Harry Potter and the Portrait Studio
Iris Lefay Longbottom
Drama/Humor
Rated for mild language
Summary: Remus Lupin's been working on a special surprise for Harry's sixteenth birthday. Confrontations, arguments, revelations, revenge, more! R&R requested.
AN: This short piece is by way of bringing closure to some of the more gaping wounds left in the story at the end of OOTP. I just want everybody to be warm and fuzzy and happy and good …
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1. The Present
Harry stepped through the front door at Number Twelve Grimmauld Place, not knowing what to expect. Remus Lupin had sent an owl to the Dursleys' the week before, saying only, I have a birthday surprise for you. It'll be ready when you come. So today he had caught the Knight Bus into London and walked to the Black family mansion, the headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix, visible only to a chosen few witches and wizards. Whether he had been followed, he neither knew nor cared.
Lupin appeared in the gloomy hallway and clapped Harry on the back. "Happy birthday, Harry!" He smelled strongly of turpentine, and by the light of the serpent-shaped chandelier in the hall Harry could see that he was wearing a grimy paint smock and had a smudge of green paint on his nose.
"Thanks. Where's everyone?" Harry looked around. Although the house was much cleaner than when he had first seen it a year ago, it still gave off an aura of decayed gentility. The house-elf heads leered from their plaques, the portraits looked at him down their noses, and he and Lupin carefully kept their voices down so as not to rouse the painting of Mrs. Black, brooding behind her curtain.
"Oh, out and about. I haven't seen anyone for days. The Weasleys are on holiday, you know. Are you ready, Harry?"
"Ready for what?"
"I just finished this morning. I may have done something very foolish, Harry, but it seemed necessary." Lupin led the way upstairs. "If it doesn't turn out well, we can just forget the whole thing." They started up the next flight. "I wanted to surprise you," Lupin continued, "but you may find it something of a shock. Just be prepared."
Harry nodded, with very little idea of what to be prepared for. Lupin paused in front of a door on the third floor, said, "Welcome to my portrait studio, Harry," and opened the door.
"SURPRISE! Happy birthday, Harry!" exclaimed a chorus of voices.
Looking to the right, Harry saw a dark-paneled wall with three framed portraits hung on it. In the left frame he saw his parents, James and Lily Potter, in the middle one, a young Sirius Black in his splendid prime of breath-catching beauty, and on the right, Sirius as Harry remembered his godfather since they had met two years ago. All of them were smiling at him, the older Sirius with genuine recognition, the other three with friendly curiosity.
Harry tried to smile back and thank them, but nothing happened. His face seemed to be stuck. He turned to Lupin and managed to ask, "You painted these?"
Lupin nodded. "I just finished the second one of Sirius this morning. His face isn't quite dry yet, I'm afraid. But he's been bringing the others up to date."
It was a shock. Harry's knees were shaking. To give himself time to recover, he looked around the room, whose windows let in a north light, ideal for painting. A clutter of papers, paint, brushes, charcoal, and canvas littered the large worktable, some of the brushes still busily cleaning themselves. A large squarish tin, with a silver snake on the label and the words "Superfine Surpentine Brand Turpentine: Lifelike Portraits Guaranteed," stood next to the photograph album of his parents, which Lupin had asked to borrow for "research." Pinned to the walls appeared to be Kingsley Shacklebolt's entire collection of photographs and press cuttings concerning Sirius Black.
"Won't you come closer, Harry, so we can see you properly?" asked Lily Potter.
Harry approached the paintings slowly, still at a loss for words, looking at Lily, with her long, dark-red hair and green eyes; James with Harry's features and untidy black hair. But they were young, so young! Only a few years older than himself, though nearing the end of their short lives. They had been painted from a photograph that included himself as a baby, but his baby self was nowhere in sight.
"I can leave the room, if you like," said Lupin quietly.
"No. Stay," said Harry. He gazed from one picture of Sirius to the other, the older one somewhat ravaged by his stay in Azkaban prison, but giving Harry a complicit, affectionate grin that made him swallow hard. "Remus told me what happened to me," he said. "Rough luck, Harry." Someday they could talk about that …
"He looks exactly like both of you," said the younger Sirius to the Potters. "I knew he would, the first time you showed him to me."
Harry took a breath. "Mum. Dad. Sirius." He paused. "Sirius," he said again. Might as well take the bull by the horns. "It's great to see you and everything … but there's something I need to ask you about."
"Fire away," said James.
"It's about Professor Snape," said Harry.
