The flattened space is as disturbing to Severus as the sensation of traveling between frames and painting styles but never as disturbing as a particularly ragged Potter would prove himself today.

It wasn't exactly like being alive, Severus decided. It wasn't like being dead either. He thought, felt, and experienced, but these thoughts, feelings and experiences had less depth than those he remembered from before the attack. The loneliness was also of a different sort. He had once been desperately lonely for a specific, missing someone. Now, he was lonely for human conversation; even the garden variety pleasantries he had once found detestable had become a welcome relief.

The portrait in the headmaster's office had been commissioned after Severus's death, but this painting at headquarters--not his usual habitat by any means--was found among the professor's belongings at Spinner's End. Severus sat for it shortly after the 1985 Dublin Potions Conference. A band of Irish werewolves wanted to mark the first effective, safe, and successfully brewed formulation of a potion to dampen the change. The Wolfsbane potion, the wolves decided, was infinitely preferable to the poison by the same name traditionally slipped into meals before the full moon to weed werewolves out of the population--undetectable, harmless to the unbitten, but deadly to the infected and their non-were children. Of course, the poison had been technically illegal for decades, but there remained inns, pubs, and restaurants werewolves knew to avoid. Severus took perverse pleasure in preserving the name even if he altered the formulation. The werewolves, like Lupin, seemed too good natured to notice the malice, or perhaps the painting was their revenge.

Severus's place is in the foreground. The background reeks of heavy-handed metaphor: three docile, protective wolves nap amidst a flock of affectionate sheep, nuzzling the wolves in grateful admiration. Of course, Severus didn't know his surround would be utterly obnoxious, or else he never would have consented to have the thing done. Now, in the painted afterlife, he regrets his decision every day. Sentenced to an eternity alongside three vicious reminders of the most terrifying experience of his youth. Wonderful. Albus's portrait, of course, is very amused.

What is the probability that the world would be left with two renditions of Severus Snape's homely visage--one for Hogwarts, one for Potter's private enjoyment--but only a single painted memorial of the great Albus Dumbledore? None. Albus's eyes had been twinkling with nothing but deceit two months ago when the old man had intoned for the umpteenth time, "Severus, you know I have no other portrait to travel between. Otherwise, I would gladly take this burden myself." How many cock and bull excuses had the man concocted over the years? And of those, how many were crafted especially for Severus Snape? The painted potions master could only hope that he wasn't his mentor's biggest dupe. "Lemon Drop?"

Severus had rolled his eyes at that. Yellow was, Severus had discovered by trial and error the least palatable paint color in the spectrum. "No. No to the lemon drop, and no to this ridiculous scheme."

"You are the only one I would entrust the boy's safety to, Severus. Remember your promise." Albus echoed the words he had used once before in life and in far more dire circumstances.

"Really, Albus. Enough with the melodramatics. Keeping your boy wonder from drinking himself to stupor three times a week hardly falls within the purview of my promise."

Severus had protested but knew he would look after the boy in spite of himself. Life as a painting had proven unsurprisingly meaningless. Severus was not in any position to turn down useful occupation. Besides, the former headmaster hadn't lost his hold over Severus and never would. The painted world despite its animation tended to be relatively static.

Spying for Albus, however, has changed. The profession has become less dangerous in death than it tends to be for the living. Safer too because Potter, who lives in the room directly above Severus's wall in Grimmauld place, plays the Dark Lord's role. Spilled beer and vomit are the only dangers Severus must contend with at secret weekly meetings nowadays.

A woman in her fifties with orange hair and a warm smile looks up as a heavy thud shook the ceiling above. "Harry must be home from work," she excuses the noise to a roomful of witches and wizards ranging in age from twenty-four to.. well, Minerva had always been very secretive about her age. "He never has mastered the floo," Mrs. Weasley adds fondly as she nods to her youngest son.

"Mom, I'll go check on Harry, then."

"Thank you, Ron." The two redheads share a meaningful look before Ron disappears through the door.

"As you all know, we have ninety-three remaining unadopted and underage war orphans to tend to, thirty-one of whom will be attending Hogwarts in the fall. Including school supplies and fees, we are short roughly 350,000 galleons." Minerva McGonagall is tight-lipped as she reads the amount. Several people sitting around the table gasp.

