A/N: Thanks to all readers and reviewers.
And here's a nice long chapter... the promised dream sequence will be in the NEXT chapter. :)
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Ginny stared at the canvas. What was it that Vasari had said back in the sixteenth century? She tried to remember. She really did, even though her mind felt incapable of recalling much of anything at the moment. Something about how Michelangelo had both begun and ended the art of anatomical painting on the ceiling of the Sistine chapel, so that no artist who followed him could ever improve on it. Yes. That was it… Being a Muggle, that critic had, of course, never seen this painting, or he would have understood just how wrong he had been. The art had been carried further in of Leda and the Swan. , incomparably further, and she was struck dumb by just looking at the results.
She leaned closer, her eyes drawn into the sensuous curve of Leda's creamy shoulders, the savagely tender grasp of her hand, and the sweep of the swan's shockingly sharp talons and whisper-soft wings.
"How could we ever ever, ever sketch anything that could live up to this?" she muttered.
"You could not, I do assure you," said a gruff voice.
Ginny gasped. "Where did that come from? Malfoy, did you hear it?"
A tiny, bearded figure emerged from one of the swan's feathers. "Draco Malfoy hears nothing, Ginevra. Nor will he, until I have finished saying to you that which I have to say."
"What are you talking about?" asked Ginny. "Who are you, anyway?"
The little man gave her a rather baleful look from beneath bushy brows. "I find that my store of patience is even lower than it was in life, so I will explain this only once. I am the artist who was known as Michelangelo Buanarotti. I have information to impart, Ginevra. If you are wise, you will listen to it. Have I made myself clear?"
Ginny suddenly remembered from reading Vasari's Lives of the Artists that Michelangelo had had a remarkably bad temper during his lifetime. There might have even been an incident involving blocks of marble being thrown at people who irritated him, if she recalled it correctly. But portrait-selves know things that nobody else does, she thought with rising excitement. He knows the secret to creating the sketches! That's it—that's got to be.
"I'm awfully sorry," she said quickly. "Uh—Mr.—I mean—" Frantically, she tried to recall any Italian she had ever heard. "Spumoni" seemed to be about the only word that was coming to mind at the moment.
"Signore Buonarotti would be the most proper form of address," growled the artist.
"Right, right. Signore." Ginny peered into the swan's wing. "Oh! You painted yourself into a feather, didn't you? That's brilliant."
Michelangelo preened slightly. "Leonardo has always thought he is so clever with his little tricks- putting his own face on the Mona Lisa, for example. But I warned him that I would show his artifices for the vulgar theatrics they are next to my accomplishments."
Not overburdened with modesty, is he? thought Ginny. "Um… yes, of course. And I would , er, just love to hear anything you have to say to me. I'm sure it would all be very valuable advice…?"
"But of course," said the artist. "It could not be otherwise. " He waved a miniature hand towards the embrace of Leda and the black swan. "Observe my work. The answers lie there."
"It's all astonishingly amazing," sighed Ginny. "But I already know that. I don't see how I can ever live up what you achieved in it. I mean, the technical accomplishments, the use of shape and form, the modeling, the—"
"Idiota!" The artist threw his hands up in clear exasperation. "I did not speak of any of those things. Do not merely look. Truly see. What is it that you see? What lies beneath the surface?"
Oh! These rude artists. "Can't you just tell me?" She had meant her voice to sound polite, but she could hear it wobbling like a child running desperately from some horrible danger. She felt a tiny hand reach up and blot away a tear on her cheek. Ginny clenched her teeth.He's right. I am an idiot. Stupid, stupid, as if crying's going to do any good.
"Io scusare, Ginevra." Michelangelo's voice was oddly gentle. "I am not, perhaps, the most diplomatic of men, in life or in afterlife. But I would ask you to think—no, to feel the true meaning of this painting. Feel it with your heart." She felt his rough little hand tap her chest. A sculptor's hand, she thought.
She bit her lip hard, trying to regain some kind of composure. "But what does that mean?"
"What is the story that you see in this painting? Tell me."
"It's a Greek myth." Ginny tried to remember. "Leda was a queen of Sparta, married to someone she didn't love. Zeus came to her disguised as a swan on her wedding night, and she let it… him… seduce her."
"So you believe that a swan is all that you see?"
"Well, of course it's a swan—oh! I think I understand…" Ginny said a bit dubiously. "Obviously, it isn't really a swan; it just looks like one. So I have to look and sort of see more than just what you painted?"
Michelangelo smiled. It was an unexpectedly sweet smile, thought Ginny, and it transformed his rugged face with its once-broken and badly set nose into something almost handsome. Without a word, he gave a little bow and stepped back.
