Springfic: "Beyond the Frame" for chimbomba
Title: Beyond the Frame
Author: St_Aurafina
Recipient: chimbomba
Character(s): Sir Cadogan, Hermione Granger.
Rating: G
Wordcount: 1,870 words
Warnings (highlight to view): None.
Summary: After admitting the murderer Sirius Black to the Gryffindor dormitories, Sir Cadogan is determined to regain his honour the only way he knows how.
Author's Notes: Set during Prisoner of Azkaban.
Betas: Thank you to my trusty beta.
Beyond the Frame
The shame of failure very nearly broke Sir Cadogan. He had admitted a murderer to the sleeping place of children. No matter that none of the students were harmed; Sir Cadogan's honour was in tatters. In life, he had been a knight of some reputation: failure had been unknown to him. Now, in the aftermath of the password debacle, he was learning that death was perhaps a preferable consequence to failure. The expression of mild disappointment on the Headmaster's face cut deeper than any sword. He slunk wordless back to his own portrait, which hung in solitary ignominy on the seventh floor. Within his frame's narrow confines, he sat on a convenient tussock and let his pony graze, then he put down his visor and thought until his head ached. At the time Sir Cadogan had been painted, when a knight had been disgraced, the poor fool must petition the wounded party and beg for a penance to complete. Even these hundreds of years later, Sir Cadogan's failure disgraced himself and his order. There was nothing else for it: he must find a pathway to redemption. He flipped up his visor and whistled at his pony, Destrier, who was dozing in the painted sun. He would beg for a quest, and so regain his honour.
***
"You stupid little man! I don't want to give you a quest. I don't want to give you the time of day!" The Fat Lady was still pale, huddled nervously in her frame, looking from side to side to reassure herself that the two solid guard-trolls still sat beside her.
Sir Cadogan was not allowed to approach the door to the Gryffindor Common room, and had to address the Lady from an illustration of the 1812 Quidditch Cup team across the hall. It was uncomfortably crowded inside the frame - the beaters would keep poking at Destrier's flanks with their bats - but Sir Cadogan persevered, because perseverance was all that he had left. "Madam, I beseech you, for the sake of my honour..."
"Your honour?" The Fat Lady's voice screeched up several octaves and the trolls flinched. "I don't care about your honour. Thanks to you, Sirius Black could be lurking in any shadow, waiting to cut me to ribbons!" She noticed the trolls discreetly edging away from her portrait, and cleared her throat, lowering her voice and speaking more calmly. "Just go away, Sir Cadogan. I have enough on my plate right now without indulging your need for forgiveness."
Sir Cadogan flushed with shame under his visor. He had made yet another error of judgment - when had things become so very complicated? He made the most graceful bow he possibly could aboard his nervously dancing pony, then bolted from the Common room door as fast as he possibly could, while the Quidditch team hooted and catcalled behind him.
***
"Never mind, ducks." Violet, the ancient witch and friend of the Fat Lady, poured him a nip of mead. "Just let things settle down again, and it will all be well. Keep your head down, that's what I always say." They sat together on a tumbled stone in the oil-painting of Stonehenge at Sunset that hung beside the staircase to the North Tower.
Sir Cadogan toyed with his goblet. "It hardly seems the honourable thing." He realised that, once again, he had spoken without thinking when Violet pursed up her lips and sipped at her mead in silence. He adopted a more courtly tone, and bowed. "I beg your pardon, Madam Violet. It was not my intention to imply any dishonour on your part, simply that I am a man of action. Men of action do not hide away until the trouble has passed." He swept his arm wide to demonstrate, sloshing mead over the stone on which he sat, and all down his right leg. The swarm of ants on the side of the stone immediately changed course towards the sticky residue.
Vi sniffed, and poured herself a little more mead from the leather-wrapped bottle. "And that's done you a world of good in the past."
Sir Cadogan shifted uncomfortably. Diplomacy made his feet itch, though that could also be the ants exploring inside his armour. "Do you think, perhaps, I should seek a different course of action?"
"I just think that you're looking in the wrong place for a damsel in distress, that's all. It's not up to the people you've hurt to help you feel better."
The itching in his greaves was swiftly becoming unbearable. Sir Cadogan slid to the ground with a screech of steel on stone. "I must depart, Madam, though I will carry your wisdom with me. Surely somewhere inside these castle walls is a maiden in need of rescue. I go to seek her out and offer her my assistance."
He clanked towards his pony, and scrambled aboard, yanking the reins to get Destrier's head up from the grass. He bolted from the frame, clapping his legs against Destrier's sides in a thunderous tattoo.
Violet sighed and shook her head, pouring herself another nip of mead. "Good luck with that, ducks."
