As Phineas moved through the halls of Grimmauld Place, he heard the sound of crying. A sense of anger shot through him and he clenched his fists tightly, perfect nails biting into the heels of his palms. Someone had made his wife unhappy. Someone had made her cry. A sense of guilt followed hard on the anger. That someone was himself.

"Heavens, my lady," he drawled as he stepped into the painting in the bedroom, "you're carrying on as if someone has died."

Isabella Nigellus raised her head from the pillow and regarded the picture with a look of confused hope. "Phineas? Phineas, is that you?"

"Well, unless you have installed a lover before I am quite cold in my grave I would have to say that the gentleman currently occupying your quarters is indeed myself." He stepped carefully to stand behind the chair at the center of the picture, fingertips lightly resting on the curved back. One arm cocked at a careful angle, allowing the robe to flow elegantly down his slim form. It was a deliberately conscious pose, the stance of a man well accustomed to being watched.

Isabella managed a small laugh. "Even death itself can not stop that infernal wit of yours."

He shrugged. "Gallows humor and all that." He reached out a hand, meaning to tuck a loose strand of her hair back in place. At the last moment, he caught himself and instead straightened his gloves. Her hair tended to fall into disarray the moment it was out of pins and twists. It had always given him a certain pleasure to see her in snares and tangles-a privilege he alone was allowed.

Embarrassed at his long gaze, Isabella patted a handkerchief over her swollen face. "I was not expecting to see you just yet. I must look dreadful."

"You look beautiful" he said softly"you always look beautiful." Then, pulling himself back into character with visible effort Phineas continued, "Dippet is every bit as incompetent as I had feared. He'd loose his nose if it was not nailed prominently to his face." He began to pace back and forth in his frame like a cat. "I would have come by sooner, but he seems incapable of making a single decision without first securing my opinion."

"Which I am certain causes you endless agonies," Isabella teased.

He arched a brow at her. "Much as I value my own importance, even I can not rejoice at the realization my replacement is a mindless twit. Such inadequacy implies that I was negligent in training my successor." He rocked back and forth on his heels trying to decide what to say next. This was a sort of desperate play, Phineas knew, encouraging those around him to speak to him as though he were still human. Yet it was all he had to prove his reality to himself. If the conversations ended, if he stopped talking, then perhaps all that would be left of him would be a few smudges of paint and an under sketch of charcoal.

Isabella settled against the pillows and arranged her ice blue dressing gown more artfully about her shoulders. "I do believe you look almost as nervous as the first time we met."

"Being dead is almost as disconcerting as being a new suitor" he agreed.

"Considering the fact that your mother selected her children's spouses in the same way most people chose racehorses, I can understand your discomfort."

"I trust my family is treating you properly in my absence."

"Oh, they are behaving quite as they always have. Lucinda Malfoy had a delightful fit when she saw I was still wearing my ring. You would have found it most entertaining. 'Such frippery is quite unbecoming of a lady in mourning,'" Isabella quoted in a mocking tone. "I told her I would wear my engagement ring for as long as I wished and if she took issue with that she could attempt to hex my hand off."

Phineas shook his head. "Lucinda always was jealous of that ring. Didn't help matters that her own looked rather like an egg."

Isabella laughed indulgently. "My dear, innocent husband. She was always jealous of me. Wanted you for herself, that one did."

Phineas gave a theatrical shudder. "Thankfully my mother's experiences with lapdogs taught her something about the perils of inbreeding. If I had been married off to Lucinda we would have been forced to drown the litter."

"Nonsense. Her children are not that horrid."

"I'm serious. You have that many cousins marrying each other, someone is bound to end up with a three-tailed pup."

"Of course the fact that I let slip the little matter of Lucinda's squib half-brother helped in my campaign to win your parents over to my side."

"I never knew that." Phineas looked scandalized.

Isabella lowered her lashes coyly. "It might even have been true."

"Clever girl. I appreciate you saving me from such a dreadful fate." He gave his wife a proper bow.

"When one falls in love with a Nigellus, one must learn rather quickly to be clever or end up with a broken heart." She gave him a small crooked smile, and then fixed her attention on smoothing a wrinkle out of the coverlet. Taking a deep breath, she picked up her story again. "After Lucinda's outburst, her brother spent several minutes trying to decide whether or not he was obliged to apologize for his sister's bad manners. Then he spent another quarter of an hour wondering whether it would be proper for him to escort me back home. If he had been thirty years younger, his stammer might have been rather becoming."

"Society is not accustomed to pretty young widows. They are uncertain as to how they should react to you."

"I am hardly young, kind sir," she replied archly.

"When compared to the likes of Lucinda you are a mere babe in arms. Most husbands have the good sense to wait 'til their wives are old and shrewish before kicking off."

"Good sense was never one of your faults." Her composure frayed briefly and she bit her lip. "I miss you so," she said in a small voice. "I wake up in the mornings and I wonder why you are not with me. I keep forgetting you are gone."

I keep forgetting that as well, he thought. I wake up during the nights in this chair and I wonder why I am not with you. To make a Draught of Peace, begin with powered moonstone... Mentally, he recited the instructions twice over before his mind turned from such thoughts and he was able to focus his gaze on the room before him. "How are the boys?" he asked with a studied casualness.

"They are doing their best to be brave. I wish you would try and speak to Theseus-I am beginning to fear he may blow up the Potions Laboratory in a bid to get himself sent to the Headmaster's office hoping to see you. Reginald sent me an owl yesterday saying he would keep watch on you, and make certain you did not 'run off with any of the pretty lady paintings here at school.'"

Phineas rolled his eyes. "I'm locked up in a musty castle with withered crones for company while you are free to roam about town, gathering sympathy from each and every handsome rake. Yes, I can see why he would think I am the one who needs to be spied upon." He regretted the words as soon as he had spoken them. He leaned against the edge of his frame and stared at the wall somewhere to the left of his wife's head. "I should not have said such a thing. I would never begrudge you your happiness, wherever you might find it." Phineas had long prided himself on being an excellent liar.

Isabella raised her chin in a defiant gesture. "I would never dishonor you."

Phineas clasped his hands behind his back and forced himself to speak. "To seek companionship would be no dishonor. You are a widow now."

"And I am also a Nigellus. Toujours Pur, my husband, always pure, in blood and in heart."

"Toujours Pur, in blood and in heart" he repeated softly. "You should get up and get dressed," he said gruffly. "The Board of Governors is sending a delegation by this afternoon. I will not have you ruining my terrible reputation by looking sorry to be rid of me."

He stared at his wife a moment longer, watching as she selected a dress of deep grey. Phineas remembered that gown perfectly, the taper of the waist, the grain of the fabric against his hands. He traced the leather of the chair softly, unthinkingly. From the painted drapes behind him came the voice of Headmaster Dippet. "Phineas! There are Cornish Pixies loose in the Great Hall! What are we going to do?"

Phineas grimaced. "Duty calls, my dear. Or rather, shrieks."

Isabella crossed the room and hesitated a moment in front of the picture, then busied herself with wiping a smudge off the frame. "I know he keeps you busy, but I would like to see you, even if only for a few moments. I...I love you still. Perhaps it is a ridiculous thing to say to a-" she pressed her fingers to her lips to keep from finishing her sentence.

"I love you too, my lady. It would take something a good deal more dire than death to change that."