(no subject)
Written for iulia_linnea's HP Character Random Facts/Things Meme Fic Fest. I think this probably counts as crack!fic, because, well, who'd choose The Fat Lady as a character for the 20 Random Facts Meme? But that's just what I did, and I'm pleased with it. Tis unbeta'd (because my usual beta and love of my life, _angels_touch_, has gone awol, and my other beta and love of my life, lyras, is trawling her way through seven chapters and a Prologue of my Remus fic and I didn't think it was fair to dump anything more on her) so please to be pointing out any mistakes or generally rubbishy bits.
Title: 20 Random Facts About the Fat Lady
Author: Me, nellie_darlin
Disclaimer: Not mine. Jo's.
Pairing/Characters: The Fat Lady, Remus/Sirius, James/Lily, Molly/Arthur, Harry/Ginny all mentioned once. Will I ever be able to write pure gen?
Rating: PG-13
Length: 1,253 words
Genre: genfic (just?)
Summary: 20 random facts about the Fat Lady...
Warnings: Watch the acrobatic feat of nellie_darlin jumping upon the bandwagon.
1. The Fat Lady has guarded the Gryffindor portrait hole for nearly a hundred years. It has been made bearable by her friend Violet from downstairs, and that painting of the Roman orgy just round the corner.
2. Her favourite password so far has been asphodel. She loves the way it sounds. Sirius Black used to drawl it, with that lopsided grin, and the Fat Lady would get all flustered. That was before he went evil, you see, when he was still the most handsome boy at Hogwarts.
3. She also liked polished wands. It was a bit naughty. It made the third years snigger, and the first years blush.
4. Hogwarts was never as exciting once Black and Potter left, at least until the Weasley twins arrived. It was nice not to be woken at all hours of the morning and bathed in a gust of whisky-smelling breath, or kept waiting while they tried to focus their drunken brains on remembering the password, but the Fat Lady missed their jokes, their pranks, their charming, wicked smiles.
5. When she heard that Potter was dead, betrayed by Black, she cried for a week. Peeves had laughed at her, and she had hidden. The only other time she hid was when Black returned to the castle, trying to kill Potter’s son.
6. If walls could talk... The Hogwarts pictures know many secrets. The Fat Lady has seen numberless good night kisses, even a good night grope here or there. Whispered conversations, arguments, reconciliations; all these have passed beneath the Fat Lady’s watchful eye, but never passed her lips. That is the Portrait’s Code. You never speak of what you see.
7. Except for that one time, when Black pushed that Lupin boy up against the wall and kissed him violently, before putting his hand down his trousers. That was far too scandalous (and, frankly, exciting) not to share with Violet.
8. Sometimes the Fat Lady feels old. Not old old, not in her body, but in her mind. The students come and go, grow up and love and lose and die, while she stays the same, stuck in a limbo, never growing older, but growing weary nonetheless.
9. Sometimes at night, the Fat Lady wonders what it is like to be human. To feel heat and cold and love and loss and death. To feel her bones stiffening as she aged, to see children, her own children, running and playing and growing up, to finally slip away into peaceful nothingness. Her life is a series of imitations - eating, drinking, sleeping - but there are some things that are never imitated, never experienced.
10. As a painting, one gets a sense of patterns, of the bigger picture. The Fat Lady has seen two Dark Lords rising, two Dark Lords vanquished, and she has seen the absences left by these risings and these vanquishings. And now a Dark Lord is rising again, and the absences are starting to appear, ghosts of laughter and kisses and anger more ephemeral than the “real” ghosts of Hogwarts, but just as haunting and just as sad.
11. Sometimes, joking with Violet and getting drunk on alcohol pilfered from other paintings is the only way the Fat Lady can forget about the absences, the ghosts of times - and students - long gone.
12. But there are happier repetitions, happier patterns. The patterns of love and friendships, children walking the corridors their parents walked twenty years before, another Potter and his red-haired girlfriend. These repetitions reassure the Fat Lady, tell her that love and friendship are as strong a pattern as the rise of darkness and death. They give her hope.
13. The death of Dumbledore has made everything much more uncertain. The halls and corridors are empty in the summer months, dust motes dancing in the silence, and the Fat Lady wonders if the silence will be broken again in September, or if the dust will continue to fall unchecked.
14. Blood had come to Hogwarts, and for the first time the Fat Lady saw. Before, she had only heard, heard whispers of events and great happenings, far away from the walls of Hogwarts. But blood had come to Hogwarts, and that pale, insignificant, strutting little boy had brought it. The paintings gathered, and watched, and judged.
