Author's Note:
I do not own the world of Harry Potter, nor its characters.
This is for The Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry Forum.
Assignment #9
Photography: Got The Shot?
Task #1: Portrait Photography: Write about a magical portrait (canon or otherwise)
Word Count: 3,499
No Warnings Necessary
The streets were soaked to the cobbled bone.
London on a rainy night was a busy concoction of squealing tyres, clamouring horns, and faint drunken shouts. Traffic clogged the roads. Rain fell with heavy ire, drops of water pelting each car as they eked slowly along the road. Teddy had to dance his way through people streaming their way home, caught in a current and unwilling to bend to his mumbled pardons and 'scuse me's. There was no way he was going to make it to the studio in time for his first lesson in his new apprenticeship, but hopefully when he turned up looking like a drowned rat, his pathetic state might earn him some sympathy.
Sympathy was all that was needed, on a night like tonight.
You see, once, there was a blue-haired boy. The blue in his hair is not important to the story, but sometimes it's nice to have a brighter picture of someone. The blue-haired boy was called Teddy, and wherever he went in the world, people noticed him. They took note of his confident posture and his crooked grin, and the quiet way he took in the scenery around him. He seemed to study every landscape, examine every cobble on the rain-soaked street, and bow his head like a kindly old-fashioned gentleman at everyone he met, secretly taking their measurements with just his eyes.
He always had a paintbrush behind his ear. Never the same one, but the bristles were always worn down in the same way, as though he ground each paintbrush like a cigarette in an ashtray every morning. It was a habit that Dean had not broken him of yet, and likely never would. It suited him well.
Teddy had never imagined himself working for someone like Dean Thomas. He had never imagined himself in any particular job at all, which was a point of contention with every single one of his teachers. He knew what he wanted out of life. He wanted to grow into his family even more and play Quidditch over summer and laze about in the garden on hot days. He wanted custard and rounds of rummy, and he wanted to be important, but not to everyone. A few people would have been enough.
The job market was widely depleted of such professions. He tried out jobs the way other people tried out trousers, swapping the navy out for pinstripes and wrinkling his nose at the fit. He was an Auror, a Chef, a Shopkeeper and a freelance Magical Creature Infestation Remover. None of them lasted long-indeed, the infestations lasted longer than the jobs.
When Harry took Dean aside at a Christmas party and quietly asked him if he had room for an apprentice in his busy schedule, Teddy expected to spend a few weeks giving it his all before the sheen wore off.
A year later, the sheen was still as shiny as fresh lacquer.
When Teddy was seven, Harry taught him how to paint horizons. In retrospect, it made perfect sense that he would be the one to push Teddy into the career that he did, but at seven, all Teddy knew was that sunsets could look quite beautiful even if you didn't know how to hold a paintbrush correctly.
"You see, it's all about perspective," Dean explained. "If you want to make a magical portrait, it has to have the right emotions in it. It's no good just slapping colours down and saying the spells over the top of it. You have to have enough there to give the spells meaning."
"I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about," Teddy said, twirling his paintbrush around curiously and almost poking himself in the eye.
"I do, though," Dean said, with a small grin, "so maybe listen to me, instead of giving yourself glasses. You want to look like Harry that badly?"
Teddy grinned sheepishly and put down the brush, glancing around the studio. It was teeming with plants, courtesy of Neville, who lived upstairs and sometimes brought his work home with him. Better Neville than Seamus, who lived upstairs and worked in the Weasley shop, making explosions for a living.
"Sorry," Teddy said. "This is all a bit new. I'm not really an artist, you know?"
He dabbled. He painted here and there. He liked charcoal and the way it smeared life into the paper. He loved the way a single dab of paint could send a spear of emotion through an admirer. He liked galleries and museums and the way they always felt like ancient places, like temples made of gilded frames and hollow rooms and enamoured footsteps that echoed off the brushstrokes of history.
Art was something he could do with his hands that never changed, no matter how much he morphed his body into someone different.
"That's why you're here," Dean said, with a kind smile, "and not at art school, weeping over a portfolio. Now, look at the picture again, and listen to me."