"Professor Snape?" snorted the younger Sirius. "Professor Snivellus Snape? Do you mean to tell me that git is actually teaching at Hogwarts?" He looked horrified. "And students actually survive and come back for more?"
"Only because they have no choice," answered the older Sirius. "Harry, are you quite sure you want to get into this? Remus and I already told you—"
"Yes," said Harry stubbornly. "I still don't get it. I have to know why."
He flashed a glance to Lupin, who said, "Go for it, Harry. You call the shots."
"Dad," said Harry. "I saw something that happened when you and Snape were at Hogwarts." He began describing the scene from Snape's past he had witnessed in the Pensieve a few months before. Lily held up her hand before he had finished.
"Stop. We all remember what happened," she said, so that he didn't have to put the unspeakable into words.
Harry and James locked eyes.
"I know what you're asking me, Harry," said James. "I know it looks bad. But you can stare at me with Lily's accusing eyes all you want, and it won't change anything. You don't know how it was."
"I saw what happened," said Harry.
James said thoughtfully, "What's Snape like now, Harry? Do you like him?"
"No, we can't stand each other."
"Why not? Does he take advantage of his position to bully students and intimidate them? Is he unfair and vindictive and bad-tempered?" James saw the answer in Harry's face. "He's always been like that, Harry! When we were at Hogwarts together, he treated the younger students like scum; he got off on humiliating them and seeing them cringe! He was a cruel, tale-bearing little sneak! I was just giving him a taste of his own potion."
"And that made you no better than he was, James," Lily scolded.
"But you married me anyway," said James.
"Only because you stopped behaving that way," she retorted. "And I thought you had stopped making excuses for it."
"No one's put me on the spot lately," said James ruefully. "All right, Harry, I admit it was a stinking thing to do. I was young and snotty. Satisfied?"
Harry let his face relax in a smile. "For now, I reckon."
But Lily had a question. "Harry," she said, "How did you happen to see that particular memory of Severus'?"
Harry's mouth suddenly felt dry and his stomach squirmy. The last of his righteous anger evaporated. He almost wished he had left it alone after all. "Professor Snape was teaching me Occlumency," said Harry, forcing himself to meet his mother's eyes. "He would always put thoughts in the Pensieve before we started. In the middle of one lesson he was called away and I was alone in his office with the Pensieve."
"I wouldn't have let a chance like that slip away either," the younger Sirius backed him up.
"Why not, Sirius?" asked Lily dangerously.
Young Sirius laughed and swept back his long hair. "Merlin's beard, Lily, it was too perfect! Alone in the room with exactly the memory he wasn't supposed to touch! Snape might as well have begged Harry to dive in. It was meant to happen!"
"You know, Sirius," said Lupin, "I sometimes wondered why the Sorting Hat didn't put you in Slytherin."
"Oh, it almost did," said young Sirius unconcernedly. "Said I'd do well in Slytherin. But I said to hell with that."
Harry's jaw dropped. "Me too," he croaked.
"I had no intention of following that family tradition," said the older Sirius with a trace of bitterness. "Even then."
"But how did you keep from getting caught, Harry?" asked James with interest.
"I didn't," said Harry, which was almost more embarrassing to confess than the act itself. "Professor Snape found me in the Pensieve and threw me out of his office; said he never wanted to see me there again. We've barely spoken since."
"Has it ever occurred to you that you owe Professor Snape an apology, Harry?" Lily asked him.
Actually, the thought had occurred to Harry, but really doing it would have been so preposterous that he'd dismissed the idea out of hand. Being confronted about it now made the anger and frustration he'd been feeling all year well up in him again. He shouted at Lily, "Everyone was keeping me in the dark! Nobody ever told me what I needed to know! I had to find things out for myself! What am I supposed to do, tell him I'm sorry I acted like a Slytherin? And WHEN DID SNAPE EVER APOLOGIZE TO ME FOR ALL THE ROTTEN THINGS HE DID?" Harry subsided, noticing how much his reasoning sounded like his father's.
"How dare you talk to your mother that way?" thundered James.
Lily put a hand on his arm. "James, hush. It's all right. He needs to say it."
The younger Sirius burst into helpless laughter. "Oh, James, you're priceless," he gasped. "Just listen to yourself going all stern and fatherly. It's all a sham, Harry," he added in a confidential tone. "He hasn't got a clue."
"I know," said Harry, with his fists still clenched.
Young Sirius chuckled again. "Don't you think it's funny, Sirius?" he appealed to his older counterpart.