***
Several hours later, the search for a damsel in distress was not proving fruitful. In the Charms classroom, Sir Cadogan paused inside Professor Flitwick's prized etching of the Pyramid of Cheops, allowing the arid air to dry the water inside his armour before it rusted. The Mermaid in the Senior Prefects' bathroom had been most affectionate, but as far as he could see, needed no sort of rescue. Indeed, he nearly needed rescuing himself - he was very glad that nobody had witnessed her watery embrace, nor his desperate struggle to break free of it.
He upended a gauntlet onto the sand, and considered his mental catalogue of female portraiture. There was the miniature of Bathilda Bagshott that hung in Professor Binns' classroom, but Sir Cadogan doubted that the rather stern historian had experienced a moment of distress in her entire existence. It was almost certainly not worth the bother of squeezing into the tiny frame to inquire, as the entire portrait was no bigger than Destrier's hoof-print. He sighed and considered his next move.
Something crouching in the corner of the classroom let out a sudden snuffling gasp. Senses bristling, Sir Cadogan drew his sword and urged Destrier forward across the several paintings with which Professor Flitwick had decorated his classroom. Sir Cadogan snatched a lantern from the hands of a startled miller in a pastoral scene, and, fetlock deep in the oil-paint of the mill-pond, he let the borrowed light spill out of the frame into the shadows of the classroom. The huddled heap resolves itself into a student, who sat up with a startled gasp, all blotchy-faced under her wild hair. Sir Cadogan recognised a Gryffindor student, the bookish girl. He took in her tear-streaked face and reddened eyes, then made a small bow.
"Fair maiden, tell me only what beast I must slay to stay your tears. I would pledge myself to ease your distress."
Hermione Granger pushed her hair out of her eyes, and with a gesture relit the candle that had snuffed out hours ago, blinking at Sir Cadogan in the sudden light. "Oh, it's you." She peered blearily at the open book in front of her. "I'm not in any distress. I'm just over-tired, I think. I've just got so much to cover before tomorrow's classes."
Sir Cadogan nodded sagely. "Understandable. Education is a worrisome burden for the fragile minds of women. A little embroidery, perhaps some lessons at the dulcimer - I promise you, my dear, there would be no more tears late at night over heavy books."
Hermione narrowed her eyes at him. "Have you ever even heard of feminism?"
"I am not familiar with the term, no." Sir Cadogan didn't quite understand why, but the furious intensity of Miss Granger's gaze made him back his pony up.
***
"So," Sir Cadogan began slowly, "You don't want to be rescued, but you would gladly accept assistance in bringing about your own rescue?"
"That's right." Hermione leaned toward the wooden frame currently occupied by Sir Cadogan, who had been joined by the painting's original inhabitants, a miller and his wife and daughter. They all sat on a low stone wall beside the mill pond, passing a jug of ale around as twilight gathered in their picture. Hermione chewed her lip as she thought of the right words to explain how she felt. "I don't want to be hidden away for my own protection, while you do all the fighting. I'd much rather we all worked together towards a common goal."
Sir Cadogan furrowed his brows in thought. "But, surely war is no place for a woman?"
The miller shrugged. "I can't speak for war, but I'd want my Bess to hold her own should bandits come to the mill. She's a strong girl, give her a good cudgel, she could wallop a raider across the ear soon as look at 'im."
Bess nodded and flexed an arm. The painter had lovingly caught every powerful muscle that came from hoisting bags of flour.
Hermione sighed wistfully."I have to admit, if I had arms like that, I'd plaster Draco Malfoy's nose flat against his face."
An idea began to grow in Sir Cadogan's mind. "If you have a wish to study the art of fisticuffs, dear lady, I would be proud to oblige you."
Bess, the miller's daughter, rolled up her sleeves, and after a moment's hesitation, Hermione pushed out her chair and did the same.
Sir Cadogan cleared his throat and began. "The first principle in the art of fisticuffs holds true for all the martial arts - that you must watch, not the hands, but the eyes of your opponent, for it is there that their intent will be made clear."
The shadows in the painting grew longer as the lesson went on.
***
When the Malfoy boy bolted towards the dungeons, trailed by his thuggish friends, Sir Cadogan knew that his oath had been fulfilled. The boy's hand, pressed to his face, could not hide the spreading mark of deep red, and Sir Cadogan nodded appreciatively. On that pale skin it would make an impressive bruise. He waited by the doors as students traipsed back into the castle.
Hermione appeared not long after, followed by her friends who looked on her with awe. As they parted ways to go to their respective classes, Hermione grinned up at Sir Cadogan as she rubbed the knuckles of her right hand. There was a light in her eyes that filled Sir Cadogan with elation. He dropped to one knee, and bowed deeply to her as she passed. Then he stood, and with his head held high, summoned Destrier to his side and mounted. He had always considered honour a quality that, if lost, could be regained only by acts of glory. Perhaps instead, honour could be shared? And in the sharing, at least at Hogwarts, Sir Cadogan found that the more he shared, the more he had to go around.