Stifling a sigh, Ginny peered more closely at the painting. It's some sort of optical illusion, I suppose. If she looked at it in exactly the right way, the swan would turn into Zeus, or something, and then... what? Maybe he'll tell me the secret of exactly how to do these sketches! She certainly did have to figure that out.
But what if I can't?
Harry's face swam between her and the canvas, stubborn, jaw set, black brows drawn together over brilliantly green eyes.
She stared fiercely at the painting. It stubbornly remained a portrait of a woman holding a swan to her breast.
She could just see Draco behind her out of the corner of her eye, silent, unmoving, frozen in time. His motionless face was pale and strangely vulnerable. She was responsible for what happened to him now. If she failed, then she handed Harry a weapon measured to his hands. No. Oh, no; that just couldn't be true. Yes, it is. Yes, it was; no it wasn't; the two thoughts chased one another round and round in her head until she wanted to weep from exhaustion and failure, and still the painting did not change. It didn't even move anymore, as a wizarding work of art was supposed to do. She could feel the tears rolling down her cheeks now, and she didn't even try to stop them. What was the point?
Leda was giving her a long, measured stare, she saw. "Girl, why do you weep?" asked the queen.
"Is there a secret to the painting?" choked out Ginny.
"I know nothing of if," said the queen. "I know that as all mortals do, you weep for what the gods have appointed, and attempt to flee from what no mortal can escape."
"I don't know what you're talking about. I never know what portraits are on about. I don't know why any of you can't ever seem to make any sense."
"Perhaps not." Leda stroked the black swan's head where it lay between her breasts. "But I know well that I have found my one true love, Ginevra, and out of true love I will never go."
Fine! Rub it in! Ginny glared back at the painting, past caring if she was offending anyone in it. The figures swam before her eyes; the beautiful Led and the sinuous black swan lying between her legs, moving up her body, caressing her skin…
The swan…
Or was it a man?
No, it wasn't either one. It couldn't be either one. It could not be painted as a man or a swan or an earthquake or a dozen notes of music, or as any other thing on the face of the earth.
In a flash, Ginny saw it all. Paint and canvas were feeble tools; pencils and paper and charcoal could never provide more than crude translations. Michelangelo had painted Zeus in the guise of a swan and Leda in the flesh of a woman because otherwise nobody could have seen the love between a god and a mortal, and stood still before a canvas on a wall, and then walked on to the next, and the next, their lives unchanged. No. The viewer must have fallen to their knees, and then thrown away everything they had ever owned and taken up a begging bowl and followed in the footsteps of the gods as long as they lived, if only they could have one more glimpse of that love. Ginny didn't know why she could bear standing in front of it and looking at it, standing where she was, instead of doing any of these things. Still, she did.
"I think I understand," she said faintly. "No—I think I'm starting to see just how much I don't understand."
Michelangelo nodded. "I did not reach the same conclusions for five hundred years. You are very wise, Ginevra."
But then an absolutely horrible thought came to her.
"Do you mean that we've got to draw something like this?" she asked. "I don't mean something this good technically, because we won't, we can't, Draco and I, but something that expresses…. Oh gods, you know what I mean…"
"The wizard knows the worth of the spell," Michelangelo said softly. "So does the artist know his art. Or hers."
"We can't," blurted Ginny. "I can't. I just can't."
"Then you will not be able to save him, I think," the artist said flatly.
"What?" She couldn't have just heard what she thought she had. Then you will not be able to. To save him. Not be able to save. To save him… The words echoed in fragmented splinters. She couldn't seem to put them together. With horror, she realized that Michelangelo was stepping back into his feather.
"Buon giorno, Ginevra," he said, tipping his little hat slightly.
"Wait! No! You can't leave yet! Why are you going? I have to ask—"
But it was too late. The swan's feathers had sealed themselves into shiny black surfaces again, as impenetrable as mirrors.
"Why?" moaned Ginny. "Why?"
"I think we've got a pretty bloody good reason why, if you ask me," she heard Draco's voice say behind her. "Such as finishing these sketches so that I don't end up being keelhauled on the next cruise ship to Azkaban by the merry crew from the Department of Mysteries?"
She turned towards him, her heart pounding with despair and fear and apprehension and a thousand other things besides, some mixture of emotions that she couldn't begin to name. He didn't know about anything that had happened in the last… what? Ten minutes? An eternity? I don't know anymore. Draco's face was impossibly open. Nobody would ever have seen that except for her, she realized. She knew his face that well, now. The fact filled her with a sort of tender terror. His eyes were filled with something like the beginnings of hope. Ginny's heart sank further with each frantic beat.
