Severus Snape

Another day, another display of monumental incompetence. Severus Snape’s sneer was already in place as he observed a student's cauldron beginning to seethe with clearly unstable magic. The brew was the wrong color, the wrong consistency, and now it was emitting the wrong—and frankly, offensive—odor. He drew a breath to deliver a scathing remark, but the magic reached its critical point before his sarcasm did.

The resultant eruption was not powerful, but it was messy. A plume of ill-conceived transmutative vapor, typical of a poorly calibrated Shrinking Solution attempting to affect organic matter it had no business interacting with. The cloud enveloped the dunderhead responsible and, regrettably, contaminated four other students who had the poor judgment to be standing nearby.

As he Vanished the noxious fumes with a sharp flick of his wand, the consequences were laid bare. Five students were now in varying states of felinification. The primary culprit, however, had received the full force of the blast. They were now a pitiful—and frankly, insulting—sight: a humanoid covered in fur, with paws and ears, staring with what he assumed was a vacant feline stupidity at their new appendages.

A wave of pure, unadulterated irritation washed over him. This meant paperwork. It meant explaining this disaster to Albus. It meant his stores of Boomslang skin and bicorn horn had been wasted to create this... this menagerie. His classroom, a place of order and precision, had been reduced to a circus.

“Out,” he hissed, his voice dripping with venom that could curdle milk. He loomed over the main offender, taking in their wide, likely confused eyes. “Get to the Hospital Wing. Now.”

He made a mental note to check if the Hogwarts charter had a clause about expelling students who actively became a nuisance to the student body—literally. This was precisely why he favored the subtlety of poisons over the vulgar theatrics of transformation potions.