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Hogwarts: Richie's Magic Research Diary
Hogwarts : Black family bloodline...
Hogwarts' Magical Food God
Hogwarts Animagus Chaos
The air in the dungeons was eternally cold, heavy with the foul stench of damp earth mixed with decades of brewed potions.
Severus Snape sat behind his desk, idly rubbing a vial of Flobberworm mucus.
He didn't need to check the sky outside to know what time it was; he could smell it wafting through the vents: charred wood, melted dragon hide, and the lingering, cheap stink of Hagrid's brandy.
Just hours ago, the fire on the edge of the Forbidden Forest had illuminated the glaring incompetence and hypocrisy of everyone in this ancient building.
Snape let out a sneer of pure disgust.
While Professor McGonagall was still pointlessly mourning the collapse of order, Snape had already looked through the embers and seen exactly how this chess match would play out.
To him, it was a painfully mediocre crime.
Only a half-wit giant like Hagrid would try to incubate a Norwegian Ridgeback in a wooden hut. And only an arrogant, self-important savior like Potter would think the law was just a set of decorative suggestions.
He stood up. His black robes swept across the flagstones without making a single sound.
---
Morning Potions Class.
Sunlight managed to pierce the narrow, high windows, but it couldn't cut through the gloom inside the classroom.
The students were already seated, and Snape immediately caught the anomalies scattered across the room.
At the Gryffindor table, Potter had dark circles under his eyes so deep it looked like he'd been violently punched. Weasley's fingers were wrapped in thick bandages—classic healing marks from a dragon hatchling's bite.
Over at the Slytherin table, Draco Malfoy sat up bone-straight, looking like the cat that got the canary. His eyes kept darting back and forth, lingering on those two panicked, idiotic Gryffindors.
What actually caught Snape off guard was Granger. She had dropped her usual insufferable chatter and completely shut down, radiating a freezing distance.
"Before we begin today's lesson," Snape's voice echoed off the damp walls, "I must remind certain simple-minded students who believe themselves above the rules—there are things in the wizarding world that are absolutely forbidden to be kept privately."
"Such behavior is not only astoundingly stupid, but exceptionally... lethal."
He stopped pacing, planting himself directly in front of Harry Potter's desk. The close-range intimidation made Potter instinctively shrink back.
"Hand it over, Weasley," Snape ordered.
Ron reluctantly uncurled his hand and placed it on the desk. Green slime oozed from beneath the bandages.
"What a breathtaking injury," Snape leaned in, his black eyes locking onto Harry. "Care to tell me what bit him, Potter?"
"A—a rat, sir," Harry stammered, his voice shaking under Snape's glare.
"A rat." Snape's lips curled into a predatory mock smile. "So the rats at Hogwarts have mutated to the point of carrying blood-tooth venom. Fascinating. Let me guess—did this rat also have wings? Did it happen to casually set fire to half of a certain gamekeeper's hut?"
Harry's face drained of color. He bit his lower lip hard.
Across the aisle, Draco Malfoy let out a loud, theatrical snort, followed by the muffled, pig-like snickering of Crabbe and Goyle.
"Ten points from Gryffindor," Snape straightened up, his black robes billowing like a dark wind. "For attempting to treat the entire Hogwarts staff and student body like blind fools."
"Potter, if your impoverished brain holds even a shred of respect for genuine danger, you will understand this: when you finally manage to get yourself burned to ashes, do not expect me to write your eulogy."
"Now, open your books to page fifty-eight!"
He watched with dark satisfaction as the defiance in Harry's eyes melted into the fear of the unknown.
When the bell finally rang, the Gryffindors scrambled out of the dungeon like they were fleeing for their lives.
Draco Malfoy, however, deliberately dragged his feet. Once the room was empty, he hurried up to the podium, practically vibrating with poorly concealed, boastful excitement.
"Professor, my father has already contacted the Ministry. Late Saturday night, we're going to publicly ruin those Gryffindor fools up on the Astronomy Tower." Draco lowered his voice, his face flushed with the fantasy of wielding power.
Snape didn't even look at him. He just kept his head down, crushing scarab beetles in his mortar.
Crack. The beetles shattered, splattering juice against the stone.
Looking at Draco, Snape saw a pathetic reflection of his younger self. A boy who thought grabbing the tail of power meant he could reshape the world.
Lucius's play in all this wasn't just greedy—it was staggeringly mediocre. Lucius genuinely believed he was using the Ministry's bureaucratic paper trail to strike at Dumbledore. But to Snape, it looked like a caveman waving a wooden club at a thunderstorm, trying to intimidate the lightning.
"Did your father send you to tell me this hoping for my applause, Draco?" Snape asked, his voice entirely devoid of inflection, not bothering to look up.
"We're doing this to purge the school of a threat—"
"You're doing this for cheap political vanity," Snape cut him off ruthlessly. He set the pestle down and fixed his cold gaze on the smug, self-satisfied boy.
