Leave Out All The Rest

Everything

"I thought you did not like to be called Albie?" My thoughts were interrupted by an unusual voice. I turned behind me, but no one was there. "Not surprising, though. Indecisive, just like your father."

"My father is not indecisive," I defended, turning around again, looking at every corner of the Head Office for anyone lingering around. "I've gone mad," I then murmured to myself. "What the hell did Zabini put in today's pumpkin juice?"

"Not mad," said the voice. "Stupid."

"I'm not—"

"Up here, boy," it interrupted me before I got a chance to defend myself. 

I spun to the sound of the voice, looking up. I was expecting a spider on the wall, the type Dad said Hagrid used to keep as pets, but there was no vile, large insect. Instead, there was a man inside a portrait. A man with pale skin, dark, ebony hair, with matching scowling eyes, and a hooked nose he was staring down at me from. 

"Talking portrait," I wheezed.

"My assumption was correct, then. Stupid."

"I'm not—" I paused, glaring but still shaking my head in disbelief. "I just meant, you're Severus Snape. The actual Severus Snape."

Snape rose a sharp, dark brow at me. "And you're a Potter."

There was a sort of distaste in his tone, but then his eyes narrowed at mine as I took a step closer. I knew I should have been uneasy about him staring me down, but I was more fascinated than anything. "Merlin," I continued, "I always knew you were here, but I didn't ever think to come up and see for myself. James mentioned portraits, but I was too busy dealing with school and girls...Wow. You're Snape."

"Ah, dear Severus, it seems you have found yourself a friend." Then there was another voice coming from beside Snape. There was another portrait there, one that had previously been empty. Now there was an old wizard too famous not to know his name. "I told you one day it would happen."

Snape turned his scowl at the bearded, white-haired man to his right. "I'm still trying to get rid of you, Dumbledore."

"Bit grouchy," the great Albus Dumbledore said to me with a wink. "But he's good company."

I took a step back, gawking at the two. 

All the stories I had heard, all the pictures I had seen in textbooks and from old clippings in Gran's attic did not live up to actually being face to (painted) face with Severus Snape and Albus Dumbledore. They had been characters in tales of war that were too gruesome and too fantastic to be real to children born decades after the battle of good versus evil. Now I was staring them in the face, the two men that had helped my father in his youth.

 "You must be Albie," Dumbledore said with a kind smile during my long moment of silence. "James has mentioned you a few times. You're not as small as he made you seem."

"Apparently he is not too keen on that name," Snape told him rather dully. 

"Ah," Dumbledore mused, pulling his half-moon spectacles down a few centimeters on his nose. "What should we call you, then, dear boy?"

"Albus," I said, pointing two thumbs at myself, "Albus Severus."

A wider smile took a hold of Dumbledore's face while Snape seemed stunned. "See," the older wizard said, "I told you Harry wasn't lying."

Before I could ask what that meant, the doors to the Head Office opened to let Minerva McGonagall in.

I scrambled back to the chair, sitting on it with my hands crossed over my lap.