Puzzle-pieces ((Open for friends))

[dana]

Dana had to walk back to school. A fact that didn’t make her overly happy as she had to take quite much care to avoid splashing dirt onto her new pants. Wearing light coloured pants at this time of year wasn’t very smart move. But the light grey pants fit nicely and Dana had liked them. Besides they were the only pants Dana had had at the apartment that went well with her white sweater and she had wanted to wear the V-necked sweater that was rather softly hugging her body. Smart-casual style was it called? It might have been, but Dana wasn’t sure. She didn’t usually dress herself according to different labels, she just wore what she liked. And what looked good on her. Can’t forget that. Clothes had to bring out the best of her build and look pretty by themselves as well or Dana didn’t wear them. She rather enjoyed wearing clothes that made statement on their own. The only thing where she draw the line was wearing too open shoes. Dana disliked her toes so she usually opted to wearing shoes that covered her toes from view. Clothes could tell so much about you really. They told one if you were shy or not, whether you preferred quality or quantity, whether you even had taste in the first place! You could make personal statement with what you wore – or didn’t wear – and you could tell or hide so much about you with your clothes. It was amazing how much power clothes had over a human being.

Being so absorbed in her thoughts about clothes Dana reached Hogwarts without even noticing how he walked the distance from Hogsmeade where she had apparated too. Dana smiled as she looked at the Hogwarts castle standing before her once again. She had felt suffocated in it, almost harassed by the cold stone walls and floors so she had escaped to settle her mind about the Death Eater attack and the Imperio in peace. It had been so easy for the Death Eater to bend Dana to do what he had wanted with just one spell. Learning that she wasn’t as strong and smart and powerful nor willfully as she had foolishly thought earlier had been something she had to learn to deal with. Yet now it felt good to be back here. It had been nice to take a vacation away at warm Spain but it was also nice to be back at school. Hogwarts did have a way of becoming a second home for you.

Dana smiled and changed her direction a little, heading towards the Hogwarts lake. She was a city-girl through and through, Dana would be the first one to admit that. Yet the Hogwarts lake draw her to it. Dana always came out here when she had a problem she had to solve. Maybe at first it was because she had a bigger chance finding Kris here at the lake who could most always help her. But as time moved on she had started to come out here on her own as well, just to think or relax after a long day. It worked just as surely as a cup of hot coffee. Dana didn’t even think about looking for comfort from chocolate, despite it being often considered the best cure for anything. Dana disagreed and disliked chocolate. She could eat it, but only in small amounts. But the Hogwarts lake she could admire for ages. Even if the water was a bit murky and muddy from time to time Dana mentally added as she glanced at the water before her feet as she stopped at lake shore. And smiled looking over the water towards where the Giant Squib was raising a tentacle out of the water and Dana smiled, touching the smooth cover of her new white willow wand. She wasn’t perhaps the same person who had fled Hogwarts but Dana liked to think that she had changed a little bit towards the better and now she was back and ready to pick up all her duties and obligations once again. Even if it wouldn’t be long until the school-year would end for this time. But she was back and better than ever.

[lacey]

She had to draw something extra-ordinary and quickly if she wanted to be accepted with a scholarship to the Magical Arts Academy. But Lacey just couldn’t decide what to draw. She had already thrown aside hundreds of sketches she did as none of them seemed to be quite right. She didn’t even want to think about it because maybe some good idea would come to her when she didn’t think about the competition so hard. But she couldn’t just click out the thoughts and not think about it either. It seemed as if she could think about nothing besides the painting she had to prepare. She just had to do it! Lacey would never forgive herself is she didn’t get into the Academy. Lacey stepped to the window and looked out, leaning herself a little bit out of the window with her hands resting on the window-sill. Looking upwards Lacey begged to whatever god or goddess or even Lady Luck if she happened to be listening to send her inspiration. Where was her muse now when she needed her more than anything? She could really use some guidance from the heavens right now. Her guardian angel to show her the path to where she would have to go to get the inspiration for the painting she wanted to complete so desperately.

