In the weeks that followed, Severus Snape could not forget his encounter with the girl in the portrait. Although she hadn't looked up again as far as he could tell, the memory of her eyes haunted him. He'd taken to glancing over at the painting surreptitiously, sometimes a dozen times a day. She was always there, looking down, stirring her cauldron. Sometimes late at night, she dozed, slumped on a wooden bench in the background. Snape couldn't remember the portrait-girl ever leaving her frame in the laboratory, not that that meant that she didn't. The whereabouts of the subject of one painting had never before been of interest to him. Now he stood in the entrance hall of Hogwarts Castle, watching the many paintings hanging there with an analytical air. He'd taken to examining the castle paintings most evenings after dinner, if he didn't have a detention to oversee. Severus Snape would not have admitted it, but the students whispered that he'd been unusually lenient lately. In fact, he hadn't assigned a single detention all week, a fact that would have annoyed him, had he noticed it.
Although portraits of adults dominated the Hogwarts galleries, there were a fair share of paintings of young people too. The potions master concentrated on these as students passing through the hall went out of their way to avoid walking too close to him. Snape ignored them all. From his observations he'd determined that the little portrait-girl wasn't in the habit of visiting any of the other children. Since he'd been paying attention to the matter, she hadn't made an appearance in any of the popular landscapes either. Snape turned his attention to a painting of a lakeside; the residents of a dozen different portraits strolled there, adults conversing sedately, children wading and splashing along the shore. The portrait-girl from the dungeon was not among them. Snape shook his head and turned away. Not all of the Hogwarts portraits were as gregarious as that insufferable Fat Lady who guarded the Gryffindor Tower, he reminded himself. The portrait-girl was simply a loner. The professor permitted himself a thin smile; he could certainly sympathize. His curiosity refused to be satisfied, however. If the painting was so antisocial, why had she stared at him with such longing in her eyes ? The giggles of two Ravenclaw second-years interrupted his reflections. With a start, Snape realized he'd been standing at the head of the stairs, lost in thought. "Miss Grosvenor. Miss Amaranth. Five points each from Ravenclaw for...for loitering," he snarled. Ignoring their reproachful looks, the potions master descended to his dungeon in a swirl of black robes.
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The girl stirred her cauldron absently. She'd nearly given up on her idea – what a stupid, foolish idea ! After her first, failed attempt to communicate, she'd almost abandoned hope. Almost. Upon awakening this morning, though, she'd found that the house-elves had dusted her; even as industrious as they were, they sometimes forgot her for months on end. The world outside her frame seemed fresher, brighter somehow, with the layer of dust cleared away. Now, listening to the afternoon lesson, she felt ready to try again. Keeping her eyes demurely on her brew, the portrait-girl waited patiently for the last class to be dismissed. She flinched involuntarily as Professor Snape shouted angrily at a student who'd allowed his cauldron to boil over. He kept up a stream of sarcastic remarks until the class finally ended. The girl trembled. She couldn't do it – No ! She could ! As the last footsteps faded across the dungeon floor, she dared to look up in time to see the potions master exit the laboratory. The girl squared her shoulders resolutely and clutched her wand tighter in her painted hand. Tonight, when he returned, she would ask him.