October 1990

"Oh! I'm sorry, um, I can come back later..."

Violet was partway through shaping a dab of paint, focussed enough that she only half heard whatever that was. She finished what she was doing, gently tweaking the edge this blue was making with the more greenish-blue next to it, before lifting the blade away — right, that looked good. Reaching over to tap the blade against her cleaning bowl — Síomha enchanted it special for her, it cleaned off the blades of her palette knives or even brushes and the like just by tapping them against the rim — before looking up at the door. "What was that? I wasn't listening..."

Susan was standing half in the doorway, leaning out into the hall, not really looking at Violet. She seemed uncomfortable, her face even going a little pink and everything. "I'm sorry, I didn't know you were... Um," abruptly switching to Gaelic, "I thought we were listening to The Hearth on the Hilltop today?"

"...Oh. Yeah?" She reached for a watch sitting on the floorboards next to her knives and paints and stuff — an old one she'd found in her grandfather's office at Rock-on-Clyde, already nicked and scraped, not a big deal if she got paint on it. (Which she had, a few blotches of dried paint here and there splattered over the silvery metal.) They'd heard some people somewhere were practising a play about the three daughters of the Morrigan and the founding of the Academy, it was going to be on the radio starting at quarter to eleven. "It d-doesn't start for t-two-t-teh– there's still time. Tea?" She made (with some help from Mum) special Seer-friendly, one-hundred-per-cent-conjured biscuits ahead of time and everything. The intermission between the acts should be long enough to make a proper lunch for Violet and double it for Susan, but that wasn't going to be for a little while.

"Sure. I'll let you change and meet you downstairs."

Focussed on screwing closed her jars of paint, it took Violet a second to process that. "Huh? Change?"

Susan had already started leaving, Violet was mostly done closing up for now when she came back into view, leaning around the doorframe with a frown. "Saying 'change' seemed more polite than 'put some clothes on'."

Violet frowned, glanced down at herself — she was naked at the moment, of course, it was just more convenient. Oh, that was probably why Susan had seemed a little awkward a moment ago, oops. "Um, I could, I g-g-guess. I wanted to keep working d-during the show..."

Oil paint could be very stubborn about getting stuck on things. This was a good thing when you were, you know, trying to make a painting of some kind, but less good for just about everything else. It did take a long time for the stuff to dry, but it also soaked into things, so, even if you wiped most of it off before it dried, you still ended up with a stain that was very very hard to get out. Master Walter said to just wear some plain clothes you didn't mind getting messy, preferably something that was sturdy enough that you didn't have to worry about it leaking through and getting on you. That wasn't really a problem for Violet, but she did have a few cheap muggle-made outfits for lessons, or when doing art stuff in public. When she was painting at home, though, most of the time she just didn't wear anything at all — you couldn't get your clothes messy if you weren't wearing any.

Of course, other people had to worry about getting paint on their skin too, but that really wasn't a problem for Violet. All she had to do was wipe off any big, obvious blobby bits, so just the stain was left behind, and then imagine her skin as clean, and let the water of the change make it so. Being a metamorph really was cheating sometimes.

Susan didn't know any of that — Violet just started playing with oil paints on her own recently (earlier stuff kept at Master Walter's workshop), so she hadn't caught her at it yet — which probably had something to do with the very funny look she was giving her. "You... Do you normally not wear anything when you're painting?"

"At home, yeah." The last of her paints closed, Violet stood up, carefully picked on her toes past her palette and array of paint bottles. "If it'll bother you, I can p-put something on."

"...It's not going to bother you?"

Violet shrugged. "No. We t– We t– We talked about that before, remb-remember? Ugh, sorry..."

There was a short pause, Susan still standing in the doorway, frowning at her. "Well, fine. I mean, if you don't want to that's fine. It's just a little weird is all."

"This is me, Susan, I am weird."

"Ha, yeah, I guess that's true..."

Violet slipped around Susan and padded off toward the stairs — there was a delay before she heard Susan start following her, probably just thrown off by Violet being naked and weird and weirdly naked. Mum had warned her that was the sort of thing normal people could be awkward about, and she usually knew about when Susan was going to come over and made a point of getting dressed first, she just lost track of time today. (Also, she really had planned on painting during the show, she wanted this one done before Samhain.) She was being less awkward about it than Lasairín, who was all red-faced and stammering and asked her to put something on before they even got tea — which was silly, because they did have baths together sometimes, but whatever — so she was sure Susan would get used to it before too long. Síomha had, and she thought it was a little weird at first too, so.

