Incredible thanks to Miss Drew for her outstanding beta work in this chapter!
Snakeskins
Paint and Unpaint
Magical and muggle paintings really weren't all that different from one another. One resulted in a painting which could speak, act and recall information whist the other was a still image which, sometimes, could do the exact same thing.
Feliciano did love painting. He'd loved it since Grandpa Rome's time and had never really separated himself from it. He enjoyed carving, sculpting and poetry, too. He'd helped authors craft books, debated with philosophers until their theories became treatises, and raised his voice in enough songs and chants over the centuries to make himself quite the authority. But despite all of that, his favourite art was painting: it was his passion.
Germany had animals; Austria his music; America was obsessed with the sciences and France with food, but Italy loved art.
He loved the smell of it: that almost salty sting on his pallet or the wet tact of pigment on his fingers. He loved the vibrancy and the stick and drip of different thicknesses, too.
An oil-based paste, a watery splash, or a drizzle of colour washing down the face of canvas, fabric or paper was all beautiful. He had brushes with handles that were three and four hundred years old with sets of pig, horse, goat and dog hair- there had been many centuries to experiment with all kinds of thicknesses and lengths; the tension of a wolf's long overcoat or the gentle fuzz of a rabbit's back. Hair was painless to gather and worthwhile when covered in so much power and a little bit of paint.
He had acrylic brushes, too: plastic, microfiber and all sorts of twenty-first century suggestions and discoveries. He had his favourites and his preferences when it came to mixing and matching pigments, but that was no reason not to try something new just in case the new compounds worked better than something old- what was the harm in giving them a try? The worst he'd ended up doing was throwing out a tube of ugly, unusable paint.
He picked up a decent–sized canvas from a small shop in Rome, and spent a few days between the office and home catching up with work while making sketches and tests on the backs of important forms and useless invoices. He wanted to know what he was going to draw before he drew it, so, whether he doodled with pens during a meeting or with a spare pencil while getting lunch, he tested the ideas until he found one he liked.
A seaside vista: all the colour and motions of blue waves and a bright sky, the strong source of light from the sun filtering through trees and spilling onto flowers and shrubs. That was the background, and that decision let him finally pack up his canvas, paints, brushes, and an old paint-splattered easel into the back of his and Lovino's car and drive out of the city after they were both dismissed from Rome to enjoy the summer heat.
Veneziano kept his phone on as-per South Italy's demand, but his brother was headed down along the peninsula to spend some time with Sicily on her island while he wanted to stay in his own territories instead. He drove up the west coast for several hours, arrived in a sea-side town flooded with tourists from Europe and abroad. By the time he found his way up onto a windy hill on foot with his supplies and a picnic basket, he was more than ready to settle down.
He could have asked Germany to come with him, but Germany was busy until next week with his election. Feliciano had just seen everyone at France's birthday a week earlier anyways, so it was nice to spend some time alone.
Smearing blue in several tones across the wooden painter's pallet he'd brought with him, the wind carried the smell of crushed grass and a wide brimmed hat on his head kept the sun out of his eyes. A pallet knife in one hand mixed just enough paint in just the right way, and he applied it straight from the dull edge onto the ready canvas, following a few ghostly guidelines penciled in for the horizon and land features.
After several weeks of office work, his right hand was no longer clumsy or painful. Spreading and scraping clouds out of the clump of paint rolling between the knife and the canvas gave his mind the freedom to wander no further than his eyes could see: it quieted all the talk and chatter and allowed him to breathe deep and slowly without any hurry at all. He'd barely covered a quarter of the sky with whites and blues before he stopped feeling his body standing there, his hand and eyes floating away from everything else so that the paint felt as natural as breath and it was more like he was cutting away the canvas than covering it up.
Tranquil and serene, it opened his mind up beautifully.
At the start of September, Feliciano would be back in the UK to attend his fourth year at Hogwarts. He would wear the same disguise and be back with the same people: his friends and professors- foreigners who didn't know him or why he was really there.
He wanted to know more about that book, though.
England had returned it to him and Feliciano had spent time with it between that summer party and where he was now. It was a book of wand lore written about two hundred year ago by a Florentine wizard. A lot of the book was just an encyclopedia of wand materials and where to find them; how they worked and what they meant. The rest of the book was theory: why those components really mattered.
It was a book about how to properly quicken a wand: how to give it real presence and life. Wands weren't just sticks of wood with phoenix feathers stuffed inside, they were extensions of the sorcerers who wielded them, and that was what made them so powerful.