Author: St_Aurafina
Recipient: chimbomba
Character(s): Sir Cadogan, Hermione Granger.
Rating: G
Wordcount: 1,870 words
Warnings (highlight to view): None.
Summary: After admitting the murderer Sirius Black to the Gryffindor dormitories, Sir Cadogan is determined to regain his honour the only way he knows how.
Author's Notes: Set during Prisoner of Azkaban.
Betas: Thank you to my trusty beta.
Beyond the Frame
The shame of failure very nearly broke Sir Cadogan. He had admitted a murderer to the sleeping place of children. No matter that none of the students were harmed; Sir Cadogan's honour was in tatters. In life, he had been a knight of some reputation: failure had been unknown to him. Now, in the aftermath of the password debacle, he was learning that death was perhaps a preferable consequence to failure. The expression of mild disappointment on the Headmaster's face cut deeper than any sword. He slunk wordless back to his own portrait, which hung in solitary ignominy on the seventh floor. Within his frame's narrow confines, he sat on a convenient tussock and let his pony graze, then he put down his visor and thought until his head ached. At the time Sir Cadogan had been painted, when a knight had been disgraced, the poor fool must petition the wounded party and beg for a penance to complete. Even these hundreds of years later, Sir Cadogan's failure disgraced himself and his order. There was nothing else for it: he must find a pathway to redemption. He flipped up his visor and whistled at his pony, Destrier, who was dozing in the painted sun. He would beg for a quest, and so regain his honour.
***
"You stupid little man! I don't want to give you a quest. I don't want to give you the time of day!" The Fat Lady was still pale, huddled nervously in her frame, looking from side to side to reassure herself that the two solid guard-trolls still sat beside her.
Sir Cadogan was not allowed to approach the door to the Gryffindor Common room, and had to address the Lady from an illustration of the 1812 Quidditch Cup team across the hall. It was uncomfortably crowded inside the frame - the beaters would keep poking at Destrier's flanks with their bats - but Sir Cadogan persevered, because perseverance was all that he had left. "Madam, I beseech you, for the sake of my honour..."
"Your honour?" The Fat Lady's voice screeched up several octaves and the trolls flinched. "I don't care about your honour. Thanks to you, Sirius Black could be lurking in any shadow, waiting to cut me to ribbons!" She noticed the trolls discreetly edging away from her portrait, and cleared her throat, lowering her voice and speaking more calmly. "Just go away, Sir Cadogan. I have enough on my plate right now without indulging your need for forgiveness."
Sir Cadogan flushed with shame under his visor. He had made yet another error of judgment - when had things become so very complicated? He made the most graceful bow he possibly could aboard his nervously dancing pony, then bolted from the Common room door as fast as he possibly could, while the Quidditch team hooted and catcalled behind him.
***
"Never mind, ducks." Violet, the ancient witch and friend of the Fat Lady, poured him a nip of mead. "Just let things settle down again, and it will all be well. Keep your head down, that's what I always say." They sat together on a tumbled stone in the oil-painting of Stonehenge at Sunset that hung beside the staircase to the North Tower.
Sir Cadogan toyed with his goblet. "It hardly seems the honourable thing." He realised that, once again, he had spoken without thinking when Violet pursed up her lips and sipped at her mead in silence. He adopted a more courtly tone, and bowed. "I beg your pardon, Madam Violet. It was not my intention to imply any dishonour on your part, simply that I am a man of action. Men of action do not hide away until the trouble has passed." He swept his arm wide to demonstrate, sloshing mead over the stone on which he sat, and all down his right leg. The swarm of ants on the side of the stone immediately changed course towards the sticky residue.
Vi sniffed, and poured herself a little more mead from the leather-wrapped bottle. "And that's done you a world of good in the past."
Sir Cadogan shifted uncomfortably. Diplomacy made his feet itch, though that could also be the ants exploring inside his armour. "Do you think, perhaps, I should seek a different course of action?"
"I just think that you're looking in the wrong place for a damsel in distress, that's all. It's not up to the people you've hurt to help you feel better."
The itching in his greaves was swiftly becoming unbearable. Sir Cadogan slid to the ground with a screech of steel on stone. "I must depart, Madam, though I will carry your wisdom with me. Surely somewhere inside these castle walls is a maiden in need of rescue. I go to seek her out and offer her my assistance."
He clanked towards his pony, and scrambled aboard, yanking the reins to get Destrier's head up from the grass. He bolted from the frame, clapping his legs against Destrier's sides in a thunderous tattoo.
Violet sighed and shook her head, pouring herself another nip of mead. "Good luck with that, ducks."
