This started out so well. So well. And then it just…. devolved.

This is written for multiple challenges at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft & Wizardry.

Assignment #2: Medicine: Preparations

Task #4, injections: Write about someone or something that gets under someone's skin

Word count: 2415 words

Warnings: strong language, violence against portraits? Is that a thing?

Thanks to Bex (DobbyRocksSocks) for looking this over for me and helping me give it an acceptable last line. I swear, I would have lost it if you hadn't stepped in XD.

Summary: Being subjected to the nuisances of every reanimated portrait in one's office at a critical moment can reanimate anyone's fury, and Headmaster Severus Snape cannot hope to consider himself the exception. He still maintains, however, that Phineas Nigellus Black deserves it.


"Headmaster!" Phineas Nigellus Black comes hurrying into his portrait. "They are camping in the Forest of Dean! The Mudblood—"

Severus' head snaps up. "Do not use that word," he snarls, whip-swift.

"—the Granger girl, then, mentioned the place as she opened her bag and I heard her!"

Severus takes his time in acknowledging the information, glaring hotly at Phineas Black. Phineas knows his stance on the word Mudblood, but he still hasn't ceased his usage of the term—despite Phineas' apparent yet convoluted respect for him—and Severus has realised that the former Headmaster might just consider his distaste for the word and its implications to be one big joke.

Phineas' countenance, in turn, is harried, excited and sullen all at once. He pulls off the look frustratingly well. Severus glares harder, crossing his arms where he stands across the room.

"Good, very good!" Albus' portrait cries victoriously, bouncing like a child in his painted cushioned chair. "Now, Severus, the sword! Do not forget that it must be taken under conditions of need and valour—and he must not know that you give it! If Voldemort should read Harry's mind and see you acting for him—"

"I know," Severus cuts him off curtly, feeling a headache bloom at the point of his forehead between the eyes. He curses, not for the first time, the wretched portrait artist who took the executive decision to paint in a bowl of lemon drops on a little stool beside Albus Dumbledore's chair. He wouldn't be surprised if sugar rushes still worked when one was a reanimated still figure brushed with oil paints onto glorified parchment.

"Firstly, are you certain the children didn't hear you?" Severus asks caustically, directing a quirked eyebrow at Black's portrait. "You came tearing in like the hounds of hell were on your heels, Phineas, I don't trust that you had enough presence of mind to maintain caution."

"You're oh so welcome, there's no need for such gratitude," the man in the portrait mumbles, much too loud to be directed at himself. Severus rolls his eyes, not deigning to soothe the portrait's ruffled feathers.

Albus gives Severus a disappointed look, his baby blue eyes clearly saying, "oh, you've done it now." Severus cannot begin to explain how the old man pulls it off as a painting.

"I am a pureblood Slytherin, Snape," Phineas snaps when he gets no response, his voice raised to be clearer to Severus who adamantly stays standing at the far end of the Headmaster's office. "I do have tact."

"He's a halfblood, Nigellus, he's bound to insult your intellect every new moon," an entitled white-haired coot Severus refuses to learn the name of pipes up from the left corner of the wall of portraits.

"Oh, go back to pretending to be asleep, you curmudgeon," Phineas instantly retorts, leaving Severus yet again confused at the man's odd idea of showing respect. The way he's seen it so far, Phineas can insult him all Phineas wants, but no one else is allowed to so much as give him the side-eye. Severus could pass it off as relating to the simple conundrum of him being a halfblood from Slytherin, if not for the many, varied instances of Phineas riling him up to the point of him committing violence against the man's portrait, and doing so with the most maniacal grin warping the goatee on that pointy chin.

Severus takes a breath and pushes out all stray thoughts. "Well, if you're sure that Potter and his merry band of hooligans didn't overhear you—"

"It's just Potter and Granger, I think," Phineas interrupts, his face serious, "I also overheard the girl mention something about Weasley leaving them. I don't know if it's recent."

Severus pauses. "Are you certain you heard right?" He glances at Albus quickly to assess the old man's reaction, but while Albus looks concerned, he doesn't seem overly worried. Then again, he almost never does. Severus doesn't know why he's using Albus as a gauge for how serious this development might be.

"Positive, Snape," Phineas answers with conviction. "Don't know what's going on, but Potter sounds like a Crup kicked in the nads. The children must have had one of their squabbles, the adolescents' usual—didn't I tell Dumbledore that Potter wasn't the one for this mission? Kids, all three of them, Dumbledore should have done it himself…"

"That'll be enough, Phineas," Severus stops him before he goes on another winding rant. A part of him isn't remotely sure what side of the argument he must stand on—Phineas' side about Potter being too young to take on the role of the world's saviour, or Dumbledore's non-argument about Lily Evans' love protection sacrifice for her only son. One side goes against his vow to Albus, and the other against his common sense.

"Severus, you must—" Albus starts, but a quick and efficient glare aimed at his portrait silences him within the second.

"I know what I must do, Dumbledore," he bites, feeling his nose flare out in anger, "Don't go on about that again."

"My boy, I'm simply making sure that you remember," Dumbledore says, subsiding. His eyes now show pity, and Severus is not taking pity from a bloody portrait.

