His Masterpiece

Prologue

This first part of this chapter is taken from The Masterpiece by Émile Zola (1886).

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Harry Potter awoke to his wife banging around in the kitchen, turned his head around to look at the clock, and swore under his breath. He had an appointment with Minerva to attend the new exhibit at the Highsmith Gallery in Diagon Alley. In truth, he didn't want to attend. He had no particular interest in art, but as Minerva said, "It's what we're expected to do."

The artist wasn't anyone Harry knew, but the man had been commissioned to paint Snape's portrait as Headmaster based on an earlier work he had done of him in his youth. Unfortunately, Snape's portrait was to remain forever unfinished. The man was found dead in his studio from a heart attack. The painting of Snape had been left sitting on its easel, the paint still wet.

And so Harry had found himself roped into attending this "celebration of genius." After all, Harry had championed for Snape's recognition as a hero of the Second Wizarding War and his inclusion among Hogwarts's greatest headmasters; as Minerva said, it was expected of him. Merlin, he better find out what the artist's name is and quick; knowing his luck, he'll get badgered by a reporter and end up looking like a fool.

With his eyes still swollen from sleep, almost bewildered, Harry managed to dress himself, scolding himself the while for having slept so long. He couldn't find anything that morning, had to hunt on his hands and knees, one shoe tucked under his arm, for his wand which had rolled off the side table during the night and was spotted wedged behind the bed. He had promised to meet Minerva at Diagon that morning and he was sure she had left for the gallery on her own by now.

Harry finally managed to dress himself, kissed Ginny goodbye, and apparated to Diagon Alley.

As luck would have it, Minerva was running late herself. Something had come up at Hogwarts that delayed her arrival, and when the two spotted each other across the street they both ran up to the other and started issuing out apologies in the same breathless manner, at the same time.

Since it was past eleven, they decided to have lunch before going on to the gallery, giving Harry time to brush up on the artist, bombarding his old professor with questions as if he was preparing for a test.

"I don't really remember that much about him," Minerva admitted. "He was at Hogwarts the same time as your father and mother were, but he was in Ravenclaw and as quiet as a churchmouse besides that. I had almost forgotten him until I learned the Board of Governors had commissioned him to paint Severus's portrait. On Lucius Malfoy's recommendation, if you can believe that! How that man escaped Azkaban a second time is beyond me..." She said as she dove into her basket of chips.

The clock was striking one o'clock by the time they made it to the gallery. It was a lovely day, somewhat chilly, with a bright azure sky. Beneath the sun, a crowd had gathered at the entrance. This stream of bustling, bewildered people, surged beneath the archway into the gallery, like a colony of ants.

Harry and Minerva allowed themselves to get swept up in the crowd. They passed a bronze bust of Venus, two white Doric columns, and then, at last, they were stepping through a red curtain and hanging directly across from them was a massive, unfinished landscape of Knockturn Alley at night.

The breadth and width was monstrous. It must have taken the poor man years and years - decades, even - to get this far, and now it would never be completed. Harry had stopped in his tracks and stood there unmoving as he tried to take it all in, until he felt Minerva slip her arm in his and tug him toward a collection of portraits.

"Harry, look," Minerva said, coming to a stop. The two portraits of Severus Snape had been hung side-by-side. Harry remembered Snape as he was when he had been his teacher: a hard and bitter man, worn and tired, and what few smiles Harry had ever seen on his face were tight-lipped and unpleasant. And there had been Snape's memories; memories of Snape as a dirty, unloved child and memories of Snape as a haunted, broken creature.

The Snape in the portrait was a Snape Harry had never before seen. The plaque underneath it dated the portrait to 1979. Snape would have been nineteen years old at the time he sat for it. Here he was as a young man, well-cared for, richly dressed, his long black hair looking glossy against the blue background as Snape shifted in the chair he was sitting in. A half-smile, full of some private amusement, tugged at Snape's lips as he leaned over, trying to get a better look at himself inside the unfinished Headmaster portrait, as if he couldn't believe what he had grown up to be. Lovely, Harry thought, which is not a word he ever thought he would attribute to Professor Snape.

Unlike the other paintings in the gallery, the unfinished Headmaster portrait did not move. Harry could see the pencil sketch peeking out from underneath the thick coat of brown paint. There was a splash of colour for his skin and robes and hair, in big blocky patches, but nothing else.

Harry and Minerva drifted onward. The artist seemed mostly a student of landscapes, and Harry spotted a beautiful rendition of Hogwarts Castle as seen from Hogsmeade, but there were other portraits interspersed between. Minerva stopped in front of a large canvas depicting a nude male lying on his back across a sofa, his face hidden behind his arms so that only his black hair could be seen.

"Look at the brushstrokes," Minerva said and Harry tried not to blush in front of his old professor.

He averted his gaze away from the man's cock resting between his thighs, preferring to look around the room he was standing in. As Harry glanced around, he spotted Draco Malfoy with his wife, Astoria, and was about to give a polite nod in acknowledgment. He stopped when he noticed that Draco looked... he looked enraged, his pale, pointed face was flushed red with anger. The crowd parted for him as he stormed past, his wife trailing behind in his wake and shooting little apologetic glances as she went. Harry wanted to call out to him, to ask him what was the matter, but Draco swept by without even seeing him.

Harry looked about in confusion. It seemed as if Draco had just come from a spot near the back of the room where a large crowd stood huddled together around one painting in particular, their voices rising higher and higher in pitch as they whispered amongst themselves.

"Excuse me for a minute," he said to Minerva, and went over to see what all the fuss was about. Whatever else could be said about the Malfoy heir, he was not a prude. It seemed absurd that any painting could be shocking enough to send him into such a fit of rage.

Harry elbowed his way through the crowd, pushing to the front until he stood directly in front of a medium-sized painting in a gilt frame. Unlike the landscapes and portraits that populated the walls, this was a scene from life. It looked to be a bedroom, some little bedsit in a tenement slum, maybe even in a run-down inn. Like the painting he had just come from, this one also depicted a nude male reclining. He was laid out on a bed, his black hair fanning the pillows. His face- it was Snape, again. That was Severus Snape lying there, naked, his face twisted in fear, his arms upraised in helplessness as another man - half of another man, only half of him could be seen, everything below his waist didn't exist and there were thin, silvery lines painted across the floor, as if an invisibility cloak had fallen from his shoulders - wrestled with him, a knife in hand. They moved, as all magical paintings moved, and Harry watched with a pale face as the two men were forced to continue their violent struggle for all eternity.

Harry glanced down at the plaque and saw that it had been painted in 1980. How can that be? Harry thought as he looked back up at the man with the knife. That's me.

Same wild black hair, same jaw, same ears. The glasses were different, and the eyes... the eyes were brown, not green.