WHO: Owen Dearborn and Gerald Avery WHAT: Figure modeling for Death Eaters is a bad life choice WHEN: Before this WHERE: The Avery Estate - Advanced Painting Class WARNINGS: Owen is in a literal glass case of emotion, claustrophobia, ABC's Hannibal Murder Scene Art
In theory, it made perfect sense -- Owen could provide a distraction, and other members of the Order would be able to use the opportunity to set whatever bugs or traps they desired in the Avery estate while Gerald Avery was busy teaching his art class to the rich and purist. There had been safer plans in the past -- ones that involved him at least starting out more clothed around Death Eaters -- but this was a good opportunity. And he had emergency escape plans. And back-up emergency escape plans in case the first six didn't pan out.
And Avery hadn't been joking when he'd mentioned that the pay was good.
"I brought my portfolio in case you need that," Owen noted, gesturing with the leather folder but ready to drop it back into his bag if Avery didn't grab for it immediately. Most of the photographs were clearly candids or photoshoots from his and Zef's engagement and wedding, but there were a few in other mediums from the actual experience he did have from doing some figure modeling at WADA back when he was still in Auror training and needed extra money. "Am I getting some sort of a tour of the facilities or is it straight to class?"
Gerald carefully considered the statuesque Hitwizard -- yes, he’d been truthful when he told Dearborn he concerned his behavior to be prancing. But he also found the ex-vigilante Dearborn’s progeny to be interesting. And further, he had to have some of his father in him. The Lestrange brothers had, at least, ensured this.
Accepting his portfolio, and quickly leafing through the photos, he turned crisply upon his heel and walked toward the classroom. “As I’m sure you know, basic figure drawing asks an artist to sketch a living subject in a sterile environment. They simply consider the figure against the page. Given that these are my advanced students, you will have props.” An array of animal bones, a spray of florals and a tight coffin-like glass box set up on its end waited for Owen.
“So you see, we must make it interesting for them.”
“I make everything interesting,” Owen replied with a confident laugh as he shoved his portfolio back into his bag. He took in the rest of the room first, his eyes scanning over the students’ easels and tables full of supplies. (Were the easels made out of bones? Were those human??)
He started pulling off his shirt over his head before asking “everything’s off for this, right?” after the fact.
That’s when his scan of the room finally made it to the weirdly gothic set design, his face paling and amused grin faltering. This had become him literally walking right into one of his worst nightmares. “Okay…” Owen pondered the scene, deciding to take initiative in a way that would make this tolerable. “So we want an “alas, poor Yorick,” sort of thing, yeah?” he asked, standing amongst the dark florals and holding out one of the animal skulls like he was about to deliver a Shakespearean monologue, decidedly ignoring the glass box.
Twelve sets of eyes appeared from behind their easels and as Owen mounted the platform, Gerald crossed his arms. “ … ah, no. The students have been studying figures, indeed. But my advanced class will sketch and paint a figure through glass.” He paused, lips pursed with mirth. “As that Muggle Holy book says … we see through a glass darkly.”
Gesturing to Owen’s trousers with a brush, he shook his head. “Kit off, model. My students need to see the depth of light and shadow. Into the coffin you go. For as Beckett says, we are born astride a grave.”
Owen didn't have a problem with taking his pants off in front of the class. He had never been shy, and this also wasn't his first rodeo. Both legs were pulled through his trousers, and then out of his boxers; it was making them move toward the box that was the problem. (The issue only doubled when Avery decided it would be cute to call it a coffin.)
He cast a glance toward the students behind their easels, hoping that Jeremy had managed to disguise himself as one of them. Just in case. Owen figured that Avery wouldn't try anything fishy with the students still in the room, but he wanted to be sure he had a back-up plan for getting out after. "Any… pose in particular you're looking for?" Owen asked, finally shuffling toward the box in the buff, his knees starting to feel wobbly below him as he stepped in. "Shouldn't astride mean that I'm straddling it, if you're getting your Beckett on?" If the painting students needed to see how light looked through glass, maybe a nice window pane would work better???
“I’m quite open to your interpretation.” Gerald, half enraptured by Owen’s discomfort, attempted to focus on his students but found himself drawn back to the uncomfortable situation. He wondered if this fear of tight spaces - for clearly this wasn’t modesty rearing her boring head - came from a missing and presumed dead father.
“Just get settled.”