15. She had never trusted him, she told Violet. She had never liked his face. Even as a boy, when he had walked quickly past her painting, head down, trying to be invisible. He was greasy and not to be trusted. And now he had killed the Headmaster. She had never trusted him, and now she was proved right.
16. Professor Lupin, however, was a different matter. He had always been polite to her, reserved and studious (but flushed and panting and debauched that time with Black...) It had been a lucky day for Hogwarts when he became DADA teacher. He had the same air of quiet authority as the Headmaster. It didn’t matter to the Fat Lady that he was a werewolf. She trusted him, and the day he left Hogwarts for the second time, she knew the school had lost a magnificent teacher, and would be worse off because of it.
17. It gave her no joy to see him at the school again, though, for that was the day that Hogwarts became a battlefield. The day the monster stalked the school, and brought blood to Hogwarts. The Fat Lady had felt the pain in her scars, those long gashes, expertly mended, caused by Sirius Black’s knife, the last monster to come to Hogwarts. But this monster was worse, so much worse, and the Fat Lady trembled in her frame.
18. An uncertain future makes the present sweeter, and the past the sweetest of them all. In the darkest hours of the night, when the castle was sleeping, the Fat Lady sees the ghosts walk again, sees Black and Potter come stumbling down the corridor, drunk and tousling, sees Potter and Lily Evans walking hand in hand, Black and Lupin exchanging complicit and intimate looks a few steps behind; she sees the red-haired Arthur Weasley and plump, pretty Molly Prewett, and the glamorous rebel Andromeda Black and her Muggle-born boyfriend Ted Tonks. She sees McGonagall marching down the corridor in her plaid dressing-gown, coming to break up another party, or stumbling out of the portrait hole, a miscreant dragging behind her. She remembers two years before, when those Weasleys set loose their enchanted fireworks. How she and Vi had giggled.
19. The Fat Lady had never liked that Umbridge woman. She was an upstart and had no idea about what Hogwarts was really about. The day Dumbledore’s office had refused Umbridge entrance, the Fat Lady had felt so proud of the fabric of the school that she’d had to have a little sit-down in that calm landscape three paintings along. Silly woman, thinking she could beat Dumbledore. Thinking she could beat Hogwarts.
20. The Fat Lady has sometimes wondered what her life would have been like had she been hung somewhere other than Hogwarts. But she has never wished to be elsewhere. She has loved being the guardian to the Gryffindor Common Room, loved watching the students come and go and grow up and live out their lives in front of her. Nowhere else could have given her so much satisfaction, and so much gossip, but also, so much sadness, such a perspective on human frailties and mortalities. And now the corridors are deserted, the classrooms empty, and the dust falls on the Fat Lady’s frame. She sneezes, and waits for life to return to Hogwarts.
Title: 20 Random Facts About the Fat Lady
Author: Me, nellie_darlin
Disclaimer: Not mine. Jo's.
Pairing/Characters: The Fat Lady, Remus/Sirius, James/Lily, Molly/Arthur, Harry/Ginny all mentioned once. Will I ever be able to write pure gen?
Rating: PG-13
Length: 1,253 words
Genre: genfic (just?)
Summary: 20 random facts about the Fat Lady...
Warnings: Watch the acrobatic feat of nellie_darlin jumping upon the bandwagon.
1. The Fat Lady has guarded the Gryffindor portrait hole for nearly a hundred years. It has been made bearable by her friend Violet from downstairs, and that painting of the Roman orgy just round the corner.
2. Her favourite password so far has been asphodel. She loves the way it sounds. Sirius Black used to drawl it, with that lopsided grin, and the Fat Lady would get all flustered. That was before he went evil, you see, when he was still the most handsome boy at Hogwarts.
3. She also liked polished wands. It was a bit naughty. It made the third years snigger, and the first years blush.
4. Hogwarts was never as exciting once Black and Potter left, at least until the Weasley twins arrived. It was nice not to be woken at all hours of the morning and bathed in a gust of whisky-smelling breath, or kept waiting while they tried to focus their drunken brains on remembering the password, but the Fat Lady missed their jokes, their pranks, their charming, wicked smiles.
5. When she heard that Potter was dead, betrayed by Black, she cried for a week. Peeves had laughed at her, and she had hidden. The only other time she hid was when Black returned to the castle, trying to kill Potter’s son.
6. If walls could talk... The Hogwarts pictures know many secrets. The Fat Lady has seen numberless good night kisses, even a good night grope here or there. Whispered conversations, arguments, reconciliations; all these have passed beneath the Fat Lady’s watchful eye, but never passed her lips. That is the Portrait’s Code. You never speak of what you see.
7. Except for that one time, when Black pushed that Lupin boy up against the wall and kissed him violently, before putting his hand down his trousers. That was far too scandalous (and, frankly, exciting) not to share with Violet.