"And how many of these ninety-three are DE children?" Moody's question is characteristically accusatory.

Minerva's eyes harden. "Alastor, honestly..." but the remonstrance is interrupted by nine and a half stones of twenty-six-year-old Boy Who Lived stumbling through the door.

"Harry, have a seat and some pie. You look starved." Mrs. Weasley offers the glassy-eyed boy a plate while Charlie Weasley helps Potter find his seat. The boy is obviously too incapacitated to do so on his own--a fact that leaves Mad-Eye and the twenty-something's snickering and the rest of the room awkwardly embarrassed at the state of their savior.

"Yes, well, now that Mr. Potter has joined us, shall we continue?" Minerva has resorted to her teacher voice, but Potter doesn't notice. "The Memorial Foundation Ball should raise half of that amount, which still leaves the fund short 175,000 galleons..."

"Mom, I can't find Harry anywhere, but his room is a..." Ron Weasley bellows, before he is even through the door. "Oh. You're here." Potter doesn't bother looking up.

The meeting's business is resolved in five minutes as usual. The Order is largely a defunct organization. Its only real responsibility is financing the care and education of the victims of the war--a task Minerva simply doesn't trust the ministry to execute. Although why anyone would trust the Order with war orphans given its first attempt, who is currently drooling and staring blankly at the wall, is beyond Severus's understanding.

"How's work been Harry?" Ron asks around a mouthful of Yorkshire Pudding. Potter turns his head in the direction of the sound. He looks perplexedly at his friend for a moment until Hermione comes to his rescue.

"Ron, you know he can't talk about work. He can't break his oath, can you, Harry?" She rests a comforting hand on his shoulder, and Harry turns to smile at the know-it-all.

"Why don't you spend the weekend at the Burrow, Harry? Charlie and Bill are home for a week before the kids are off to school. We can get a few pick up games of quidditch in before they leave, and I can show you Dai Llewellyn's broom from the '61 cup."

Potter shoots a sloppy smile at the second youngest Weasley, but those green eyes ignore their friend in favor of staring at a painted visage almost as intensely as they did the night it came to life. "The stomach of a goat, sir," Potter answers much to the confusion of his interlocutor before promptly passing out in a pool of his own slobber. Unnoticed, Severus's painted eyes widen and then harden. The most peculiar image of a drunken Potter uttering those same words in the potions classroom comes to Severus like a memory the portrait doesn't remember having. Some unknown but significant parameter is fundamentally and terrifyingly wrong. The Order and portrait stare quietly, nonplussed at what has become of the evening's meeting.

"Mr Weasley, Mr. Ron and Charlie Weasley, if you would please." Minerva, Severus observes, hasn't lost her knack for being at a loss without ever appearing to be so. Perhaps that is all it takes to be headmaster.

The two Weasley boys share a confused look, but eventually the younger takes the feet; the older grabs their friend under the arms; and the three make their way back up to the inevitable mess the bespectacled manboy emerged from only minutes before.

"Shouldn't you call Madam Poppy, Headmistress?" asks Ms Granger.

"Hardly. I imagine even Mr Potter can survive a hangover unassisted." Granger bristles at that. Severus smirks. "Should he require medical aid," Minerva continues, "I hope someone in this house has the sense to floo St Mungo's and not disturb Poppy's holiday. I apologize as I hope does the young man in question" --the last Minerva mutters to herself (and inadvertently to the portrait behind her left shoulder)--"but I am needed back at the castle. Good evening."

 Within minutes, the crowd clears out, leaving Ron Weasley to tend to the mess left behind--although why he is allowed anywhere near the flatware is beyond Severus. The boy brakes more dishes in one night than Longbottom melted cauldrons in his entire career at Hogwarts. After the fourth tea cup shatters, the potions master's nerves require tonight's mission come to an abrupt end. "Mr Weasley, a word if you would," Severus drawls, but the effect, the professor fears, is largely dulled by his medium: sound, Severus has learned, unfortunately loses much of its resonance when traveling from the two to the three dimensional.