Any wizard could use magic without a wand: when in distress or danger; outraged, or overjoyed. Magic didn't come from potions or special words - it was inherent and deeply embedded in the user's soul. Wands were created to channel the tiny spark of magic to help transform it into a strong, stable flame. They were a tool: a shovel was for digging, a fork was for eating, a wand was for magic. Wandless magic users could still get the job done, but the effort was so much more. Without wands, the wizarding world's population would be a fraction of what it already was. If one out of every hundred muggles might be a wizard now, then without the help of a wand, only one out of every hundred wizards would be able to wield magic at will.
They didn't really have to use a wand, though. England knew how to channel his magic through his spell books and Feliciano had seen his brother use muggle weapons the same way plenty of times. Nations were special though, and it was hard to guarantee that a witch or wizard, without the right training, would be able to do the same things. Instead of a ready-made wand, they'd need an item of extreme personal value to pull it off with. Again, wands were an extension of the wizards who wielded them.
Maybe Michael Rosetti had been interested in making wands, or just the history around them. Feliciano didn't know how he could figure that out for sure unless he tried visiting Madame Rosetti again. After the way he'd last seen her after her children's death, however, there was no one he could think of in Florence who could help. Professor Binns' ghost had vanished last year before any of this had come up too, and he'd been the only instructor Feliciano could think of who would have anything to teach about wands.
He resolved to go through the school's library in September, and in the meantime to pay a visit to Wizarding Florence and any other cities he came near with a sizeable magic population. Michael Rosetti's wand had been in pieces when Feliciano pulled it out of its his wand sleeve four years ago, and, as far as he knew, they'd either been thrown away or buried with him by his surviving family. It would be worth it to try and dig those pieces up if they could be found.
Maybe he could speak to Professor Malfoy, but that thought made the pallet knife pause on the canvas. Would he be better off writing to him as an adult or approaching Scorpius' father as a student? He was probably still in trouble for breaking the school rules to find the book in the first place, asking why or how Michael had left the school to bury it in the forest would be difficult either way. Michael had been in seventh year with every right to go down to Hogsmeade on weekends: how hard would it be to circle back around the mountain from the village and pass between the dark trees?
Too dangerous for Feliciano to test it himself, which was why he scraped a little too hard with the knife against the wooden pallet on his arm. Manipulating the knife at a kinder angle, he scooped up the last of his sky colours to press and flick in long smooth strokes down the canvas face.
Too dangerous to wander into the woods again, even if he knew what would be waiting for him. Scotland had contacted him over the phone and through several e-mails so he understood that the Centaurs had been spoken to. So long as he stayed out of any of Professor Firenze's lessons he'd have no trouble from them again, but he wasn't going to test Scotland's word. They'd attacked him once and if given the chance they'd do it again. That was just the way they were.
He painted more of the canvas as sky than he probably needed, but that was the beauty of paint: he could just cover the bottom layer with something new once it was dry. Dabbing a few touches of yellow and green from the pallet, the knife scrapped and knocked again with a richer blue that he spread parallel from the sky to form the sea. Threads of green gave the sea depth compared to the pale clouds. He bent and spread the paint to form the ridges of waves, but crowning them with white foam would have to wait for it all to dry.
A seaside vista: positioned on land with a retaining wall and summer flowers growing out of the cracks. He had a general idea of what the subject would be. A beautiful woman only seemed appropriate, leaning on the wall in a dress he was mentally prepared to sculpt from petals of red and pink paint with one of his favourite flat brushes. He wanted the dress to be full of wind and movement, maybe adding a raised arm to hold up a sun hat as she grinned out at the viewer. Something lovely and romantic seemed much more fun than a boring, if beautiful, plain landscape.
Even as he stopped to eat his lunch in the sun to let the first layers of paint dry, the subtle differences between muggle and magical artwork had already taken effect. One of his clouds moved as he enjoyed a small bottle of wine, and by the time he stood up to finish the waves, there were panels of golden sunlight shimmering through the clouds to touch the sea as, one by one, the cresting waves were finished and allowed to swell and dip in the distance. If he crouched a little to line up his skyline with the real thing beyond the hill, it almost looked like the canvas was a glass window instead of stretched cloth.
Feliciano loved painting, and he loved sculpting beautiful things from his artwork. There was enough suffering and dirtiness in the world and he didn't need to add to it. He could paint storms, wars or the dead passing away in their lovers' arms. He could turn sad poems into heartbreaking images, but why? There was so much death tangled with nationhood- why would he want to perpetuate the image of it?
