Disclaimer: I don't claim to own any copyrighted material. I am indebted to 'The Harry Potter Lexicon' for many of the little details of this story. Any errors are mine, not theirs.
Author's notes: Setting is the future, for sake of argument let's say 2011. Dumbledore is retired. This particular story is not a romance.
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The Portrait
by Rae Roberts
The portrait of the little girl had always hung in the far corner of the lab, one of the few paintings in the laboratory. Professor Severus Snape did not particularly care for it. It reminded him, vaguely, of the 'big-eyed waif' paintings so popular with Muggles in the nineteen-sixties. Not that the portrait was painted in that style, thank Merlin, but it did have a naïve quality about it that did not appeal to the potions master. Despite his dislike of the piece, it had never occurred to him to have it taken down. This was Hogwarts, after all, and at Hogwarts, one did not tamper with tradition. The portrait had hung quietly in the far corner for more years than even Griselda Marchbanks could remember, and there it would remain.
Tonight, the little girl was watching him. A minor detail, but one the sharp-eyed Professor noticed almost immediately upon entering the lab. He endured her gaze while setting out the ingredients for the antidote he was planning to brew in preparation for the next day's class. Shrinking Solutions were tricky; at least one of the slack-jawed idiots in the third-year class could be counted on to get it wrong. Snape checked his recipe methodically, running a long, sallow finger down the page. When he looked up from the tome, the portrait-girl was still watching intently. She'd seldom raised her eyes from her cauldron before. Snape suppressed an urge to squirm uncomfortably under that hungry gaze. Whatever did the child want ? He resolved to ignore her, raising his wand to light the fire under his own cauldron. He could feel her watching even after he'd turned his back on her. "Bloody nuisance." He lowered the wand, turning abruptly and raising his eyes to meet hers. "What the hell do you want ?" he snapped. The portrait-child let out a nervous squeak and hastily returned her attention to stirring her brew. Snape watched her impassively for a long minute, then returned to his own work, satisfied that she had been sufficiently intimidated; no more irksome stares this evening. He didn't feel guilty for having frightened her; young children generally reacted to Severus Snape with varying degrees of terror. Why would a painted child be any different ?