"Hogwarts portraits behave like their subjects. The portrait will be able to use some of the subject's favourite phrases and imitate their general demeanour. However, these portraits would be capable of having a particularly in-depth discussion about more complex aspects of their lives: they are literally and metaphorically two-dimensional".

- JK Rowling on Pottermore

The Picture

There's a picture of Teddy's parents on the Astronomy Tower staircase. Mum, Dad, Sirius, Emmeline, Fred Weasley and Mad-Eye Moody- Order of the Phoenix members who died during the Second War. Dumbledore and Snape have spots there too, although they're usually in their other (proper) portraits in the headmistress' office. Everyone expects the picture to make Teddy feel special and happy and like it makes things better. He's supposed to feel proud and, at first, he did. Teddy spent plenty of evenings in first-year sitting in front of the picture, looking at his parents and talking to them.

"We love you so much," Dad had said, "We are so proud of you,"

Mum had cried and told him how much she missed him. You weren't supposed to touch portraits but Mum liked Teddy to put his hand on the painting, and she'd hold her hand up too, like they were touching. Sometimes Teddy brought his friends to meet them (Mum didn't cry then), and at the end of second-year he'd asked their advice on what he should take for OWLs.

"Don't bother with Divination, it's a waste of time," Mum recommended.

"What did you get in it?" Teddy asked.

"Failed,"

"Same! High-five!" piped up Fred, holding his hand up. Mum slapped her against it.

"Muggle Studies is a laugh, though. Really useful if you meet any Muggle girls around," Fred continued, winking.

"He sees our Muggle families though, don't you, Teddy?" insisted Mum, indicating herself and Dad.

"Yeah,"

"So, he doesn't really need to take an OWL in it,"

"What are you interested in?" asked Dad, sitting down in front of Teddy.

"Umm. I like Herbology. I like Potions,"

"If you like Herbology perhaps you might like Care of Magical Creatures," Dad suggested.

"Muggle Studies and Magical Creatures? Soft options," scoffed Mad-Eye, "By all accounts you're a bright lad so it's Ancient Runes and Arithmancy for you,"

"There's no such thing as a soft option, although it's worth challenging yourself," said Dad.

"Care of Magical Creatures is a soft option?!" piped up Sirius, "Try running round with a werewolf once a month and see how soft that is!"

That conversation had taken place a year and a half ago. Teddy's in fourth-year now (he took Herbology and Ancient Runes for OWL) and the picture doesn't make anything better anymore. It makes everything worse.

Dad likes to go from portrait to portrait learning about the people in them. Teddy will often be walking down a corridor and hear Dad's voice call, "Hello, Teddy. Having a nice day?" from a picture frame. Then Dad'll want to introduce him to whichever portrait he's hanging out with.

"It's very interesting," he promises.

Or he wants to talk to Teddy about school and friends and whatever: "Hello, Teddy. What are you up to?"

"Going to my lesson, Dad. What does it look like?" Teddy mutters. He can't be bothered to talk to him; Dad isn't going to say anything useful or meaningful. He never does.

Mum tends to stay in the Astronomy Tower picture, which means there's less chance of unexpectedly meeting her around the castle. But Mum is so embarrassing. She gets excited every time she sees Teddy, waves like a nutcase and yells at Mad-Eye, Emmeline and the others to come over to look at him, see how tall he's getting, how cool his hair looks today (he's starting morphing his hair brown when he passes the picture). His friends think it's cute.

"Hi, Teddy's Mum! Hi, Teddy's Dad!" they call, or "It's so cool your parents hang out with Dumbledore," or "Your Mum's pretty fit, Ted".

His friends don't understand. Nobody understands because nobody spent those hours in first and second year hanging off the picture's every word, so nobody's realised that their words are empty. The figures in the picture are like a broken toy, saying the same things again and again. "Hello, Teddy. Having a nice day?" "How's your homework going?" "Wotcher, Teddy! Wotcher, Teddy!". Teddy hates her saying that. Must be something she picked up at school, or one of Grandad's phrases, because Granny never says it. Grandad doesn't have a portrait. Wotcher, Teddy. Watch-ya, Teddy. Watch you, Teddy. They're always watching him.