"Not as funny as you do, obviously, Sirius," said the older version of Harry's godfather. But all the same, he too looked amused. He gave Harry a wink.
"You try being a father, Sirius," said James, clearly irritated. "It's not as easy as it looks. Especially when you have a teenager sprung on you without much warning."
"Quite," agreed the older Sirius. "Most especially one who knows things about you you'd rather he didn't."
Harry was beginning to put the situation back in perspective. "You can't tell me what to do, you know," he informed his father. "You're only a painting." In the heat of the moment he had actually forgotten this.
James folded his arms. "And do you hold that against me? Against us?"
Harry's heart lurched with something he couldn't name. They had died to save him, all of them … "It'd be pretty thick of me to do that. It's just that … you're not real, and if I pretend you are, I'm fooling myself."
"We're as real as Remus could make us, Harry," said Lily.
"I have almost all the memories I had when I died," said the older Sirius. "I know you as you are now, Harry. I know what we've been through together."
"We're sorry we had to leave you, Harry," said James.
"But such as we are, real or not, we're here for you now," said young Sirius. "And we'll never get any older, you know. We'll stay just as you see us. Just think, in a few years you'll be as old as we are." Young Sirius sounded pleased, but the thought sent a shiver down Harry's back.
"You have a bit to go before you catch up with me, though," said the older Sirius.
Suddenly it was too much—all of it. Harry wished he could turn them off, like a television program, and go off by himself to decide how he felt about everything. And even that impulse made him question himself. What kind of a son and friend was he, anyway?
But Lupin was quick to sense that Harry had had enough for the moment. "I think Harry and I will go down and get dinner now," he said. "Harry can spend the night here and we'll see you again tomorrow."
Harry's painted family accepted this without question. "Goodbye, Harry," they said together.
"Bye, Mum … Dad … Sirius … Sirius," said Harry. And that was that. Lupin opened the door to the studio and Harry followed him out of the room and down three flights of stairs to the gloomy, smoke-blackened kitchen. He wondered what Lupin must think of him. The first time in his life he had a chance to talk to his parents he'd practically got into a shouting match with them.
Lupin said nothing as he shrugged out of his paint smock and got out a loaf of bread and a hunk of cheese, both of which looked (and smelled) well past their prime. He looked at them and shrugged, pulled out his wand, pointed it at the food and said, "Fresco!" Instantly the bread and cheese perked up and looked presentable, even edible.
As he started slicing them onto two plates, Lupin's worn face broke into a smile. "Well, Harry, I couldn't have scripted that scene better. I was very pleased with all of you."
"You were?" said Harry blankly. He helped himself to a bottle of butterbeer. "But …you heard …"
"Why shouldn't you and your parents shout at each other?" asked Lupin with a smile, melting some cheese on his bread with the help of his wand. "It was quite entertaining to watch."
"Well, I—" Harry took a bite of his own bread and cheese and thought about it. The truth was that until recently Harry had idolized his parents, especially his father. It was easy to think of them as perfect when they were dead. But now, for the first time, Harry wondered what it would be like to be a father.
So he was rowing with his parents, just like any normal teenager! Harry grinned. Actually, it wasn't bad. Not bad at all. Mrs. Weasley might think of him almost as a son, but she never yelled at him as she did at her own children.
Lupin watched Harry's face as these thoughts went through his head. "I liked the way you got straight to what was on your mind without wasting time," he said. "You made excellent use of the situation."
"Yeah, I guess," said Harry. "Professor Lupin—"
"I haven't been 'Professor' Lupin for quite a while now, Harry. I think it's high time you started calling me Remus. I want to do what I can to fill the place left by your parents and godfather, and I'd like to do it as a friend."
"Well, you've made a really good start," said Harry. "I didn't know you painted, Remus."
"It's never been more than a hobby," said Lupin, cutting more bread and cheese. "But it turned out to be a good way for me to come to terms with Sirius' death."
Harry stood up and said abruptly, "I'd better go to bed now." It was still early, but his need to be alone had suddenly grown acute.
"Good night then, Harry," said Lupin calmly. "I don't even have a birthday cake for you. I've been too busy to think of it."
"I got one this morning," Harry assured him. "From the Weasleys. But your surprise was even better. Not exactly fun, but … thanks, Remus."
"Believe me, it's my pleasure, Harry. And there's more, if you're up for it tomorrow."
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AN: Coming soon: in the conclusion, a surprise visitor to the portrait studio. Guess who? Bwa ha ha ha ha! I realize that this raises questions like: can two versions of the same person co-exist and even talk to each other?