"You've only mentioned it every week, Albus, it's not easy to forget. Conditions of need and valour, Potter must be the one to pick it up, stay hidden, maybe a disguise, don't let them trace it back to me. Did I miss anything out?"

"Respect your elders, boy, a Slytherin always knows who to defer to in the chain of command," Phineas comments disapprovingly, and Severus has to consciously tamp down the twitch in his eye because a good spy discloses neither their emotions nor their thoughts. This is what he lives with in this office. One a barmy coot, another a disrespectful, hypocritical Black patriarch, and a wall filled with self-righteous bastards.

"Why are you glaring at me?" Phineas asks at length, looking the slightest bit unnerved.

"I'm hoping you'll spontaneously combust," he utters in response, watching with annoyance as the other man simply rolls his dark eyes at him, as if Severus were a particularly troublesome child.

Taking a deep breath to get back to focus, he uncrosses his arms and quickly strides across the large office, passing by Albus' desk—because it will never stop being Albus' desk—and heading straight for his most ardently warded cabinet while his mind churns over itself to form the barebones of a plan.

"I'll head out to the Forest of Dean tonight, scope the land," he calls over his shoulder as he bends and undoes the wards on the door one by one. "I need to find a suitable location to lure Potter to, somewhere where the sword can be both hidden and found."

"You better move fast, Snape," Phineas advises oh so wisely. "We don't know when they'll make their next Apparition jump, and I refuse to camp out in the Mudblood's handbag—"

"Do not use that word, Black!"

"Granger's handbag for another month till we get the next juicy bit of news. It is dark as a tomb in there, boy, and considering I'm well past dead, I do not require to relive the experience again."

Severus straightens up and stares. "You were too dead to remember being buried, you insufferable man."

"Insufferable!" Phineas rears back, offended. "Why, you little blabbermouth whelp—"

He straightens in an instant, his back creaking in protest at the sudden jerk. "I am not nearly old enough to be called a whelp—"

"How dare you!" Phineas cries. "I am Phineas Nigellus Black, I'm old enough to have fathered your grandfather! You are a child, a… a baby Kneazle! I can call you whatever I bloody like!"

Severus' nose flares up again. "Never refer to me as any of those ever again, you blithering bratwurst. You really are maddening in every aspect of the word."

Silence. For all of one second, there is sweet, precious silence.

And then—

"Did you call me a sausage?"

Phineas eyes widen and his chest puffs out, and before Severus' very eyes, the portrait's face gets visibly redder. Severus can only credit the blotchiness along the man's clean shaven cheeks to magic.

A silent part of him is ecstatic to see that blind rage is very much an unbecoming look on the forever regal-looking Black. Of course, that's when the roaring starts.

"You incompetent, knobble-kneed miscreant! You fopdoodle! You dare call me a… you artless, bat-fowling boar-pig! Blasphemy! The cheek!"

Severus' jaw clenches tighter and tighter throughout the tirade, and he feels the headache pulsing at his forehead take over the entirety of his skull and all the way down his nose as voices from other pompous portraits that occupy his office chime in with vigour at the opportunity to throw in their own two Knuts.

One of them—the coot Severus still refuses to learn the name of—calls him a "canker blossom", while a particularly wizened witch takes pleasure in screaming "rat fucking bastard" at the top of her considerable lungs, little bags of wrinkled skin jostling about in ripples across her face.

Through all this, Albus looks suspiciously entertained—not that Severus cares for what Albus thinks at this moment. He is much too fired up to even consider Albus' presence, much less scowl at the man for enjoying his irritation.

"All of you flea-ridden mongrels will shut the blasted hell up!" He snaps when he's had enough. His voice carries the undertone of a growl in his frustration, and it instantly makes all the voices quieten.

The silence in the room is almost staggeringly loud.

"Okay," he mutters to everybody with a quick glare around at the rows of portraits to further the silence. "We have a Potter and a Granger and potentially no Weasley to entice into unknown areas of a dark forest. In the middle of the night, to boot, and while they're on the run. This will take thinking, and I will appreciate it if you lot shut your mouths long enough to let me think."

"Severus, my boy—"

"No, Albus," he cuts off the man, not even looking in his direction, "Not this time. All of you, be quiet."

There's peaceful silence in the office for three whole minutes while he takes down the last of the wards on the cabinet that holds the Sword of Gryffindor and mutters the password, letting his mind take over and feed him potential possibilities for what he can do to lure Potter to the sword without him catching on to Severus' machinations. Absently, he pricks his finger on a little splinter of wood he transfigures into a needle, and whispers the activation password for the ward magic to accept his entry.

Inside, the sword gleams in the shadowed cabinet, its blade of pure silver polished and shining. Rubies glimmer a dark wine red as he pulls out the sword by its hilt. He sneaks a look inside the cabinet for the sake of old memories while it's open, threaded fragments of the most precious parts of his life strung together and locked away in this unassuming little cupboard. It's then that he spies the carefully preserved box of old letters that makes him think of red hair and green eyes and a silvery doe bursting from a wand thrumming with skill, and it's then that the idea comes to him.