Lacey’s eyes snapped open at the thought as she stared out. Guardian angels. But why not? It would be an idea. To draw something magical, yet so very common for wizarding people and show it at a completely new angle. Not the small round cherubs you usually saw on greeting cards but Lacey had never seen angels but she needed a model. So what would be? Fairies or elves? Lacey had never seen any in real life so she wouldn’t really know where to go to get a model. Besides she had discovered during studying at Hogwarts that not all fairies and pixies were pretty like in the fairy-tales. But what else? Maybe the mermaids? A mermaid resting on a rock might be nice too. Lacey’s eyes fell to the Hogwarts lake and the lone figure in white standing on the edge of it. And she gasped. Maybe her muse had heard her prayer because now Lacey knew what she could do. Angels, but weren’t some angels thrown out of heaven? Why not an angel who had been discarded and who was now seeking forgiveness, who was experiencing the pain of her loss? An angel transforming into a human. The girl who stood there with her hands wrapped around herself as she gazed over the look seemed to have just the right kind of sad aura about her. Fervently pulling on a pair of old jeans and pushing her feet into old sneakers Lacey ran out of the room not even stopping for a moment to tie her shoe-laces but grabbing her drawing things along. Hopefully she would get to the lake-shore before the strange girl left.

Never before had Lacey been more grateful for her habit of going jogging every morning than now that she reached the lake and the girl was still there. Lacey bowed over trying to catch her breath even as she kept looking at the girl from the corner of her eyes. Dark hair, a high forehead and a firmly but prettily shaped face. And something in her eyes as she looked at Lacey forcing Lacey to stand up straight again as she fruitlessly tried to smooth her blouse to try and look better in the eyes of the girl. “Can I draw you?” Lacey burst out before clapping her hand over her mouth and closing her eyes. She hadn’t meant to blurt it out like this! Now the girl would think she was crazy! “I mean… You were… Ah. I’m Lacey Langres. Hufflepuff fourth year. And I have a chance to compete for a scholarship to the Magical Arts Academy next year, but I need paintings for that. And I was wondering if you would perhaps agree to be my model, even though I can’t pay you anything for it. I was just looking for inspiration ad I saw you standing here and it hit me. An angel banished from heaven and now understanding what she had done. Her dress torn and her wings fallen from her back, looking a bit disheveled as she sits in the rock in the lake and cries.” Lacey finished her speech feeling flushed from both her sprint here and her long rattling speech as she breathlessly waited for the girls reply.

[dana]

It was good to be back and let the wind coming from the lake smooth her face and cool her skin Dana decided as she wrapped her arms around her waist and closed her eyes. Tilting her head slightly back and upwards Dana just stood there sensing everything around her that she could for a few moments. She had found peace in herself once again and she had accepted that peace. Life could, would and should go on. And Dana was going to give her best to enjoy it because her grandparents hadn’t grown her to be a quitter! She would survive and come out of this whole ordeal stronger and better than she had been ever before. So it came as a bit of a surprise as a girl raced to her and then blurted out that she wanted to draw Dana. Dana arched her eye-brows having to swallow a snappy response about stalkers and obsession but deciding against it as the girl seemed embarrased enough.

But the proposition in itself was interesting. Dana blinked her eyes curiously. Be a model for a banished angel? Dana had never considered herself to be much of an angel. Besides weren’t angels supposed to be blond and perfect with blue eyes and whatever else? Something that veelas looked like on their good days? “I suppose I could be a model, but I’m not very pretty when I cry and I’m not much of an angel either,” Dana replied slowly letting the younger girl’s words through her mind once again, “I’m Dana Coran. Ravenclaw and a 6th year. Magical Arts Academy? That’s impressive, they only take the very-very best and not even all of those. So sure, I guess you could draw me but I don’t have a white ragged dress and you have taken your things along so I can see that you want to draw now which I don’t mind, but I don’t have wings, I don’t have clothes and are you completely sure I’m the best model you could come up with? I’ve never done this sort of thing before I must admit. Even though the idea is very tempting not to mention flattering.”

