Severus Snape
“I thought you said she was giving you lines?” Harry hesitated, but after all, Ron had been honest with him, so he told Ron the truth about the hours he had been spending in Umbridge’s office.
“The old hag!” Ron said in a revolted whisper as they came to a halt in front of the Fat Lady, who was dozing peacefully with her head against her frame. “She’s sick! Go to McGonagall, say something!”
“No,” said Harry at once. “I’m not giving her the satisfaction of knowing she’s got to me.”
“Got to you? You can’t let her get away with this!”
“I don’t know how much power McGonagall’s got over her,” said Harry.
“Dumbledore, then, tell Dumbledore!”
“No,” said Harry flatly.
“Why not?”
“He’s got enough on his mind,” said Harry, but that was not the true reason. He was not going to go to Dumbledore for help when Dumbledore had not spoken to him once since last June.
Ron, however, had stopped listening. His jaw was clenched, his ears were red, and without another word, he grabbed Harry’s arm and began dragging him down the corridor with alarming determination.
“What—Ron—where are we going?” Harry demanded, trying to yank his arm back.
Ron didn’t answer. He stormed straight into Snape’s dungeon classroom and, by some stroke of luck (or possibly misfortune), found it empty.
Snape, who had been marking essays with the enthusiasm of a man forced to grade flobberworm reports, barely had time to look up before Ron shoved Harry’s hand out in front of him.
Snape’s black eyes flicked to the words carved into Harry’s skin.
His entire body went deathly still.
The room dropped a few degrees.
When he finally moved, it was with precise, controlled slowness—like a predator considering whether it was worth the effort to maul its prey.
Without a word, Snape flicked his wand, summoning a small bottle of Essence of Dittany from his shelves. He grabbed Harry’s wrist (rather more forcefully than necessary) and applied the healing solution, watching as the angry wounds began to fade.
He said nothing.
Then, in a voice like ice cracking under pressure, he hissed, “Leave.”
Harry and Ron didn’t need telling twice. They bolted.
The Potions Incident
Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately, depending on one’s sense of humor), Umbridge chose this very same day to conduct an inspection of Snape’s class.
The moment she stepped into the dungeon, clipboard in hand, Snape spoke.
“The most useless potion ingredient,” he announced in a slow, deliberate drawl, “is the toad.”
Silence fell.
Every student turned to look at him.
Umbridge, mid-waddle toward the back of the room, hesitated, quill poised.
Snape’s black eyes gleamed with something almost… dangerous.
“But even among toads,” he continued smoothly, “there is one that is particularly worthless.”
A pause.
A very, very deliberate pause.
Then, with all the grace of a man making an observation, Snape let his gaze flick over Umbridge—her frilly pink cardigan, her garish pink bow, the nauseatingly pink quill gripped in her stubby fingers.
His lip curled.
“The pink one,” he murmured.
A sharp intake of breath rippled through the classroom.
Umbridge’s toad-like mouth puckered.
Then, with the slow precision of someone savoring the moment, Snape turned, walked to a nearby shelf, and plucked something from it.
A very pink toad.
It was plump. Warty. Slightly squished-looking. And, most importantly, painfully pink.
Snape carried it back to his desk with the deliberate movements of a man about to perform something deeply satisfying.
Without even looking at Umbridge, he set the toad down, adjusted his sleeves, and reached under his desk.
Out came a bat.
Not a wand. Not a knife. A bat.
The tension in the room became unbearable.
“And this,” Snape said silkily, raising the bat, “is how we deal with useless ingredients.”
Before anyone could react—
BANG.
The pink toad was obliterated.
Glass jars trembled. Seamus let out a strangled choke. Lavender Brown clapped a hand over her mouth. Dean Thomas’s quill slipped from his fingers.
Umbridge made a faint gurgling noise.
Snape, still not looking at her, tilted his head and examined the remains with an air of mild dissatisfaction.
“Of course,” he muttered, “one must be thorough.”
He lifted the bat again.
BANG.
Something wet slid across the desk and smacked into Neville’s shoe. Neville made a noise that might have been a suppressed scream.
Umbridge’s entire body jerked. Her clipboard quivered. Her bulging eyes darted wildly between Snape, the bat, and the smear on his desk.
Then, at long last, Snape finally turned to face her.
His expression was unreadable. His gaze was steady. And then—he smirked.
“I think,” he said, in a voice like a knife sliding from its sheath, “I’ve forgotten one toad.”
A single beat of silence.
Then, in slow, deliberate motion, Snape leaned forward ever so slightly and murmured,
“I will deal with it… in private.”
The words hung in the air like a death sentence.
Umbridge’s clipboard clattered to the ground.
She made a strangled noise—not quite a gasp, not quite a shriek—then spun on her heel so fast she nearly tripped over herself.
And then she fled.
The door slammed behind her.
For several moments, no one moved.
Then, in perfect synchronization, every student in the room slowly turned back to stare at Snape as if he had just casually announced his candidacy for Minister of Magic through brute force alone.
Snape, for his part, exhaled through his nose, placed the bat back under his desk, and waved a hand with practiced indifference.
“Continue your work.”
The classroom erupted into the frantic sound of everyone trying very hard to pretend they had seen nothing.
Ron, staring at Snape with the expression of someone who had just found religion, leaned over to Harry and whispered, awestruck,
“That… was the single greatest thing I have ever seen.”
Harry, who was still trying to process whether that had actually happened or if he had finally lost his mind, simply nodded.