Iconic
Challenge Eighteen: March Madness Redux
Title: Iconic
Author: moonblossom55
Wizard/Witch: Wayne Hopkins/Cho Chang
Rating/Warnings: G/PG
Genre: Romance/Drama
Word count: Exactly 500
Prompt: 19. bouquet of irises
Summary: When Cho visits an artist with Cedric’s mother, she learns portraits are rather flat compared to the real thing.
Cho and Mrs Diggory sat in the waiting room of Hopkins Gallery. Marietta had told Cho the young Wayne Hopkins was already being compared to wizarding portraitists of legend like Rosetti, the artist who’d painted Dorian Gray.
Restless, Cho rose to examine a small painting of a bouquet of irises. A strong perfume emanated from the canvas. Entranced, she laid a finger on the petal of one bloom, and instead of the rough texture of oily pigment, she felt a velvety softness. Moving to the next painting, depicting a bowl of fruit, she touched a strawberry, then brought her finger to her lips, and the sweet flavour of the berry burst upon her tongue.
Then the door opened, and Hopkins stood still at the threshold, paling. “Miss Chang?”
“How?” She gestured at the paintings.
“A paintbrush imbued with the Vivas Iconus Charm.”
“Surely not just…”
“That, Miss Chang, and talent.”
Mrs Diggory sprang to her feet and ran to them. “You did Headmaster Snape-even though he’d never sat for a portrait-at Harry Potter’s commission. You can’t tell me you can’t do Cedric. Here.” Mrs Diggory dug into her handbag, bringing out a matchbox-sized item she enlarged into a photo album. “Surely-”
“M’am, I knew Cedric at Hogwarts-”
“Then you’ll-”
“No.”
“But-”
He took Mrs Diggory’s hands. “Snape, other portraits in the offices of Ministers and Headmasters, may have an imprint of memory and personality that can be invaluable but not soul. Cedric can never grow in wisdom, marry, give you grandchildren…” He pressed her hands together at her sobs. “He’ll be stuck, and so will you. You can make wizarding portraits of living people, too, you know.” He licked his lips, flung an intense look back at Cho. “I did that once. It makes for a good icon, but a poor companion. Like the legendary Mirror of Erised, it’s a poor substitute for living.”
Together they brought the sobbing woman into Wayne’s office. They talked for hours, about Cedric, about the portraits Wayne had created, and for the first time in five years, Cho saw something ease in Mrs Diggory’s face, and a tightness in Cho eased with it. Something nagged at her though every time Wayne’s gaze darted towards her face: A memory of a quiet boy with curly sandy hair and hazel eyes, who always seemed to be seen from the corner of her eye, but never face to face at Hogwarts.
She followed Mrs Diggory out, then claimed to have forgotten her jumper and told her she’d meet up with her later.
She found Wayne seated at his desk, his head in his hands. “Yes, it was you.”
“I would never have asked. It would have been… impertinent to assume… Why didn’t you…?”
“Ask you out?” His laugh was bitter. “How could I compete? With the Boy-Who-Lived and the Boy-Who-Didn’t?”
“I suppose then that I’ll have to ask you out.”
She wished she could capture his joyous smile and frame it.
Proof-reader: Rose Mary