(After paying attention, she honestly thought people just thought it was supposed to be weird, and when everything was normal and fine they let themselves stop making themselves act like it was weird, and then went back to behaving like always. Because normal people could be silly like that sometimes.)

Because they were having different things to drink, Violet had to get two different pots going, one with the special stuff just for Susan they kept in the house and the other with Violet's own not-tea mix. She couldn't use fresh leaves anymore — the plants weren't dead, but they wouldn't keep making leaves as quickly now that summer was over — instead she had dried leaves and berries in a big jar, a scoop of that did the same thing. (She didn't think it was going to last her all the way to spring, but oh well.) She took the plate of biscuits out of the 'cold' cabinet, but she'd actually set the dial so it was just a little bit above room temperature — not hot enough to make them cook further and get all hard and super dry, just enough that they stayed a little warm and nice and crumbly.

Oh, they were conjured! Yeah, Violet did that earlier, go on, try one! Grinning, Susan plucked one off the plate, took a bite — and let out a little hum, her eyes closing, covering her lips with her free hand for silly polite pureblood reasons. It was very obvious she liked it, Violet felt herself smiling.

Her weird fairy magic was mostly inconvenient, meant she had to be very careful what she did with it, Mum still had to test every single new spell she learned to make sure it didn't do anything extra weird. But she was still glad she had it, if only so Susan could have good-tasting stuff that didn't make her feel bad for Seer reasons. Apparently the Sight could mess with what even safe food tasted like, but that didn't happen at all with the food Violet conjured for her, for some reason. Well, it did, it just tasted like Violet's magic on top of whatever it was supposed to taste like. But Susan said that wasn't a bad taste, so.

(She was kind of curious what her magic tasted like, but Susan said it wasn't really something she could put into words, not the sort of thing English was meant for. Which was fair, Violet guessed, just a little disappointing.)

The tea and the biscuits went on a tray, along with some berries — saved from the garden, they were real but Violet could copy some for Susan upstairs. Susan carried the tray, on the way back to her art room she stopped in her bedroom to— Actually no, she went to her art room to grab a couple rags — she did have paint on her hands — and then she went to her bedroom, grabbed a couple cushions and little lap desks, stacked up on each other, and her wand. Making sure it was balanced okay, Violet then carried the whole stack back to her art room.

When they first moved in, Mum said the second bedroom here was also for Violet, which had been kind of overwhelming at the time. Just that she had a whole room to herself had felt like a little much, and then there was a second one — Dudley had two bedrooms, it just seemed...not quite real. She hadn't been sure what to use it for, so she mostly hadn't. It was basically the puzzle room for a while, dumping the pieces out of the box over the floor and putting it together in here, since there wasn't really room for it in her bedroom.

A little bit after she started lessons with Master Walter it was turned into the art room. The walls had been repainted a pale sky blue, Mum had replaced the lights in here, instead of the fake sun- or fire-light just a plain pure white, so the colours of everything would look right. (Though she could switch it to the more yellowish tone, so she could make sure the kind of light mages usually had wouldn't make whatever she was making look bad, but it was mostly fine.) The floor was treated with some kind of special alchemical lacquer, if you looked closely things seemed to hover like a millimetre above the floor, to protect the wood from the ink and the paint and stuff. There was a wide deep desk, bigger than her reading desk in her bedroom and without the shelves and stuff, just more space to spread things out on — some of her ink stuff was scattered around at the moment, the corners of a scroll she was partway through illustrating pinned down to dry.

That was for Lord Arcturus, a poem Mum said he liked, though Violet couldn't say she did herself, really. She did know what it meant, even though she couldn't read it — it was in Cambrian, Mum translated it for her, once in straight English and once word by word so she could line up the drawings right — and it was very adult, and serious, you know the kind of thing. But, it was serious in an important meaningful way, and Mum said Lord Arcturus wasn't going to be around much longer, so... Violet didn't know, she just wanted to do something nice before he died, she guessed.

