Act III - Explanations and Expletives
Disclaimer: Not my characters, and no money being made, etc., etc. The chapter title is accurate; those with tender reading ears shouldn't read the alphabetized translations provided at the end.
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After a few hours of alone time by the lake, Hermione went back to the Divination classroom for some answers to questions that didn't involve Ron or romance. She was disappointed to find the room empty save for Romeo, who was hard at work behind the easel. Hermione was in no mood to deal with another idiot with sex on the brain.
"Signorina, what a pleasant surprise," he said, when he heard her close the door. "We were afraid that you might not return."
"I'm not scared off so easily," Hermione replied, warily. "Where's Master Rondino and Headmistress McGonagall?"
"Your Headmistress, I know not where she is. Master Rondino is taking a rest…the potion, he is made tired by it…only for a few hours at a time he can paint."
"I see," Hermione said, as she approached the young artist. She was surprised to find Romeo painting a still life, and even more surprised when she smelled the objects of his attention.
"Bangers and mash?"
"Si, signorina," he said with a sigh, as he looked at the plate in front of him. "I am painting what passes for English cuisine. How the British people didn't die from boredom at the dinner table centuries ago I am at a lost to explain."
Hermione looked at the canvas to discover that he had already completed magical images of several plates piled high with food.
"Why, in Merlin's name, are you painting plate after plate of potatoes and sausage?"
"Because, signorina," Romeo patiently explained, "the taste buds of your English echoes are just as easily satisfied as those found within the mouths of their originals."
"You know," Hermione said, "this is exactly why I'm here right now. I've so many questions…Why, for example, do portraits need to eat?"
Romeo shifted his gaze from the canvas to Hermione, squinted his eyes, and sighed.
"Signorina Hermione, I am disappointed that your beauty is not matched by your intelligence…not that we will not enjoy each other's company in bed, but…"
"What?" Hermione exclaimed. She whipped out her wand and pointed it slightly south of Romeo's belt. Romeo reacted by pointing back with what was in hand, but found himself rather outmatched with only a paintbrush for his defense.
"To presume," Hermione seethed, "that I am both dim-witted and eager to be bedded by you is a rather precarious opinion… Che faccia di stronzo…Che coglione! Shall I demonstrate just how smart I am by transfiguring your cazzone into calzone?"
"How charmingly vulgar, signorina," Romeo replied with a smirk. "I think, however, you will find that my cazzone…he will taste better."
Hermione fumed. "Oh…Che cacasenno…to think that I am a scopate facile…if you weren't somehow needed by the Master…tell me Romeo, would you like to be a born-again castrato?"
"So many questions, signorina, perhaps if I answer your first you would put your wand down?"
Hermione thought for a moment then slowly lowered her wand.
"Grazie, signorina." Romeo said. "I must say, your fighting words, they are most impressive."
"Well, I've had years of practice," Hermione replied, thinking back a few hours.
"And your use of Italian slang? You have learned from a native?"
"No," Hermione said, "I learned because of a native…idiot named Zabini…thought he'd have it easier insulting me in his native tongue."
"So you learned the language of love….from a lover, perhaps?"
"No, I learned how to say `Vaffanculo!' from Google, a few summers back."
"Ah…I see," Romeo replied, with some newfound respect for the English witch in front of him.
"Now you were saying…about portraits and food?"
"Ah, yes, it is quite simple, really. Portraits, they must eat for the same reason you eat."
"You mean," Hermione reasoned, "that the portraits need to eat because they are hungry?
"Si."
"They need magical energy?"
"Si, si."
"Just as real people need to eat for the energy to walk and talk and breathe?"
"Yes again, but don't, signorina, forget making love…it is also something that requires energy."
"No doubt you'd never forget that fact, Romeo," Hermione sneered. "So you are saying that the magical energy bound within your paints isn't enough to keep a portrait acting, well, magical?"
"Oh, signorina, you kill me with words!" Romeo exclaimed with mock sincerity. "But the sad truth is that what you say is true. Even the magical paints that Master Rondino and I prepare are not strong enough to animate an echo for more than a few hundred years."
Hermione thought for a moment.
"Well, that explains why so many magical portraits seem to have the subject sitting at a dinner table, I guess," she reasoned. "So while you are here painting the Headmistress's portrait you are also replenishing the magical energy of the portraits already completed?"
"Si, signorina," replied Romeo, "except that it is the Master who paints the portraits, while it is the lowly apprentice who must paint the toads in their holes."
"Part of the price you pay to learn from the Master, no?" Hermione asked.
"Si," Romeo said. "It is what I always must do once Master Rondino has finished his work…so not to waste the paints that we have prepared."
"Do you need to use that potion Master Rondino swallowed to see magical auras?"
"No, signorina," he replied, "Certainly not. There is no potion in the world that would detect anything magical about your bangers and mash."
"But the images of bangers within you paintings…they are magical because of the potion paints that you are using?"
"Si."
"So why," Hermione asked, "are you painting a separate picture of nothing but food? Why not simply paint more food on each portrait?"
