Portrait Life

Portrait Life

The circular tower office is quiet as the evening shadows lengthen. Each day the sun sets perceptibly later; each week, the grey sky gives way to a brighter blue. He would almost find it tiresome, this routine, unvaried year after year, decade after decade, except for days like today. Today is--

"Phin-e-AS!" A high-pitched voice squeals from the emptiness behind him, its overtones and harmonics cause the highly sensitive instruments on the desk to whir, spin, buzz, and hum in response. The headmaster has learned not to leave delicate crystal brandy snifters out when he goes; this is a voice that will shatter glass.

Phineas, poised on the edge of a burgundy leather armchair, strokes his dark goatee and rolls his eyes. "Insufferable old hag," he whispers under his breath before returning to his reverie. The headmaster has been gone for eight hours, forty-three minutes and ten, no, eleven seconds. Not, Phineas reminds himself sternly, that he is counting. The point is that Dumbledore will return soon, and whatever news he brings--

"Nigellus, would you please go speak to her?" The plump, matronly witch in the portrait over the wall clock huffs and presses her hands on her abundant hips. "She will disturb the headmaster when he returns." Artemia believes that having been a student of the Founding Four qualifies her as an authority amongst authorities, and Phineas is certain that she gloats to the lesser portraits in the halls that the headmaster turns to look at her whenever he wants to know the time.

"Is it normal for a voice to carry so far?" adds Fortescue, a white-haired wizard in a green, floppy hat, his chins wobbling munificently as he speaks.

"Clearly you've never met dear Mistress Black," Phineas replies lazily. And they should count themselves lucky, he thinks. Mistress Black has the unique ability to make herself heard through time, space, and portals of portraiture. She has been screaming more frequently of late, ever since the night he found her sprawled over black sheets, her youngest son's letters crumpled in her hands. Then the sound was desperate.

Now she screams with spite.

He can count on two fingers the number of people who have listened to that voice with the equanimity of the indifferent: himself and just one other.

That other was the subject of last night's exhausting meetings between the headmaster and the Minister of Magic. The other, his great- great-grandson, last scion of the house of Black, will stand trial today, defended by the headmaster himself. Yes, Phineas was listening while he pretended to doze, but not for lack of desire to be sleeping; he simply did not trust Dippet to accurately relate the facts come morning. It is the same reason he waits now, stroking his goatee and staring glassy-eyed out the tower window.

The sun casts a golden glow about the room, one that flatters Phineas' dark eyes and olive complexion. Several other voices have begun to protest in his general direction. Phineas yawns and stares down his imperial nose at the disgruntled headmasters and headmistresses in the portraits around the room. He wears an expression that he has spent the past hundred-odd years perfecting, often slipping into the mermaid's portrait in the fifth floor bathroom, opposite a row of highly polished mirrors, to practice. To achieve the perfect blend of righteous distain and haughty omnipotence, with just a dash of mischievous energy, is no easy feat, and Phineas has proudly mastered it.

In turn, the other headmasters regard him with tired forbearance.

Phineas wonders, not for the first time, if the board of governors intentionally selects the dowdiest bibliophiles they can find to run the school. He glances at Caulder, who continues to believe that mouldy lace is the height of fashion, then Marymount, whose slattern garments hang in rolls off her towering shoulders. Phineas is, with good reason, grateful for the contributions that facilitated his own selection; at least one headmaster since the great Salazar himself can be relied upon to have a sense of style. Their current fearless leader, Albus Dumbledore, is perhaps the exception that proves the rule. Phineas smiles -- inwardly of course -- remembering Dumbledore's argument the night before. The bleary-eyed Minister hadn't stood a chance.

Dumbledore has not yet committed his likeness to canvas; Phineas must remind him again, that if he does not do so soon, his face will be indistinguishable from a bearded willow tree. To a man -- and woman -- the other headmasters have all waited until their faces resembled those of old basset hounds before having their portraits commissioned. Many elected to stand before draperies that clearly clashed with their robes, and some even insisted that their favourite slobbering mongrels be painted forever at their sides -- Phineas has never cared for children. And the frames! Most days Phineas avoids so much as a glance at the other frames, all roses and laurels and flute-wielding cherubs. When compared to their gaudy golden monstrosities, his own tastefully carved, gilt casing is a paragon of elegance, though it was selected by his eldest, and most fashionably challenged, son.

