If it weren't for Hermione actively looking into books about magical creatures being so glaringly out of character, Charlie wouldn't have even remembered the whole ordeal.
Of course, that had very little to do with him. Charlie had zero desire to show even a shred of curiosity about the event. He absolutely refused to let himself get sucked into that particular whirlpool. He was busy enough as it was.
"You read books about paintings? Is that a hobby of yours?" Hermione asked, looking rather astonished at the heavy tome in Charlie's arms.
"You could say that," Charlie nodded.
Arriving at the library entrance, Madam Pince checked out their books. Charlie casually drew his wand and pointed it at the volume on the counter.
"Wingardium Leviosa."
"Your charm work is really good," Hermione admitted, looking surprised before her face twisted into a knot of anxiety. "But... well..."
"School rules?" Charlie shot her a sideways glance. "Even Madam Pince didn't bat an eye."
He raised his wand in his right hand, pinched the hovering book with his left, and strolled toward the heavy oak doors.
Hermione hugged Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them to her chest and hurried after him. She mumbled softly, "Am I being annoying again? Am I caring too much about..."
"About what?" Charlie asked, keeping his pace light and breezy. "House points? Or the almighty school rules?"
"Exactly," Hermione nodded miserably.
"There is nothing wrong with caring. Is it wrong to stick to what is right?" Charlie shrugged.
"But..."
"But you only need to hold yourself to those standards, Hermione. Trying to enforce what is 'right' all the time is exhausting. You can't keep using a commanding tone to demand others fall in line."
Charlie turned his head, flashing a lazy, unbothered smile. "For a slacker like me, sticking to the straight and narrow around the clock is impossible. I much prefer bending the rules. Though you don't need to walk on eggshells around me. We are friends. I won't throw a tantrum just because you nag me a little."
Hermione seemed stuck in her ways. She was deeply concerned about whether her views on rules and points were fundamentally flawed.
She looked baffled and a little indignant. "But I just care about them! I care about the house! I did what you said. I tried not to be so blunt and rude. I just offered advice. But it still has absolutely no effect!"
"Sounds like you are referring to a specific incident. Let me guess, the flying class fiasco yesterday afternoon?"
Charlie hadn't seen Hermione in the Great Hall yesterday afternoon. Clearly, the little Gryffindor had run off somewhere to sulk.
"Yes, but also no," Hermione huffed, her cheeks puffing out. "Why are you so dismissive of house points?"
"Isn't it about our collective honor?" she added, throwing her hands up.
Charlie gave her a weird look before his tone shifted to genuine bewilderment. "Honestly, Hermione, you might be the odd one out here. Aside from you and Snape, nobody actually cares about house points. House points, the House Cup... sure, it is technically an honor, but deep down, it just doesn't matter that much to anyone anymore."
Between kids just wanting to be kids and a certain greasy-haired Potions Master completely ruining the integrity of the system, the House Cup had lost its shine. People liked the idea of winning, but nobody was going to break their backs over it.
He didn't bother explaining all that aloud. Besides, 'collective honor' was a joke when you barely knew the people you were supposed to be bleeding for. In your first year, successfully keeping your dorm room tidy with three other roommates was a massive victory, let alone guarding the house's honor.
"I still don't get it," Hermione admitted.
"You will when you find something more important than house points. For you, those things might be rare right now. For everyone else, things more important than an hourglass full of gems are everywhere."
Hermione's face remained scrunched up in misery.
Charlie let out a long, theatrical sigh. "It is perfectly normal not to get it. You just can't force your worldview onto others. Look, I don't understand your mindset either. I couldn't care less about points. Does a shiny cup matter more than a good meal and a solid nap? No! But I can understand why you act the way you do, and that is enough."
He paused, letting the words sink in. "Or do you think that isn't enough? Do you want me to lecture you? Force you to admit points are garbage and drag you into being a rule-breaking delinquent with me? Would you like that?"
Hermione violently shook her head.
"Exactly. So, just flip the roles, and you will understand."
Hermione nodded slowly, the gears turning in her head. "Alright. You actually make sense. Maybe I should learn a thing or two from you."
"Remember to pay your tuition," Charlie quipped.
"Of course! What is the tuition fee?"
Charlie mentally facepalmed. She had agreed way too fast. He had picked up the habit of asking for 'fees' from his days doing street magic in his past life. Tossing out cheeky lines usually netted him a few extra quid from amused tourists.
"I haven't decided yet. We will put it on your tab," Charlie replied smoothly.
"Deal," Hermione beamed, her eyes crinkling happily. "I understand what you mean now. Thank you, Charlie. This really helped."
They reached a fork in the corridor. Hermione needed to take the stairs up toward Gryffindor Tower.
"Bye!" the little witch waved, practically skipping away.
"See ya," Charlie nodded, heading toward his own cozy, rule-free sanctuary.
***
The trek back to the common room was exhausting, but after a quick wash, Charlie settled at his desk with the borrowed tome. It was far too early for sleep. He popped a piece of Moonbeam Chocolate into his mouth and cracked the book open.
This book was absolutely fascinating, filled with the most bizarre and wonderful magical oddities.
For instance, he read about a painting of a gramophone. On the right side of the physical picture frame, there was a narrow slot. If you slid a real vinyl record into the slot, the painted gramophone would actually 'read' the record and play the music out loud into the room.
The book also detailed the strict hierarchy of magical portraits.
The lowest tier was equivalent to printed photographs. They maintained fixed postures, didn't speak, and offered zero interaction with the outside world. Their movement was limited to swaying or blinking. This basic animation was usually achieved by spraying developing potion over the canvas. The Daily Prophet was full of these.
