Harry Potter gets smart and takes control - The Goblet

Chapter 33 Severus's Epiphany

See end for some notes on the flower translation ect.

Severus Snape jerked a hand furiously towards the door, making it slam shut on the green-eyed menace fleeing his dungeons. He could barely contain the fury boiling in him, making his hands shake; mixing toxically with a familiar burning mortification. The brat knew! Potter's dunderheaded spawn knew! He knew and would use it against him and humiliate him, just like his misbegotten father!

And now it would be all over the school by morning! His shame! His humiliation. He grabbed the nearest jar and hurled it at the closed door. The jar was of cockroaches, (he kept especially for these moments.) They shattered, and the tiny brown bodies slid slimily down the door. He watched them go feeling slightly better, but still mortified, furious.

How dare he! He wanted to haul the brat back in there and make him scrub cauldrons until his fingers bled, until the day he died. How dare he play him! How dare he lie and manipulate him! How dare he treat him that way! How dare he know!

The brat was such an arrogant blighter, such a terror like his idiotic father. And how dare he know Severus's shame. How did the little blighter find out! Potter was dead and still he lived on in his son to torment Severus Snape!

He wanted to smash and break every jar in that room! He rained it in slightly and crossed to the door hidden behind the shelves in the wall behind his desk. He hurried down the tight spiral stairs behind the door and into his rooms housed below in the lower dungeons. It was blissfully quiet and deserted down there. He stalked across his rooms and out the door, exiting his rooms into the rest of the lower dungeons. It was even colder down there; silent. He stalked down a corridor, around a corner and into one of the old potions classrooms.

He didn't notice it was cleaner than it should have been for a long abandoned room, didn't notice the tables were freshly scrubbed, didn't see the fresh scorch marks. He would later. It would make him think later when he reviewed and sorted his memories of the day. Then it would make him think, make him go back and have a closer look. But now he dismissed it and let himself indulge in his fury.

Instead, he stormed across the room to grabbed the hearest chair, raising it over his head and bring it down with a crash. Upending the old desks, picking up chairs and throwing them, hexing every bit in sight. He let himself fume in a way he rarely allowed himself to. There are no potion ingredients down here, it was safe. Safe to smash things without wasting hard won ingredients and risking blowing up the castle.

He was humiliated and furious and mortified. He threw things and broke things only to mend them and wreck them all over again. It was hard exhausting work, trashing the place.

He was numbly aware of the wards around his office going off, but he dismissed it. They were warded to the high heavens. No-one would get in without his say-so.

He didn't want to be wrong! He didn't want Potter to be abused. He didn't want to have failed Lily. Potter was a menace, out to get him, use and humiliate him just like his rotten father! He didn't want Potter to be like him. Potter was an arrogant snot, and that made him justified in taking his resentment out on a child. It justified his harshness as Severus Snape never wanted to be the bully his masters wanted to make him.

He always resented Potter's carefree childhood and arrogance. And like Dumbledore said, he was the one who needed to teach the brat about the unfairness of life. But if the boy was like him... then that just made Severus Snape another one of a long line of abusers.

And he'd never wanted that.

Potter could not be abused.

He exploded the teacher's desk with uncontrolled magic, the likes of which had not escaped him in years. It rained shrapnel everywhere.