He took a breath and settled his hand on his wand, levitating palettes to each student. “Observe the play of light and shadow. The concept of chiaroscuro is to be your focus.”
Just get settled. Yes, because getting cozy inside a freaking glass coffin was super settling. Owen stepped back into it, his shoulders pressing up against the sides, with only a few inches to spare over his head. His fingers drummed nervously against the edges as he tried to get his bearings about him (though maybe barings would be more appropriate, all things considered). He needed to calm down; he needed to not be giving a Death Eater a first hand account into his anxieties.
He shifted slightly into a stance that felt caught all the right angles better, despite having a difficult time moving at all. No expense spared. "It's a bit, uh, snug," Owen said, fully inside but still holding the lid open. "How about an expansion spell or something on it before we get started?"
Gerald made to consider for a moment, even pointing his wand briefly toward Owen. He then shrugged.
“ — ah, I’m afraid not. You see, Aster has already begun her masterpiece.” The young girl in a starched white dress smiled at her instructor and nodded.
“I’m going to call it Wizardus Interruptus: A Study in Power.” Gerald clapped his hands with delight.
“You see! The process has begun!”
"Oh! Great title! That's great!" Owen replied, the excitement in his voice only due to how his nerves were pitching his tone up a few steps. "Thanks Aster." This was fine. Everything was fine. And that was that. He didn't want to move again if people had already started; despite his discomfort, Owen also knew what job he'd been hired for and didn't want to mess that up.
He also wanted to avoid the mini-heart attack that he'd had upon seeing Avery with his wand pointed at him, and realizing that yes, that had been his own stupid fault for suggesting it. Maybe this would be for the best. They'd done something like this on Top Model once, and all those ladies were fine. This was fine. "Happy to be a part of the process."
“He looks like Snow White!” came one chirping student named Honoria. The young lady, sleeves pushed up to her elbows and smudged with oil pastels, moved her easel closer. “A really sweaty Gothic Snow White.”
Time passed and Gerald, walking through the easels, offered the young ladies and gentlemen advice and even bent over to guide pastel or paint. He kept one eye peeled on the model and as the session began to wrap, he found himself toward the front of the classroom. Searching for Owen’s eyes with the glass between them, his lips tipped forward in a smirk.
“It fits you well, my glass abode,” he carefully intoned, and then turned back to the students. With a snap of his fingers, they began to pick up their easels and clean the studio. As he turned back to Owen, the glass lid fell shut and he was encased inside.
“Oops.”
As the class had gone on, Owen had been able to deal without much of a fuss -- this would be a really funny story to tell Zef the next time that they Skyped. Maybe she'd be in to the sweaty gothic Snow White thing, considering their occasional Twilight roleplay. And this was giving Aberforth the chance to do his thing with casing the Avery estate elsewhere. It wasn't as bad if Owen thought about this as a part of a much more complicated mission. It was sort of like a heist. A really really strange heist.
Even as his thoughts drifted, he'd kept his eyes trained on Avery, unable to turn off years of Auror training; not when there was a confirmed Death Eater just a few feet away at all times. Occasionally his eyes fell on the backs of the easels again, or on the paint supplies -- what the hell sort of supplies were those anyway? -- but they always returned to Avery.
And then the lid slammed shut on Owen before he could shift enough in the tiny box to catch it. "Ha ha, very funny," Owen forced a laugh that clearly wasn't amused, his stomach dropping so hard that it almost felt like it should've shattered the glass box itself. "I'm gonna just hop on out of here if you'll flip that open so you can clean this part up too, yeah?" It wasn't a request.
“Oh, Mr Dearborn, I’m quite sorry. The box requires a very special key.” A key that was in the pocket of Gerald’s fashionable velvet coat. “I’m afraid it’s going to take some time finding it.” He stared at the young man, Caradoc Dearborn’s son, through narrowed eyes and tried to soften his features into that of his father’s.
This war and its generations. Better to drown him in flower petals and have done with the whole thing. Better to let this one die than his own sons. Owen had been mouthy, had been so beloved of Robards and other Aurors, that he was quite sure he had some rebellion of his own to answer for. And where better when he was right here.
Gerald stepped upon the dais, hand falling heavily upon the lid as he gestured with his wand, prepared to practice his only slightly rusty Legilimency. But, of course, wizardus interruptus.