His patronus. The silver doe. He can use the patronus to lead Potter to the sword.

It's a very workable plan, he realises, his head shooting up. There's no way Potter will not follow a Patronus. It's not like Potter to turn away from something… shiny.

"Severus?" A familiar voice calls behind him.

He sighs. "Yes, Albus?"

"Why did you pull out the sword, my boy?"

Just this once, he decides to indulge the old man. "I want to get a proper look at its size and weight so I search for more accurate locations tonight at the forest that may be ideal for us."

"Oh. I see. That makes sense."

He turns back to face the portraits, fledgling relief trickling under his skin, when a snort from Phineas makes that relief halt in its tracks and back up all the way back into his brain.

"Sense? It's foolish, is what it is. What man of Slytherin cannot estimate the size and weight of a sword? A founder's artifact, no less. Why, if Salazar Slytherin knew that the quality of his chosen would dwindle this way, he'd have a fit worthy of the gods!"

The unnamed coot bursts into mocking laughter. "Well, good luck and don't fuck it up, boy. That's a legitimate concern the way this is heading, eh, Nigellus?"

"Quite," Phineas agrees emphatically, grinning in delight at the chaos he's caused.

That's the final straw that snaps Severus. Severus Snape snaps, and he snaps like a twig. No, he cracks like the crack of a whip. He is furious.

And when he is furious, he is silent—and if only the reanimated portraits offered him a chance to kill, he'd also be deadly.

So when he snaps, he says nothing. He conjures a knife wandlessly and stalks to Phineas's portrait, and he stabs the right corner of the portrait and drags down his knife before Phineas can balk, top to bottom, murder gleaming in his eyes.

"When I come back, you will pretend your lips are sewn shut, and you will do so till I instruct you to pretend otherwise," he hisses as he pulls out the knife and stabs it on the left hand side. Drags it down, a sharp, jagged line, till the canvas is sagging by its middle and fluttering lightly against the air currents within the office. Phineas goes still, so still that Severus would be half convinced that the reanimation spell has malfunctioned if he hadn't done this before so many times.

Throwing his knife on the Headmaster's table, he strides away to the door to his private quarters with a dramatic billow of his black robes.

"Severus, you do know you have to fix Phineas' portrait when you come back, yes?" Dumbledore's amused voice calls out behind.

Hand on the door, Severus growls wordlessly and pushes it open. He'll be damned if he returns before the day ends. Phineas will suffer, whether portrait or person.

For now, Severus had more important things to think about. Perhaps, if his mission went well, he'd fix the miserable excuse for a portrait's canvas.


Prompts:

[August] Writing Club:
Bromance to Romance: (word) Disguise

Written in the Stars: (setting) Headmaster's / Headmistress's office

Book Club: Owen: (action) smirking, (color) black, (trait) selfish, (word) shadow

Showtime: Take It From an Old Man/Ma'am - (restriction) Character over 50yrs

Lizzy's Loft: Polaroid - All my life I've been living in the fast lane [bonus]

Elizabeth's Empire: Chameleon: (word) disguise

Angel's Archive: Baby Blue

Amber's Anime Adventure: (plot point) losing something important

They Said What?: [Drag Race] "Good luck and don't fuck it up." — RuPaul

Lyric Alley: I thought I would break

EnTitled: Murphy's Law - Trait: Leader

Artist Appreciation: Fool's Gold (2017 re-recording): Prompt - (AU) Spy

Resolution Evolution!: Write a fic with the theme: Taking a Leap

Buttons: (word) blabbermouth; (object) knife; (emotion) Regret; (character) Severus Snape

[Summer] Seasonal Challenges:

Days Of The Year: 29th June - Camera Day - Write a snapshot fic (an in the moment snapshot of a relationship/a characters life/whatever you want. Like a slice of life)

Anti-Boredom Month: If you use your imagination you'll be okay

International Pirate Month: (plot point) a betrayal/mutiny

Self-Improvement Month: Severus Snape

Indoor Plant Week: Urn Plant - (object) pure silver

International Body Piercing Day: Dahlias - (word) Scowl

Creative Ice Cream Day: Mango (Albus Dumbledore) & Coffee (Severus Snape)

International Beers Day: Lagunitas - (Emotion) Cheerful

Book Lovers Day: Practical Household Magic by Zamira Gulch - "Why are you glaring at me?" / "I'm hoping you'll spontaneously combust."

Colours: Wine red

Flowers: Hibiscus - (dialogue) "You really are [adjective] in every aspect of the word."

Crystals And Gemstones: Star sapphire - Write about someone intelligent.

Tarot Reading: The Hierophant - Write about someone doing what's expected of them

Gryffindor Characters: Albus Dumbledore

Gryffindor Challenge: Props - (object) bucket

[Summer Quarterly] Southern Cookout:

Enjoy Some Music: Thunder - (trait) uptight

[August] Auction:

Day 5, Auction 1: (Death Eater) Severus Snape

[August] Gobstones:

Stone - (theme) Red Stone - Failure

Accuracy - (color) black

Power - (quote) "It's foolish to fear what we have yet to see and know."- Itachi Uchiha, Naruto

Technique - (action) painting