The postcard was pristine in his hands. Teddy held it up to the oily light and examined each word, noting the tear tracks on the thick card.
When he came to France two weeks ago to search for inspiration, as per Dean's instructions for his final project, he had expected it to feel like a fresh, crisp place. He thought it would be all fountains and statues and balcony doors thrown wide to embrace the morning. So far he had stepped on a pigeon and been given the dingiest room known to mankind in a hotel that had definitely seen the turn of the last war, but the real misery was painted all over the postcards that kept coming.
Maybe it's silly to write to you since you're in France and enjoying yourself, right? Lily says it's stupid or whatever. But I don't want to tell Dad how much everything sucks because he won't know what to say, and I always feel like a right git for complaining. He fought in a war, you know? I'm just trying to pass my exams and not feel sick all the time.
The owl on the windowsill hooted softly. Teddy got up from the narrow twin bed, and crossed the room with the remains of his breakfast on a plate. The floorboards creaked beneath his feet. He put the plate down on the windowsill and the owl dug in, tearing off flakes of pastry with its sharp, pointy beak.
He could count on one hand the number of times Albus had spoken to him about something personal. They didn't have heart to hearts. Maybe it was the distance and the fact that Teddy no longer shared a flat with James while he saved up for Quidditch Boot Camp, or maybe Albus really was running out of people to talk to, or maybe he thought Teddy would understand, but it was odd. He would be right, but it was still odd.
Teddy did understand. He understood very well. He spent most of his school years feeling like a fraud, like a shy, frightened boy stuck in the body of a teenager, almost a man on the outside. He used to wake up drenched in sweat, nightmares of his skin rippling and his hair turning dull and mousy plaguing his mind. When you could change who you were on the outside at a whim, it made it hard to know who you were on the inside.
Teddy wasn't sure that he knew yet, but he knew one thing. He wasn't going to let Albus feel alone if he could help it.
"Think I found the inspiration for my final project," Teddy told the owl, adding the postcard carefully to the neat pile of previous missives. "Let's see what France has in the way of art stores, shall we?"
"It's all about perspective," Dean had said.
Teddy remembered asking him why he decided to go into that field of study. There were artists in the Wizarding World, of course, but it wasn't a profession that was widely discussed, and schools hardly ever focused on the creative side of life. He remembered the way Dean had shrugged and smiled, as though he had a secret that he found sad but couldn't bear to part with, and the way he said, "I was always good at art, I guess. That seemed like a good enough reason."
Perspective told Teddy that Dean had probably been lying. It also told him that it was very soon into their mentorship for him to be asking such personal questions, and a fib or two was understandable.
"That doesn't explain why he lied about this not being that bloody hard though," Teddy muttered aloud, flinging the palette on the bed.
The hotel room smelled like paint. There was no other word for it. Paint smelled like paint, and that was that. He threw open the balcony windows and stepped out, grimacing at the pale grey sky. Another postcard had come that morning, detailing another miserable week of Albus's life, and he was getting sick of not being able to help.
A Magical Portrait Artist usually worked with memories. Dean would make him sit over photographs for hours, trying to tease out the emotions and the feelings they evoked. He was supposed to weave the essence of the Witch or Wizard into the paint until they were alive in most senses of the word. He was supposed to give a piece of someone back to their loved ones, and frame them lovingly in golden sympathy.
You didn't necessarily need to be good at art for that. There were ways to copy the exact likeness of a person from a photograph or a Pensieve into paint. But it was the rest of it that Teddy struggled with.
"I think the problem is that I'm not working from a photograph," Teddy mused. "I'm trying to paint… something that makes someone feel safe and calm. That's not a person, that's a weird, abstract concept."
Groaning, Teddy flung himself down on the bed and hung upside down off the end of it. A thin canvas leaned against the door, splattered with paint and filling half the wall. He needed it to be big enough to walk through, but it looked excessive in the tiny hotel room.
"Something safe," Teddy said, ignoring the heady feeling as blood rushed to his brain. "Something I can hang in Hogwarts that's going to make Albus safe and calm."
