Bare Heroism
Ginny was standing next to Mr Cotte in the main corridor of the old classroom block, watching Jehanne striding through the paintings. Ginny knew Jehanne was close to one of the tokens, and Jehanne seemed to know what she was looking for. Was this the effect of Felix Felicis? Or just her natural character? She’d just had to solve a logic problem set by a cheerful elderly Centaur, and done so with ease.
Ginny was distracted when a translucent silver cat appeared before them without warning. It had to be McGonagall’s Patronus, but to her bemusement the animal simply stood frozen before her, silently.
“Professor McGonagall?” she asked, feeling stupid. Patronuses can’t hear you. “Minerva?” Even now it felt wrong to call her that. “Hello?”
“Ginny?” spoke the cat then, in McGonagall’s voice. She sounded distracted, upset. “Wait…”
Ginny had no choice, she knew, as she watched Jehanne struggle to pass from a painting of a rocky landscape into an interior, showing an alchemist’s laboratory. She was very close now.
“Ginny!” said the Patronus, more firmly now. “We have a problem. Chloe Langenberg has disappeared!”
“Disappeared?” Ginny echoed, automatically. “Disappeared how?”
Somehow McGonagall knew what question to answer. “We don’t know what happened to her. Some of the students here were watching her – Caroline is still here, so I was following her. And Professor Flitwick had to… disappear for a moment – What was I saying? The students saw Chloe cross one picture, and into the next, but she just disappeared.”
“So what…” Ginny started to ask, fruitlessly.
McGonagall was still talking. “Ginny, we need to go and find her, and you’re the only person I know with a portrait here!”
“But…”
“It has to be you, Ginny. Once you get inside, you need to cross to New Hogwarts. We can guide you then…”
The silver cat disappeared. Ginny turned to look at Mr Cotte in horror. Her voice seemed to have gone.
Cotte was looking around. “Lydia!” he called. Ginny could see the monitor further along the corridor, staring at Jehanne’s progress, muttering in another girl’s ear. Lydia turned and looked at them, inquiringly.
“Stay with Jehanne, understand?” Cotte called. “We need to go over to the Senate Room. I’ll be back soon…”
Lydia looked puzzled, but she nodded and moved towards them. Cotte was seizing Ginny’s arm, and Ginny was reluctantly Twisting.
The Senate Room was empty apart from the two of them. Cotte hurried her towards her painting. Her painted self was as normal, leaning back on her hands, her knees raised. She turned to look at the real Ginny in surprise.
She still looked sulky. When she’d heard about the second challenge, the painted Ginny had volunteered to guard one of the tokens, and fight the champion wanting to possess it, but Ginny had refused. I don’t have much reputation left, she told herself. So definitely no nude wrestling.
Cotte was pulling out his wand, and pointing it at her. “Tela…” he began.
“Ginny!” There was a shadowed figure coming towards her. “What are you doing?” It was Undine. She was wide-eyed with fear, and breathless.
“What’s wrong?” asked Ginny in return.
“You can’t…” Undine started.
“I’ve got to find Chloe,” said Ginny, impatiently. “She’s disappeared.”
“In the paintings? No!”
“I’ll be OK,” Ginny said, although she wasn’t sure of that. “Wait! I’ve… She’s no…”
“Tela Carbasum!” shouted Cotte, and in a timeless instant Ginny could see Undine’s look of fear and horror, and the spell reaching out and hitting her chest. The Senate Room vanished from around her, and she was hitting the floor with a jarring, painful thud.
“…Clothes on!” Ginny managed to say. She felt strangely pinned. Her limbs would move, but only in some directions, not others. It was hard to talk. She was sitting as her painted self had been, as she’d sat years ago, her hands behind her, her knees raised. The ground was strangely warm where her bare flesh touched it. She was naked, of course.
She found she could move enough to push herself upwards. It felt like she was caught behind glass, unable to move properly. She struggled to get to her feet, a huge effort. Now she could look around. The room she was in seemed shadowy, with light pouring onto her.
She could see Cotte standing there staring at her, huge now, with Undine at his shoulder, biting her hand in fear. She automatically moved one hand to her breasts, the other to her lower abdomen, to cover herself. In either direction she could see figures, bare like hers, and windows of light in front of each of them. Behind her, when she turned, was darkness.
She could see a shadowed figure walking along the line of portraits towards her. Automatically, she reached over her shoulder to pull out her wand, but of course her hand found only bare skin.
She recognised the approaching figure now. Guillaume de Fleury, her painted self’s lover. Her face was hot with embarrassment, and her hand of its own volition came up to shield her face. She could see now that the skin of her hand was strange, like textured paint, a spectrum of colours.
Guillaume was towering above her now, his gleaming mirror-like helmet making him taller still. Would he…?
“I need a wand,” she found herself saying.
He shook his plumed head. He seemed careless of his nakedness. She tried to keep her eyes on his, but she couldn’t help notice his maleness, the blondness of his body hair. “There are no wands here,” he said. “It is not the custom, you see, to paint a wand.”
