She couldn't stop the smile from pulling at her lips, not when praise—his praise—was so rare, so deliberate. Even in portrait, Severus Snape didn't offer it lightly. But as quickly as it bloomed, she blinked and tempered it, folding the expression into something quieter. Something more worn.
Her fingers fidgeted with the edge of her sleeve, and when she finally spoke, her voice was steadier than she expected, though laced with something raw.
"The war took…" she began, then paused, searching for the right shape of the truth. "It took my ability to connect, I think."
She let the words linger in the low light between them. No embellishment. No softening.
"I was pursued," she added with a wry tilt of her head, as if the memory itself amused her in retrospect. "Pretty relentlessly, actually. As if surviving a battlefield meant I ought to be someone's reward."
The smile she wore now was thinner. Hollowed.
"But I have no interest in marriage. Or children," she said, matter-of-factly. "Not because I can't. I just… won't. Something about seeing death like that—watching people I admired fall, hearing screaming in stone hallways, holding someone's hand until it went still—it just... stole something. My willingness to love like that."
She glanced down at her hands, the ink-stained fingers of a teacher, not a soldier. "Some days I think it made me selfish. Other days I think it made me honest."
Then she looked back up at the portrait, eyes brighter now—not with tears, but with clarity. "But I do love to teach. And I do love potions. The precision, the control, the transformation... there's something almost sacred about it."
Her gaze softened, as if daring to hope he understood. "It gives back what the war tried to take. And for now… that's enough."
Snape studied her for a long moment, and though his face didn't soften, something behind his eyes shifted—quietly, like frost receding under a weak sun.
"Grief can do that," he said finally, voice like worn parchment. "Make the world feel too fragile to touch. Make people seem like glass you're too tired to shatter."
He moved within the frame again, pacing a slow, deliberate step to the side, fingers steepled behind his back.
"They will tell you it fades. That you heal. That love returns when the timing is right, when you're ready, when your scars have faded enough not to frighten anyone away." His tone curled with disdain, not toward her, but the platitudes themselves. "They are lying."
He turned back to face her. "You do not recover from war. You restructure around it. You find the things that do not flinch when you do. The work. The craft. The silence."
A long pause.
"And in that silence, if you're foolish—or brave—you invite voices into it. Like mine."
His gaze dropped briefly to the stack of notes on her desk, one of his old volumes peeking from beneath her own tidy script.
"You love to teach," he repeated. "Good. Hogwarts needs more professors who teach from memory, not from doctrine."
Then, as his eyes met hers again, something remarkably close to respect shaded his voice: "And you love potions. That's the only thing that's ever mattered to me."
Another beat.
"So. Show me what you're working on. If you insist on dragging me from the crypt, I might as well make myself useful."
She let out a soft laugh, one of those quiet, unguarded sounds that slipped out before she could think to restrain it. Her fingers moved instinctively to the stack of parchment on the edge of her desk, brushing aside a stray sprig of dried belladonna as she pulled the notes closer.
"Well," she said, glancing up at the portrait with a flicker of amusement in her eyes, "classes just started, so it's pretty standard potions for them—Boil-Cure for the first-years, truth serums they'll all try to sneak out of class by Christmas, that sort of thing."
But her tone shifted as she spread the parchment across her desk. Her movements became more precise, more solemn, like someone opening a ritual rather than a folder.
"But I've been working on something new."
She smoothed the top sheet and leaned forward, fingers tapping lightly against a scrawled diagram of a cauldron mid-process, arrows marking ingredient ratios and magical influences. Her handwriting wasn't unlike his—small, meticulous, but hers looped in places where his would snap.
"It started as an idea during my apprenticeship," she explained, lifting the next page. "A stabilizing agent for regenerative draughts. Most of them—Skele-Gro included—can trigger painful reactions if administered alongside certain magical suppressants, especially in patients with cursed scars or chronic potion use."
She gestured to a chart filled with test results, percentages, red markings. "I thought… what if we could refine the base? Modify the diffusion process so the body accepts the potion more gradually. Controlled absorption. Minimal rejection."
Another page, this one covered in notes scratched in at odd angles, as though added in bursts of inspiration between sleepless nights. "I've added powdered moonstone, only trace amounts, and combined it with diluted murtlap essence. It shouldn't work, but—it does. At least in theory. Small-scale tests have been promising. Still working on the delivery method."
She glanced up at him again, a touch of excitement flickering behind her otherwise calm expression. "I wanted something that doesn't just treat wounds. I wanted something that heals—without collateral damage. Something you could give a soldier. Or a student."
Her voice faltered just a little at that last word.
Then, after a breath: "Anyway. I'm close, I think."
