Fire Painting

---Three Weeks Later, December 1987---

Harry stared at the moving paintings adorning the walls of Magical Kyoto's shopping district. Unlike the formal portraits at Hogwarts, these were... different. Vibrant characters with huge eyes and exaggerated expressions dashed between frames, acting out dramatic scenes.

"Manga-style wizarding art," Nicolas explained, following Harry's gaze. "The artists here blend magical animation with their own unique style."

A painted samurai leapt between three frames in quick succession, his sword leaving trails of light against painted demons. Harry's fingers itched for his brushes.

"Can we get some new art supplies?" he asked, already moving toward a shop with colorful displays. "I want to try..."

"Of course," Perenelle smiled. "Though perhaps lunch first? I heard the ramen shop around the corner is excellent."

Chrysa's ears perked up at the mention of food. The magical district was remarkably accepting of her presence - several other magical creatures could be seen accompanying their wizards, including what looked like a small dragon-like creature curled around someone's shoulders.

The ramen shop turned out to be run by kitsune - fox spirits who kept their multiple tails hidden while serving customers. Numerous bowls floated through the air, guided by invisible hands.

A young kitsune, probably around Harry's age, was practicing making little balls of silvery fox-fire float between tables. One drifted too close to their table, and Harry instinctively caught it with a small azure flame of his own, making them dance together before letting both dissipate.

"Oh!" The young kitsune's glamour flickered in surprise, revealing pointed ears and fox tails. "You can play with fire too!"

An older kitsune - probably the child's mother given their similar features - approached their table with floating bowls of ramen. "Akiko, what have I said about practicing near customers?"

"But look!" Akiko bounced excitedly. "He can make pretty blue fire! Can I play with him? Please?"

"Just don't burn down my shop," Akiko's mother said with fond exasperation, setting down their ramen.

The two children quickly finished their meals and moved to a courtyard behind the shop. Chrysa lounged in a patch of sunlight, watching them with half-lidded eyes.

"Watch this!" Akiko formed three balls of silver fox-fire, making them spiral around each other. "Mama says I'm really good at control."

Harry grinned and created his own spheres of azure flame. They flew through the air, dipping between Akiko's silver ones in increasingly more close-calls.

"Ooh!" Akiko clapped. "Now try this!" She spread her hands, and her fox-fire flattened into sheets that rippled like silk. "It's harder than balls, but prettier!"

Harry focused on his chi control, carefully spreading his azure flames into similar shapes. The first few attempts dissipated quickly, but soon he had sheets of blue fire floating beside Akiko's silver ones.

"You know," he said thoughtfully, looking at how the flames moved, "this is kind of like painting..."

He concentrated, pooling his chi precisely as the flames spread out before him like a canvas. Orange fire bloomed from his other hand - he rarely used it anymore, but the contrast felt right for this.

Slowly, carefully, he began to paint. Azure flames formed the sky, while lighter orange created distant mountains. Deeper blue shaped the forests, and brighter orange caught the sunset's reflection on a lake.

It was harder than using actual paint - the flames wanted to move, to dance. But that movement gave the scene life. The trees swayed in an invisible breeze, the lake rippled, and clouds drifted across the fiery sky.

"That's amazing!" Akiko breathed, her own flames forgotten. "How did you make the mountains look so real?"

Harry adjusted a few details, deepening the shadows with darker blue. "I visited there once," he explained. "The Nilgiri Mountains in India. They're called the Blue Mountains because of how they look in the morning mist."

The painting held steady for almost a minute before Harry had to let it dissipate, the complex chi control finally wearing him out. But seeing how the flames could create art had sparked something in him...

"Magnifique," Perenelle whispered, eyes shining. She had come to check on them and caught the last moments of Harry's fire painting.

Nicolas joined them in the courtyard, an expression of pure delight on his face. "In all my centuries, I've never seen anything quite like that."

"It wasn't perfect," Harry said, slightly embarrassed by their reaction. "The flames kept wanting to move slightly differently than I planned..."