There were also a few bookshelves against the walls, filled with art stuff — the books Master Walter had her get at one point or another since she started having lessons, her sketchbooks (some blank, some entirely filled up), a bunch of brushes and pencils, jars of pastels and inks and paints, different kinds of paper, all kinds of stuff. Well, the shelves weren't full, Mum had gotten the shelves all at once and Violet hadn't filled all of them yet...but it was kind of a lot of stuff when you just looked at it all together. There were a few blank canvas frames, the stretched linen untouched white, sitting leaning against a corner, and one finished one — or partly finished, anyway, she was keeping it there until she forgot about it so she could give it another look later, and decide if it was finished finished. Then she'd bring it to Master Walter, who might tell her to fix something, or might say it was done, and then...well, then Mum would probably hang it on a wall somewhere or something, she'd started doing that with Violet's stuff a while ago. It was a little embarrassing every time, Mum making a whole thing about it, but it felt good that Mum liked them and cared enough to show them off, so she didn't say anything.

(The first time, she was reminded of Aunt Petunia pinning up on the refrigerator Dudley's drawings and stuff from school — it seemed like a basic mum thing to do, but also Violet's art was way better, so there.)

A cabinet next to the shelves had roll-out drawers holding a bunch of finished sketches and drawings and stuff in there. The magic radio was sitting on top of it — Violet's, kept in here when she was drawing and in her room when embroidering — still on the music station she had it on when Susan showed up. Setting the lap desks and cushions down on the floor, Violet cast a levitation charm on the food tray (her wand protected from her messy hands by the rag), kind of stealing it from Susan. "Set the thing, should be starting soon."

While Susan fiddled with that, Violet guided the tray down to one of the lap desks, and started splitting up their things with more levitation charms. Except needing to hold her wand through the rag was getting annoying — she set her wand down on a desk, and quick dipped over to the bathroom to scrub as much of the paint off as she could. There were still stains left, but that looked good enough. Closing her eyes, a second of concentration, the warm silky-smooth magic ran through her skin, and her hands were clean (and also dry). So, then Violet could copy some fruit for Susan, without having to worry about getting paint all over her wand.

There actually were a few paint stains on her wand, but Lord Arcturus said not to worry about that too much — the cleansing ritual they would do when they returned the wand to Scorpius Brandon's reliquary would clean it off, good as new. She still thought she should avoid getting it messy as much as she could, just to be respectful and stuff. The wand was borrowed, so it wasn't really hers, seemed like the right thing to do.

(Even if the bloke she was borrowing it from was dead.)

Susan paused for a second, giving her a kind of funny look before moving to sit down. Probably still thought it was odd that Violet was naked, but she sat down to have tea with her anyway, so she must not think it was too odd to play along. Violet kind of made a face at her not-tea — the berries were a good little extra thing, but it wasn't quite as good if the leaves weren't fresh, drying them out did...something to the taste, she didn't know. Maybe she should look into making an indoor herb garden, she heard that was a thing you could do...

It was really obvious that Susan liked the biscuits, even making little pleased hums and stuff. Good.

The conversation was a bit slow to get going, Susan seeming a little uncomfortable...though, honestly not talking so much right away might be just because she was busy munching on biscuits. For a moment Violet considered offering again to put something on, but before she got around to asking they were talking, so, never mind. Mostly school stuff — they were in different classes this time, so the things they were doing were slightly different. Violet didn't like being in different classes, honestly, partly because she didn't have Susan or Lasairín in her class, but also she kind of worried about Susan when she wasn't around? For Seer reasons and stuff, you know, it could be really hard for her...

A little bit later, the pre-show stuff had started on the radio — explaining who they were and about the play and stuff, not actually started yet — and Violet was sitting in front of her painting again, her second cup of not-tea sitting on a lap desk nearby. Susan had put down a couple cushions and her robe a little bit away, where she'd sit for the show, but right now she came around behind the frame, standing over Violet's shoulder. "Oh, wow. You're getting so good at this stuff."

Violet shrugged. "Thanks." She didn't think she was that good, but she knew that was partly just because she knew more about this sort of stuff than Susan, so she could see exactly how it was still kind of bad. Susan didn't know what it was supposed to look like, so.

"Is this somewhere you went to travelling for Cassie's duelling stuff?"

"No, this is R-wr-rrock-on-Clyde. Bleh. You can see the g-gr-g-greenhouses there, and the river..."

"Oh, right. I don't think I saw this side of the Manor when I was there." She didn't, they were in the library and the west gardens and the kitchens and the baths, wrong side of the building. Violet actually had to ask Cediny to pop her up to the roof to get this angle, not something Susan would have seen.