Teddy tilted his head at the canvas and went still. A thin line ran vertically through the white fabric, cleaving it in two. It was a mark of his frustration, a dribble of paint that meant nothing on the outside, but if he tilted his head, it became something else entirely.
"Huh," Teddy said. "Maybe it's all about perspective after all."
When Teddy was seven, Harry taught him how to paint horizons.
It was a plain old day, and Teddy prodded open the door to Harry's office, slipping inside with a hopeful expression. He was bored of apple juice and cartoons. When he got close enough, Harry grinned down at him and patted his knee, and the paperwork was forgotten in favour of something more fun.
"You're drawing?" Teddy said, peering at the desk, where brushes and canvases were strewn about. "Can I draw?"
"Sure thing, Ted," Harry said softly, and he handed over the paintbrush.
Harry was no artist, but he took pride in his paintings.
You see, once, there was a black-haired boy. The colour of his hair is not important to the story, but the misery inside him felt dark and heavy. The black-haired boy was called Harry, and wherever he went in the world, he noticed all the people he had not been able to save. It was like seeing blank spaces. Boarded up shops and smashed windows and obituaries in the newspaper. They were all people once, and some of them had died of coincidental matters, of heart attacks and untimely accidents, but many had died in the war that just passed, and there was no way to convince Harry that it wasn't his fault.
That kind of blame could drag anyone down. It rolled like a moss ball, gathering lint and more dirt and stray leaves until it was a thick boulder of anxiety sitting right in Harry's chest, a paperweight of grief.
It was his third therapist that suggested an outlet. She had a granddaughter that found it useful, and she passed the knowledge on. Immediately after the session, Harry bought cheap bundles of canvases and thin, watery paint from the cash-and-carry, and he kept them in the corner of his office at home. When he was stressed to the point of burning out or keeling over, he brought it all out and sketched a line across the canvas in a simple, neat stroke.
"That's the horizon," Harry told Teddy, nudging his tiny fingers into place. "You know what that is? It's the place between the sea and the sky. Drawing it helps you focus. Once you've got your horizon, you'll know where everything else goes on the paper."
Sometimes, Harry only drew the horizon. Sometimes, that was all he needed.
Years later, and sometimes Teddy only needed to draw the horizon too.
"Did I pass?" Teddy asked.
Dean circled the portrait. There was a critical gleam in his eye. He slung a paint-splattered cloth over his shoulder and came to a stop beside Teddy after two more circles, both of them staring at the painting.
"You know, I wasn't sure you'd be any good at this," Dean said. "You're smart and skillful, but you're so full of self-doubt that you can barely focus on anything else. This job needs more than technical skills."
"I know." Teddy put his hands in his pockets. "It's hard to know what you want to do when you're not sure of who you are. That sounds cheesy, I know, but sometimes I feel like a lot of different people mashed together. Like I can't settle."
"Looks like congrats are in order then." Dean put his hand on Teddy's shoulder and squeezed it, flashing him a warm, proud grin. "Judging by this portrait, I'd say you finally figured it out."
The portrait was too heavy to lift all on his own. Usually, Teddy was perfectly happy to shoulder his burdens alone, but on this particular night, he was willing to make an exception.
"I still don't know why you need me for this," Harry said.
Teddy ushered him through the front door and grinned at him. Harry shook off a few stray drops of rain and eyed him with a mix of wariness and fond affection. He was older than the man that wandered through Teddy's memories. It wasn't perfectly obvious unless you looked closely at the fine lines on his dark, handsome face and the seasoning in his messy hair. Sometimes Teddy would stand the memories up side by side and compare them, watching the years slink onwards with the grace of a cat on a wall, determined not to acknowledge its own wobbly legs.
But the green in his eyes never faded, and nor did the love, so Teddy supposed it didn't matter how far along the wall the cat got.
"Tea?" Teddy asked. "Or straight to business?"
"I don't even know what this business is. If it involves paperwork, then I've clocked off for the year."
Tea didn't take very long to make. There was an explanation given while the kettle boiled, which involved Teddy ironing out the finer details whilst Harry's eyebrows climbed his forehead with admirable agility. There was a debate while they sipped at citrus-sweet Earl Grey over whether or not a giant portrait counted as paper, and whether lugging it across Britain on their brooms counted as work.