"But that's what made it beautiful," Akiko's mother had appeared with a tray of tea and sweets. "Art isn't about perfection - it's about bringing something new into the world."

"The way the trees swayed..." Nicolas accepted a cup of tea with a grateful nod. "It was like seeing a memory come to life."

"Can you teach me?" Akiko asked eagerly. "I want to make pretty pictures too!"

Harry smiled, already thinking of simpler scenes they could try together. "Maybe we could start with something small? Like a single tree?"

The children began experimenting with their flames again - Akiko's silver fire forming wobbly branches while Harry's azure flames added leaves - Nicolas leaned closer to his wife.

"You know," he said softly, watching Harry laugh as Akiko's tree ended up looking more like a rabbit, "I don't think I've ever seen him create something with fire just for the joy of it before."

Perenelle squeezed his hand, smiling as Chrysa padded over to inspect the fiery artwork. "Then we'll simply have to find him more opportunities to do so."

oo0ooOoo0oo

They spent the next week exploring magical Kyoto. Harry filled a new sketchbook with drawings of the moving manga-style art he saw, while practicing his fire painting each evening in the inn's garden.

"Young master is very talented," their elderly innkeeper commented one morning, watching Harry create a miniature azure phoenix that flew circles around the koi pond. "But perhaps would like to see different styles?"

That's how they found themselves at the Magical Art Museum of Kyoto. Unlike what could be found in ordinary museums, the exhibits here moved and changed. Traditional ink paintings of mountains would shift through seasons in minutes, while delicate paper cranes in display cases occasionally took flight.

"Look at this one," Nicolas pointed to a particularly striking piece. A dragon formed entirely of brush strokes twisted through clouds, each stroke flowing into the next in endless motion.

"It's a single continuous line," Harry realized, studying how the artist had never lifted their brush. "The magic just keeps it moving..."

That evening, he spent hours trying to recreate the technique with his flames. It was harder than using ink - the fire wanted to spread and dance rather than flow in a single line. But slowly, carefully, he managed to create a simple koi fish that swam through the air, its fiery form maintained by a single continuous stream of azure flame.

"Very good!" Akiko had taken to visiting in the evenings to practice with him. "Now watch this!"

She demonstrated a trick her mother had taught her - making her fox-fire take on different colors by adjusting its temperature. Soon they were competing to see who could create the most colors, their flames painting the garden in rainbow hues.

"You know," Harry said thoughtfully, watching their flames flow together, "I think I want to try something..."

While he couldn't match Akiko's variety of colors - his flames stayed stubbornly orange, blue, or azure - something about the way she controlled the temperature gave him an idea.

He created a sphere of azure flame, letting it hover steadily between his palms. Then, drawing on what he'd learned about continuous brushstrokes, he began to feed the flame differently. Instead of maintaining a single temperature, he carefully varied the chi flow, making the azure deepen in some places and lighten in others.

The sphere began to take on depth, like a glass ball filled with swirling blue fire. Where the flames were hottest, they became almost white-blue, while the cooler areas darkened to deep sapphire.

"It's like the ocean!" Akiko exclaimed, her own flames forgotten as she watched the sphere. "Look, you can see the waves!"

She was right - the varying shades of blue created the illusion of waves and currents moving within the sphere. Harry added touches of orange flame around the edges, like sunlight catching the water's surface.

He maintained the sphere for several minutes before letting it dissipate, tired but pleased. It wasn't as dramatic as Akiko's rainbow flames, but there was something satisfying about finding new depths within the colors he had.

oo0ooOoo0oo

The farewell with Akiko was bittersweet. "You'll write to me?" she asked, offering him a small package wrapped in silvery paper. "I got you some special brushes..."

"Of course," Harry smiled, handing her one of his paintings in return - a traditional scene of Hogwarts he'd done in the manga style she loved. "And maybe you can visit someday. The castle has lots of space for fire practice."

After one last display of their combined flames - silver and azure dancing together in a final farewell - the Flamels apparated them to their temporary home in the Japanese countryside.