It almost kind of looked like what it was supposed to? Master Walter was having her work on, like, bigger stuff, landscapes and the like. Lots of complicated perspective stuff, and getting the colour right, but also if things came out slightly wrong it still looked okay — maybe not realistic, but it could still be pretty, at least. (Drawing people was harder, they did a little bit with that now and then but that was actually the next big topic after this one. Might get super into doing portraits in spring, or maybe summer? Not sure.) So she went up on the roof to get a wide angle over the river, the forested hills rolling away in the distance, little bits of magical villages or muggle stuff poking up here and there, some greenhouses going down the slope of the hill in steps on the left side, the memorial grove close on the right. Violet had tried to get the angles and the shapes of everything right the way she saw it, but she wasn't quite sure if her original sketch was perfect.

Not that she kept the original sketch anyway — paintings were different from real life, Master Walter said, something you just had to change things so they looked better put down in paint, even if it wasn't what they looked like in real life. She redid the sketch a few times, simplifying the curves of the hills a little, just got rid of some of the details of the buildings and stuff in the distance. The angle the greenhouses made to the viewer was adjusted, which actually made the slope of the hill look "wrong" — in the sense that the hill wasn't shaped like that in real life, but Master Walter agreed that it looked better. You could also actually see the river in the painting, even though it was mostly hidden with trees in real life. Violet didn't actually know exactly what the river bank there looked like, not from this angle, so she started with the curve the dip in the trees made and guessed, added a couple rocks sticking up here and there for flavour. The last couple versions of the sketch, she went over the lines with ink and shaded in with pastels, trying to get an idea of what it was supposed to look like. When Master Walter agreed she had something that looked good, she started the painting painting for real.

That was normal, Master Walter said, to do practice versions of a thing before doing it for a real. Expert painter people might even do more than one of the painting paintings before they liked the look of it. That sounded like a lot of work on its face, but Violet understood wanting to keep doing something until you got it just right, so, yeah.

Anyway, this one she was actually trying to do the super-tiny details to make it look not quite photograph real, exactly, but a more realistic-looking thing than she normally did. It was very very hard — making a real painting took forever. Mixing colours together and adding little bits of this one or that one to tweak it, and again and again trying to get just the right colour (her palette was huge, all the different colours she was using and trying not to mix on accident), dabbing tiny little bits of paint on the canvas — or, not directly on the canvas, there was already a simple version of the painting done in a single layer of tempera so she knew where everything went — making tiny little adjustments with the point of her knife, trying to get it to sit just the way she wanted it to, maybe tugging it into a neighbour colour a little, mixing just slightly to get a bit of subtle shading going. And then tapping her knife against the bowl, and reaching for another colour, except that shade wasn't quite right, add a little bit of this yellow here...

It was very very slow. And the canvas was big, probably the biggest one she'd used yet — it was a wide view she was making, if she wanted all the details to come through right in paint she had to make it big. So this was going to take a very long time to finish proper.

But that was fine, Violet could listen to the radio while she was doing it. And, the parts she had done (or done for now) were super pretty! The details almost looked right, except, she made the colours pop a bit more than in real life. Like, she didn't know how to describe it, exactly, but it was kind of common for nature things to get kind of muddled, with lots of samey browns and greens, especially in the shade, but if she put vibrant colours in with the muddier stuff they stood out all sharp and bright and pretty. Like, accenting the more colourful details, more reddish leaves here or a flower there or sunlight hitting a branch or the water just so here. Maybe not super realistic, but she liked the effect — Master Walter said it was a fine thing to do, it didn't look bad, most people would just call it her personal style was all.

(Violet didn't know what to think about maybe having a personal style. Seemed like kind of a big thing, and she was only barely ten.)

"You know, I kind of wish I could do this."

"Hmm?" Violet finished the fiddling with the little bit of the river she was doing, there was going to be a lighter spot here from the sun, so she wanted this colour to bend this way like this... Once that looked about right, she glanced up at Susan. "You mean p-painting? It's not hard, only takes practice."

"No, I didn't mean that. And painting is hard, at least like this — I definitely couldn't get something to look like that, no matter how hard I tried. It just doesn't seem hard to you because you're good at it." Well, sure, but she hadn't been able to do stuff like this either, before she got a lot of practice in, and lessons from someone who knew what he was doing. Whatever, not worth arguing about. "I meant, just, sitting here, and not caring."