"Do you honestly think your father has Dumbledore by the throat? Do you believe a single Ministry memo is enough to dethrone the greatest white wizard of our age?"
Draco froze. "But—we have hard evidence! The illegal breeding of a highly dangerous magical creature—"
"Go back and tell your father," Snape turned his back on Draco. "If you intend to hunt, you stay hidden in the shadows."
"The creature barking in the spotlight is never the apex predator. Tell your father to stop treating the political chessboard of this school like one of his pathetic Ministry cocktail parties. Get out!"
Draco snapped out of his daze, stumbling backward in terror before bolting from the dungeons.
Snape swept the crushed beetle remains into the waste bin. Trying to take down Dumbledore using the Ministry's bureaucratic red tape was a strategy so clumsy it didn't even qualify as a bad joke.
---
Late Thursday Night, The Headmaster's Office.
A Sneakoscope clicked and whirred softly in the moonlight.
Dumbledore sat amid towering stacks of paperwork, currently filling in backdated signatures on a blank Hogwarts Staff Dormitory Fire Safety Inspection Report.
Bang. The door swung open.
Snape strode in, marching straight to the desk and slamming his hand down flat over the parchment Dumbledore was writing on.
"Forging fire safety logs? I thought that level of stupidity was reserved for the useless dregs in the Ministry's logistics department." Snape glared down at the old Headmaster, unable to leash his venomous tongue.
"Brilliant, Albus. Truly. To protect a reckless brute who doesn't even carry a wand, you've resorted to fabricating evidence like a third-rate politician."
"Hagrid needs a little help, Severus," Dumbledore said mildly, setting his quill down. He took off his half-moon spectacles and pinched the bridge of his nose. "If we follow standard procedure, he will be sent to Azkaban. You know he couldn't survive the torment there."
"Help?" Snape straightened up slowly, his voice dropping into its signature, deadly drawl. "You are teaching that savior boy that as long as he has a patron of your caliber to wipe his nose, the law is nothing but a joke."
"You are single-handedly cultivating another arrogant, lawless James Potter."
"Except this time, you've handed him a shield far more lethal than an Invisibility Cloak: your lies."
"You are bankrupting the integrity of this school to satisfy your overflowing, misguided sense of love."
He leaned back in, his eyes burning with disappointment as he stared Dumbledore down, dropping his voice to a harsh whisper. "Tell me, Albus—as you sink deeper into this rot, is the only real difference between you and Lucius Malfoy the fact that you wear white robes?"
Dead silence suffocated the room.
"You have said enough, Severus," Dumbledore replied. His tone wasn't loud, but it carried an undeniable, crushing weight. "Justice is a scale, Severus. Sometimes, the weight we place upon it is the entire world."
"Because that is the only truth left in this castle of lies," Snape sneered, turning sharply toward the door.
Halfway there, he stopped. Without looking back, he said, "I hope your little farce wraps up nicely on Saturday night. I will be watching."
The door slammed shut behind him.
---
As Saturday midnight approached, the tension between the two houses escalated into visible, ugly hostility.
Late at night, the torches flickering in the corridors struggled against the encroaching dark.
"Hey there, little snakes. Did mommy forget to mail you your antidotes?"
Lee Jordan's voice was wired with nervous adrenaline. Backed by two older Gryffindors, he had cornered a group of first-year Slytherins in an intersection. The tip of his wand glowed an angry red.
"Let us go!" one of the young Slytherins yelled, backing up and throwing his arms over his head in fear.
"Let you go? You should take a cue from your cowardly upperclassmen and stay hiding in your damp little dungeon." Lee Jordan sneered. "Densaugeo!"
A flash of red light slashed through the dark.
Snape was standing just a few feet away in the shadows. He watched the hex slam into the first-year's face. He watched the boy double over, clutching his mouth in agony as blood seeped through his fingers.
Snape didn't move. He just coldly ran his thumb over the wand concealed in his sleeve, waiting until the Gryffindors raised their wands for a second hex. Only then did he step smoothly into the light.
"Mr. Jordan," Snape's voice was so low and deadly it sent a shiver straight down the spine. "I was unaware that Gryffindor's vaunted courage had grown so cheap that it requires bullying ten-year-old children to prove it exists."
Lee Jordan jumped out of his skin, his wand nearly clattering to the stone floor. "Professor! They started it—"
"Twenty points from Gryffindor."
Snape glided past him, not even sparing a glance for the bleeding first-year. His tone was icy and clipped. "If you find yourself with an excess of energy, I would be more than happy to lock you in the dungeons to scrub jars used for pickling dead rats."
"Now. Get out of my sight."
Lee Jordan and his friends fled like whipped dogs.
Snape looked down at the shivering first-year Slytherins. They were looking up at him with wide, pleading eyes, hoping for comfort.
He just let out a cold snort, his eyes filled with nothing but contempt. "Useless baggage. You can't even throw a counter-curse. Get back to your dungeon."
He turned away, dissolving back into the darkness—even though he had rarely ever stood in the light.