Closed Everything is Awesome

[Hadley Orel]

Everything was not awesome. Not even close. After the complete debacle of getting her wand at Ollivanders and asking so many questions that Hadley had to assume she was going to be put on some sort of shopping blacklist, it had come to her attention that no matter how many questions she asked, she was very likely never going to be fully prepared for the absolute nonsense she was seeing before her. Moving. Portraits. Now moving pictures was one thing, as a muggleborn that wasn't completely new to her. Movies and tv shows and gifs were common place of course and so that wasn't such a shock. Though having an actual moving, printed, photograph would likely give her a slight fright, it really wasn't going to cause her too much trouble. What was causing her some trouble, though, and she wasn't sure she was ever going to really understand, was the actual, honest to god, oil painting (she checked) that was currently smiling and waving at her. SMILING AND WAVING. She was completely gobsmacked. Blinking at it, rubbing her eyes to make sure she wasn't just seeing things, poking it with her finger (thats how she knew it was oil paint) only for the woman in the picture to shoo her away and tsk at her for being rude. Apparently it was some big boundary to randomly touch a portrait without it's permission and she'd certainly never thought about what the implications of that might be. She stepped back a little, staring at it as it continued to berate her about her ill manners and lower class breeding. Well, Hadley had no idea what any of that meant and she'd certainly never been so insulted or offended by a piece of art before, but boy, was this portrait opinionated. The Portrait lady was insulting everything from her hair, the way her uniform sat slightly dishevelled and down to the dirt scuff on her black shoes. If Hadley hadn't been in such disbelief about all of this, she might have even been incredibly upset. But as it was, she was finding it incredibly difficult to compute what was happening, because to be honest, you could be told about this for years, actually seeing it before you was completely different.​

 

[Nikola Raven]

Nikola had given himself the task of trying to see every portrait in the castle, as his uncle had suggested that it would be a way to orientate himself in the large, new space. So far, he was quite right. It was easier to remember where he had been, and where he needed to go when there was a portrait to guide his way. He had walked the third floor previously, as he wanted to make sure he knew where the Hospital Wing was located, and was on his way to the Trophy Room when he heard a rather heated exchange between another first year and one of the portraits. He knew her face, though had forgotten her name despite hearing it during their sorting, but he recognised her as a fellow Ravenclaw. Not only that, it was rather clear that the portrait in question was berating her. he didn't have anything against portraits - after all, his late mother was now immortalised as one - but he certainly took issue with them acting like authority figures. They were, after all, a representation of a person, not the essence, remains or copy of a person. He walked up to the other first year, ignoring the portrait entirely.​

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"Hi, my name's Nikola," he said, feeling like he should introduce himself before jumping into the situation with a well tested solution to any and all portrait problems. "My uncle's a paint charmer. He taught me how to handle situations like this," he explained, before grabbing the portrait and angling it so that it remained on its hook, but the woman within the painting was unceremoniously thrown off the image, behind the frame and into wherever paintings went when they were not visible. He turned back to the girl, smiling mischievously. "Someone will come by and fix her back up. Eventually."​

 

[Hadley Orel]

Hadley had to admit, this was not the kind of situation she would have expected in her first week in a new place, a magical place, a school to learn magic things. To be honest, she hadn't had a lot of expectations, though the ones she did have were pretty major, she didn't quite know how to handle this berating portrait. She stood stock still, staring at it when someone walked by and she looked at him as he went ahead and introduced himself. She was still fighting the stunned affects she was under as he introduced himself and she nodded once to him as he stepped by her and approached the portrait. What he did next couldn't possibly have been what she'd seen because that meant that she had discovered not only could portraits in this world move but they could also completely leave their environment and Hadley wasn't sure what to do with that information. She blinked as the boy moved back towards her and shook her head, trying to stop looking like a stunned mullet. "Oh my gosh!" She said, breathing in and wringing her hands through her hair as she came back to her senses. "Wow, thank you! I didn't know what to do, I've never seen a moving painting before and definitely not one that was yelling a screaming, I mean moving photos is one thing we have those in the muggle world too, but not an oil painting!" She said, looking back at the now empty portrait containing nothing but an orange chair and a door that was slightly ajar. This was insane! "How, how, could that be possible?" She asked, turning to look at the boy, Nikola and wanting to know everything that there was to know about this painting and how it was able to move because that was frankly amazing, and she needed to know how it worked! "Where did she go? Is there like a hole in there somewhere? Is this a common occurrence, do portraits usually just hang around berating people?" This was all so crazy. "How do they move, how do they talk?" She really just wanted to know what was happening in front of her and this boy seemed to have all of the answers. She walked over to the now empty portrait and lifted is slightly she she could peer behind it, but it was absolutely a painting, there was no hidden depths behind and no mirrors or anything like that. "Wow!"​