“Master Avery!” It was Aster. He turned, offering the young lady a wide smile.The pupil bounded to her instructor and wrapped him him an embrace. “Master Avery one day I hope my paintings hang in all the best places in Europe.”
“Oh my dear,” he said, squeezing gently, before he drew back. His voice rang for Owen’s benefit. “The revolution has come and together, we will ensure that this great culture is known and beloved of everyone on the Isles -- and the Continent too.”
Any pretense of Owen's that he was remaining calm was gone as panic started to thunder in his chest. Pride goes before the fall and whatever other sort of platitudes he was sure that Avery would be trotting out at him soon. The glass in front of his face fogged up as Owen's breath moved in and out, hot and fast and were there air holes in here? He was going to suffocate, and Gerald Avery was going to just stand out there inches away on the other side of the glass watching him suffocate.
"Bullshit that there's a special key, use your fucking wand you freak, you're a wizard," Owen glared, struggling to gain some sort of movement within the box. Maybe he could just tip the damn thing over and let it smash. He frantically tugged at the wedding ring on his finger, trying to flip it around and unscrew the emergency portkey he'd hidden inside. Although Avery with wand in hand didn't seem much safer to Owen than Avery without it, not sure what exactly the older man had in mind but definitely sure it wasn't going to end well for him.
But then there was Aster. "Aster! You wonderfully talented jewel off a young woman. Mr Avery seems to be having a senior moment and forgot where he left the key for the box here, do you mind Accioing it and helping me out here?"
The painting master smiled, giving his student a conspiratorial wink and a roll of the eyes as he breathed a few words to her. The young lady nodded to her instructor and trotted up to the dais with a simple iron skeleton key in her hand. She unlocked the lid and stepped aside arms locked at the small of her back.
She gave Owen an arched brow. “Master Avery said that you were to see your own way out. He suggested that you do not wander.”
Gerald, for his part, was gone.
The moment the key turned in the lock, Owen threw the lid open and burst out of the box, his heart still pounding in his chest as he rolled toward his pile of clothes. He was back in his boxers in one fluid moment, his wand back in his hand the next. The rest wasn't as important.
"Thank you, Aster," Owen replied, having to hold himself back from hugging the girl out of relief. He refrained, though, instead looking for Avery so he could punch him in the face. The Death Eater was already gone. "Don't worry, I'm not going to stick around." He didn't run out immediately, though, his focus returning to the girl after he finished dressing. "Tell me, Aster. Does he play that game with everyone who models here? Do you ever have anyone who comes back?" Or is there some sort of figure model graveyard planted out back in his gardens? he refrained from adding.
She frowned slightly - whether it was seeing Owen clothed or his question, who knew - and let her hands fall, wiping them on the apron that protected her dress. “Your setting was unique. Generally, figure models sit on a stool and eat an apple or a pear.”
A beat. “Master Avery is a very good painter and a very eccentric wizard. He’s going to ensure that our art is seen and appreciated, even beyond that of Muggles and dirty Mudbloods. He says our culture --” her face erupted into a beatific smile -- “our culture will rise again!”
Owen stared at Aster as if she'd sprouted a second head; clearly Avery wasn't just teaching them about art during their sessions. He was helping mold a new generation of talented bigots. "Guess he must've been out of fruit," Owen replied, trying to not roll his eyes.
"So that's all very interesting, Aster. I guess my question is what makes the art you guys are doing here different than the art that muggles are doing? No offense intended, I'm just curious. Ravenclaw, haha." And lots of offense intended.
“ … we’re recording wizarding successes and shaping ideology, of course!” she said to him, rolling her eyes like it was obvious and he was being intentionally thick. Her brother Lionel was good at ‘intentionally thick’ and she broke a chair over his back during Christmas. Aster was passionate like any good young lady.
“Maybe the sketch of you might one day hang in a museum.” She paused. “And from one Ravenclaw to the other, I would think you already knew that.”
"That I belong in a museum? Of course I already know that," Owen said, skipping over the nightmare ideology in favour of good natured vanity.
"Anyway. I need to see myself out. Best of luck to you in your career, Aster. Learn from a lot of talented people. Don't get stuck in a box you can't get yourself out of." Don't let Avery convince you to join the Death Eaters if you haven't already, because you're sort of terrifying, he thought as he started to leave the room, finally fully dressed again and definitely needing a shower. And to take every action figure he'd ever kept inside the box out immediately.