She sat back slightly, hands resting atop her notes, resisting the urge to fuss over the edges again. "You're welcome to look through it. I imagine you'd have… thoughts." A smirk tugged at the corner of her mouth. "Probably sharp ones."
But beneath the playful remark was something earnest. An offering. Not just of her work, but of her mind laid out for him to see, to dissect, to know.
His eyes followed her movements as she laid out the notes, and for a moment he said nothing—just observed, the way he always had in life. Sharply. Silently. As though waiting for her to make a mistake so he could decide whether to correct it or let her figure it out herself.
But as she began to explain, the portrait of Severus Snape stepped closer to the foreground. His eyes flicked to her margins, her notations, her modifications to traditional methods. His gaze moved quickly, absorbing it all, lips pursing just slightly.
"You've altered the base," he said quietly, interrupting in that clipped way of his, though it lacked the biting disdain it once had. "Using powdered belladonna instead of crushed root. Subtle. More volatile. But more precise."
His eyes flicked up to her. "And risky. I approve."
He looked back down and tapped the corner of a diagram with a long, pale finger. "This sequence—your stirring method. Counterclockwise before the shimmer, not after. That's… original." A pause. "You discovered that yourself?"
When she nodded, he gave a short exhale. Not quite surprise—something rarer. Recognition.
"You have an instinct for this," he said, voice low, almost reluctant. "Not many do. Most potion makers follow instructions. You interrogate them."
He lingered over one of her more experimental pages and made a quiet, thoughtful noise. "You're working toward emotional regulation elixirs," he said, more a statement than a question. "But you're trying to avoid suppressive effects. That's... ambitious."
His eyes met hers again. "It won't work with hawthorn. The binding's too weak. Try lungwort instead. It'll stabilize the emotional compound without muting the reaction entirely."
He straightened within the frame, expression unreadable again. "You were always too quiet in class. I never realized how much of your mind you were keeping to yourself."
Then, softer—almost to himself: "Perhaps I should've looked closer."
The silence that followed wasn't cold this time. It was filled with something else. The clinking of the cauldron in the background. The slow hum of music. The quiet flick of parchment under her fingers.
Snape looked around once more, then nodded just barely.
"If you insist on resurrecting me, Miss Wilde," he said, "I expect you not to waste my time." His eyes narrowed just slightly, though it lacked venom. "So we'll be continuing this discussion tomorrow."
And just before he stepped back into the shadows of the frame, the faintest curl of his mouth:
"You may call me Severus."
She watched him go—his figure fading from the portrait like mist dissolving in morning light—and for a moment, all was still. The room felt quieter without his presence, though he hadn't said much. He never did. Still, the weight of him lingered in the air, in the books, in the low hum of her enchanted gramophone, and in the place he had taken inside her thoughts without ever truly asking to.
She let out a small breath and leaned back in her chair, eyes still on the now-empty canvas. Then, softly, just above a whisper, she said, "Thank you, Severus."
It wasn't for anything he'd done—not yet, anyway. Maybe it was for staying. For listening. Or maybe, selfishly, it was just to say his name aloud. She let it sit on her tongue like a secret spell, one she hadn't dared speak until now. There was something intimate in that. Sacred, even. As though the syllables themselves connected her to him in a way logic never could.
After a beat, she stood—driven by something sudden and sure.
She moved to the side of her desk where her wand lay waiting, fingers closing around it with purpose. Her mind was already racing ahead, heart beating with that familiar alchemical rhythm: inspiration meeting execution.
She replicated the frame of the portrait, her wand drawing quick, fluid lines of enchantment in the air. She reinforced the charm—carefully layered work, meant to allow a linked manifestation across both spaces without diminishing the original. The charm took time. More than she expected. It required precision and intention she hadn't anticipated needing. But perhaps that was the key — she wasn't just copying a portrait. She was inviting presence. A second heartbeat in the room. A kind of witness.
She carried the new frame through the quiet corridors of the dungeons, her boots clicking softly against the cold flagstones, until she reached the classroom.
The cauldrons sat dormant, shelves orderly, awaiting the next influx of young minds. But she didn't pause. She walked straight to her station—her cauldron, her desk, her sacred space—and mounted the second frame just beside it.
Not for decoration. Not for tradition.
But so he could see.
Overlook the class. Watch the brewing. Be part of the art again, in a room that bore his legacy.
She stepped back and surveyed the placement, her chest rising and falling with quiet satisfaction.
"There," she whispered, more to herself than anyone. "Now you're where you belong."
And though the frame was still empty, she could almost feel the air shift—as though something old and powerful stirred in response.
The next morning, Ivy stood at the front of her classroom, the scent of crushed lavender and ground asphodel lingering faintly in the air. The classroom was bathed in the soft, flickering glow of enchanted lanterns, their golden light reflecting off polished cauldrons and the faint steam rising from a simmering base potion she'd begun brewing before sunrise.