"...What?" It took her a couple seconds to figure out Susan was talking about her being naked right now. "Oh! Why not?"

"You know the windows are right there."

Violet glanced over her shoulder — not that there was much to see, dim and cloudy, a little drizzle of rain. "No one's looking." They were well above ground, the angle you got on the window from down there meant you couldn't really see anything. At least not from close up, and if you were further back the trees got in the way, which was why the houses on the other side of the square wouldn't be able to see in. Also, there were privacy wards on all the bedroom windows, so — there weren't on the windows downstairs, which was why Violet was supposed to close the shades if she was going to be walking around naked, but it wasn't a problem upstairs.

"That's not really the point, Violet."

"...I don't understand." If you were alone, then it should be fine even for normal people, right?

Smiling, shaking her head, Susan said, "Yeah, I know you don't. I'm just saying, it... It would be easier sometimes, if I could. Even the clean linen can be a problem sometimes, if I'm tired or if my grounding potion isn't keeping up, or if it's just a bad day... It's heavy, you know, like something pressing down on you all the time. I thought it was weird at first, sitting here painting without a stitch on, but when I think about it, honestly, it'd be nice to be able to put it down now and then. You know."

Oh. Yeah, she guessed that made sense. "And, it's a little l-llike a shield, it k- it k-keeps you from touching other stuff?"

Susan nodded. "Yeah, that too. The floorboards here are fine, but, that's only when it's my feet. More touching is always worse."

"I'm sorry, that sucks. Um. I'll um, I, I'm, I'll make cl-clothes for you later. I can't do it yet, that's too big, but. When I can. Everything you need."

"I... Thank you, Violet. Really."

...Seemed like a pretty basic thing to do, really. Things were hard for Susan sometimes, and Violet could help, so obviously she was going to? Didn't seem like something Susan needed to thank her for. So, she didn't really know what to say to that — Violet still kind of felt like Susan having to deal with all this stuff was her fault, but she knew if she tried to apologise for it Susan would just argue about it again — so she turned back to her palette, mixing the vaguely orangish colour she wanted in a tiny sliver in the river just here...no, yellower than that...

After a little bit, the radio playing some very old-fashioned Celtic-y sounding music (setting the mood, should be starting any minute now). Susan had moved over to where she'd set down her robe, laying down over it, her head sitting on a pillow — she wouldn't be surprised if Susan fell asleep, as hard as sleeping could be sometimes, but that was fine too, Violet could just listen to the play by herself while she napped. From over there on the floor, Susuan started, "Have I... I don't know if I've ever told you how...how much I appreciate it. Always trying to be there to help with Seer stuff, and always being understanding when some weird thing comes up, and, the food, it— That's a miracle, you have no idea. I... It really helps, it means a lot to me. And I don't now if I say that enough."

"That's okay, you don't nn-need to thank me. I like to help." She did kind of feel like it was her fault, still, but also she just...liked doing nice things for people? Even if it wasn't her fault, for weird fairy magic reasons, she'd still try to help, just because Susan was her friend, and that's just what you did. "I mean, it's nice to say so, b-but I don't do it to, to, to be thanked. I want to help, so. You know?"

"I get it. There's no way you're not going to be in Hufflepuff," Susan added, voice wavering a little.

"Yeah, Mum thinks so too." She thought Ravenclaw was the other option, depended on how much she was thinking about art stuff at the time — Mum said a lot of artist people were put in Ravenclaw. The Sorting Hat also had to keep all the houses as close to even as possible, so, which one she went to might come down to which one was smaller by the time the Hat got to her. "But, I know that, that things can be...a lot? Even only making it through a day. So, d-don't worry about, like, making sure I feel appreciated enough or whatever. I l-ll-like helping, I would even if you never thanked me ever. Am I making sense?"

"...You are. You might not think I need to say it, but I do. Seriously, thank you, for everything."

Shooting her a quick smile, Violet said, "You're welcome."

"Mm." They sat quietly for a moment, Susan staring up at the ceiling while Violet fiddled with her riverbank a little, but it was only a few seconds before the play started. "Is this going to be loud enough for you?"

"Oh, um, turn it up a little please — need to hear it through my thinking about this..."