He studied her, and the open door of his face began to close again. "I suppose that particular comment wasn't in the best of taste, was it?
"Er…" Ginny's eyes slid down to the blank sketchbooks that Draco was handing out towards her.
"We'd better start drawing, don't you think?" asked Draco. "We really do need to come up with something that would leave Mike—oh, I don't know—falling off the scaffold of the Sizzling Chapel in envy before he even finished painting it—"
"The Sistine Chapel." Ginny corrected him numbly.
"Yes, well, I'm sure you're right." Draco gave her a tight, encouraging smile. Or at least, she thought, that was undoubtedly what he was sure it conveyed. "The point is, everything's got to be finished in less than forty-eight hours."
"No," moaned Ginny.
"Oh, do buck up, Weasley. You can't funk out on me now. What's happened to that much-vaunted courage of yours?"
"I… it…" There was nothing to say , and she couldn't say it, anyway. Ginny couldn't look at the swan nestling so sensuously between Leda's breasts, so she clutched despairingly at a small table beneath the painting.
"Weasley, this is nothing but a spot of minor performance anxiety," said Draco. "You're perfectly capable of doing this- we are, rather—but we've got to start somewhere—"
Ginny whirled on him. "What if we can't? What if there's no way we can possibly come up with anything like that?" She stabbed a shaking finger at the painting of Leda and the swan.
"We've got to," Draco said intensely. He turned so that he faced her squarely, and in the dim light, the pupils of his eyes were huge, swallowing up almost all o the grey. They looked like the lustrous feathers of the black swan, Ginny thought dizzily. "Weasley, you know we've got to. It would be so much easier if we didn't need to live up to those sorts of standards; do you think I don't understand that? Do you think I don't know how much easier it would be if we could get away with creating something more modern? Think of how bloody easy it would be if we could fall back on concept art. We could print up little booklets of instructions directing visitors to stand next to the fountain and imagine that they saw sculptures there. We could—I don't know- create a few simple geomorphic forms and then claim that they represent a witch, a wizard, and a house elf. We could stuff loads of rotten apples into canvas bags and tie them up with ropes, or something. You could conjure those up, don't you think? Very Robert Linsley."
Ginny gave a half-hysterical little laugh. "You'd never get those past Gaylord Humperdinck."
"I suppose not," said Draco. "Even he generally isn't that oblivious." One corner of his mouth quirked up just slightly. "Weren't there artists in the 1960's who attempted to sell blank canvases? Yoko Ono was one, as I recall… How about setting out blocks of uncarved marble? That would be rather similar. We could claim that the stone in its native state represents unlimited potential, and each stroke of the artist's chisel reduces its infinite possibilities…"
Ginny stared at him hard. He looked back at her, and the smile died on his lips. She wondered just when Draco Malfoy had lost so much of his ability to hide his thoughts from her, or to dissemble his feelings, because he certainly had done.
"You've known all along," she said slowly.
"I don't know what you're talking about," said Draco.
"You've pretended not to, but that was never the truth. It couldn't have been."
"I don't know what you mean."
He was trying to look transparent and innocent now, his big grey eyes opened much too wide. He couldn't have always been so painfully obvious, thought Ginny. Could he? This version of a dissembling Draco wouldn't have fooled a slow child. Or was I just the fool all along?
"You know exactly what I mean, Malfoy." She almost choked over the words. "You've claimed all along that you don't know anything about art, that we couldn't draw anything decent until I taught you, and you lied to me- you know loads about it! You always have."
"Ah- It's not like that at all. Really, it isn't—"
She glared at him. "Really? Concept art, Malfoy? Robert Linsley? Geomorphic forms? Did you pick these ideas out of my mind? Have you been using Legilimency on me all along?"
"If you'd only listen to me, Weasley—"
"I don't see why I should listen to anything you have to say when this is all your fault!"
"My fault?" exclaimed Draco. "Where did you dredge up that perfectly mad idea?"
Ginny clenched her fists. "Because if you'd told me the truth from the beginning and not pretended that you needed me to teach you about art, we would've had the sketches done by how! That's why!" She wheeled on one foot, away from him. She felt his hand on her arm, disturbingly hard and large and insistent, and tried to shake it off. "Let go of me, Malfoy."
"Exactly where do you think you're going, Weasley?"
There was nowhere to go, of course. His huge eyes stabbed through her in the near-darkness and his fingers clasped onto her like the talons of a desperate great bird.
"Listen to me, can't you?" he demanded.
"I can't. You tricked me," she said weakly.