“Are you a witch or aren’t you?” came the reply from behind Dana instead of coming from Lacey. Whirling around on her heel Dana could only gasp in shock as she looked down at her clothes that had now been transfigured into a ragged white dress with straps going over her shoulders. Cleo merely arched an eye-brow in response to Dana’s glance as the younger girl calmly stashed her wand away once again while Kris stood wordlessly by her shoulder. “Well, what are you waiting for? Get over to the lake before the light vanishes. Do you have any special plans for her, Lacey? I heard you two. I’m Cleo by the way. This is Kris.” Cleo added to Lacey as Kris merely took a step further and seated himself calmly on a rock, reaching out his legs and crossing them at the ankles as he put his walking cane down on the ground. Walking by him Dana reached out her hand touching his cheek gently with her finger-tips passing on the quiet message that everything between them was as good as ever before he stepped into the lake and waded over to the rock raising a bit above the surface she had been pointed to. Sitting on the rock Dana glanced back to the shore raising her voice a little to make sure it carried nicely, even if the light breeze had died down: “Right so, do I just sit here?”

Lacey smiled at Cleo gratefully before looking at Dana and chewing her lower lip nervuously for a moment as she tried to imagine the picture. The shadow of Hogwarts castle falling on the lake would definitely have to be there too as it could symbolize the gates now closed forever for her outcast angel as Cleo had so nicely put it. “Sit sideways with your face turned left. Show a bit more of your back rather than the front. Bent your left leg at the knee and lean your chin against the side on this side of the knee. Clasp your fingers on right under the bent knee and tilt your head to the side a bit, the chin my way. Right leg can be as it is, laying freely on the stone with the foot in the water. Close your eyes, I want the effect of eye-lashes against the cheeks,” Lacey instructed forgetting her previous shyness as her mental image was starting to turn into reality, “I’d like your hair be a bit more messed up though.” “I can do that, don’t move, Dana,” Cleo commented from her position as she raised her wand again messing up Dana’s hair so that instead of the smooth hair Dana’s hair was wild, tangled, with strands falling as they wished. With the one more flick of her wand Cleo adjusted the remains of a dress Dana was now wearing. A tear down the middle of the back as the cloth inched a little bit higher on her left thigh and the strap from her left shoulder that was towards the shore fell down. “The graders for the scholarship are most likely old men so tease a little bit. You aren’t revealing anything too much after all. Now cry.”

“You aren’t the one who has to sit here. And I can’t cry on command. Mind singing something heart-wrenching, Kris?” Dana called over but didn’t move and both Cleo and Lacey glanced over at the Slytherin who Lacey had completely forgotten until now. “You know the song, Cleo,” came the slow reply from him after a moment as Kris transfigured a tree to a guitar for himself and took the first accord Starting to sing quietly. The first verse was sang by Kris alone, the chorus together, the second verse by Cleo and the chorus together once again and a lone tear did slowly trickle down Dana’s left cheek that Cleo charmed to freeze midway. Lacey started drawing getting lost in her own art as she drew Dan as the outcast angel while Kris and Cleo sang in the background.

“She put him out like the burnin' end of a midnight cigarette
She broke his heart he spent his whole life tryin' to forget
We watched him drink his pain away a little at a time
But he never could get drunk enough to get her off his mind
Until the night

He put that bottle to his head and pulled the trigger
And finally drank away her memory
Life is short but this time it was bigger
Than the strength he had to get up off his knees
We found him with his face down in the pillow
With a note that said I'll love her till I die
And when we buried him beneath the willow
The angels sang a whiskey lullaby


The rumors flew but nobody knew how much she blamed herself
For years and years she tried to hide the whiskey on her breath
She finally drank her pain away a little at a time
But she never could get drunk enough to get him off her mind
Until the night

She put that bottle to her head and pulled the trigger
And finally drank away his memory
Life is short but this time it was bigger
Than the strength she had to get up off her knees
We found her with her face down in the pillow
Clinging to his picture for dear life
We laid her next to him beneath the willow
While the angels sang a whiskey lullaby.”

((The song is Whiskey lullaby by Brad Paisley and I have no claim over it.))