Mid-tier portraits were much more lively. The artist imbued them with a specific life, or as Charlie preferred to call it, a 'mission'.
If an artist painted a farmer harvesting wheat, the painted figure would gradually absorb the concept of being a farmer. It would understand its eternal duty was to cut the painted wheat. If the artist bothered to give the farmer a name and a backstory while painting, the portrait would possess those traits. If not, it was just a mindless wheat-cutting machine.
These mid-level paintings could perform basic portrait-hopping, wandering into neighboring frames to gossip. In all likelihood, the painted farmer's favorite pastime was ditching his field to visit a tavern painting for a glass of wheat juice. The catch was that the physical canvases had to be relatively close together.
For example, the Girl with a Pearl Earring in Charlie's dorm couldn't go visiting, simply because there were no other magical portraits in the room to visit.
So, was there a way to break these geographic limits?
Absolutely. Welcome to the highest tier of magical portraits.
These were typically formal portraits of specific wizards and witches. They weren't bound by a simple mission. Instead, they were given a template, and their entire existence revolved around learning and mimicking that template.
When painting a high-level portrait, the artist infused the subject's voice, mannerisms, and physical essence into the canvas. Once completed, the portrait would actively study its real-life counterpart. The living witch or wizard would teach it their catchphrases, their memories, and their secrets, molding the painted figure into a near-perfect copy of their consciousness.
The most crucial rule of high-level portraits was the Rule of Uniqueness.
There could only be one dominant consciousness per person. These portraits could bypass geographic boundaries entirely.
If Charlie had two high-level portraits, and they somehow met, the one with the higher 'completion rate' (the more accurate copy) would instantly assimilate the lesser one. If Portrait A was an 80 percent match and Portrait B was a 60 percent match, Portrait A would devour Portrait B's consciousness.
Portrait B would then become a mere vessel, an empty avatar. Without the main consciousness occupying it, it would downgrade to a low-tier painting, just swaying mindlessly, stripped even of the ability to portrait-hop.
However, if Charlie hung Portrait A in Hogwarts and Portrait B in the Ministry of Magic, the dominant consciousness in Portrait A could ignore all distance and instantly possess Portrait B. It was essentially a magical remote-control avatar system.
That was the gist of it, anyway. Charlie had a massive headache trying to decipher it. A strong vocabulary was painfully necessary for reading English magical texts. The author loved using obscure, made-up academic jargon, forcing Charlie to guess the context or rely on his past-life knowledge of Dumbledore's portrait network in the Headmaster's office.
The author also included a cautionary tale.
A century ago, a filthy rich French merchant decided to create the ultimate surveillance network. He commissioned multiple high-level portraits of himself, planning to hang one in his home and one in every single shop and branch office he owned. He wanted to monitor his entire empire from his armchair.
It worked... until he added the fifth avatar.
The moment the fifth portrait was linked, the entire network crashed spectacularly. The master portrait and all five avatars were instantly reduced to drooling idiots. They lost the ability to speak, instead bobbing their heads in unison and babbling utter nonsense.
"Note to self: Do not attempt to build a massive portrait hive-mind," Charlie muttered, closing the book with a sigh.
It was 3:00 AM. Sleep was definitely required.
***
Over the next two days, Charlie poured every ounce of his free time into the heavy book.
Finally, on Sunday afternoon, he struck gold.
He found an entry about a painting famously known as The York Coin Thief. The painting depicted a scruffy little thief who, according to the author, had successfully stolen a solid gold brick from a mountain troll.
The painted thief always wore a fanny pack around his waist. This pack, enchanted with an Undetectable Extension Charm, was his greatest accomplice.
The backstory was where things got wild.
The creator of this portrait was an extremely arrogant 17th-century Irish burglar. He disguised himself as a starving street artist to gain access to the mansions of wealthy nobles. Once inside, under the guise of painting their portraits, he robbed them blind.
Whenever he was caught and searched, the guards found nothing. He carried no loot, only his paints, his brushes, and his personal painting of the little thief.
The secret lay entirely within the painting itself.
If someone physically reached into the painted thief's fanny pack, they would find the burglar's entire stash! His own pockets were empty, but the painted pockets were overflowing.
The paint used for the fanny pack section of the canvas was mixed with a very specific blend of silver and gold powder. Silver powder possessed incredible magical conductivity, allowing that specific area of the canvas to be enchanted using basic alchemy. Essentially, it allowed magic to be physically engraved onto the object.
An Undetectable Extension Charm had been cast directly onto that patch of paint, and the gold powder amplified the spell's stability. The painted pouch was no larger than a fist, but reach inside, and you had the storage capacity of a large steamer trunk.
The absolute best part? The storage space could be moved.
Since the pouch was worn by the painted thief, the space moved wherever the character moved within the frame. It could even be hidden!
That was why the arrogant Irish burglar was never caught with the goods. When an Irish magical aristocrat finally detained him and the Aurors confiscated the painting, the painted thief simply grabbed his fanny pack and hid it behind his back, completely out of sight.
Aurors couldn't exactly dive into the canvas to strip-search a drawing!
Ultimately, it was the robbed aristocrat who solved the case... or rather, the aristocrat's portrait did.
Furious at the theft, the noble's magical portrait charged through the estate's interconnected frames, invaded the burglar's canvas, and beat the living daylights out of the painted thief. During the painted brawl, the fanny pack was torn open, and the secret of the Undetectable Extension Charm was laid bare for the world to see.
Silver and gold powder mixture... casting an Undetectable Extension Charm directly onto paint... a portable, hideable pocket dimension controlled by a loyal painted servant...
Charlie inhaled sharply.
His scalp was literally itching.
A brilliant, blinding flash of inspiration was just millimeters away from exploding in his mind.