Chapter 104 - 104- the life of a magical portrait

Elizabeth's POV

Elizabeth Spriggs, or as she was known to most of the rude children in school, the fat lady, was trying to sleep.

Yes, she sleeps! Most people would be surprised that a moving lecture sleeps at all, as usually a moving picture doesn't need much, not considered a living being, yet she was different, spacial.

She, along with a couple of other paintings in hogwarts were given life, and the ability to not just move like other paintings, but to listen to instructions and talk.

Of course, that came with a price.

Not only they were given jobs, they also become the headmaster's spies.

Not that most of them cared, given the chance to be more than a painting on a wall, moving from one painting of them to another, having the knowledge of the person who charmed you gave you as you look in a muted colorful world.

Yes, most of the paintings jumped on the opportunity to become a semi-living thing and interact with the real world and didn't regret a thing.

Not her, sure, as soon as she has consciousness she didn't want to give it away, agreeing to become the doorway to the Gryffindor common room, and for a while, she didn't regret it.

Yet, as she seen children come in and out from behind her painting, listened to their life, talking and complaining about their studies, their friends and their love, while only calling her the fat lady and giving her the weekly password, she became sullen.

She wanted to meet new groups of people, like those muggles who according to one child she overheard has an actor who looks just like her - Elizabeth Spriggs, from whom she took her name.

She wanted to meat those weird animals who some children kept complaining about, the slimy snakes or the badgers.

Yet, since the moment she got consciousness she couldn't even go to different paintings unless it was the middle of the night, as she needs to keep open and close the thrice dammed painting.

Instead, she took to sleep at night as it became one of her only pleasures, along with advising love-struck children.

Yet, as much as she tried, sleep kept avoiding her as someone kept trying to open her painting.

"We had a deal!" She said with a bite in her voice as she unwillingly opened her eyes, thinking it is the pair of redheaded twins, who two years ago, after she had enough with them walking her up like that five times a month, cut a deal she wouldn't repeat report their late night adventures to the headmaster as long as they return before midnight.

Yet as she opened her eyes she instead saw a haggled looking man, with black, unkept hair and beard and a glossy look in his eyes as if he is still half asleep.

"I don't know who you are," she said angrily, in a body tone she kept hearing in the last seven years from a different redheaded. "but unless you tell me the password you can't come in."

As soon as she started talking, the glossy look in the man's eyes went away and instead came a feral look which made her pale as much as a painting could as she recognized the man from a photo the deputy headmistress showed her- Sirius Black.

"Y-Y-You can't come in!" She tried to say with as much Gryffindor's courage as she could master, yet seeing the man pulling a knife from his pocket made her lose the little she had as she fled and screamed "A painting is being murdered! A painting is being murdered!"

Seeing the only home she ever knew being ripped apart before the man ran away didn't help.

She didn't know if she would ever return to be the doorway guard of the Gryffindor common-room, or even if she wanted to, but before that she was sure she would need 'Portrait counseling' by a trained psychotherapists.

Marcus's POV

The shouts of "A painting is being murdered!" woke everyone in the tower up, making Marcus and his roommates put some clothes on as they ran downstairs to see almost the entire Gryffindor house shoving each other trying to reach the exit of the common room.

Yet, as Marcus tried to walk forward it seemed as if the students were the Red Sea and him the ancient Egyptian wizard Moses, as they moved aside.

Reaching to the exit, a deep sharp intake of air could be heard from his mouth.

Where there was once the backside of the fat lady's portrait, now was a hole in the fabric that seemed to be made from a knife.

Hearing the cries outside, Marcus, now joined by his roommates and Hermione, ran outside to see the fat lady in a near painting, crying and yelling it was Sirius Black who did this, who attacked her after she was unwilling to let him in.

Sirius Black! Just the name made Marcus's blood boil, it was the man who betrayed his parents, the man who killed his godfather, the man who broke out of jail just to kill him, and the man who made him unable to go to Hogsmeade.

Marcus now knew, as the teachers were rounding the students in the grand hall to sleep together as they searched for the escaped criminal, that just like previous years, he can't trust the a.d.u.l.ts to stop the bad guy, he need to do it himself.