Beauty was meant to delight and sooth anyone who came upon it. An endless summer day with a gorgeous woman laughing in her prime was so much more engaging than muddy streets of corruption or bombs weeping out the bellies of airplanes. He'd seen those planes- he'd built them, flown them. He could feel the corruption like sores down his back. There had to be at least one way to escape all of that and just breathe easily for a little while.
Art was that escape and paint was the timeless medium.
"I think you'll be a very strong woman, Bella." He murmured over the wind, brush in hand and burnt neutral tones spread over the pallet. "The kind who doesn't let people hurt her feelings because they say she smiles too much. No one can smile too much." A dirt road and the shadows of a wall formed and covered up sections of the waves as he spoke. They were places he hadn't detailed with white because he'd known they'd be painted over, but he'd spread colour there anyways because the wall didn't mean the water didn't exist.
A wizard's painting was a three-dimensional world compressed into a two-dimensional image. With paints like these, the texture of the waves should have interrupted the brickwork of the wall, but magic was delightful and the canvas devoured the sea and let the rise and bulk of the wall rest evenly across it.
Somewhere far beyond the edge of the nascent painting, Feliciano heard a gentle laugh.
Arthur spent his summer vacation attempting to be productive, both for the sake of Hogwarts as well as his own. He spent as much time in the Ministry of Magic as he did in Westminster Proper, corresponding with archivists and ghost specialists while frequenting museums on both sides of the veil. He even dragged that idiot Frenchman into things.
"You see," And dealing with France was always terrible. "What I fail to understand is why you are asking me, and not your beloved partner."
"Must you be so nosey?" Arthur bit back, the two of them walking in suits through marble halls and panels of hot summer sunshine. France's pale blue suit was recklessly fashionable with a gaudy yellow scarf around his neck which matched perfectly with the rest of his outfit, sunglasses dangling with one arm stuck through the buttonhole of his jacket in place of a rose. Arthur himself was satisfied with his own dark green outfit, even if he'd opted for a proper tie instead of something straight off the Parisian runway. "Italy and I see more than enough of each other as it is."
"Yes, but he is Europe's authority on paintings, my sweet darling." The fact that France also chose to speak exclusively in French while Arthur doggedly clung to his own language made them quite the sight, storming through the museum together. Paris was alive with tourists and, of course, France's most famous exhibition halls were teaming with people. The nations were spared the jostling crowds and camera whirrs by walking along a restricted path with a balcony view down into the Louvre's main causeway. The noise of the visitors was enough to cover their own conversation, but the bilingual exchange was still an annoyance.
"Oh, and I suppose you're just going to readily give up your own contributions?" These words were bound to needle the other nation gliding alongside him, Arthur was sure: "He's been after you for almost two centuries to return several of his favourite pieces. The Mona-"
"Finish that sentence, my little rabbit, and I will have you dragged out of Paris by your ankles." What a delightfully charming smile France flashed him, unshaved chin picking up the light where his dirty blonde scruff was otherwise invisible. He had such a disgustingly French face: a long, straight, pointed nose; pointy chin and deep-set eyes. He looked like an ugly little house-elf with a straw mop tied to his head.
Arthur refrained from pointing this out, for polity's sake and nothing else. As they rounded a corner out of sight from the milling crowds on the floor below, the other nation came to a halt outside a decorated door painted to blend in with the stonework of the museum. The Louvre had once been a palace, and kings weren't especially fond of blatant utility doors in their hallways.
"This is the one." There was no handle on the door, just a few shallow gaps between it and the wall where France placed his fingertips and pulled: the door slid into the wall along a track, and a dark little passage opened up for them. "A utility closet when security passes, and a security door when the cleaners see it, wonderful little redirect, don't you think?"
"Sounds rather like your government, old bean." That earned him a nasty French sneer, but France ducked into the passage, Arthur followed and nearly ran into his back.
"What are you doing?" He sneered.
"Oh hush."
The door slid shut behind them, trapping both nations in pitch black and utter silence, save the grinding sound of concrete slabs. The air was tasteless but close, and as France started moving again, he murmured for Arthur to remain on his tail.
The passage turned out to be quite ridiculous, of course, because it was an immediate left turn from the threshold, then another left turn with no change up or down. Another door slid opened and let light in, and Arthur was thoroughly annoyed when the two of them stepped back out into the exact same grey, marble corridor.
"I understand magic can be round-about, but this is taking things a little-"
"Monsieur Bonnefoy!" Now that could reasonably have been anyone calling.
