FicWad

"I thought I might find you here."

Startled by the sound of the voice, Phineas looked up, not at Albus, but at the sunlit room beyond the surface. The twin beds were empty and the wardrobe was bare; the faded green paint on the walls peeled like ivy, revealing the cracks and the damp beneath. There'd been a comfortable old armchair by the window once, and a small bookcase near the door. Phineas wasn't certain when they'd been taken away.

There was no one in the room. Phineas reached out, touching the surface, and the sun's warmth found his fingertips. He wondered who had left the curtains open. "Where else would I be?" he said finally, embarrassed by the reedy petulance in his tone but unable to remove it. He was so young in this picture. "I have nowhere else to go, damn you. You saw to that."

"Phineas."

Just his name, nothing more, but Phineas heard the unspoken admonition. He might well have been back in the Head's office, being shouted down by the other portraits, except this was worse, a stir and a breath in his own quiet world. A shudder choked through him, but he stiffened his spine against it and said, "You are not Headmaster anymore, Dumbledore. I do not owe you my allegiance."

"Perhaps not," said Albus, "but I think I have it regardless."

"No," Phineas snarled, shaking his head. "No, you have nothing. I will obey Minerva, according to my oath, but you will get nothing more from me. You have taken so much already."

"Phineas." A firm, long-fingered grip closed about Phineas' wrist, bind and brand, and a sob rose in his throat. He had not been touched in more than seventy years.

He shook it off. "You have your hand back, I see. I beg you will do me the courtesy of keeping it to yourself."

"As you wish." Albus stepped back, and Phineas found the strength to turn and face him. They shared the same wall in the Head's office, so he had not seen Albus since he left for his fool's errand with the Potter boy. Albus looked much the same - his was a recent commission, completed not long before the injury to his wand arm - but as he leaned against the gaudy, sunlit frame, his silver hair was washed with gold, and Phineas felt like a schoolboy again. His fingers itched to break Albus' nose, to smack the smile from his face, and he was not surprised when Albus said coaxingly, "I came as soon as I awakened."

"Do you think I am so anxious for your company?" He glared at Albus, knowing full well Albus would see the truth in his eyes, whatever it was. Phineas hardly knew himself anymore.

"I think you have been very lonely."

"Lonely!" The word tasted like bile in his mouth. "And if I am, whose fault is it? I know what you've been up to, you despicable meddler. Did you think I wouldn't realise? That I couldn't tell the difference? I was dead for forty years before you became Headmaster. I know the difference!"

"Phineas -"

"No, you will hear what I have to say." Phineas found himself panting as he remembered the change, how Albus had spun his strange silver devices and woven the oldest of magic into the office walls until Phineas had shaken off the soporific deadweight of the portrait world to reach the barrier, to break it. "I have held my tongue all this time - who would have believed me? - but if you have the balls to show your face here, then I need feel no compunction about telling you exactly what I think of you. Dumbledore, you are grotesque. You have committed the most unspeakable desecration, without permission or apology, and I consider you every bit as bad as your precious Lord Voldemort. Worse, because you ought to know better. Damn you for what you've done to me."

"My dear!" A pleading note joined the customary tone of cheerful, peremptory command. Phineas was pleased to hear it, and he stood his ground as Albus reached out for him, then dropped his hands. "Without permission, yes, but I apologise with my whole heart if I have caused you pain. I learned much from Nicolas, but even he did not know if such a thing could be achieved."

"But you had to find out for yourself, and I was the test subject. I find your expression of remorse as thin as whey." Phineas felt the old jealousy twist in his belly and cursed Albus for it. "You should never have taken up with that man. He ruined you."

"Perhaps I was already irrevocably damaged."

"Do not put this on me. I may be dead, but I am not a fool, and I know you. How often have I listened to you buckle your students to their knees with your prevarications and your calculated charm? You even appointed your own executioner. Poor, wretched Severus, how he loved you." Phineas dragged his eyes from Albus and stared out at the empty beds, his barren home. He had struggled so long and hard to fill it, and his line had turned to dust. "Your black-haired favourites, how we all love you."

His rage dispersed as quickly as it had appeared, absorbed into the muffled darkness beyond his frame. Since Albus first beguiled him back to something like life every feeling had seemed disproportionate, warped beyond measure by his confines and with no hope of release. It was very much like revisiting his youth, and just as painfully unsettling. Albus approached him once more, cautiously this time, and Phineas allowed the heavy fall of hands upon his slumped shoulders and the whisper in his ear. "I had to know that it would work. I am sorry, my dear. More sorry than you can know. But I am also glad. I will not deny it."

