"Oh, is that what we're calling it now?"
Since Harry's getting in a "plowboy draws on top gun" affair with Dumbledore had occurred in private, the whole school knew about it by the next morning.
"For god's sake, Harry, don't draw on Snape," hissed his prefect into his until-then-sleeping ear.
"Gotcha," said Harry, and might well have followed through on it, except that getting to breakfast amounted to a positive gauntlet of smartly-dressed students begging him not to draw on Snape.
"This is getting ridiculous, Hermione," he said.
"But you've got to be careful, Harry!" she said urgently. "I've read it in books! Snape runs his class like it was still the 18th century! 19th, tops!"
"Okay, okay!"
But when he finally got to the Great Hall, Fred and George told him not to worry, they'd mail him a cake with a file in it when he was sent to Azkaban.
"Oh, for Trotsky's sake," said Harry, "why does everyone think I'm going to draw on Snape?"
"He's mean motorscooter!" said Fred.
"And a bad go-getter!" said George.
"He's the toughest man there is alive!" said Fred.
"It's true," said Mr Hagrid, the groundskeeper, who happened to passing by. "He made a suit out of my pet wildcat."
"I don't believe it," said Harry, picking up a cupcake from the breakfast table.
"It's TRUE!" cried Mr Hagrid, and burst into tears. "TWO JACKETS AND A PAIR OF PANTS! OH THE HUMANITY!"
"No, no," said Harry, "I mean I don't believe that they serve cupcakes for breakfast! How long has the wizarding world been completely insane?"
Harry walked in the door of the Potions classroom.
"One million points from Ravenclaw," said Snape smoothly.
"Aw COME ON!" said Harry. "For what?"
"Questioning me," said Snape. "Which you just did."
"I hadn't questioned you yet!"
"Said the boy with the Time Turner," said Snape smoothly. "An additional one million points from Ravenclaw for your cheek. That's the same as two thousand thousand points. And that's terrible."
Harry glared into the professor's inky black eyes. It hardly mattered; by the end of Mortal Kombat, Professor Quirrel had awarded every house Aleph-null House points. "Take another two million, now that we know you can count."
Half the class screamed and fainted. The other half looked like it wanted to elect him God.
"Uncountably infinite points from Ravenclaw," said Snape smoothly, his dead black eyes boring straight into Harry's head and flicking idly through his synapses.
"WHAT!" said Harry. Snape wasn't a supergenius, how would he know about countable and uncountable infinities? "YOU'RE READING MY MIND!"
"Yes, yes, of course I am," said Snape. "Now, put this rubber apron on, and these safety goggles."
Harry calmed down. At last, chemistry class!
"You're the boss," he said.
"Splendid," said Snape, also donning a rubber apron. "Now: let's cook."
"NON SERVIAM!" screamed Harry.
"So, Harry," said Dumbledore. "I've heard one report of this day from Professor Snape. Would you care to tell me what happened in your own words?"
Harry spoke with icy calm. "HE TRIED TO ENTICE ME INTO COOKING METH! AND HE READ MY MIND! I'M GOING TO THE NEWSPAPERS!"
"And what of it," said Snape through steepled fingers. "I always begin class with an applied lecture on the mysteries of Kentucky Fried Chicken. Crystal meth is simply one of the secret herbs and spices. It's like cooking with wine, it boils off. As to your comical threat, no one ever reads past page two of the Daily Prophet, that is what page three is for. And, as the editor of the Daily Prophet replies upon me for meth—"
"What Daily Prophet?" said Harry in a voice whose temperature had dropped below subzero. "I'm going to the Quibbler. Think what THAT headline will read."
Snape blanched. "You wouldn't dare!"
"I am Harry James Potter Excessive-Use-Of-Force-On-The-Blues-Brothers-Is-Authorized Von Wulfenbach Evans-Verres, little man, and there is nothing I would not dare," said Harry. And then applied a style-sheet to his words to turn them into small capitals.
"Harry, please be reasonable," said Professor Chandra Flitwickramasinghe, who was there instead of Professor MacDoogle because he was Harry's head of house and she was not. "You'll leave the school without a Potions teacher."
"Professor Sprout can cover for him," laughed Harry.
"That's true," admitted Flitwickramasinghe.
"Well, Harry certainly seems to have backed us into a corner," Dumbledore said, smiling happily. "He is simply too AW3S0M4½ for the likes of us."
And so it was that in a ceremony at dinner Professor Snape was Transfigured into a scarecrow, wrapped in unbreakable chains forged in the heart of a dwarf star, and deposited into a magic mirror which was then thrown into the event horizon of a collapsing galaxy, therein to be imprisoned forever or until they needed the mirror back, whichever came first.
"Not bad, Harry!" said Fred.
"Nine out of ten!" said George.