Phineas yawns again.

"Phin-e-AS!"

"You had better go," Artemia chastises. She would never have dared to be so short with him when he was the one sitting behind the massive oak desk.

He pretends he hasn't heard the call. Mistress Black will simply have to wait.

Armando Dippet wipes his eyes and looks hard at Phineas. Probably wants a glimpse of my retreating arse, the poof. "It's alright," Armando says slowly. His voice will always be tired and sinuses just a little bit congested simply because he sat for the painting on a day that the ragweed was flying-- Poor planning is what it all comes down to, poor planning and physiological misfortune. Consequently, Armando snores at night, often prompting Phineas to seek refuge elsewhere, with the portrait of the Baroness Von Shrousberg on the first floor as often as he can manage it. She has lovely satin sheets...

"... will tell you if anything important happens here."

"You're still speaking," Phineas comments off-handedly. He'd lost the thread of the conversation at the thought of the Baroness' coverlet.

"I was saying," begins Armando once again, as though repeating himself is as natural as breathing, "that you needn't worry about missing any news. I will contact you should the headmaster return." He peers at Phineas from rheumy, colourless eyes.

Phineas sighs dramatically, and the sound echoes in the empty office. A silver instrument on the desk pings in response. He shrugs, turns, and disappears beyond the lush folds of emerald velvet behind the chair, draperies that flawlessly accent the Slytherin emblem on his cincture.

***

Phineas slips into the edge of the empty portrait in the second guest bedroom, peeking around the brocade tapestries that frame the empty space. He immediately stands up straight and steps around the hangings. The Most Hated Headmaster Hogwarts Has Ever Had will not be caught peeking.

His portrait is empty. He can feel as much through the brushstrokes of shadow and light on his robes. His curiosity is directed towards the rest of the room. No house-elf lurks in the shadows; no waif of a witch has stepped into the desertscape on the opposite wall.

She is not yet expecting him.

The house is eerily silent, holding its breath, perhaps, in anticipation of her next scream.

Phineas tolerates this room, the one in which his portrait hangs, better than any other in the house. That is why his portrait hangs here. There are two canopied beds with a large picture window between them. The window faces one of the innumerable fireplaces in the house, cold now, dry ashes scattered about the hearth.

He thinks of the children who have grown up here, laughing and playing in this room because it is the farthest from the nexus of adults. But there are no children now. Once noisy, scrabbling, fighting terrors, they are now generation after generation of ghosts and memories.

Vividly, he recalls the most recent boys, his grandson's grandsons.

I'm the Desert King!

But I want to be!

You're too short to be the king. And besides I can knock you off this bed any day.

What am I, then, Sirius?

You can be my camel.

The smaller brother got onto his hands and knees and looked up curiously. Like this? What sound do camels make?

They don't make sounds. See, look in the painting there. They have humps, and... they chew a lot. The older brother threw a pillow onto the younger one's back, and before long, there was a full scale pillow fight in the room. They played until someone downstairs heard their peals of laughter and quickly came to silence them.

Look at him, dear, the father said, years before camels ever padded across the grey-eyed boy's imagination. His stern face was smiling at the baby in his arms. Already looks like a Black. Across the room, Phineas had almost smiled at the new father's pride in his firstborn son, a child named after a star.

Phineas now shakes his head to clear the maudlin memories. These sons of his, four generations of Blacks, they are so quick to forget that the crystalline eyes have been the family trademark for only a few generations. Phineas and his fathers' eyes are dark as night, pupil difficult to discern from iris, except in the light of the setting sun.

The pale eyes, those belonged to Annabelle.

Annabelle, whose grey-eyed genes were so much stronger than her blue-white body.

Phineas glances around the room once more to ensure that no one is watching. Then, with a deep breath, he turns around.

Slipping from his painting, listening to the swish of his robes behind him, Phineas travels a familiar path. He crosses the encampment of nomads in the desert, a gift to his grandfather upon returning from a colonising expedition in the east. Wiping the sweat from his brow on a soft fold of velvet, he nods in greeting to Aunt Desdimona. Two insolent brats, his uncles, Amos and Christian, throw hand-carved wooden blocks at him as he passes through their playroom. He savours a quick swill of wine while dashing through a Bacchanal. And then he is in the attic.