8. Sometimes the Fat Lady feels old. Not old old, not in her body, but in her mind. The students come and go, grow up and love and lose and die, while she stays the same, stuck in a limbo, never growing older, but growing weary nonetheless.
9. Sometimes at night, the Fat Lady wonders what it is like to be human. To feel heat and cold and love and loss and death. To feel her bones stiffening as she aged, to see children, her own children, running and playing and growing up, to finally slip away into peaceful nothingness. Her life is a series of imitations - eating, drinking, sleeping - but there are some things that are never imitated, never experienced.
10. As a painting, one gets a sense of patterns, of the bigger picture. The Fat Lady has seen two Dark Lords rising, two Dark Lords vanquished, and she has seen the absences left by these risings and these vanquishings. And now a Dark Lord is rising again, and the absences are starting to appear, ghosts of laughter and kisses and anger more ephemeral than the “real” ghosts of Hogwarts, but just as haunting and just as sad.
11. Sometimes, joking with Violet and getting drunk on alcohol pilfered from other paintings is the only way the Fat Lady can forget about the absences, the ghosts of times - and students - long gone.
12. But there are happier repetitions, happier patterns. The patterns of love and friendships, children walking the corridors their parents walked twenty years before, another Potter and his red-haired girlfriend. These repetitions reassure the Fat Lady, tell her that love and friendship are as strong a pattern as the rise of darkness and death. They give her hope.
13. The death of Dumbledore has made everything much more uncertain. The halls and corridors are empty in the summer months, dust motes dancing in the silence, and the Fat Lady wonders if the silence will be broken again in September, or if the dust will continue to fall unchecked.
14. Blood had come to Hogwarts, and for the first time the Fat Lady saw. Before, she had only heard, heard whispers of events and great happenings, far away from the walls of Hogwarts. But blood had come to Hogwarts, and that pale, insignificant, strutting little boy had brought it. The paintings gathered, and watched, and judged.
15. She had never trusted him, she told Violet. She had never liked his face. Even as a boy, when he had walked quickly past her painting, head down, trying to be invisible. He was greasy and not to be trusted. And now he had killed the Headmaster. She had never trusted him, and now she was proved right.
16. Professor Lupin, however, was a different matter. He had always been polite to her, reserved and studious (but flushed and panting and debauched that time with Black...) It had been a lucky day for Hogwarts when he became DADA teacher. He had the same air of quiet authority as the Headmaster. It didn’t matter to the Fat Lady that he was a werewolf. She trusted him, and the day he left Hogwarts for the second time, she knew the school had lost a magnificent teacher, and would be worse off because of it.
17. It gave her no joy to see him at the school again, though, for that was the day that Hogwarts became a battlefield. The day the monster stalked the school, and brought blood to Hogwarts. The Fat Lady had felt the pain in her scars, those long gashes, expertly mended, caused by Sirius Black’s knife, the last monster to come to Hogwarts. But this monster was worse, so much worse, and the Fat Lady trembled in her frame.
18. An uncertain future makes the present sweeter, and the past the sweetest of them all. In the darkest hours of the night, when the castle was sleeping, the Fat Lady sees the ghosts walk again, sees Black and Potter come stumbling down the corridor, drunk and tousling, sees Potter and Lily Evans walking hand in hand, Black and Lupin exchanging complicit and intimate looks a few steps behind; she sees the red-haired Arthur Weasley and plump, pretty Molly Prewett, and the glamorous rebel Andromeda Black and her Muggle-born boyfriend Ted Tonks. She sees McGonagall marching down the corridor in her plaid dressing-gown, coming to break up another party, or stumbling out of the portrait hole, a miscreant dragging behind her. She remembers two years before, when those Weasleys set loose their enchanted fireworks. How she and Vi had giggled.
19. The Fat Lady had never liked that Umbridge woman. She was an upstart and had no idea about what Hogwarts was really about. The day Dumbledore’s office had refused Umbridge entrance, the Fat Lady had felt so proud of the fabric of the school that she’d had to have a little sit-down in that calm landscape three paintings along. Silly woman, thinking she could beat Dumbledore. Thinking she could beat Hogwarts.
20. The Fat Lady has sometimes wondered what her life would have been like had she been hung somewhere other than Hogwarts. But she has never wished to be elsewhere. She has loved being the guardian to the Gryffindor Common Room, loved watching the students come and go and grow up and live out their lives in front of her. Nowhere else could have given her so much satisfaction, and so much gossip, but also, so much sadness, such a perspective on human frailties and mortalities. And now the corridors are deserted, the classrooms empty, and the dust falls on the Fat Lady’s frame. She sneezes, and waits for life to return to Hogwarts.