“What about a weapon?” she asked, uncertainly. She’d always thought him handsome, had imagined her other self with him, enjoying him. But now she could walk up to him, touch him…
“Matthew has a sword,” called a voice over her shoulder. Ginny turned and recognised the statuesque figure of Julia, the Countess of Airelle, walking towards her, equally uncaring of her lack of clothes. Someone was striding up behind the Countess. He wasn’t as tall as Gillaume, but broad chested and powerfully muscled. His granite-like face didn’t change as he thrust out his sword towards Ginny. She found she had no breath as she reached out and took the sword from him. He was much older than Guillaume, but still very much a man.
The sword was heavy – heavier than the one she’d held for Gosse’s Joan of Arc painting. “I don’t know how to use this,” she said helplessly.
Matthew, still too close to her for her comfort, gave her a crooked smile. “Perhaps your enemy won’t know that. All is illusion, here.”
Her eyes kept dropping below his waist, and she was supremely conscious of de Fleury close beside her, and the equally naked Julia. “Thank you,” she said. “I’ll try.” She tried bringing the tip of the sword up to eye height. Illusion this may be, she told herself. But this sword is still effing heavy.
“Wait!” she said. “How about my own sword! The one from Joan of Arc! How do I get to that? I can, can’t I? How do I reach my other paintings?”
“You can see them,” said Guillaume. “But we cannot.”
“See them where?” Ginny walked back towards her own painting. Through the bright yet grainy windows into the real world, she could see Cotte, following her, huge, his expression worried. I have to hurry, she told herself.
Here was her own painting, empty now apart from the dark brown background. “Where do I look?” she repeated.
“Look along the paintings,” called de Fleury. “Our paintings. Then turn either side. Turn just a fraction. You should see light.”
Ginny turned obediently, but all was darkness. “I can’t see anything!” she called, distressed now.
“Move to where you normally pose,” said Julia, pointing. She didn’t bother trying to cover herself.
“I don’t…” began Ginny, but she realised what the Countess meant. She stood in the middle of the window, where her painted self normally sat, and turned to look along the line of paintings, then turned her head slightly.
A dim strip of light… She moved her head, and the strip broadened. She could see another room, another canvas window.
She hurried towards the light, and as she did the strip of light narrowed and disappeared. She moved sideways, and the light reappeared. It was still only narrow, and she had to turn sideways to slide through the gap.
She was looking for the castle wall, and the warhorse, but this wasn’t the right place. Instead, her bare feet were on fabric, gold fabric. She recognised this, but how?
She turned, and jumped when she saw Undine.
“Undine!” she said in amazement.
But this wasn’t the Undine of now, but the painted Undine of last year, wearing a revealing waistcoat and transparent trousers. She was looking at Ginny in shock. “What is it?” asked Undine. She glowed with perfection, Ginny saw, prettier even than her real self, and younger.
“I… I was looking for Joan of Arc,” Ginny stammered. “I need a sword.”
The painted Undine frowned. “A sword? Why a sword? What’s wrong with that one?” She nodded to the sword in Ginny’s hand.
“It’s too heavy! I need a… a weapon!” said Ginny. “One I can actually use!”
“Why?”
“I’m not sure,” Ginny confessed. “Someone’s been abducted. In a painting, at Beauxbatons.”
Undine shook her head slowly in confusion. “A wand, surely. You need a wand!”
“There aren’t any…!” Ginny began in exasperation. “No wands here! Somebody told me…”
Undine was shaking her head, but more definitely now. “You can have mine,” she said. She turned, strangely, and disappeared.
“Undine?” Ginny cried out. She looked around her, but the painting was empty, apart from the circle of the golden wedding dress under her bare feet. “Undine?”
A line of movement, which became Undine again, slipping into view. She was holding something. “Here,” she said, thrusting it towards Ginny.
It was a wand. “Do you remember?” asked Undine. “I showed you my painting. With a wand. That was Gosse breaking the rules.”
“Are you sure…?”
“Yes! Yes of course!” insisted Undine. “Take it! And good luck!” Her expression changed suddenly. “No! Wait!” she said. She was stripping off her jacket, and passing it to Ginny. “You need this,” she said hurriedly. Then she was dragging down her gauze trousers.
“I can’t…” Ginny began. But Undine, naked now, was kneeling at her feet and urging her feet into the trousers she’d just removed, and then standing, plucking the jacket from Ginny’s fingers and helping her into that as well, taking the sword as she did so.
“Here,” said Undine, handing the sword back. She leaned in and gave Ginny a brief kiss.
“I can’t take your clothes…” began Ginny.
“Of course you can,” said the painted Undine. “You have to hurry!”
There was no way of fastening the jacket shut, and the trousers were see-through, but it was better than nothing. “Thanks,” said Ginny. The Undine of the painting looked happier than the Undine of today, didn’t she? What did that mean? But she had to go…
Ginny turned, and could see a strip of light once more. She twisted sideways so she could slip through the gap, so she was back in her Senate Room painting.
Guillaume de Fleury was still there, kneeling on the floor. Ginny looked around and could see more distant figures in the light of their own portrait windows. De Fleury surged to his feet, his eyes sweeping her minimal clothes, and the wand in her hand. “Good!” he said. “We need to hurry!”
“We?” asked Ginny in confusion.
“Do you know where you are going?” he asked. “I can help you.”
She shook her head. She looked through the canvas window: Cotte was still there, hugely looming still. “Do you know how to get to New Hogwarts?” she called to him. He shook his head.
“Come,” said de Fleury.
Hedoesn’t have any clothes. But I have no choice.