The artist had reproduced the scent of lemon. Phineas shivered, although he was never cold. "Are you glad because it worked? Or are you glad because it was me?"

"Ah, Phineas, how can you ask? And I thought you were no fool." Albus shook him lightly, reproachfully. "Who else would it be? My magic, strong as it is, would not be enough to instil such vitality into any portrait, even yours. Only a special tie to the world, to me, would suffice. A bond with a life of its own."

"Do you speak of love? How fond you are of that rubbishy notion, and how much trouble it has caused me."

"It is the best reason to live." Phineas felt Albus' lips press against his hair. "I have watched your progress over these long years with such terror and joy. You tried to conceal it behind your usual vile temper, but I could see your life force splashing across the canvas, soaking up the spell's power. Your strength staggered me. Some of the others caught hints of it. Dilys, perhaps, and Armando and Everard; they still have some echo of feeling for this world. But you, Phineas, you feel such love even in death. For your family, for the school. But most of all, for me. So much love, I am humbled."

"Yes, yes, you have put me to the blush." Phineas stroked anxiously at his beard; it was thicker than it had been in life, a kindness on the part of the artist. "Will you at least tell me why? Why am I to have no peace? Why will you not rest yourself?"

"Phineas, you know as well as I do that there is a task to be completed. I cannot allow death to sway me from my course."

"You will in fact use it to your advantage." Phineas remembered asking Albus long ago how he had ended up in Gryffindor, only to be told that Albus had expressed to the Sorting Hat an aversion to dungeons. Phineas was still not certain if Albus had lied to him. He did not have Albus' skill at Legilimency.

"Yes," said Albus. "I have sunk my very bones into the foundations of Hogwarts, woven my spirit into the walls, and there I will stay and fight until the school falls."

"Will it be long?"

"What is time to us? It will be long enough, my dear, and not forever. I hope you will stay by my side and help me."

"When have I ever denied you?"

Albus laughed, a harsh sound, and his fingers bit into Phineas' collar, tearing the lace.

"You ought not to touch me," Phineas said almost absently, feeling the tacky imprint of Albus' thumbs against his skin. "You are not yet dry."

"It might be fifty years before I am dry. How can I not touch you? Have I not waited long enough? Turn around, my dear. You gave your life to that house, but your life is mine now. It is only fair."

"You, to speak of fairness," Phineas scoffed, but he turned in Albus' embrace and let him kiss the frown from his face. "See how I must stretch to reach your damned lips? As tall as you are, and still you prance about in your high-heeled boots. How is that fair? You know nothing of the subject."

"For you, I will learn," Albus whispered, his mouth hot and vehement against Phineas' forehead. He cradled Phineas' face carefully in his hands. "How handsome you are in your wedding finery. I remember that day vividly. You were just eighteen, absurdly young. Scared, too, and so determined not to show it. Even now you sneer at anyone who dares look at you."

"How could you remember my wedding? You were not even invited." Phineas did not recall feeling frightened, just a bone-deep, barely understood misery mixed with a steadfast resolve to do his duty to the Black name. He was six years old - Sirius still warm in his grave - when his father arranged the betrothal; Ursula had been two years older than him and a stranger.

"I was there, although you did not see me. I suppose you did not want to," said Albus. "I entertained wild ideas of replacing your wedding band with a Portkey, or loosing a dragon upon the guests, or simply throwing you over my shoulder and making for Australia. I did none of those things. I watched you marry, and I put the memory in my Pensieve where it could not hurt me."

"Until you saw my portrait in the Head's office and thought how you might have me at last," said Phineas, raising a brow.

Albus promptly smoothed it down with his thumb. "You credit me with more forethought than I have, my dear. I saw you, and I was glad. I would be gladder still if you could grant me your forgiveness now."

"Perhaps your sincerity would be more convincing if you expressed it upon your knees," said Phineas slyly. Albus would undoubtedly find the forgiveness in his eyes - Phineas could not hold it back if he tried - but a show of magnanimity was not in his nature, while a sense of mischief was.

"I would be honoured," said Albus, and he slid to his knees with surprising grace and only the merest creak, before looking back up into Phineas' eyes. "Am I forgiven?"

