Of Crotchety Heroes
by Nanaho-Hime
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter
Lily Luna Potter is a troublemaker at heart, mischievous and spoiled and ridiculously popular. She's aware that everyone has a soft spot for her. After all, she's baby Potter, all red hair and freckles and energy. So whenever she does manage to cause mayhem, she's sent to the Headmistress's office where she is half-heartedly scolded and sent off with a pat on the back and a cookie from the tin.
It is one day in her fifth year that she is alone in the office, left to her own devices. A portrait hanging on the wall snorts and wonders why little Miss Potter enjoys being sent up to the office. Lily sees the man with the oily black hair and dismisses him as a crotchety old portrait, most likely an unpopular headmaster who enjoyed demeaning his students and suffered a very painful death.
When he mentions that she is nothing like her grandmother, her interest is piqued and she turns on the charm. Professor Snape does not seem like the hero her father has made him out to be, but he is most certainly witty, if not a bit stern.
Using her charisma, she manages to gain access to the Headmistress's office whenever she likes and it is there that she develops the strangest relationship with the portrait of Professor Severus Snape. He is severe no doubt about that, but sometimes she cannot help but feel he is a complex man. When she tells him of Albus's middle name, he is very quiet, and then goes on to ridicule James Potter and Sirius Black, snidely referring to their enlarged egos.
Her favorite stories are of his childhood with Lily Evans, and she can't help but think her grandmother was a beautiful woman. He is softest when he speaks about her namesake. He never smiles, but his features are not quite as rigid when he reminisces on the summers spent with Lily.
He tells her, quite often, to try and behave herself, citing that her grandmother would not have approved of some of her more raucous behavior but there is always the slightest quirk to his lips, as though he approves. He makes her laugh, with his bitter, sarcastic sense of humor, and though he does his best to dislike her (or get her to dislike him) he is rather unsuccessful.
On the last day of her seventh year, she does not go down to enjoy the beautiful summer day with her friends, but rather goes up to say her last goodbye to the portrait who had become her mentor. Severus Snape offers her the closest thing to a heartfelt congratulations he can muster, being the cranky, irritable old man that he is; and when he does she cries, with the realization she will never be able to sit down and speak to him again.
When her tears subside, he looks so, unbelievably awkward that she laughs and laughs harder still when he harrumphs. She regains her composure (eventually) and he takes the chance to remind her that he is not the real Severus Snape, merely a portrait.
He continues to inform her, that had Professor Snape lived, he would have been very fond of her, and that if Lily spoke to him he was sure that real Snape would take the time to listen to her, always.
She kisses the portrait before she leaves the office, on the cheek. She is certain that a portrait never blushed a more vibrant shade of red.
As Lily goes on through life, though her career, through marriage, through motherhood, she writes letters (she finds it vastly more effective than talking aloud) to her mentor and friend. And she knows, through all her successes, and all her failures, and through all his irritable moods, he listens to her.
Always.
A/N: Reviews would be lovely, so if you would?