Chapter Thirty-Five: Some Nightmares

In a dark oak frame that looks solid and impressive, but not entirely right, against the pink-papered wall of an office in the Ministry of Magic.

I don't know why she likes me. Why she bought me.

I don't know why she demanded I be brought here.

I wish I wasn't here.

She talks to me constantly when other people aren't around. I pretend to be asleep. I wish I could sleep.

I never really sleep anymore.

Ever.

She admires my clothes, I think. Maybe. I can think of no other good reason for her to keep me here.

I don't even know how I wound up in her office. I was sleeping after…whatever happened, for some time, I can never be sure how long.

I knew of her before, and I didn't like what I'd heard. She never met me. Wanted to, I think, but never did. We wouldn't have gotten along.

I'm glad of that. I don't like her now and I don't think I could have been civil to her before.

She also doesn't know that I'm me. Which is funny, in a sick way.

She bothers me. Something about her is very wrong.

She had them ship me to her other office. It was dreadful. I could sleep before I saw what she did there.

She made them do lines.

Little children, and she made them do lines, with that awful quill…

I saw some awful things, before, but this, this I cannot forget.

The smell was wrong, too. I don't smell anymore. Problem is, not smelling doesn't mean you don't know what a smell smells like, so your nose remembers and it's as bad as smelling it, except that it feels even more wrong.

I know the smell of blood too well to not know what doing lines for that woman smelled like.

I'm never cold here, or warm, either. I'll never grow older and I'll never know what happened to me after the day I was painted here, well, not unless someone tells me. I know I'm not alive anymore out there, otherwise I wouldn't be aware in here.

But for the love of…did they have to make it so nothing has a smell?

I can hear so much better here. My hearing was never good enough, and it was getting worse. Here, I can hear so very, very well. Maybe the depth of the frame's helping.

Why did I let him paint me in these ridiculous clothes? She wouldn't want me here if I looked anything like myself. I should have at least have had the courage to let him put my name on this.

I don't even look like Rowena Ravenclaw in this costume. The dress was wrong for the period, Gardner said, and he would know, I think.

But I do look like her, she thinks. It's the dark hair. Mine holds still for the most part here, because it was painted to. Before, it never did.

Her hair is dark, and that counts as a resemblance.

My nose was broken, though. Hers is just that ugly. Like a toad.

I never really sleep anymore. Not since she gave them lines.

I can hear so well, but I will never talk. Never. Not to her.

To them, I talked. Some of them didn't notice me among all the paintings of kittens.

The kittens move. They play. They meow. And they never get even a day older.

Some of the children realized what that meant, and they cried, the poor little things.

One of them looked like him. So, so much like him. She saw the kittens and was so upset she couldn't see what she was writing. I saw her tears hitting the paper. It blurred the blood.

We were alone, so I asked her what that awful woman had against her.

And she told me.

She looks like him. So much like him.

That awful woman made her do lines.

That horrible, wretched woman dared make that little girl, who looks so much like him, do lines.

She has his hands. His nose. Her hair is the same color.

She is, or was, a prefect, like he was. Like I was. Maybe seventeen at the most.

My age.

And that awful woman made her do lines.

I never really sleep anymore. Not since that.

But James wanted to win something that wasn't to do with clocks. There was an art contest in Hogsmeade. He needed a model and I needed the homework help and someone to kick my ankle when I dozed off in class. What are friends for?

And then things changed somewhat, and it became 'what are girlfriends for?'

It's a good thing sketches don't come to life when the subjects…well.

Or nude figure studies, for that matter.

Or do they? They do say that art is more valuable when it's old enough for the creator to…hmm.

I never thought of myself as beautiful until I knew him. I wonder if I looked the same or different, when…whatever happened did.

I am here, in this costume, at this desk, with this quill, forever. I never speak to that woman.

But I can hear so well, and there is always parchment at this desk.

And I was always a fast writer. They made me do lines, too, but not with a quill like that, and not after they realized it wasn't a punishment, not as fast as I could go.

She has such contempt for Muggles, too. Squints at the lines on the parchment and wishes aloud with a melodramatic sigh that the artist had made the handwriting legible. The only flaw in her valuable painting, she tells her guests.

Pitman shorthand, bitch.

I know everything she's done. I have it all written down.

When that awful woman needs me to be quiet most, that is when I will speak. I will read aloud. I will tell them everything and I will make sure she burns. She can set my canvas alight, take a razor to me, but she can't stop this. I can be loud when I need to, and I have been saving this.

It's the best I can do for the girl, the girl who looks so much like him. She was so brave, even with her hand bleeding.

His hands. She has his hands.

It was comforting, to know that he has her. I haven't found him in a painting yet, and I don't want him to be alone.

I never really sleep anymore, but if I did, I would dream that she was mine, too.

It's okay. That's a dream I can have awake.

It's a dream like justice.

The best I can do for her.