"Signorina," Romeo exclaimed, "my canvas…it is a restaurant that does not do home delivery. The portraits, they can walk to the food, no?"
"Ah," Hermione said, "so that explains all of the paintings of food down in the kitchens…. does this also mean that the portraits sleep not to amuse those viewing them, but to conserve their energy?"
"Si, Signorina Hermione…the echoes…they are more like real people than most anyone imagines."
Hermione chewed on that for a moment, while Romeo silently returned to his work.
"Romeo," Hermione finally said, "your magical paints…they aren't entirely magical energy…just like the food that you and I eat isn't completely used by our bodies."
Romeo chuckled. "I'm so sorry, signorina, for underestimating your intelligence….the answer to your question is yes."
"But I've never seen a magical painting of a loo."
"Is that something you would like hanging on your living room wall?" Romeo asked rhetorically. "Is that something that you would like to see being used on your living room wall? They are there…they are just hidden behind the walls of the rooms that you do see."
"I do see," Hermione smiled, in the unique way she always did when she deciphered a difficult puzzle. "You paint in layers….in three dimensions. Just as you must paint your portraits in three dimensions…even if the portrait is facing you and you don't see their back, it still has to be there.
"Si, signorina," Romeo said, with a grin returning to his face. "We must paint all of an echo…dalla cioccie alla culo."
Hermione answered Romeo's coarse chide not with a retort, but with a blushing admission. "Which brings me, I guess, to the more immediate question I came to find an answer for."
"Ah, yes," Romeo said. "Of course. Why do we insist that the subjects of our magical portraits pose in the nude?"
"Well, yes."
Romeo turned his attention back towards his canvas before he answered.
"Because, signorina," he replied with a grin, "Master Rondino is a vecchio sporcaccione, and there is nothing I find more sexually arousing than the sight of a hundred-year-old witch in all of her naked glory."
"That's no doubt true," Hermione said, "but it is also not the correct answer to my question."
Romeo nodded his head as he looked at his subject, looked back at the canvas, and dropped his paintbrush onto the easel's shelf. He then lifted the painting from the easel and propped it up against one side of the potion laboratory's bench.
"Signorina, my still-life is completed. Would you like to eat the original?"
"Erm, no thanks," Hermione said, not willing to give Romeo the satisfaction of knowing that her stomach was growling (and that bangers and mash were always comfort foods for her).
"As you wish," Romeo stated. He then shouted "Elfa-di-casa!"
A house-elf that Hermione recognized from her visits to Hogwarts's kitchens appeared as Romeo grabbed a scroll from his work desk.
"Yes, Apprentice Romeo?"
Romeo sneered a bit. "Take that plate away from here…there must be a troll somewhere around here that needs feeding."
Hermione furrowed her eyebrows in anger, but said nothing as the house-elf snapped her fingers and the plate disappeared.
"So now I need…let me see." He sighed as he traced a finger down a list on his unrolled parchment. "Shepherd's pie and Yorkshire pudding...and try to make it smell a little less strong then that other cacca you gave me."
The house-elf fidgeted a bit, as if she would have liked to have done nothing more then bathe Romeo in flaming custard, but did as he ordered her to do. The elf then turned towards Hermione.
"Harry Potter's `Mione, you's is, aren't you?"
"Erm…yes…I'm sorry, I think we've met before but I don't remember your name."
"Harry Potter's `Mione wants to know Dumkie's name? Thank you, thank you, thank you…Harry Potter's Dobby was right about Harry Potter's `Mione…she is nice, and not crazy like the other house-elves say."
"Erm…thank you, Dumkie….I guess," Hermione said with some embarrassment.
"Dumkie saw Harry Potter in the kitchens a little while ago," the elf said, as she looked towards Romeo. "Should Dumkie go find Harry Potter to keep Harry Potter's `Mione safe?"
"No, thank you," Hermione replied politely. "I'm perfectly safe….I'll find him myself in a little while."
Dumkie looked at Romeo again, then turned back to Hermione and noted that she was holding her wand.
"Smart witch, Harry Potter's `Mione is," she said, before she disappeared.
Romeo, who had been holding his breath for the previous few seconds, broke out into laughter as soon as the house-elf vanished.
"So you are Harry Potter's `Mione?" he asked. "How charming…and how exciting it is to think that you are an owned woman."
"Watch it Romeo," Hermione said. "And take care to remember that while your wand is flaccidly hidden away that mine is still just a newt's hair away from issuing a hex."
"Oh, signorina," Romeo shot back, "there is nothing flaccid about my wand when you act excited like that."
"Well beat that bad boy back down, Romeo," Hermione threatened, "before I Reducto your belino."
"I am truly impressed, signorina….you know that there are at least 140 more ways to say penis in Italian, no?" How many more do you know…or better…how many have you known?"
"My wand is going to get to know yours just long enough for me to say Evanesco, if you keep talking like that, Romeo...not that anyone would likely notice the difference."
"Yes, well…" Romeo replied, "you have given me such a charming segueway for telling you why I shall soon see all of the woman behind the wand."
