An Artist's View

An Artist's View

I watch her on the lawn, swaying dreamily; occasionally dipping to pick a flower or a blade of grass. The wind carries snatches of humming past my ears, and I strain to make out the melody.

I try to capture the expression on her face in a thousand different moods and changes. I try to draw her; try to include her dreamy sway, and vague movements, and yet, somehow, I always fail.

No two days are the same. On Monday, she may be wearing radish earrings and a butterbeer necklace. Tuesday may see her in floating scarves. Her hair may be pinned up messily or left to swirl in the wind, wrapping her like a cloak in its fine, golden length.

I no longer remember when I began watching her. All I know is that now, I watch her always. It began in an attempt to define her, and I would follow her, unseen and blending into the shadows of the corridors, everywhere except for her common room and dormitory. And always, afterward, I would try to draw her; emptying my memories onto the page like a Pensieve of paper and graphite.

There is some quality about her that defies capture. I could draw her for a thousand years, until my hands were worn to stumps, and still I could never capture her wonderful spirit on the paper before me.

And her moods change like the sky in a storm: beautiful and terrifying, she is poised as if to leap into midair. I see flashes of the lightning-sharp wit that placed her in Ravenclaw, and conversation with her swirls between topics like the grey clouds that fill the sky.

Her image appears through my sketchbooks in pencil, in crayons, and in charcoal. I have painted her using watercolours, oils and poster paints. There are endless portraits of her kept in a folder in my desk, painted in any style I could imitate: Renaissance to Pre-Raphaelite, and Classical to Cubist. All of these and more I have struggled to master in an attempt to capture the truth.

My watch upon her has followed into the dark places of her life. I have watched her struggle, and respond to challenges. I have watched, as those around her wrote her off as 'loony', the name they would eventually replace her own with. I know what she does when she is happy, and where she goes when she is sad. I have seen her laugh: pealing, infectious laughter echoing from the vaulted ceiling of the Great Hall, and I have seen her cry: her tears falling like silent rain, buried in a hidden corner.

I have painted her as an angel, a flower, and a spattering of dots on the page. I have drawn her features melting, and her face reduced to squares and blocks. I have made her image in blues, in reds, and in every combination of colours, and yet it is still never enough; it is never right. I can recreate the beauty of her pale, silvery eyes, but I cannot capture the depth of the soul that looks out from beyond them.

I feel as though I am racing against time, struggling to fit the lines to the paper before she changes again, but it is always, always too late.