The corridor was identical down to the drone of conversation elsewhere in the museum, but as Arthur turned to see who had called his host so suddenly, he was forced to admit that they had in fact come the right way.
Not even a French muggle would wear a floor-length black robe with neon blue flames decaled through it, nevermind the ridiculous aqua ruffles around this witch's shoulders. The sequined blue shoes with a staggering heel made the woman's wide hips lunge hypnotically from side to side as she came up to them in a fire-engine red ruffled dress, arms spread open to receive them. She wore thick red glasses and her black hair was strung up in a massive bee-hive, and her high voice shattering with a delighted laugh.
Hair and shoes taken into account, the witch who greeted them barely came up to Arthur's shoulder, and she made France look like a lanky tree for having to bend down so far to drop a kiss on both of her rounded cheeks.
"Mademoiselle Marchmaine, I am so delighted to see you again!" France crooned, and Arthur remembered to be polite as he watched them exchange greetings which bordered on flirtatious, but they were honestly just being French. "Were you able to fulfill my request at all? On such painfully short notice I am ashamed to say I ask too much of you."
"What nonsense! Come, Monsieur, I have everything you need waiting in the east wing." Mademoiselle Marchmain knew how to enter like a peacock in full display, but now that she was standing relatively still, Arthur likened her much more to a humming bird: twitching and twisting and moving, completely animated and not half as annoying off the bat as her outrageous colours had suggested. "But first, sir, our manners!" She turned to look at Arthur with great big brown eyes tilted to gaze up at him through the thick lenses of her glasses, and when France began spilling compliments to assure her that Arthur's presence was irrelevant, he spoke up for himself instead.
"Arthur Kirkland, Mademoiselle Marchmain," It wasn't much like French because he merely pronounced the title and name correctly, but as he nodded and took her hand to kiss the back of it, he made up for it: "I am Monsieur Bonnefoy's counterpart from the United Kingdom. It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance."
"Oh my! It certainly is, Monsieur Kirkland."
"Your French has improved!" France gasped, firmly lodged in the same language.
"And your body odour hasn't. Shall we be off, Mademoiselle?"
Mademoiselle Marchmaine happily led the two nations back down the same corridor they'd already walked, but this time theywere greeted along the way by the hanging portraits on the walls who waved and called out their hellos and good-afternoons to the museum curator. The same balcony passed on their right side now, and looking down now revealed a sea of robes and funny hats, no-smoking signs replaced with pictures of wands shooting sparks with livid red lines x-ing them out. No casting around the displays, and one French sign declared the fines in gold and silver pieces for anyone caught laying hexes, enchantments, charms, or any other foolish and potentially damaging magic.
Instead of making small spaces much bigger as the British often did, the French preferred to simply mirror their buildings and public spaces. It was all far too troublesome to try and work it out logically. Magic was magic; it was as simple as that.
"I must say this, your request was strange, Monsieur." Mademoiselle Marchmain led them down a flight of wide marble steps that took them to a crowded foyer, but then turned immediately to her left and caused a thick red velvet rope to fold out of her way to walk down a restricted passage. The nations followed easily and kept up with her as she spoke, spying portraits of old wizards and witches snoozing in their frames or chatting softly over painted cards and open books. "Almost upsetting. Damaged paintings we see here very often, but dead? Truly dead? It is enough to bring me to tears."
"You would do a great honour to them by weeping, my dear, but for your own sake: please be strong." Arthur allowed France to sooth his own curator as they walked away from the cheerful din of the art-seeking crowds. As they turned down another flight of sunlit steps moving further into the museum, he was reminded even more of why they were here.
They came to a large steel door with a massive lock in the centre, but as their footsteps slowed down, the petite witch kept going and reached into the deep pocket of her black and blue robe to pull out a large gold key ring. The hoop was big enough to fit over her head like a necklace and the keys, albeit thin, were longer than the hand she used to grab one with and shove the skeletal head into the lock. With a mighty twist and a great boom inside the door, the passage opened up with little more than an irritated snort and shuffle from the dozing paintings hanging around them.
Beyond the door was a half-lit workshop which Arthur found very muggle-like at first. There were magnifying glasses hovering in mid-air over desks and slanted drawing platforms, stacks of canvases against the far wall draped with tarps like that could convince the images to sleep instead of complain about their accommodations. It was a good studio space and doubtlessly one of many housed inside the museum, but Arthur thought it was empty until a bit of movement at one of the desks caused him to jump.
