The class was deathly silent. Except for the frantic scratching of parchment by quill as students hurried their notetaking to Snape's deadly low whispers. He dictations were soft, wispy little whispers. He loomed over the classroom, fixing his beady black eyes on the students, He would swirl about with a flourish of his cloak, looking like an overgrown bat or an underpaid Dracula, whichever seemed most attractive in his eyes and abuse students from afar without even needing to look if they were making the mistakes he was criticising them for.
Severus Snape was a man in total command of his body, down to his nimble little fingers that wanted to concoct poisions that would poison Harry Potter when Harry wasn't looking to his nimble little toes, which would power walk him to Harry Potter's desk and berate him for being an idiot for the hundreth time when Harry wasn't listening. His beady black eyes spoke of unfathomable depths that no human had ever traversed, and were for locating Harry Potter when he was in the middle of making a mistake at Potions Class.
Truly, Severus Snape was a man in total command of his body. A captain of his soul and first lieutenant of his heart.
He dictated for the class in a soft and deadly whisper. He whisked up a potion out of nowhere, momentarily paused to wonder if he could poison Harry Potter and get away with it— No? — Then he poured the contents with a dispassionate grumpy glare and narrated the procedure for concocting it to his students who were not Harry Potter, who he hated very much. And also Harry Potter, who he also hated very much.
"Harry Potter!" shrieked Snape, suddenly turning to him.
Harry screamed, toppling over his cauldron in shock as the only response for a young teenage boy was to respond to a grown adult perpetually targeting him for harassment in an educational facility that was primarily meant to house Harry Potter, who Voldemort would attack annually, and also attack the other students as a mere matter of being in proximity of Harry Potter, who Harry Potter was.
Snape swished his wand in a horizontal swoosh, as he was seeing Harry Potter from a distance and did the swiping motion one would do were you to signal you were going to decapitate the person from afar using a swiping motion to show decapitation.
"Foolish Potter!" snarled Snape, sending phlegm and spittle that would bury itself in Harry Potter's robes and attack Harry Potter's immune system when Harry Potter was vulnerable, as Snape was one with himself and desired nothing more than his hatred of Harry Potter be known to all lifeforms in all omniverses.
"I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" screamed Harry Potter in a very Harry Potter-like tone. That is to say, prepubescent and reeking of puberty.
"Why did you mix the salamander blood with the troll heart?" said Snape, spittle spat and splayed across Harry Potter's robes, "Are you not paying attention in class, foolish boy? Well?"
Harry Potter said nothing. He awkwardly picked up his cauldron and set it upright. He dusted the junk off his robes and looked at Snape's feet, who he knew was configured to move towards Harry's coordinates at all times when he was making a mistake at class. He seethed and sat silently, staring at Snape's presumably slimy feet.
"No, sir," said Harry softly, not bothering to look up at Snape. Snape felt temporary victory over the man whose genes had combined with his beloved and created another of himself. But it was temporary, as all victories are, as life eventually ends in death.
Snape returned to his position at the front of the class, maintaining eye contact with Harry to establish his dominance over him and returned his attention to the more tedious, non-Harry Potter students in his class, some of which included Draco Malfoy, who's' dad he sometimes liked and wife who cooked good meals when Snape was invited over for dinner. Snape liked Draco Malfoy, and Draco Malfoy liked Snape.
Snape continued dictations. He held vials at eye level and spoke about the complexities and intricacies of their shimmering contents and how they were fatal if concocted by idiots who were also dunderheads which happened to include Harry Potter most of the times.
He jabbed at various students cauldrons and pointed out mistakes they had made while keeping eye contact with Harry Potter. He singled out students to answer questions they were unprepared for as he maintained eye contact with Harry Potter.
Snape's behavior had hard-wired into every student a regular flight or fight response when they entered his dungeons or smelled the greasiness of his hair from afar. All inattention, all mischief would earn Snape's wrath. His wrath was indiscriminate and unyielding, just like the grease in his hair.
The most foolish of all students, ones who had spent all-nighters would often nod off during class. Their classmates would swish and flick their wands and cast a spell that looked like their eyes were open even when sleeping.
Several students had nearly died in Snape's class for the transgression of sleeping, and the other students had sworn to never submit to the grave sin of falling asleep in his class. With child-like glee and fervor, Severus would carry out punishments unchecked by Dumbledore because of his unique position of acting as a double agent for the light and the dark sides.