The space is cluttered, layered with eons of dust and the debris of twelve generations of Blacks. There are broken mahogany chairs, books that no longer fit in the crowded library, spare candelabras, children's toys long outgrown, and portraits whose wall space has been usurped by younger generations. He steps cautiously through the forgotten canvasses, unable to discern the faded faces from their dirty draperies, coughing on the clouds of dust that rise beneath his feet.

He stops and stares at a picture that leans against a far wall.

It is one of the few whose occupant is visible; the dust is thinner over her face and dress than in the rest of the comatose prints. Phineas lifts an old rag from a Dutch masterpiece and wets it in the fountain of a country courtyard lined with climbing ivy, then steps gingerly into her portrait.

Silently, he wipes the thin layer of grime from its surface, top to bottom, corner to corner, before turning to look at her.

"Annabelle?" he whispers.

Her head is resting in the crook of her right arm, which is draped over the back of her burgundy leather chair, the same seat in which he was painted not long after. White blonde hair falls over her face. In one easy movement, he brushes the stray locks aside and rests his hand on her shoulder.

She looks up, blinking slowly, translucent lids over pale grey eyes, lines of blue veins traceable under her skin. "Finn," she murmurs.

"Anna."

"Where are the boys?" She pronounces each word carefully, as though speech is a habit she has long since forgotten.

"About."

Annabelle coughs. It is the faintest of sounds, a wheezing deep in her chest, but Pinneas is aware of it now more acutely than he ever was with flesh-and-blood ears. Without the mush of grey matter in his head, it is harder to suppress the small sounds he would rather not hear.

"So sleepy," Annabelle whispers.

"Rest," he tells her and quickly steps from her painting as she lowers her head again.

Phineas takes a more circuitous route downstairs, as he does not want either of the Mistresses Black to know where he has been. Just before he enters the sitting room, he hears the screech again.

"PHIN-E-AS!" The call arrives in stereo, two identical voices yelping at once.

The portraits in the headmaster's office will not be pleased, and Phineas grins at the thought of Artemia huffing impotently at his empty, yet elegant, frame.

"Yes, dear?" he asks, gliding into the painting opposite her chez-lounge.

The current Mistress Black is wafer-thin and colourless. Though built rather like Annabelle -- they are, after all, cousins roughly thrice removed and separated by several generations -- she does not melt into her surroundings. She lies against them in sharp relief, imposed upon the background of her life, outlined in black kohl.

The light, any light, is harsh when reflected off the mistress' skin. Her angular bones cast dark shadows.

"I have called you three times," she states. One long, bony hand is draped over her thigh; the other pauses mid-gesture, poised in the cold air. Her voice is reminiscent of her scream, subdued in volume, but similar in pitch and tone. Fury lurks just beneath the cool surface of her words.

A stray breeze blows in to the room through an open window. It rifles through the long curtains, and Phineas glimpses the night sky outside. "Yes," he replies, "you have."

"You will stay to dine with us." Her fists clench, twined in the chiffon of her dress, wrinkling the garment and pressing into the skin of her palms, then release, quivering slightly.

"If only I could, but there are matters to which I must attend tonight." He bows gracefully, and turns to go.

Her oil-based alter ego, standing in the landscape of Argyleshire across the room, growls menacingly. Phineas smiles at her, silently vowing to cajole some witless whelp of a student into finding him a spell that will forever trap her in her frame.

"You will dine with us," the three-dimensional woman repeats, "because I would hate for a stray Incendio to set fire to the attic. Is that clear?" Her voice is strained with the effort of staying calm.

"As crystal." Phineas manages a smile, though all the crystal of Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place has been gathering dust of late. Someone ought to speak to the house-elves about that.

"Very well. Krea-CHER!" As the call dies from her thin, coral lips, a house-elf totters into the room, hairy tufts sticking out of his ears, and bows to both the mistress and to her portrait-self.

"Kreacher, prepare us supper," orders the portrait. The flesh-and-blood Mistress Black has not taken her eyes off Phineas. "We will arrive in the dining room in fifteen minutes."

"Yes, mistress." The house-elf bows again and exits.