"Ah, Lambert you're still here!" Mademoiselle Marchmain said, throwing her hands up in the air again as a wizard with rich black skin stood up from the place where he must have been working. He seemed quite young, in his mid-thirties at most and with his head shaved clean, a white dress shirt unbuttoned at the collar but professional enough just the same as the nations followed the Museum curator closer to him. The normal shirt was bellied by violently green trousers which matched the robe flung over the back of his chair, but Arthur was well accustomed to wizard fashion sense by now.
They greeted each other with a kiss and Madame Marchmain twirled around on her toes for the introductions.
"Lambert, this is Monsieurs Kirkland and Bonnefoy. Gentlemen this is Gideon Lambert, head of the restoration team here in Paris."
Handshakes passed instead of kisses, and finally the four of them were able to settle in to what the nations had come for. Chairs were summoned with a gesture and they sat around the desk to talk.
"It is very difficult to actually kill a painting, and it is a very sad thing as well." Monsieur Lambert's voice was very smooth and handled his words so well that Arthur could almost forgive him for speaking French. This was the cost of asking France for help. "I am sorry we couldn't do anything for the pieces you lent us from your school, Monsieur Kirkland, but the magic was drained and with it, the paintings' spirits." He'd expected as much…
"Do you mean drained as in it all bled out when the canvas tore?" Arthur asked, sifting through the meaning of Lambert's words and making sure he understood them. The wizard raised both eyebrows and nodded his head back like he hadn't thought of the technicality but then, with lips pursed, he shook his head and answered.
"No, it's much worse than that. You claim these paintings have all died instantly, or within minutes of being attacked by the vandal. Paintings, especially old ones, do not die that easily. The subject can flee to another canvas or jump into an alternative frame, and otherwise rescue themselves by relying on their neighbours. If they die, it is because their background deteriorates so much that they cannot get back into the frame which prompts them to wither and disappear. Your problem is a very strange one." Strange, indeed, and all the more disturbing.
"Is there any way at all to kill a portrait instantly?" France put the question out and Arthur was pleased not to feel like he was interrogating the poor man.
"Fire can sometimes do it, or very powerful attack spells." but then he looked back at Arthur with his own query: "Your letters described the portraits being ripped apart, yes? The ones you sent to us have fingermarks on them."
Fingermarks, but no actual prints. The Wizarding world was only just adopting a science that muggles had been using for over a hundred years. Finger prints were a case of better-late-than-never which sadly wasn't going to help this time.
"Cutting a painting would be very traumatic for both parties," Lambert continued, but his words were cruel: "Like using a knife to cut a person tied to a bed. They would scream, beg, cry, and rage just like any flesh and blood being. Nothing in this world truly wants to die."
"You're saying that cutting damage would be like bleeding to death?" France clarified, and Arthur looked down at his hands where he was weaving his fingers together trying hard not to fidget with the topic. "My god, that sounds horrific…"
"Is there any difference between a painting that's a few hundred years old and one that has been freshly painted?" This would be quite important. As far as Arthur could tell, Professor Huntington was still looking for pieces of art to fill up the bare spaces in Hogwarts, and with a whole summer to work on it, she was likely to make some real progress with that.
"Not really." The wizard answered, a casual shake of his head helping the words flow. "Once they've quickened, the subject becomes fully sentient. An older painting has the benefit of life and experience: perhaps it's seen death before. Some portraits take a few years to understand that the world outside their frame is very fluid and prone to change, so death is an impossible concept. Usually once their artist dies they get a much better idea of how these things work."
There was a heavy silence working in the half-light of the quiet studio, solemn and unhappy questions lurking alongside thorough but grim answers. Instead of putting another question to the man, Arthur tried to rephrase the information one more time.
"Something is speeding up the killing process when the paintings at Hogwarts are attacked. Something is draining them: can you think of why that might be?" Monsieur Lambert was already shaking his head.
"I have never seen or heard of a vandal like this. Usually what I see is paint thrown over them, or someone shooting fire or water from their wand to damage something. These things I can fix, but it takes a truly evil soul to commit this kind of violence." He seemed at a loss even as he spoke, heavy hands gesturing slowly like he was holding something between them and trying to turn the problem back and forth in front of him to see it from all sides. "And if they are draining the magic on purpose, then for what? There is as much latent magic in a self-soaping sponge or a quidditch snitch, even garden gnomes have more agency than a fifty year old painting of fairies in a woodland glade. The artists you named were all very talented and created many lovely works, but there was nothing particular about the paintings damaged. I am sorry, Monsieur Kirkland, but I cannot help you."
No-
No, Arthur hadn't thought he could.