Snape slammed his palms on the sides of his cauldrons, jostling awake any students that had a low enough IQ to drift asleep and began his teaching.
"…curiously leaving the consciousness of the victim whole, this venom leaves the pain receptors live. This leaves the victims, I mean, subjects, breathless in a matter of minutes because of their adrenaline glands failing and the body narcotizing rapidly due to the time-relative properties present in the poison. The poison disrupts the nervous system—"
Chomp smooch smack.
"Outlawed under Section 71.B as a Class III scheduled substance, which is a highly dangerous chemical substance of a venomous nature- "
Smooch kiss smack.
"…Banned in 182 countries after the Moscow Warpact, arguing mankind had finally created a weapon worthy of the biblical devil-"
Smooch smack kiss.
Snape slammed his desk with open palms and sent an ear-splitting crack resounding through the classroom. The luckiest students jumped, the less lucky flatulated, and the least lucky emptied their bowels mid jump.
Snape glowered at the classroom. Several students were trembling and staring beyond Snape, at the walls with thousand yard stares.
Some students had jumped in their seats. Some had stopped breathing. Everyone had their own unique coping mechanism in Snape's class.
Harry had jumped a whole 4 inches off his seat more than Ron, who had only managed 2 inches. They shuddered and exchanged looks of horror, like the primitive prey animals they were in Snape's presence.
"What," Snape began in a deadly hiss, "is that infernal racket?"
Snape jerked his head towards the students, his tiny black pupils glittering with malice. He scanned across the rows of students one by one. His eyes came to rest on the godforsaken Potter boy. Was it him? Was it Harry Potter? Truly? Really? Had he given him a reason at last?
No, he was trembling and looking at the floor, unable to make eye contact with Snape. To Snape, it looked as though he was as stupid and arrogant as ever. He was too scared to pull off anything with Snape in the room, Snape thought, as his lips curled into a smile.
His eyes scanned the students again. All manner of shapes and sizes of prepubescent teens littered his beautiful dungeon, and he hated them for it. Ooh, a redhead. Weasley. The friend of the Potter boy. Was it him?
Ronald Weasley was also not looking at Snape and attempting and failing to clandestinely pick his boogers and eat them. Not him, no. Severus vomited in his mouth a little bit.
His eyes shot across the room again, like a roulette ball spinning across the wheel. Brown hair. Ah. The only girl Harry Potter had ever managed to get in contact with. Was it her?
No, she was not looking at Snape either. Just scribbling notes as usual at a speed that threatened to set fire to the parchment and launch her into the future with the required 1.21 jijawatts being met. Not her, no.
Snape's roulette vision began to roll again. Nothing. Not a single thing from the Gryffindor regiment.
But then—no—It couldn't be!
Smooch smack kiss.
The Slytherin lot? Truly? Really? Snape cricked his neck from jerking it so fast. Students gasped as they wondered if he had managed to twist his own neck and die. They grimaced, hearing the audible crack of his neck.
Smack kiss slurp.
All eyes in the classroom turned to the Slytherin regiment. The temperature in the rool chilled.
Snape's pupils glistened as they do when he had located his prey. The students gave an audible gasp, Cormac McLaggen even screamed, as Snape glided over to the Slytherin contingent with unnatural acceleration and speed. His eyes were narrowed and locked onto a blond head with slicked back hair. He knew that hair. It was the hair of his ex-coworkers son.
Snape narrowed his eyes as he gazed upon his ex-coworkers son with disdain.
"What," began Snape in a voice full of venom, "in Merlin's name are you doing, Malfoy?"
The scion of Malfoy wasn't looking silently at the blackboard with a god-fearing obedience in his eyes like he was supposed to.
He held an apple in his hand— An apple! In the middle of class no less! Raised to his face level. Draco was ferociously eating— no— humans did not eat like that— he was kissing— making out with the apple in the middle of the classroom.
The class held its collective breath. Harry nudged Ron who ceased the consumption of his boogers and sharply inhaled at the sight of Snape lowering his head towards an oblivious Malfoy eating an apple in class. Ron nudged Hermione, who returned her mind to the present as she looked up from her notes at Draco's flagrant disrespect of the teacher during class.
Everyone held their breath as Snape's face drew closer inch by inch to Draco's eye level.
The bottomless black pits Snape had for eyes threatened unimaginable anguish and pain beneath their icy unfathomable depths.