"Nigellus," the portrait turns to him. "We have had a most unsettling dream of late."

Mistress Black clicks her tongue warningly, though her eyes look far away. "Something has happened at the school," she says. "What news?"

Phineas wonders, not for the first time, if there is a trace of Seer blood in her family. She knows things, things she should not know, and her eyes... they are neither here nor there. He found her prostrate in bed over black satin sheets the morning the younger boy was slaughtered. Even the Ministry had not yet been informed. News of Black's innocence had only reached the headmaster last night. She could not know...

"News?" he cadges, raising an eyebrow. "None at all. Perhaps I may arrange for the Prophet to be--"

She silences him with a look that states in no uncertain terms that a periodical so plebeian as the Prophet will never be admitted into her sitting room. Phineas elects not to mention that her husband, closeted away in his study, receives it every morning.

Sometimes Phineas wonders about his great grandson's state of mind; it cannot be healthy to live out one's days enclosed in a single room. But the house-elves bring him food and remove his dishes, wipe the dust from his papers and set the pillows on his couch. And, Phineas supposes, considering the alternatives, the books in the study are quite charming company indeed. Besides, the image of the master, pining away, unseen by human eyes, lends such grace and mystery to the family's fall.

It is, yet again, a matter of style, style that the mistress has allowed to slip from her fingers as her eyes dart nervously to the shadows in the corners of the room. Her dreams consume her more every day; they burn in her memory as her hair thins and her anger boils. Her grasp on reality is tenuous with only her own portrait to speak to, and an entire manor to roam.

Phineas feels no compulsion to inform her of the events the previous night. It is the headmaster's prerogative to share -- or not -- as he sees fit.

"Come," she snaps, and her pictorial self leads the way to the stately dining room. Phineas sighs and follows several frames behind.

The mistress sits stiffly at one end of the ebony table, and Phineas settles himself beside a bowl of green apples. Part of a mediocre still life, they reflect the light of an unseen candle in their polished skins. The house-elf promptly brings a tray of sandwiches, meat pies, and tea, places them on the table, and bows.

"What is that rubbish?" Phineas stares pointedly at the elf, one eyebrow arched indignantly.

"It is supper, sir, Mistress says to bring supper, and Kreacher does. Kreacher is a good house-elf."

Phineas wrinkles his nose in distaste. It is one of the most common misconceptions that a painted figure is incapable of smell. Noses work just as efficiently on canvas as eyes and ears, a fact well known by the fortunate Smythe family in Kent, whose lives were saved when their painting of Mumford the Mime broke his twelve year silence to warn them of a fire in the den. The family survived, but Mumford bubbled and melted away in his frame. Phineas would never have made such a foolish mistake; he has Hogwarts to run to. Besides, if he were to warn these two of a fire, he doubts either would leave with any urgency.

"You expect your mistress to eat last week's meat? Take it away. Eat it yourself, elf. Where is Mimsey?"

"Kreacher is sorry, sir. Mimsey is on the wall, sir, in the hallway."

"Pity," Phineas sniffs, then shoots a commiserating glance across the table. "Good help is so hard to find."

Kreacher scampers away and returns several minutes later with a tray of fresh fruits and vegetables. Phineas nods curtly, and the elf places them on the table. If the master of the house is going to hide himself away while the mistress lives in a world of prescient nightmare, someone must keep the place running, the axels greased, the proverbial wheels t--

"Well?" she snaps, bursting in upon his reverie.

Phineas looks languidly down at her. "Well, what?" You shrivelled old bat.

"News."

"What makes you think I am privy to anything of interest?"

"Dumbledore," she seethes, baring her teeth as she says the name. Really, she is nearly unfit for company these days. "The mudblood-lover." She speaks softly, but her voice grows as she continues. "Is planning. Plotting and planning. I know. Do not underestimate me, Phineas!" She has started shake, a subtle tremble of her smallest finger, but Phineas sees it. She idly pushes the food around her plate before turning away from it entirely. As she clearly takes in no sustenance, Phineas wonders how many years a person can survive on spite alone. "He smiled at me," she says, shivering. "He winked."