"You already know the answer," said Phineas, stroking a hand across Albus' silver hair.

"And you will be mine? You will keep by me, and lend me your aid and your love?"

"So formal," Phineas mocked gently. "I am entirely at your disposal, until the fall of Hogwarts. If you can make me happy, I shall do my best to prop up its stones until time's end."

"That is incentive indeed," said Albus, smiling. "May I undress you?"

"If it pleases you."

"You please me, Phineas, more than I can say." Albus took Phineas' boots upon his lap, unbuckling them one after the other, while Phineas braced a hand upon his shoulder and told himself sternly not to hop about. His socks were stroked and nuzzled and approved of, then rolled off without regret, after which Albus licked a delicate path across his bare arches and Phineas bit his own lip savagely, wrenched between a giggle and a whimper. He shrugged out of his formal robes and fumbled at the buttons of his frockcoat and shirt, but Albus batted his hands away and unfastened them himself; and Phineas was delighted to find that Albus' fingers were no steadier than his own.

"Oh, please," he begged, blushing for the rash eagerness in his voice as Albus cupped him through his trousers. His prick strained against the material, aching for attention, and Albus rubbed at it lavishly until Phineas grew fractious, shoving his pelvis back and forth in futile, ardent thrusts. Albus laughed and pulled Phineas' flies apart, yanking his trousers and underwear down, and Phineas kicked free of them so violently that he fell on his arse and swore. Albus kept him there, his hands firm on Phineas' hips while he suckled and teased at the rigid length of Phineas' prick, and Phineas wound his hands in Albus' hair and almost cried to think that he had died without knowing what Albus felt like.

"You taste of linseed oil and turpentine," said Albus, licking his lips and swiping at his damp beard. Phineas' hips bucked insistently, and Albus flipped him onto his belly, bunching his formal robes beneath him and spreading his arse cheeks wide. "It's even stronger here." His tongue was lewd and insistent, lapping at Phineas and darting inside him, again and again, and his beard trailed between Phineas' trembling thighs and curled about his balls until Phineas was frotting his prick raw against his own robes. He could feel a hot, melting sensation as the oils began to bead down his straining back and seep across the curve of his arse, and he cried out as Albus gathered them in his palm and rubbed them into his tight virgin arsehole, working him carefully open with his fingers. "My dear, my dearest, forgive my haste. I have left you alone too long and I cannot, will not wait any longer. I must be inside you."

"Yes," Phineas groaned, and Albus took his hips in a cruel grip and hoisted them high. Phineas braced himself upon his elbows, biting his fist and pushing back as Albus' prick ground inside him and settled to the hilt. The fit was tight and unnerving, yet utterly right, and Phineas arched his back and widened his stance, urging Albus to rut against him. Albus' robes rustled over his bare skin and his balls swung oil-slick and heavy, slapping between their thighs as his prick slid home, over and over. Phineas' hips writhed in Albus' tight grasp until he knew marks would be left that would have nothing to do with the artist's craft.

"With me now," Albus pleaded, dragging at Phineas' shoulders until Phineas rose upon his knees, splayed across Albus' lap, and then Albus wound his wand hand about Phineas' prick and clamped the other across his heart, shoving them both to a frantic and deplorably undignified release that left Phineas sobbing.

"Not yet, stay awhile," he begged, when Albus tried to withdraw from his body. Albus stilled, then tightened his possessive embrace, filling Phineas' ears with a low, anxious keening. Phineas dropped his head back upon Albus' shoulder and pressed a kiss to his damp, flushed cheek. "Let me catch my breath."

"You are dead, my dear. Our semblances have no need of breath." Albus' spectacles looked fogged and just a little askew.

"And still we pant desperately for it. That is your doing, meddler." He looked down upon his bare body, so comfortable and replete in Albus' arms. "You have left smears all over me. Shall I be a nude portrait from now on? How very decadent. Mundungus will likely spirit me away in the night and put me up for auction in some house of ill-repute."

"Never. You are mine now."

"And delighted to remain so, although how you shall feel about the matter when you have shared my abode even a short while remains to be seen. It was not so very long ago that someone informed you, quite rightly, that people don't like being locked up. We shall see."

"I give you my word, it is not forever, my dear."

"Perhaps I would not mind forever after all," said Phineas, sighing as he felt Albus' softened prick slip from inside him. "If you are quite done here, than you might be so kind as to fetch my apparel. We have much work to do."