My family was never so rich as the Blacks and Potters, but we lived a comfortable life, our modest fortune built on trade. There were certain expectations of me. I was supposed to join my father and brothers in the family business, but when I told my parents I wanted to be an artist my father became so enraged that he said, "If you want to live the life of an artist, then you can starve like one," and promptly kicked me out of the family home.

With nowhere else to go, I found myself renting a garret room in Knockturn Alley. Knockturn Alley consists of several little cobblestone streets filled to bursting with narrow, crooked buildings held together with magic and a prayer. Their facades have turned black from centuries of chimney smoke and they are crowded so close together that only a sliver of the grey sky could be seen. From my garret window I can see a small, overgrown cemetery where last century's whores and pickpockets were tossed in all together. An old hagwitch is moving between the tombstones, harvesting the wild yarrow that grows there. There is a tavern in the building directly across from me where music can be heard at all hours of the night, and on both sides of the street hawkers cry out their wares. Two ragged-looking children are playing in the street while an old woman – a woman with a bit of goblin blood in her if I'm not mistaken – keeps an eye on the pair while she darns a sock from her spot on the stoop.

Despite the fact that I have been reduced to buttered bread and potatoes, I like this neighborhood. It is so full of life, and in the distance, through the cloudy haze of smoke, I can see the dome that sits atop of Gringott's and, a little further, the Ministry. One of these days, when I have enough money, I'm going to paint this street and all the people in it.

Every year the Académie des Arts Magiques hosts an exhibition and I am determined to earn a spot. My submission from last year had been rejected. I had put so much effort into it, nearly flunking all my NEWTs in order to complete it in time, and I had felt crushed when the Académie turned me down. But not this year. I am going to succeed. I already have the subject in my mind – a nude, male, a simple background – the only thing I lack is a model.

So I put an advertisement in the paper, feeling extremely silly about the whole thing. Right there, next to a grinning witch with wind-blown hair and holding a bottle of Sleekeazy's, are the words: WANTED! ARTIST'S MODEL. MALE. PREFERABLY TALL AND DARK HAIRED. MUST BE COMFORTABLE POSING UNDRESSED. WILL PAY. It embarrasses me to read it, and I was the one who wrote the damned thing. It makes me sound like a pornographer. There is a pornographer who lives two flights down from me, a husband-and-wife team who take moving photographs of naked women in funny poses. I went down to call on them once and found the man's wife riding atop a housecat that had been transfigured into a tiger, her bare breasts bouncing with each leap. "You know, like in that story, The Lady or the Tiger," the husband said to me with a grin. "Pretty clever, eh?"

"I don't think I've ever read that story," I told him faintly.

It has been almost a week since I put in the advertisement and I have yet to receive any callers. I had positioned the sofa where I wanted it, hung up drapes, my canvas was primed. I have everything but my model. I suppose I could try my luck on the street; there are a few male prostitutes that come out at night, or else look in at the brothel on the corner, but the thought of actually asking someone to take off their clothes so I could paint them to their face makes me want to curl up and die.

I had almost given up on the whole endeavor and resigned myself to painting another landscape when a knock comes at my door. When I open it I can feel my heart stop.

Severus Snape stares defiantly down at me.

"Oh, it's you," he says, apropos of nothing. "You were in Ravenclaw, right?"

"Y-yes," I stutter.

"From your advertisement, I thought you might be a kidnapper trying to lure vulnerable men to some secluded spot in Knockturn."

"And you came anyway?" I ask, before my brain fully catches up with what he just said. "Wait, are you here for the modeling gig?"

A faint blush spreads across his cheeks and his face grows stony. "You weren't specific," he says, his voice defensive. "All you asked for was a tall man with dark hair. Well, here I am. Take me on, or don't. I don't care which."

I realize that he expects to be thrown out on sight. "You're perfect," I blurt out, and his blush deepens. He looks at me like I'm crazy, but he doesn't protest, merely steps inside my little garret room. It hasn't been that long since I last saw him, at our graduation, but there is a marked difference between then and now. Free from our old school robes, he looks so much more grown up.

"How much is the pay?" He asks me.

"A galleon an hour," I answer as I watch him make a slow circle of my 'studio.' His eyes rake over the sofa, the drapes, the blank canvas, but always drifting back to the sofa. He is chewing on his lower lip, deliberating. I can tell he needs the money.

"These are your paints here? Are they magical? What is the process?" He asks as he stops in front of my mixing table.

"It's, well, I guess my paints are classified as potions. You mix them up with magical ingredients to give them that spark of life. You can buy them already made, of course, but the really dedicated artists all have their own formulas. I like to add ground moonstone to mine. Take a look at this landscape here–" I gesture towards one of my rambling forests. "Do you see the way the light filters through the leaves, how it moves? The tiny dust motes that float through it? That's the moonstone."

Snape studies the painting with an air of appreciation, and while he might not be an artist, he is a potioneer.

After a minute he straightens back up, and turns his head to look at the sofa. "This painting…" he says. "Do you… plan to show it to many people?"

"I was going to submit to an exhibition in Paris."

"An exhibition," he huffs out. He is starting to get that wild-eyed quality I remembered from school. He keeps looking between the sofa and the door, but he must have come to a decision because he announces, "I don't want my face shown."