Her hands moved with practiced ease as she sorted ingredients and set out clean vials for the day's lesson, but her thoughts wandered—drifting just slightly from the task at hand.
She was glad she had done it.
The second frame—the replica of his portrait—hung just behind her workstation, in a place of quiet prominence. A watching place. A witnessing place. And though the canvas remained blank for now, Ivy couldn't help the way her eyes flickered to it every so often. Just a glance. A small pause between words as she instructed her students. A flick of her gaze during a lull in boiling. As if expecting him to be there. As if she could will him there.
The dungeons were alive again.
Not with chaos, not yet — it was still early in the term — but with the restless energy of students, quills scratching, cauldrons bubbling, and a hundred tiny things that made a classroom breathe. Ivy stood near the front, her notes beside her, the usual calm confidence wrapped around her like a well-worn cloak. But her eyes flicked to the frame beside her cauldron.
Empty.
For a moment, doubt curled in her stomach like oversteeped tea leaves.
Had she miscalculated the spell? Had the charm not carried over properly? Or maybe… maybe he'd simply chosen not to come.
She turned back to the class, masking the small sting with a bright, crisp tone. "Line your cauldrons up and prep your ingredients. We'll be starting with the Invigoration Draught. Not because it's difficult—but because you'll need it by midterms."
The students chuckled. Most of them. A few paled.
She gave them a quick series of instructions, weaving among the desks like something fluid and grounded all at once, and just as she turned back toward the front—
A flicker.
Not a grand entrance. No dramatic swirl of robes or sudden burst of presence. Just… a shape. Stepping quietly into the mirrored frame by the cauldron.
Severus.
He didn't speak. Didn't even look at her.
He watched the students. Observed the room like a hawk from an unseen perch. Hands folded behind his back, expression impassive.
But he was there.
And when her gaze caught his — just for a second — his eyes flicked to the potion at her side, then to her hands, then back to the classroom.
She didn't say anything when she passed the portrait again. No greeting. No pause in her stride.
Just a subtle shift in her expression before she turned her attention back to the cauldron in front of the class.
The fire beneath it crackled gently, and the potion inside shimmered a soft, pearly blue. She dipped her ladle once, let the contents swirl, then held it up for the students to see. "This is the consistency you're aiming for," she said calmly, projecting her voice just enough to reach the back row. "Smooth, viscous, no clumping on the ladle's edge. If you see separation or grittiness, it means you've added your binders too early."
She let the ladle lower slowly, gave the potion one final stir, and extinguished the flame beneath it with a flick of her wand. The potion hissed gently, steam rising in lazy spirals, perfumed with a mix of hellebore and powdered moonstone.
Then, without another word, she turned and began her slow walk around the classroom.
Her boots made soft sounds against the stone floor—muted taps and scuffs that accompanied the low murmurs of brewing and the occasional clink of glass. She moved with quiet authority, stopping here and there to lean over a shoulder or murmur a correction.
"Clockwise, Miss Patel. You're reversing the motion and you'll separate the base."
"Warrington, you're overheating. Look at the color—it's going green. That should be silver by now."
Her tone wasn't harsh. Just precise. She didn't raise her voice or waste words. A raised brow was enough to send a fourth-year back into frantic stirring, and a gentle tap of her wand redirected a flame that had crept too high.
She passed by her cauldron once more and let her hand rest lightly on the edge for a heartbeat. It was steady. Warm.
Severus didn't interrupt. Not even once.
He stood silent in the frame, a dark sentinel in a corner of the room most of the students hadn't even noticed yet. His eyes moved with a precision Ivy knew all too well—watching every stir, every sliced sprig of asphodel, every dropped vial with the scrutiny of someone who'd once deducted points for breathing too loudly near a cauldron.
But he didn't speak. Not to her. Not to them.
And she—brilliantly—didn't acknowledge him. Not directly. Not yet.
She moved through the classroom like a conductor, correcting wrist angles here, adjusting flame levels there, offering just enough guidance without dulling the students' instinct to think.
She paused beside one nervous second-year whose potion was beginning to froth dangerously.
"Too much dittany," she said calmly, tapping the edge of the boy's ladle with her wand. "What do you think you can add to balance it out before it neutralizes the infusion?"
The student hesitated, then stammered out a possible solution.
She arched a brow and nodded. "Try it. Slowly."
As she moved on, her eyes flickered briefly to the frame near the front.
Severus had tilted his head.
Subtle. Just the smallest shift of expression.
Amusement?
Satisfaction?
She didn't know. But he was still watching.
Still choosing to stay.
And in the quiet spaces between instructions and simmering brews, there was a strange sense of... partnership. Wordless, weighty, but solid. Like iron buried beneath the foundation of the room.