The Sitting
Title: The Sitting
Team Name: Spy for the Death Eaters
Word Count: 5 x 100
Rating: PG (just to be on safe side)
Challenge: "When I'm Old and Grey" but would also fit "Portrait"
Characters: Hermione, Severus
A/N: take it as read that the idea(s) and characters I have nicked are attributable to their original authors.
They are in a long-forgotten room, deep in the dungeons under Hogwarts. There are no windows. Dim light is cast from flickering torches in sconces on the rough walls. Opposite the door, propped against the wall, is a life-size portrait of a wizard, set in a heavy frame.
Hermione is seated in a high-backed wooden chair, set before the painting. She is gazing intently at it. After a long moment she twists round to look up at the man standing behind her, his hands resting on the back of the chair. She is puzzled. “Severus,” she questions “what is this?”
***
He speaks in a low voice, quickly, trying to justify. “Hermione, in age I am more than 20 years your senior. This is hard enough. But constant proximity to evil has taken my youth from me, bit by bit, as surely as the years themselves have done. I have lain awake, night after night, wondering how you will see me when I am old and grey, and you are still young and lovely. Wondering how it will be when I am an old man and you no longer want me. I cannot bear to think of losing you this way.”
***
Hermione looks back at the picture, and now becomes aware that it is not, as she had first thought, lifeless. It is a living portrait, it is the type of portrait that should only ever be made after death, and it is a mirror of the man behind her. She leans forward, her face buried in her hands. She is cold and hollow in the knowledge of what he has done; of the dark magic he has used in her name. For as long as this portrait survives, it will age for him, and his living body will be immortal.
***
“Severus, Severus, you fool. What happens when I’m old and grey? When I die? My portrait will hold my memories and wisdom for others to share in perpetuity. But what of this likeness of yours? It will have no knowledge of the life we will have shared. Its appearance may age, but its thoughts and memories are frozen in time, an image of your thoughts and memories on the day it was painted. It can never be my companion as we are in life. You have separated us for all time as surely as if you had left me now.”
***
“No Hermione, you don’t understand, I could never do that, I could never be without you. You must be with me always”.
She rises. She cannot rise. She is bound seated in place to the straight backed chair. Now he turns the chair to face a blank and unframed canvas set upon on the easel positioned by the door. A hooded figure is mixing tints on a palette, matching the shade of her eyes, her skin, her lips, her hair. Hermione is sitting for her final portrait, the portrait that will ensure she, too, will never be old and grey.
Team Name: Spy for the Death Eaters
Word Count: 5 x 100
Rating: PG (just to be on safe side)
Challenge: "When I'm Old and Grey" but would also fit "Portrait"
Characters: Hermione, Severus
A/N: take it as read that the idea(s) and characters I have nicked are attributable to their original authors.
They are in a long-forgotten room, deep in the dungeons under Hogwarts. There are no windows. Dim light is cast from flickering torches in sconces on the rough walls. Opposite the door, propped against the wall, is a life-size portrait of a wizard, set in a heavy frame.
Hermione is seated in a high-backed wooden chair, set before the painting. She is gazing intently at it. After a long moment she twists round to look up at the man standing behind her, his hands resting on the back of the chair. She is puzzled. “Severus,” she questions “what is this?”
***
He speaks in a low voice, quickly, trying to justify. “Hermione, in age I am more than 20 years your senior. This is hard enough. But constant proximity to evil has taken my youth from me, bit by bit, as surely as the years themselves have done. I have lain awake, night after night, wondering how you will see me when I am old and grey, and you are still young and lovely. Wondering how it will be when I am an old man and you no longer want me. I cannot bear to think of losing you this way.”
***
Hermione looks back at the picture, and now becomes aware that it is not, as she had first thought, lifeless. It is a living portrait, it is the type of portrait that should only ever be made after death, and it is a mirror of the man behind her. She leans forward, her face buried in her hands. She is cold and hollow in the knowledge of what he has done; of the dark magic he has used in her name. For as long as this portrait survives, it will age for him, and his living body will be immortal.
***
“Severus, Severus, you fool. What happens when I’m old and grey? When I die? My portrait will hold my memories and wisdom for others to share in perpetuity. But what of this likeness of yours? It will have no knowledge of the life we will have shared. Its appearance may age, but its thoughts and memories are frozen in time, an image of your thoughts and memories on the day it was painted. It can never be my companion as we are in life. You have separated us for all time as surely as if you had left me now.”
***
“No Hermione, you don’t understand, I could never do that, I could never be without you. You must be with me always”.
She rises. She cannot rise. She is bound seated in place to the straight backed chair. Now he turns the chair to face a blank and unframed canvas set upon on the easel positioned by the door. A hooded figure is mixing tints on a palette, matching the shade of her eyes, her skin, her lips, her hair. Hermione is sitting for her final portrait, the portrait that will ensure she, too, will never be old and grey.