Once they had all arrived at the old Alchemy room, Hermione quickly realized that making the replacement portraits of themselves to be used in the Second Task was going to be more of a challenge than she had expected. Even with the ability to free-transfigure pure metals, none of them had any dirt of sculpting experience or artistic talent of this sort that could help in the least. Still, giddy with Harry's triumph at having rescued them in ten minutes, Hermione went for the logical approach.

"Let's go to the Room of Requirement," she suggested. "There might be something we can use there."

"What, you don't want to learn to carve marble in a couple hours?" Blaise pouted. "But it was going to be such fun."

Everybody else in the school was still watching the Second Task, which left the seventh-floor hallway conveniently empty - save for Blaise, Luna, Susan, and Hermione, who paced back and forth in front of the wall, focused and thinking hard.

I need a solution to leaving a body double behind…

I need a depiction of each of us we can take with us…

I need an artistic portrait of us…

When the door to the Room of Requirement appeared, Hermione had no idea what to expect, but she didn't hesitate before pulling open the door, letting everyone else go inside ahead of her.

"Ooh, very nice," Luna said. "But isn't this backwards of what we need?"

Hermione was the last one inside. The Room had become a nicer, more relaxed version of the Alchemy Room they'd been in downstairs. There was a worn wooden table and chairs with nicks and paint splatters on it, and on top of the table stood three oval portrait images. Each was around 2 feet in diameter. The frames of each were decorated with carved filigree.

"They're recessed," Blaise said approvingly, examining his. "They're intaglio carvings, instead of a relief." He looked up at Hermione. "Are we able to take things that this room created out of the room?"

"Umm…" Hermione hesitated. "I'm not sure."

"Let's presume 'no'," Susan said, examining her own. "Does that mean we're meant to use these as a mold to make the relief portraits that we saw outside?"

Blaise grinned. "Worth a try."

Luna retrieved an oil they could use as a mold release from the kitchens, and they each set about filling up their face with metal. Ridiculously, the only metal Hermione had large quantities of handy was gold, meaning they'd be making their relief portraits out of gold instead of a more normal metal.

"At least they'll be heavy," Susan pointed out. "Maybe not our full body weight, but at least something to make it a challenge, you know?"

Hermione, who had more experience with the full weight of gold when not in a bag charmed with a Feather-Light charm, bit her lip.

"Let's try and keep these as thin as possible," she said casually. "Maybe three inches thick?"

It was determined that free-transfiguring small amounts of gold into the details and then lumping in more of it afterwards to fill in the back would be faster and safer than melting the gold, which had been Hermione's thought, but she was outvoted by the others who decidedly did not want to chance her making a giant cauldron of molten gold with Fiendfyre indoors.

Mutinous, Hermione used her fire elemental anyway to help soften the gold as she manipulated it into the crevices of her face, before relaxing and getting into it, smirking as she covered up her eyes with softened gold. Pure gold was pretty soft to work with as it was, so it wasn't that difficult, and she found herself enjoying herself as she filled in all of the crevices that had carved out her hair.

When everyone had finished, they found it'd only taken them an hour, and they took turns helping each other pull their portraits free. Susan's turned out wonderfully, while Blaise had missed some areas with the oil and had to smash his original intaglio to get the pieces out of the golden sculpture, and Hermione went last, rather pleased with how the depiction of all her hair and curls made her look slightly like Medusa.

"Are we just… hiding these?" Susan asked, attempting to hoist hers up. "This is much heavier than I am, Hermione – I don't think I can lift this."

Hermione frowned. "I didn't see them on us when they took out bodies down to the lake."

"We have to hide them beforehand, then," Blaise said, examining his. "They're fairly large – we can just drop them into the lake approximately where we saw the statue, and then leave the merpeople to hide them until the necessary time."

"Can we write them a note?" Luna blinked. "Would parchment last underwater?"

"It would if we cast a Water-Repelling charm," Hermione said. She glanced at the others. "So – use the ley line to get back to the Alchemy Room, Time-turn back while holding your image, then jump the ley line back to where we started to pass off the cloak? And then we'll all try the ley line to get these out to the lake?"

"We could probably use Feather-Light Charms and Levitation, too," Susan pointed out, amused.

"Oh," Hermione said, pausing. "That too."


There was something very funny about seeing one's giant relief portrait sink to the bottom of the Black Lake with a scroll of parchment lashed to it. As a last second adjustment so as not to cause potential changes to the timeline, they'd each covered their gold portrait in a thin layer of silver, which was much more easily disguised as a generic metal instead of a precious one.

"Au revoir," Hermione bid her face, smirking as it sunk straight down. She looked up at the others. "Ready to go meet Snape?"

"Sprout," Susan corrected, but it was with a smirk. "And sure."

"Absolutely not," Blaise said, checking his watch. "We have ten minutes. Everyone needs to get into their ball robes."

Susan and Luna both blanched, and Hermione laughed.

"Just cast a Color-Change Charm a similar robe, if you have one," she advised the other girls. "Otherwise, trust that the House Elves will be able to get them all clean again one way or another?"

Susan sighed. "I think I have an old robe I can sacrifice."

Together, the four of them made their way to the castle, where they split up, redressed, and rejoined each other at the base of Dumbledore's tower. When the appointed time came, the Heads of House emerging from the darkness wearing expressions that ranged from tired to worried to irritated, Hermione could see their expressions transform to ones of incredulous astonishment, and Hermione smiled up at them all.

"We figured we might as well push the point home," she said brightly. "You know, Yule Ball dates and all."

Snape pinched the bridge of his nose very tightly while Sprout and McGonagall snorted. Flitwick just looked very confused, even as Snape sighed.

"Let us hope, then, that the Headmaster is not too opposed to adding extra Warming Charms to ensure you do not freeze to death," he replied, but his black eyes were glinting with amusement.

"He would have had to add those anyway," Susan said crossly. "That water is cold."

"Indeed." Snape's tone was dry. "If you are all ready for this inanity, then, let us go up."