They're always happy too, which frustrates Teddy. Mum and Dad weren't always happy- they got angry and confused and upset like normal people. Real people. The people in the picture are not real. A couple of days before the Christmas holiday last year Teddy had caught them snogging in a frame outside Transfiguration. The frame was empty apart from the two of them, but it was still in a busy corridor, and it had made Teddy angry because he knows that his real parents would never have been that open. Everybody who knew them has told him that Dad would hardly touch Mum in public, let alone kiss her. That's the version of them we wants, not this lie. The liars in the portrait taunt him about what he doesn't have. They look like his parents but they're not- they're wrong. They're not even a picture, they're a cartoon. Harry would say it's better having the portrait than having nothing at all, but Harry would say that, wouldn't he?


It's Wednesday afternoon and Teddy's halfway down the Astronomy tower stairs before he realises that he's left his textbook back up in the classroom. Bollocks. They only started having Astronomy theory lessons this year. They're in the daytime, which is a relief because Teddy always feels exposed on top of the tower at night. In first-year there were whispers behind his back during night-time Astronomy lessons; kids muttering about the moon and the mongrel boy. Murmurs like that had followed him round a lot in the first couple of years of school, and Vic gets them now, though while Teddy ignores the whisperers and sniggerers, Vic confronts them. Like a lot of things about Vic, Teddy kind of likes it and kind of finds it irritating.

Teddy mumbles an apology to his friends and jogs back upstairs to the classroom. He elbows open the classroom door, stammers an explanation to Professor Sinistra, grabs his textbook from where he left it on his desk, and dashes out of the room. He's late for Potions now and hurtling down the stairs, forgetting that the picture is waiting for him on the landing. Until a voice calls out to him.

"Wotcher, Teddy! What's up?"

Teddy cringes.

"Teddy! Hi!" yells the voice again. It's The Woman- he's trying to stop thinking of them as Mum and Dad. Teddy can hear the next class clattering up the stairs. He doesn't want them to hear The Woman calling after him, so he decides to talk to her for a moment so he can shut her up before the next class get here.

"What do you want?" Teddy growls. Snape and Dumbledore aren't there but all the rest are. Sirius and Fred are tossing Moody's eye to each other, while Mad-Eye grumbles at them. The Man is chatting to Emmeline.

The Woman's gazing at Teddy dreamily. "You're getting so grown-up. Come here and let me look at you,"

Teddy doesn't move.

"You're so handsome. You look just like your Dad. Mad-Eye, don't you think he's handsome?"

(Next time, Teddy thinks grimly, he will morph himself as ugly as he possibly can). Everybody in the picture turns to look at him. The Man's smile is sad.

"How much is your real face? Come on, you can tell me," stage-whispers The Woman, "I promise I won't tell anybody,"

Her friendly, conspiratorial tone makes something inside Teddy snap.

"Stop it! Stop it now!" Teddy shouts.

Everybody in the picture jumps.

"Sorry, mate," grins The Woman, "I'm your Mum, it's my job to embarrass you,"

"You're not my Mum," Teddy snarls.

"Well, that's not very-"

"SHUT UP!" Teddy bellows, "Shut up shut up shut up! You're not my Mum! My Mum's dead so will you shut up and leave me alone!"

He kicks the wall beside the picture so hard that it hurts. Teddy swears under his breath, then swears loudly at the people in the picture, turns and storms away down the stairs. He puts his head down and doesn't look back.

The Man calls after him in a maddeningly gentle tone, "It's alright, Teddy, it's alright. I'm sorry. Listen, let's-"

The Man's voice is lost in the sound of the footsteps and chattering of the next Astronomy class. Teddy pushes through the crowd of sixth-year Gryffindors and hurries on down the stairs. Frustration and satisfaction and pain are buzzing around inside him. He didn't know how much everything he'd said had been weighing on him until now, when he's got the weight off his shoulders. Teddy knows that he's supposed to feel guilty for shouting and swearing and saying those things to them. Granny would tell him it was rude and hurtful and ungrateful. Teddy Lupin doesn't feel guilty at all, and arrives in Potions with a smirk on his face.