***
Several hours later, the search for a damsel in distress was not proving fruitful. In the Charms classroom, Sir Cadogan paused inside Professor Flitwick's prized etching of the Pyramid of Cheops, allowing the arid air to dry the water inside his armour before it rusted. The Mermaid in the Senior Prefects' bathroom had been most affectionate, but as far as he could see, needed no sort of rescue. Indeed, he nearly needed rescuing himself - he was very glad that nobody had witnessed her watery embrace, nor his desperate struggle to break free of it.
He upended a gauntlet onto the sand, and considered his mental catalogue of female portraiture. There was the miniature of Bathilda Bagshott that hung in Professor Binns' classroom, but Sir Cadogan doubted that the rather stern historian had experienced a moment of distress in her entire existence. It was almost certainly not worth the bother of squeezing into the tiny frame to inquire, as the entire portrait was no bigger than Destrier's hoof-print. He sighed and considered his next move.
Something crouching in the corner of the classroom let out a sudden snuffling gasp. Senses bristling, Sir Cadogan drew his sword and urged Destrier forward across the several paintings with which Professor Flitwick had decorated his classroom. Sir Cadogan snatched a lantern from the hands of a startled miller in a pastoral scene, and, fetlock deep in the oil-paint of the mill-pond, he let the borrowed light spill out of the frame into the shadows of the classroom. The huddled heap resolves itself into a student, who sat up with a startled gasp, all blotchy-faced under her wild hair. Sir Cadogan recognised a Gryffindor student, the bookish girl. He took in her tear-streaked face and reddened eyes, then made a small bow.
"Fair maiden, tell me only what beast I must slay to stay your tears. I would pledge myself to ease your distress."
Hermione Granger pushed her hair out of her eyes, and with a gesture relit the candle that had snuffed out hours ago, blinking at Sir Cadogan in the sudden light. "Oh, it's you." She peered blearily at the open book in front of her. "I'm not in any distress. I'm just over-tired, I think. I've just got so much to cover before tomorrow's classes."
Sir Cadogan nodded sagely. "Understandable. Education is a worrisome burden for the fragile minds of women. A little embroidery, perhaps some lessons at the dulcimer - I promise you, my dear, there would be no more tears late at night over heavy books."
Hermione narrowed her eyes at him. "Have you ever even heard of feminism?"
"I am not familiar with the term, no." Sir Cadogan didn't quite understand why, but the furious intensity of Miss Granger's gaze made him back his pony up.
***
"So," Sir Cadogan began slowly, "You don't want to be rescued, but you would gladly accept assistance in bringing about your own rescue?"
"That's right." Hermione leaned toward the wooden frame currently occupied by Sir Cadogan, who had been joined by the painting's original inhabitants, a miller and his wife and daughter. They all sat on a low stone wall beside the mill pond, passing a jug of ale around as twilight gathered in their picture. Hermione chewed her lip as she thought of the right words to explain how she felt. "I don't want to be hidden away for my own protection, while you do all the fighting. I'd much rather we all worked together towards a common goal."
Sir Cadogan furrowed his brows in thought. "But, surely war is no place for a woman?"
The miller shrugged. "I can't speak for war, but I'd want my Bess to hold her own should bandits come to the mill. She's a strong girl, give her a good cudgel, she could wallop a raider across the ear soon as look at 'im."
Bess nodded and flexed an arm. The painter had lovingly caught every powerful muscle that came from hoisting bags of flour.
Hermione sighed wistfully."I have to admit, if I had arms like that, I'd plaster Draco Malfoy's nose flat against his face."
An idea began to grow in Sir Cadogan's mind. "If you have a wish to study the art of fisticuffs, dear lady, I would be proud to oblige you."
Bess, the miller's daughter, rolled up her sleeves, and after a moment's hesitation, Hermione pushed out her chair and did the same.
Sir Cadogan cleared his throat and began. "The first principle in the art of fisticuffs holds true for all the martial arts - that you must watch, not the hands, but the eyes of your opponent, for it is there that their intent will be made clear."
The shadows in the painting grew longer as the lesson went on.
***
When the Malfoy boy bolted towards the dungeons, trailed by his thuggish friends, Sir Cadogan knew that his oath had been fulfilled. The boy's hand, pressed to his face, could not hide the spreading mark of deep red, and Sir Cadogan nodded appreciatively. On that pale skin it would make an impressive bruise. He waited by the doors as students traipsed back into the castle.
Hermione appeared not long after, followed by her friends who looked on her with awe. As they parted ways to go to their respective classes, Hermione grinned up at Sir Cadogan as she rubbed the knuckles of her right hand. There was a light in her eyes that filled Sir Cadogan with elation. He dropped to one knee, and bowed deeply to her as she passed. Then he stood, and with his head held high, summoned Destrier to his side and mounted. He had always considered honour a quality that, if lost, could be regained only by acts of glory. Perhaps instead, honour could be shared? And in the sharing, at least at Hogwarts, Sir Cadogan found that the more he shared, the more he had to go around.