, Vargas." Why, why was James Potter of all people standing there in the hallway, a troupe of Gryffindors behind him, and why was he holding Feliciano's notebook? "What's a snakeskin like you doing way up here near the towers?"

James Potter was a third year student, messy black hair like his brother Albus but with none of the quiet shyness the younger Potter had. He wasn't very humble, word of mouth said he didn't need to be. Star seeker, excellent grades, lots of friends, famous parents. He had every right to enjoy his school years with a pedigree like that, but Feliciano drew the line at someone going around antagonizing other students for sport.

He approached the group, all four Gryffindors with their red-lined robes and lion badges over the hearts. When Feliciano stopped, he held a hand out and made his request plainly.

"I'm taking a walk, can I have my book back, please?"

"Slytherins win one little match and think they have the run of the castle." Potter answered, looking surprised that Feliciano either wasn't cowering or crying or getting upset at him for taking it. Maybe if the ringing in his ears would go away, maybe if the feelings that he'd been running from weren't catching up with him as he stood there. "This isn't a school book you know, Vargas."

He was too angry for this.

Too insulted to put up with this.

He wanted his report back and then to be on his way, that was all Feliciano wanted.

He wanted to put thoughts and memories of dead children and murdered art to rest, he needed to just fall into a deep sleep and wrap himself in the illusion of childhood for a few days, surrender a letter to Lovino keeping him updated. He just couldn't deal with James Potter today.

"This is a diary, isn't it?" But James Potter insisted on flipping through the pages with one thumb holding the black cover, fanning them and stopping when he hit black script. Feliciano took a breath to ask him not to do that, to repeat his request that Potter just give the book back now and be done with it, but James just laughed and Feliciano's vision started getting very narrow and very black and fuzzy around the edges. "Look at this, these scribbles are nothing but nonsense! It really is a diary if he just keep writing in Italian everywhere."

"That's enough, Potter." He almost called him boy, he swallowed the word and kept his hand out. "Give it back."

"I'm not finished yet." And then Potter dared to- "Abello, Nicolosi-"

He lost his temper.

He didn't use his wand- he didn't need magic. He felt his weight go to his right foot and kicked his left one up, jumping forward and slamming the hard heel of his shoe against Potter's shin. The boy yelled until a punch from Feliciano's right fist caught him in the mouth and he dropped to the floor in a stunned, writhing heap.

Maybe he hit a little too hard, but he took back the diary and-

"Get him!"

His wand came out and stunned a tall dark-skinned girl with long curly hair, feet already carrying him back as a girl who looked like Rose Weasley came at him with her wand glowing blue. He didn't know the spell, he just thrust his wand up into the blast before it hit him, catching the enchantment and swinging his arm back around over his head before lashing it at a short blonde boy with glasses who instantly froze in mid-step.

A yellow bolt was caught the same way by his wand and slammed to the floor where it let off a jet of sour gas, but it left his arm open to a jet of blue fire from someone he couldn't see.

They caught his robe instantly, heat cutting straight through the fabric to his skin.

The fire cut through his instincts, spells abandoned because if he fought when injured then he would keep fighting, it was already taking him by the throat and the flames sinking their teeth into his flesh woke him up just enough that Feliciano turned tail and ran.

He ran, wand in his other hand and book between his teeth, heat blazing up his arm from wrist to shoulder before licking at his back and forcing him to tear off the robe. His book bag got caught in the fabric and was dropped on the floor with the burning robe, his sleeve singed and smoking as he pumped his arms and went down the first flight of stairs at a dead sprint, almost crashing down the next flight.

The school moved by in a dusky blur, the sun setting somewhere outside the castle as he ran past the point of his lungs burning, feet slamming against cold stones because even if he couldn't hear anyone chasing him, he could feel the anger and the hurt and the insult and the pain all racing to catch him this time, and he couldn't surrender to them again.

"Vargas?"

He ran so hard and so fast that when he heard someone say his name he stopped so fast his weight slipped out from under him and he slammed his tail-bone on the floor, skidding another foot before stopping in front of the infirmary's white doors.

Professor Malfoy'd called his name because Scorpius' father was standing there in the hall next to Professor Flitwick. Feliciano laid there panting on the floor just long enough to see the shock on both their faces and feel the way their eyes fell to his smoking, burnt arm before he regained the ability to move.

"Vargas!"

Move, meaning flip over on his hands, kick his toes against the floor, and shoot back the way he'd come to find anywhere better to hide.

Anywhere, at all, to hide.

Jfc James didn't your mother ever tell you not to read creepy Slytherin diaries like c'mon.