Word Count: 817/?

Day Four

Frog-Girl is standing outside her door, if her room had a door, that is, bouncing on the balls of her feet.

"Hurry up, Hermy!" she calls loudly enough that her voice bounces around the sparse room a few times.

Her head hurts like the time Ron got her thoroughly smashed on Muggle liquor the Halloween before Harry died. Her body feels heady, and every movement makes her want to be violently sick. But she knows she hasn't been drinking, so it must be the potion. If so, Healer Dingbat should be given way more credit for possibly being more evil then Voldy-pants ever was.

"What are you so excited for?" Hermione croaked out, pulling on the closest pair of trousers and a wool jumper.

"It's art day!" Frog-Girl chirped, hopping on one foot. Every few jumps she would change foot.

"We have art every day," Hermione told her as she pulled her tangled hair into a knot at the back of her neck. Hair brushes and combs were two of the many things a patient wasn't allowed to have in the ward. As such, her curly hair had slowly worked it's way into a bird's nest that would not become untangled without enough conditioner to cover a small continent.

Frog-Girl continued to hop with her excitement, this time with both feet, "But today the art lady is here!"

The art lady, who Healer Muttonhead introduced simply as 'Madam Linda', turned out to be a volunteer art teacher from one of the wizarding day schools in the area. She was very colouful in her long, Gypsy skirt, and patchwork robes - both covered in bits of paint. Even her bright brass coloured wasn't sparred from the errant flecks of colour. A huge Marry Popin-esque carpet bag that held a large assortment of pastel sticks, water colour paints, and charcoal was slung over one shoulder. Under her arm, she carried a stack of thick wire bound sketch pads.

Frog-Girl sat next to her, still hopping in her chair. Hermione idly wondered when she was going to fall out of her chair. The art lady handed her a sketch pad from the stack, it had "Carrie" written on the front in black, with a small frog drawn under it. Frog-Girl/Carrie flipped open to a seemingly random page, where the bare outlines of a frog were already drawn. Grabbing, a felt tip pen, she started to fill in the internal organs with amazing accuracy.

"Very vivid, Carrie," was all she said, before handing out the rest of her pads before circling back around the room.

"'Ello, you must be new," she greeted Hermione with a voice more used to talking to children then adults, but she handed her a brand new sketch diary, "here you go, lass."

"Can I keep it?" Hermione asked, her hands running over the bleached paper.

"You have to give it back at the end of the session, with the wire and all, but yes, you can keep it," the woman pulled out a thick marker and wrote her name in the same loopy script, and doodled a small sheep under it, "there, all yours."

Hermione spent the rest of the hour drawing a flock of sheep grazing on a lush green field, the Hogwarts castle in the distant background. (And if she did see Severus watching her from the window in the door, she completely ignores him. Because he's dead. And dead people can't stalk you.) Or tries to, at the very least. But when she hands the book over to Madam Linda at the end of the hour, all she can see is Harry's face, emerald green eyes staring back hard and unyielding, drawn over and over again.

"That's not what I meant to draw," she tells the woman, hoping her voice sounds reasonable. Sane.

Madam Linda doesn't seem to realize she's crazy, however, "It's alright, love, sometimes the charcoal gets away from us all."

"Does that ever happen to you?"

"All the time!" she tells her with a bright smile, "Art is alive in ways that none of us will ever be able to understand! Some of the best works start out as something else entirely."

Hermione blinked blankly, "I thought you were going to tell me it was my psyche asserting itself via a creative outlet."

"Oh no, love," Linda patted her on her head like a pet, "I'm only an art teacher."

It's a bit like saying that Professor Dumbledore was only a teacher, Hermione mused. Then again, he had always been fond of understatement in his own way as well.