Perhaps he did, in fact, visit her dream. Phineas smiles at her accurate though unflattering description of the headmaster. Dumbledore has a warm spot in his soppy Gryffindor heart for mudbloods and their ilk; Phineas must remind him on a biweekly basis -- at least -- to be more cautious in his choice of associates. But the man also has the infinite capacity to smile at the likes of Mistress Black and her petty ways, much as he smiled at the Minister last night ...

She has begun to whine at her own portrait, furious with Phineas' lack of useful information and disconcerted, no doubt, by her dreams.

"...the curs and halfbreeds..."

Phineas stops listening and examines an apple instead. Though he has no need of sustenance, he considers eating it simply for the satisfying crunch. He spins it in his hands, watching the candlelight play along its surface.

A grape flies across the room.

"Madam!" Phineas cries over her maddening muttering. He plucks the limp skin from his hair and flicks it onto the floor.

"Blood traitors, all of you," the two women snap back in unison. "Fools and Sheep, you meddle. You bring trouble on us all."

Phineas feels a subtle tug at his robes, just a shift in the brushstrokes of his hem, in the light and shadow of the round, turreted office. Dippet.

He considers, just for a moment, informing her that a half-blood werewolf has made it his mission to rescue her Ishmael and contemplates subtly insinuating his unspeakable suspicions about the two, just to see the look on the mad harpy's face as he trots back to Hogwarts. He could tell her something about trouble, trouble unlike this house has ever seen.

Then she looks at him for a moment with the wide eyes of a child, of a little lost camel. Mother, they want me to... I don't know if I can--

Her portrait curses, as loud and fluent as any of her sons, and she follows suit, slipping into other languages -- whether real or of her own creation Phineas does not hazard a guess.

Mad as a hatter.

But, in a steely glint of the washed-out, infernal eyes, he knows that she is also dangerous.

Phineas Nigellus may be many things, but a fool he is not.

He can play the cravenly ancestor when necessity and the vestiges of an antiquated loyalty call him. He speaks slowly, drawing incensed glances from her portrait but allowing his words to work through her disquiet, wheedle beneath her anger, appeal to whatever part of her is rational and aware.

He informs her that he might know something.

That there are forces afoot.

He drops casual hint of a conspiracy against the established order. She will always pause to consider a conspiracy.

"That is all," he finally tells her. "Deign to read the Prophet tomorrow. You will see how it ends." He will learn from the source, but not even to escape a charging graphorn, would he return to this house with his news.

She nods absently. Her temper has subsided, leaving nothing to fill the void. She looks at him with vacant eyes, and Phineas wonders... None of my concern.

"I will make the arrangements," he tells her. She nods again. He doubts that she will sleep tonight, preferring her disappointment printed in black and white rather than the shades of a vivid dream. She summons Kreacher to fetch a cup of coffee.

Most likely burnt and flavoured with rancid milk.

Let her drink it, he thinks. Phineas backs slowly towards the edge of the stillife, and neither of the Mistresses Black notices his motion. Once he is safely out of sight, he strides back to the second guest bedroom. With a final glance at the desertscape across the way, and a wistful look towards the attic above, he disappears behind the tapestries.

The office is empty and dark. The other portraits are snoring loudly.

"What happened?" Phineas asks.

None responds.

Damn Artemia -- the overbearing Jezebel must have told them to ignore him.

He steals over to Armando and pulls on the edge of the shabby brown robes. The old coot must actually be asleep. Drugged no doubt; he's never feigned anything so convincingly in his life.

Phineas stalks from the room, teeth clenched. Mistress Black will have to read about today's trial from the blasted Prophet, and now, so will he. And he hasn't the foggiest how to obtain one at this hour. No impressionable students to inveigle; they are all fast asleep in their beds. He considers barging into the headmaster's quarters, getting his news from the source. Never mind that entering the headmaster's private quarters simply "Isn't done". This is about family.

He smiles, catlike, at the thought of Artemia's face when she sees him emerge behind Dumbledore. He is certain he can find a way in.

Dumbledore will understand. It is his greatest weakness that he always does.

Or, Phineas reconsiders, he can slip between the Baroness' satin sheets and wait for morning, when he will doubtlessly be able to convince some unsuspecting sod to hand the article over, or even to read it aloud.

Phineas yawns and imagines the satin caressing his skin.

Yes, off to see the Baroness. He disappears from the round, tower room.