"I didn't do any such thing. Listen to me, Weasley. Just… listen."
If he had sounded angry, then she could have kept up her own anger. But he didn't, and she couldn't. The false front of her rage melted away. She kept her head down, hiding her face from him, because she didn't know what else had melted along with it. She might be left entirely naked before him, for all she knew.
"Why would I do anything so utterly fucking stupid as to lle to you about my knowledge of art?" he asked.
"I don't know," she mumbled. I've never known why you do anything, Draco Malfoy. Not really.
"Try to use your brain, Weasley," said Draco. His voice was almost harsh. "It's a good one, you know. If I really possessed this sort of expertise, and if I had kept it cunningly hidden, then you're absolutely correct. We might have finished these sketches to exact Ministry specifications weeks ago. We'd both be perfectly safe right now. More to the point, you'd be safe. I wouldn't have put you in so much danger. And if you think I would have done that deliberately, hiding something I knew, something that could have avoided your being a part of this—" He broke off, breathing heavily.
Ginny kept looking down at the floor. "I just don't understand," she told Draco's feet.
He gave a long sigh and leaned against the wall. "I do know a bit about modern art, but that's all. And as I've just finished saying, that isn't going to help us very much. It doesn't fit the style that the Ministry wants."
She looked at him sidelong. "Then why didn't you ever tell me, Malfoy?"
He looked past her, into the mist obscuring the far wall of the gallery. "Because there's only one reason why I know. Astoria doesn't give a flobberworm's arse about art, but nothing gives her a greater thrill than getting her name in society papers, and few events provide a better excuse than a fashionable art opening. She dragged me to any number of them in the past months. It was rather amusing to watch her attempt to attach herself to artists at first, I suppose, but those with talent didn't tolerate it for very long. Why do you think Warhol was so snarky with her? He can't abide her at any price, and although I never thought much of his art—quite derivative, I think- it does show his good taste, I must say. I was bored and drunk off my arse half the time and… and lonely, and for something to do, I educated myself about the artists I saw."
"Why didn't you study the history of art, if you became so interested in it?" asked Ginny. Her voice was quieter now.
Draco shrugged. "I certainly would have liked to go round the museums of Europe, but Astoria wasn't having any of that."
Something small and ugly stabbed through Ginny's chest. "Couldn't you have gone on your own?"
He gave her a strange little smile. "Let's just say that artistic appreciation for its own sake might have been better encouraged in the Weasley household than it ever was in mine."
"What do you mean?" She looked at him suspiciously. "Didn't you have house-elves taking you to the National Gallery when you were six years old, or something? Weren't art museums on the Official Malfoy Grand Tour?"
Again, she saw that odd smile. "My father never encouraged that sort of thing. He liked having portraits of Malfoy ancestors about the manor, of course, but that's as far as his aesthetic appreciation stretched."
"What about…" Ginny didn't finish her question. She'd never actually asked Draco anything about Narcissa Malfoy. This didn't seem like a very good time to start.
"My mother? Art meant something quite different to her." Draco said the words with a sort of finality, as if the subject were now closed. But he had said them, thought Ginny. She couldn't remember ever hearing Draco mention Narcissa Malfoy. Never.
"I don't know anything about the history of art," Draco went on. "I don't know Rauschenberg from the Renaissance. I don't know da Vinci from de Kooning, or Michelangelo from that odd balloon-shaped Muggle thing, what's it called—the Michy-mitch tree man?"
The corner of Ginny's mouth quirked up, even though she tried her best to keep them still. "That's the Michelin tire man, Malfoy."
"Well, what do you think I'm trying to tell you? I vaguely remember that I've heard some of the names, but that's all there is to it. I had to know more, and you never would teach me, Weasley. And now we're here, with forty-eight hours left to do what should have taken weeks."
Her cheeks burned. She felt his hand on her chin, lifting her face up to his, and she didn't try to resist.
"Why did you think that I would have lied to you about needing art lessons?" he asked.
"I don't know." She squirmed.
"I've always needed you to teach me," Draco said softly.
Ginny writhed endlessly under his grey eyes, sure they were seeking out something in her that she still guarded fiercely. Then suddenly, he smiled.
"Forty-eight hours, Weasley. No more time to waste, wouldn't you say?"
Ginny nodded. She turned back to the swan painting, holding the sketchbook in her hands like a talisman, feeling him turn at her side. Ready or not, here we come…
The canvas was now blank.
Ginny stared at it. The sheer horror of what had happened refused to filter into her mind. The failure. The fact that it was all her fault. The loss of the last hope to keep Draco out of Azkaban, the end of her dreams, the disaster, the cataclysm, the—
"You've done it now, Weasley," Draco said cheerfully. "I think you've scared them off."