"I can't take it through the Floo," Teddy said, tapping his teaspoon on the table for emphasis. "It's made of parchment, Harry. I did all the necessary spells, and I know Floo Fire is safe enough for humans and all that, but I still don't want to risk it. Flight seems to be the only way."
"The only way to break our backs and our brooms, you mean."
"It's important," Teddy blurted. "Please."
Harry downed the rest of his tea and put it down. The mug was still steaming faintly by the time he was up and out of his seat, heading for the coat rack.
Teddy watched him go in dismay. He scooped up both mugs and dropped them in the sink, rolling up his sleeves as hot water streamed out of the taps. He added washing up liquid and muttered under his breath.
"Maybe the years have changed you then, you old, grouchy bastard. It's not like I've never done anything for you before. Didn't I spend a whole summer sharing a flat with James when he didn't have anywhere to live? I almost went mad from that. And there was that time I threw you a birthday party and you fell asleep in your office and didn't come home for it! And then-!"
"If you're quite finished," Harry said.
Teddy peered over his shoulder. "What?"
Harry was standing in the doorway, wearing his shoes and coat and tapping his broom against his hip. There was plenty of that fondness in his eyes to go around, but there was also an amused curl to his mouth that made Teddy feel faintly stupid.
"I had to summon my broomstick, you pillock," Harry said, shaking his head. "All you ever have to do is ask. If you want me to fly for hours across Scotland on a freezing cold evening, I'm not doing it on a spare Cleansweep you found in a shed somewhere."
"Broom snob," Teddy muttered.
"What was that?"
"Nothing!
"That's what I thought." Harry smiled wryly. "Let's get on, shall we?"
Neville met them at the entrance to Hogwarts, beckoning them through. The portrait was lighter than it should have been, thanks to a nifty spell applied only to the frame, but Teddy still groaned with relief when they put it down.
"Thanks, Nev," Harry said, when Neville summoned them some coffee. "We had to fly at the same pace, and we had to keep stopping so my spine didn't snap."
He shot Teddy a glare, but he was too exhausted to make it genuine. Teddy was in the same boat, but excitement was creeping in. Neville let them rest, chatting quietly to them about his newest plants and the latest student drama, and then he helped them heft the portrait up several flights of stairs. He left them there, offering Teddy a knowing smile, and headed back to his nightly patrol of the grounds.
"You're putting it over a door?" Harry said, blinking in bewilderment.
"It's an old classroom," Teddy said, as he applied the spells carefully to the stretch of wall around the door. "Neville said I could use it."
It took both of them to heave it onto the wall. It fused with the brick with a soft pop. Teddy pulled down the protective covering, and the portrait gleamed in the low light.
After a quiet moment, Harry said, "Teddy, what is this?"
"Beedle wasn't the only one that wrote children's stories," Teddy said. "There's a kid's tale about a Witch named Hilaza Orion. She attached a piece of string to her boat and sailed it all the way around the world, and when she came home again, the string had wrapped itself around the planet, cutting apart the sea and the sky."
Harry lifted his hand gently and placed it on the fine, windblown strands of Hilaza's painted hair. It streamed like ribbons. Behind her adventurous face was the piece of string, stretched across the waves that moved gently in the portrait, crashing silently against the rocks. The sail of her boat fluttered.
"The horizon," Harry said.
"I know it's just a story, but it reminded me of you," Teddy said, nudging him gently. "It was my final project, to create a magical portrait from my own memory or photograph. This is something you taught me, and it always made me feel safe, so I chose that."
In the morning, Teddy would tell Harry exactly why he chose to pin it up in Hogwarts, where any lost, anxious kid could step through it and find a quiet, peaceful classroom waiting for them. He would show Harry some of the postcards, and he would wipe the grief and bitter self-blame from his face with just a few words: "We've helped him together already, see? You taught me to paint the horizons, and now he's gonna feel safe when he sees one. It's a start."
That could wait until morning, though. For now, Teddy let himself be pulled into a hug, and they stood and watched the horizon for a moment more, immortalised in magic and memory.