From the Ashes

WHO: Adam and Spencer
WHERE: A warded room in the castle, and then...
WHAT: Strapped in a closetpainting.
WHEN: Wednesday Afternoon (12/2)

Adam was not, in fact, a connoisseur of art. He wouldn't ever be hired on the basis of his art knowledge. Sure, he could draw, and sure, he liked looking at comics and cartoons and things like that, but art? Not so much.

What Adam was, was an expert in dark arts. That's what they'd hired him for, anyway. Well, he supposed. And he had unique experience, so maybe that counted for something. Which was why he was spending his second free hour in two days examining the damn painting that had been found and then locked away from the students because it pretty much oozed dark magic.

In fact, the longer Adam stood there looking at it, so close to the magical residue, the more nauseated he felt. That was fun. And it was worse because not only was there the whole "icky dark magic" feeling, but, well, the painting was boring as hell. It was some terrible Muggle-style job of angels with ridiculously large wings that only very occasionally flapped lethargically. Adam was not impressed. He was even less impressed that this happened to be what he saw, as opposed to what anyone else saw. Which he supposed had something to do with the dark magic. Whatever.

Then Adam realized two things. One, that one of the angels, well, looked a little different from the day before. By the time he realized the second one - that that particular angel looked like him - well, he had wings and was wearing a toga.

Adam was not pleased by this development. The first thing he did was reach for his wand, and - shit, where was his wand? Clearly it was going to be that kind of day. Sucked into an evil painting, wand missing, pants missing. Big, feathery wings.

Actually, the wings were kind of cool.

Who: Pete and William
When: Wednesday, midday
Where: That is an excellent question.
What: ...the hell happened?

There had been an alarming number of staff disappearances over the past day. Not deaths, not that anyone knew, but it was enough to make even the most optimistic of Hufflepuffs look solemn over their morning porridge. The headmaster had assigned substitutes to hastily rescheduled classes and declared that every spare minute be spent in finding out exactly what was going on.

William had been buried in books for most of the morning, but so far the only plausible explanation he had come up with was 'Portkey', and both Headmaster Schechter and the Defence experts had sworn the possibly-Cursed painting currently locked away behind wards in an unused classroom wasn't a Portkey. Presumably everyone had also been careful not to touch it, which was further evidence against the Portkey hypothesis, but William hadn't been able to come up with a better suggestion.

There was a spell called a 'compleat bauble' listed in one of the Elizabethan-era texts which seemed to detail the containment of a person or persons within a small glass sphere, but the foundation of the spell seemed far-fetched to begin with, and William hadn't heard mention of anything resembling a glass ornament being discovered in the castle. Surely something would have had to set such a spell in motion, and ostensibly they would have heard about the event.

( William was on his way to investigate the suspected instigator of the disappearances now. )