Ginny tried to hide her head in her hands. Draco picked her fingers away.
"The blank canvas fosters creativity," he said. "You can do anything with it. Or at least I'm sure I heard some artist or other spouting some such rubbish at a hideously boring show in Madrid last month. It sounded almost reasonable after the third bottle of Dom Perignon, I must say. Come now, Weasley. You can do something with this, can't you?"
"No," moaned Ginny. "I can't!"
"Ah," said Draco. He cocked his head at the canvas. "Maybe you're right. I think that you can't, actually."
She glared at him. "What you mean, Malfoy?" He was agreeing with her; she should have been glad, but she wasn't, somehow. He wasn't supposed to agree with a statement like that!
"I mean that you can't." He picked up a pencil and held it between thumb and forefinger, experimentally. It nearly fell to the floor; he caught it just in time. "And I certainly can't. But, perhaps… together…" Draco moved his hand to lie alongside hers. The pencil slid between their fingers and balanced perfectly. "We can."
She looked up at him, her eyes wide with the sort of almost-fear that hovers on the very edge of unbearable excitement.
Draco looked down at her, his lips curved up into a smile. Or maybe it really wasn't a smile of the lips at all, thought Ginny, but of his eyes. "Well, can't we?"
His smile was impossible to resist, she realized. It shifted all the harsh sorrowful planes of his face into something something soft and unbearably beautiful, and she felt her own smile warming to his, like a flower opening to a silvery sun. She didn't dare to speak, so she gave a short, almost imperceptible movement of her head.
"Where would you start?" he asked.
"Something simple," said Ginny.
"Such as what?"
She moved so that she was holding the pencil. "How about… a line?"
Ginny set the point down on the paper. But it felt wrong to start drawing, and she hesitated, wondering why. Then she felt his hand clasp the top of hers. He moved closer, and the heat radiated out from his body.
"We've got to do it together," said Draco.
So together, they began to draw.
They were awkward at first, their movements clumsy, the line jagged. Ginny wondered whether they ought to separate.
"Again," said Draco. "I really think we're on to something." He bent over the paper, examining the squiggle. Ginny looked at it too. It really reminded her of a five-year-old's first attempt in art class, if she were to be honest with herself. And yet…
"You're right," she said. "There's something. I don't know what, but I want to find out."
"So do I. We've certainly got nothing to lose." He looked up at her. "Weasley…"
"Don't," she said swiftly, and just as swiftly regretted saying anything at all. What she'd meant, of course, was that she suddenly couldn't bear to hear him calling her by her last name, as he'd done all along. Why it should make so much difference now, she didn't know. But she couldn't say that. And what else would he call her, anyway? They just couldn't start in on first names now. Sweetheart… The ghost of a memory whispered to her.
Draco nodded, as if he understood. His hand closed at the top of the pencil once again, lingering over hers like the ghost of a lover's kiss.
The second line began to come straight. Then the third. And the fourth. And the fifth. Something indescribable began to happen. Ginny could feel it spreading all through her hands and arms and shoulders and chest, and settling in her stomach in a quiver of sureness.
They moved on to squares. Then rectangles. Then triangles. Ginny was a little afraid after that, because geometric shapes were all very well. But what if we can't…
But then they drew a sinuous curve that made her breath catch, and she knew that it was all right.
"Do you think we're ready for a circle?" she whispered, looking down at one of their arcs.
Draco shrugged. "Why not?"
"It's a very big step." Ginny kept staring down at the paper. "A Zen master once said that if an artist could draw a perfect circle, they would've mastered art."
"Let's try." Draco's hand closed over hers, firmly and fully at last. "Don't be afraid," he murmured, and even though she was, she knew that she would try.
They drew the curve, round and round in a full-bellied shape, and then drove it towards the top with the combined strength of their hands, working as one.
"So what do you think?" She examined it critically.
Draco grinned. "I think it's a bit lopsided."
It was, but Ginny understood for the first time that it didn't matter. They drew another, and another, and another, until she lost track and her hands ached and she wondered if his did too, and when she flexed and rubbed his palms she felt the relief in her own muscles, and they kept drawing and drawing until the small hours of the night seemed to stretch into infinity.
Finally, at some unnamed hour, they drew the last one. The circle came together like two halves of a long-separated whole, and they both knew that it was right. It was the last thing Ginny saw before she stumbled down into some soft bed, rolling against that other half, so strong and spare and yielding, made and matched exacdtly to her. She fell into untroubled sleep.