The Battle of Hogwarts in Flames and Smoke — Print & Oil Painting

Everything capable of holding a colour has been drained of it. The cobbles, the cloud, the ruined arcade, the giant looming in from the left: all of it pushed down to charcoal, ash and wet slate, so that the only saturated things left anywhere on the canvas are the spells.

They arrive in three colours and are spaced across the width like notes on a stave. Green flares low at the left edge and again from a wand raised near the centre. Gold and white burst against the courtyard wall on the right. A long ribbon of pink whips out of a caster in the middle distance and curls back over the stones. Nothing else in the picture glows at all.

The staging is shallow on purpose. Defenders stand in a broken line across the middle of the frame with their wands up and their robes dragged sideways: one in a pointed hat, one in a red cloak, one in a pale grey dress with an arm flung wide. A hooded figure blocks the right foreground, back turned, close enough to read as a wall. Behind them fire pours from an upper window and the great archway has already lost its glass.

The details reward a slow look and almost all of them are bad news. A lion-headed beast crouches at the lower left. A snake crosses the wet cobbles at the bottom edge. Winged shapes cut across the cloud. The trunk of a blasted tree fills the right side of the canvas from top to bottom. The wide format holds all of it in one glance, which is exactly the point. Part of our Harry Potter collection, and the far end of a story that begins with the castle standing whole in daylight. For one of the figures on the other side of this fight, see the portrait in green mist.