The traditional house was smaller than their cottage in France, but Harry immediately loved the paper screens and the way the rooms opened to a perfectly maintained garden. Chrysa seemed equally pleased, claiming a sunny spot on the wooden engawa.

"I think," Harry said that evening, watching the sunset paint the distant mountains in gold, "it's time to try progressing with the quintessence flame."

Nicolas and Perenelle exchanged glances but nodded. They moved to the garden where Harry could work safely.

The silver-white sphere formed easily now, unstable but familiar. Harry let it dissipate naturally into the black sphere of Nigredo, maintaining perfect stillness as it absorbed ambient energy.

Ten minutes passed in meditation. Usually, this was when extreme fatigue would set in, but something felt different. The sphere remained steady, and Harry felt unusually clear-headed.

Then, like dawn breaking through night, points of light began escaping from the darkness. The black sphere gradually transformed, its surface becoming luminous until it shone with a pure, silver-white radiance - different from his initial unstable creation. This was steady, balanced, whole…

Harry shook his head softly as he looked at the 'pure' sphere. He remembered what he had learned about neither pure nor impure, and how reality resisted such simple categorizations. The quintessence flame had initially taught him that - no single perspective held the ultimate truth.

Whether this sphere was pure or impure... it simply was.

"Albedo," Nicolas murmured, carefully approaching. "May I?"

Harry nodded, maintaining his focus as Nicolas held a crystal vial near the sphere. The glass seemed to become more... clear somehow, its tiny imperfections visible yet not diminished.

"Try bringing it near your normal flames," Perenelle suggested.

Harry created a small azure flame with his free hand. As it approached the white sphere, the blue fire refined itself, becoming crystalline and clear while maintaining its essential nature. No smoke, no waste - just pure flame.

"It's not changing things," Harry whispered, watching the interaction. "It's just showing what's already there."

The strain of maintaining the sphere began to build after about fifteen minutes. Rather than fight it, Harry let it dissipate naturally, watching as it faded like morning mist.

"Well done," Nicolas said softly. "I think this calls for celebration. Perhaps some of that green tea ice cream from the village?"

Harry opened his mouth to respond but paused as his eyes darkened slightly. The Flamels, now familiar with this sign, waited patiently.

[Stability - Marvel: Age of Krakoa] – Costs 100CP, 250CP available to spend.

As insurance, you are a particularly stable Deviant. Your random mutations will never have a negative effect on you. As a bonus, your body cannot be physically altered against your will, and you will not suffer any negative effects from anything that changes your body or DNA.

"There's a new offer," he said quietly. "Something about stability. It says my body can't be changed against my will, and something about 'DNA' not being affected negatively?"

"DNA?" Nicolas looked intrigued. "Ah, that's a recent muggle discovery - the mundane building blocks of life, essentially. They found it just a few decades ago. It's what makes you... well, you. Physically speaking."

"Like a… pattern?" Harry asked.

"Precisely," Perenelle nodded. "Though most wizards haven't paid much attention to the discovery."

"The offer seems... protective?" Harry continued. "It mentions being a 'stable Deviant' and preventing negative effects from mutations or changes."

Nicolas stroked his chin thoughtfully. "Given some of the things we've encountered... protection against unwanted transformations could be valuable."

"Like what the Oracle tried?" Harry asked softly.

"Among other things," Nicolas said grimly. "There are many magical means of forcing transformation - potions, curses..."

"And some creatures whose very touch can change others," Perenelle added with motherly concern. "It would be good to have protection against such things."

Harry nodded slowly, then accepted the offer.

Immediately his Po Soul began to shift and strengthen. The dense, yin aspect of his soul that maintained his physical form grew more... definitive somehow. Like his body's pattern had been carved in stone rather than written in sand.

He could feel how his Po Soul's original function of maintaining his prime condition had expanded. Now it didn't just maintain - it protected. Any attempt to alter his physical form would have to contend with this foundational stability.

"Well," Nicolas clapped his hands together. "I believe we were discussing ice cream?"

"Yes," Perenelle smiled, already reaching for her shawl. "The walk to the village will do us good after all this practicing."