"But your face is so lovely–" I start, only for Snape to shut me down with a glare.

"Either you obscure my face or I walk out of here right now."

There is no way I was going to miss out on this chance. "I promise, no one will be able to see your face."

He nods. He is chewing on his lower lip again. "Do we… do we start now, or–?"

"The light is good, unless you've got prior engagements–?"

"No, no, now is fine."

"Alright, once you're undressed you can set your clothes on that chair."

Snape's face is cherry red and I move over to fiddle with my paints to give him some privacy. I don't look up until I hear the sofa's metal springs creak as Snape sits down.

Snape sits at the edge of the sofa, hands in his lap and his knees pressed together. That long, black hair of his hangs down around his shoulders in waves. He shudders when our eyes lock. "How do you want me?" He asks.

I swallow thickly and have to take a moment to clear my throat before answering, "On your back. Part your legs slightly. That's right. Okay, now bring up the left leg, bend it, good. As for your face… throw your arms up, like you're shielding your eyes from a burst of light. Bring the right arm down a little more. Perfect. Oh, just a moment–" I step up to the sofa. Snape's body tenses as the sounds of my footsteps grow nearer. I run my fingers through his hair, brushing it over the pillow so that when the light catches the strands they shine. "There. Stay just like that. Don't move."

I go back to my canvas and throw myself into my work, starting with a rough pencil outline. Snape's body, something that had long been an object of fascination for me, becomes lost in the lines. It transforms into a mosaic of colours: whites and yellows and inky blacks bleeding into the blue velvet of the sofa. I become so absorbed that I jump when Snape suddenly says, "I don't know why I'm so nervous, it's not like this isn't anything you've seen before."

"I'm sorry?" I squeak out.

Snape moves his arm to peek at me, "You were there, weren't you? When Potter stripped me at the lake?"

I had heard about that. Everyone had heard about that, though the teachers pretended to be ignorant of the whole thing. I shake my head. "No. I think I was studying. I knew I had failed my Charms OWL and I couldn't afford another bad grade. Put your arm back."

Snape does as I command, but I don't know if it was nervousness or genuine curiosity that prompted the next statement. "What are you doing slumming it in Knockturn?"

"I could ask you the same question. I figured you'd be going for a mastery and have a grant from the Ministry already under your belt."

"A mastery requires either money or connections, of which I have neither," Snape drawls out.

"Slughorn didn't set you up?"

"Slughorn thought I was mad. He probably imagined me creating some sort of Frankenstein's monster if I had full access to a laboratory."

"Who is Frankenstein?" I ask. "Is he a magizoologist?"

I can see a smile hiding between his arms. "Something like that. Now, answer the question."

"My parents have cut me off."

"And you decided to do this instead of getting a real job?"

"I have to do this. I can't do anything else. It's the same with you." He snorts, and I press on, "I saw the way you looked in Potions. You can't stop brewing anymore than I could stop painting."

Snape is quiet for a moment. "Watch me often, did you?"

I am glad he can't see my face. "I liked to draw you."

"Why?" I can hear the disgust in his voice.

"Nobody else looks like you. You're... fascinating."

Snape barks out a laugh. "No accounting for taste then."

"Snape, I am an artist. I have a highly developed palate," I say.

"Merlin, I'm lying here naked. You can call me Severus."

Severus leans over my shoulder and studies the finished portrait. "That's not me," he insists.

"It is!"

"You made me look nicer than I do in real life."

"I painted you exactly as you are."

"I do own a mirror, you know."

"Mirrors lie. Everybody knows that. Just the other day my mirror told me I'd never amount to anything and now I have a painting that will hang in the Académie des Arts Magiques!"

"It hasn't been accepted yet," Severus cautions.

"It will," I say, and I was right.

My painting received good press, and commissions started to roll in. I am still living in my little garret room, and working on a family portrait for the young Mr and Mrs Potter when Lucius Malfoy knocks on my door. I assume he has come to make arrangements for a sitting, like James Potter had done a week before. Potter had come in, swept his eyes over the sofa that was now tucked into a corner, and made pleasant small talk. He mentioned he had seen my painting while honeymooning in Paris and loved it. "Who modeled for it?" He asked.

"Oh, one of the locals here in Knockturn," I answered. I knew Severus would not want me telling anyone, much less James Potter, that he was the one who sat for that painting.

Potter gave me a rather severe look. "A whore?"

"No," I answered and quickly changed the subject. "How can I help you?"

My family never had much to do with the Malfoys, though not for a lack of trying on my father's part, but the Malfoys have no use for what they term as 'tradespeople,' pureblood or not. "I've come to inquire about a painting you did, a nude," Malfoy says.

"Oh, are you looking to purchase it?"

"I'm merely acting as an agent. My associate wants the piece for his own collection, and if you would be so kind as to provide the name of your model…?"

I give him the same false, apologetic smile I had given Potter. "I'm sorry, but the model wishes to remain private."

I hear a footstep cross my threshold, the tread so soft I almost miss it. My door opens and I turn my head to see a shadow pouring into the room. There is a white, grinning face half-obscured by a cloak and peeking out between the black folds are a pair of red, slitted eyes.

"I'm sure he won't mind," the man says in a hoarse, snake-like voice.