Hermione wasn't too angry to be embarrassed, just as Romeo had calculated.
"Well, go on," she stammered out as a reply.
"There are many good reasons," Romeo began, "But for now I will tell you the two most important…When the Master paints a portrait, he must see the magical aura, and he must see all of it."
"Yes, well that's pretty common knowledge, isn't it….so why would clothes get in the way of my magical aura?"
"Because, signorina, a witch or wizard's aura…it comes out from the body…from every part of the body. And the way it comes out of the body…well…it comes out however it can. With each breath, each bead of sweat, each…how do you say it…each peta?"
"Are you suggesting that my farts are magical?"
"I'm sure, signorina," he replied, "that your petas are not only magical, but musical."
"That's disgusting."
"No, that's magic….it is inside us, and it is how we make magic….well, there is a much better way for you and me to make magic, but…."
"So that's part of the reason," Hermione said as he simply ignored the latest come-on, "why muggles can say the incantations without anything happening….the words have to be spoken with magical breath?"
"Si, signorina, but as you no doubt know, magical breath is not enough…there must be intent as well."
"And intent is just…just another way of saying that a witch is focusing her aura on a subject."
"Exactly, signorina…it is why wandless magic is so difficult…one must have a very strong and focussed aura not to need the magic that comes out when you exhale."
"So…back to the clothes…you might think with your pants, but I don't breathe with my knickers."
"Ah…signorina, you may not breathe through them…though I certainly would like to…but tell me this. Will your knickers be just as dry when I slip them off you at night as when you put them on in the morning?"
"Like you'll ever know," Hermione replied, a bit too nervously for her liking. "So…so there's magic in sweat…and…other bodily fluids…and clothes capture some of it, and so it dampens this magical aura that the Master needs to paint magical portraits…this seems farfetched. So it's impossible to paint magical portraits of people wearing clothes?"
"Of course not, signorina," Romeo replied. "The Master could paint a portrait with the subject wearing clothes…and depending on the strength of the subject's aura that echo might even think and talk. The amount of magic lost by sweat in the clothes…it is, after all, very small. It is large enough, however, to keep even Master Rondino from making a masterpiece….a portrait that is dynamically linked with its subject."
"Hmmph…" Hermione muttered, as she thought for a moment. "You make it sound just weird enough to be magically plausible….and you've certainly given me enough rope to hang you if what you said isn't backed up by what your Master no doubt has told my Headmistress."
"Signorina," Romeo proclaimed, "You dishonor me. I am not a cacasentenze."
"Well you are a perv, and that's almost as bad," Hermione replied. "So Romeo," she continued, "you said that there was a second reason?"
"As yes, signorina," Romeo replied. "The second reason…when a portrait is fully animated, it knows what the subject knew at the time of the painting…unless, of course, it is a dynamic link."
"Yes, go on," Hermione said.
"Well, signorina, most people would say that this knowledge, these memories…they are mostly stored in the
brain, no?"
"Yes, of course."
"But think for a moment, signorina, and tell me if it is possible that there are things we know and memories that we have collected that are linked not just with the brain, but with other parts of our body."
"What do you mean…like love residing not in the head, but in the heart?"
`Well, yes, but it goes beyond just that. Again, these are subtle differences, but imagine that there is a portrait of, say, a farmer whose hands have been hardened over years of toil in the field. Do you think that the captured echo might be a bit lacking, somehow, if the artist failed to paint the calluses on his hands?"
"Well, perhaps, but…"
"Perhaps a subject closer to your heart, then…what would the echo of `Mione's Harry Potter be like if the Master forgot to paint a certain scar?"
"So you're saying that you need to include every part of a subject in the portrait because we are more than what is stored in our heads?"
"Exactly, signorina."
Hermione thought about that for a moment, while Romeo mixed a few new colors for his next still-life.
"And so, signorina," he said, "I have enjoyed your company very, very much, but these paints, they will soon harden, and I have a few more plates of swill to check off on my menu."
"Yes, I understand," Hermione replied. "Well, perhaps it is time I go find my Harry Potter….I'll see you tomorrow, I guess."
"Si, Signorina Hermione," Romeo replied with a grin. "I will indeed see you tomorrow."
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A/N: Okay, so now that the Fat Lady and Romeo have shown that they have the same thing on their minds it's time to find out what Harry and Hermione are thinking, no? Hmmmmmmm…. Oh, and here's the web site I used to brush up on the 140 slang terms for, well, you know….
belino [penis]
cacca [shit]
cacasentenze [a person that pulls words from his ass (literally: someone that shits out sentences)]
cazzone [penis]
Che cacasenno! [smart-ass: someone that defecates wisdom]
Che coglione! [What a testicle! (what an idiot, only coarser…in U.S, the equivalent is What a dickhead!)]
Che faccia di stronzo [What a shithead! Literally "What a face of feces"]
dalla cioccie alla culo. [from tits to ass].
Peta [fart]
scopate facile [easy lay]
`Vaffanculo!' [insult: "Up your ass!]
vecchio sporcaccione [dirty old man]
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