 

[Nikola Raven]

It was quite a lot to take in, as it seemed that the girl just tended to... rattle off questions without needing to breathe. It sounded like he was dealing with a muggle born, or at least someone that had basically no ties to their magical heritage, which effectively made them a muggle born in his eyes, anyway. Her numerous questions made it hard for him to actually address any of them. He stepped away as she seemed to look behind the portrait for something, and once she seemed to stay in place for longer than five seconds, and breathed, he decided to try and answer her questions. He wasn't an expert, but he knew an expert, and had lived with his uncle for over a month before coming here, so as far as the first year was concerned, he was the closest thing to an expert either of them had right now.​

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"I don't know where they go when they're not in their pictures, but they can move between pictures," he explained. "So, maybe she's rolled into another portrait somewhere, I don't know. There's no hole, though. As for the berating, I think you caused that," he added, seeing as he didn't imagine that the school would have a portrait hanging up that habitually berated students.he then remembered her first question. "Oh, they're painted, and then the paint charmer enchants the painting, and the the portrait can move and interact a little, and people usually try to have their portraits act like them."​

 

[Hadley Orel]

Hadley really didn't know what to say, this was nuts! She truly could not believe that portraits could move. It was insane that magic could feign life where there was none. She found herself wondering idly if it was anything like robotics, or if robotics had anything to do with it at all since she thought that would make a bit more sense. This was almost as exciting as when she'd gotten her wand and done her first bit of magic. She was sure everyone felt the same way about finally finding their perfect match, though it had taken forever and she was sure there were easier methods than the ones currently employed, like maybe there was a mathematical formula to all of this, right? That would make sense! She turned to listen to Nikola as he explained a little of what he knew. She was sure everyone knew all about the portraits and that she was just ignorant because she came from a muggle family, it didn't occur to her that not everyone knew everything about different branches of magic. After all, she didn't know everything about muggle things and she certainly couldn't explain the inner workings of a car, or anything really. She was still learning all of it, she just knew cars drove and got people from point A to point B, or that was what they were supposed to do anyway. "Move between pictures?" She asked, looking around at a couple of the other portraits who she now saw did not appear to match their environment. "Can all paintings move, or do they to be done a certain way?" She asked. He'd explained that they could be charmed by magic of something but these portraits were all apparently done in a similar style, could something more modernist or cubic also be charmed to be lifelike? "Could a Dali work be charmed to be like this do you think? Would it have to be recreated or would they be able to use the original?" Nikola was the only person she'd met so far that seemed qualified to answer her burning portrait questions. Though she was curious why anyone would want a painting that looked or sounded like them... was that not a little weird?​

 

[Nikola Raven]

Coming from a magical household, Nikola had never had to think this much about how a portrait functioned in his entire life. He had watched his uncle work and, quite frankly, it was pretty boring, and portraits themselves were little more than a facsimile of a person, in his mind. He gave them as much notice as a muggle would a video they had seen a thousand times before.​

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"A portrait has to be charmed a certain way," he replied, not quite understanding the specifics of her question. "So, not every painting moves, just ones that are charmed. I don't really know who Dali is, but usually the painting will be charmed by the painter. I don't think it has to be like that, though. All I know is that my uncle always paints everything he charms. I'd have to ask him."​

 

[Hadley Orel]

Hadley couldn't keep the stars out of her eyes as this boy, absolute genius that he clearly was, just explained, basically, everything to her. Magic was a complete mystery and having met Nikola had to be some fateful sign or something, because usually people shunned her for her questions, even at home. She'd asked a substitute teacher once to explain the different levels in a rock and she hadn't been able to do it. It had greatly disappointed Hadley because she liked rocks. She could not find enough information on the internet though because most of it was way above her. So knowing that Nikola seemed to be the font of knowledge she'd always hoped to find, she just knew they were going to be the most amazing of friends because he seemed happy to answer her questions. She gave Nikola her undivided attention, eager to hear what he had to say, because honestly it was all just so very exciting. How could people not want to know everything they could about this stuff? Amazing! "So, if you were the painter, do you also have to be the charmer, is it all sort of done together or do you sort of take one step at a time?" She nodded as he spoke more. "Dali is a muggle painter... I assume he's a muggle, I mean I don't know if that kind of thing transcends borders or whatever, but he did like... I don't know how much you know about art, but his paintings we very different to these, they were surrealist works, like melting clocks or people that weren't built right," and it was now that Hadley realised why she missed her phone so much. She could have whipped it out and just done a quick google search to show him. Wizards really missed out. "I have so many questions for your Uncle!"​