Harry thought on both of those possibilities as he diced up the kidney of a willow warbler. Is this was Snape's natural response to his and Harry's confrontation in the Great Hall earlier, then Harry had greatly underestimated them man's capabilities of self-restraint.
If, however, this new attitude was on Dumbledore's orders, Harry was certain that it was taking every ounce of will-power the man had to keep it going, and it was unlikely that it would be long before the cracks in the façade became obvious.
Sure enough, Snape let himself down at the end of the lesson.
"By now your soothing solutions should all now be a pale blue in colour. Please place a sample in a glass phial, label it with your name and bring it to the front to be marked."
All things considered, Harry thought that his soothing solution had turned out pretty well. The colour was slightly off, but he felt that it at least deserved a passing grade. It seemed to him that he was actually quite good at potions when Snape wasn't breathing down his neck and making his usual snide comments.
He momentarily forgot, however, that such a grade was only likely to be given to him by a fair teacher. And a fair teacher was something that Severus Snape was most certainly was not.
Harry gently poured some of the potion into one of his phials, stoppered the top and wrote his name on the label. Then he took it up to the front and placed it onto Snape's desk alongside several others. When he turned to head back to his table, he heard a smash and turned back to Snape's desk.
The man was wearing a superior sneer on his face, and the phial that Harry had placed on his desk was lying in smashed pieces on the floor of the classroom.
"Oh dear," said Snape "I do believe that will have to be a zero for today's lesson, Potter."
This wasn't the first time that Snape had pulled this stunt on him, only this time Harry wasn't going to put up with it. He pulled out his wand and cast a repairing charm on the smashed remains of the phial, which rose into the air and joined back together like some kind of 3D jigsaw puzzle. Harry took the mended phial back to his desk, poured some more of the potion into it, stoppered it and returned it to Snape's desk.
Every other student in that classroom was standing completely still, most hardly daring to breathe as Harry and Snape stared each other down. Several of them wondered if the long anticipated day in which one of the two finally snapped and killed the other was now upon them.
A minute of silence passed before Harry finally turned once again back towards the table where he had been working.
And once again there was a smash and his phial mysteriously fell from Snape's desk and crashed to the stone floor of the dungeon classroom.
All eyes were not on Harry, who bit down hard on his bottom lip to prevent himself from saying anything. He took out his wand and repaired the smashed phial once again before returning to his cauldron and filling the phial with the contents of the cauldron once more. He stoppered it and placed it down onto his desk. Then he took another three glass phials from his set of potions instruments and filled all three before stoppering each one and labelling them.
Next he vanished the remaining potion from the cauldron before, with a few flicks of his wand, he packed all his remaining equipment away. Then he picked up all four stoppered phials and, rather than place them all down on Snape's desk like they were all expecting him to, he walked towards the door of the classroom.
"Potter!" Snape shouted after him "Potions brewed by students are not allowed to be taken beyond the walls of this classroom!"
Harry ignored him. Cradling all four phials in one arm, he wrenched the door open with the other and marched out of the classroom and into the corridor beyond.
As he made his way up one of the staircases the bell rang to signal the end of the lesson and the start of their lunch hour. He quickly found himself in the corridor that led to the History of Magic classroom and he pushed his way by a group of third year students in order to get to the classroom.
Professor Umbridge was just coming out of her classroom when she spotted him.
"Potter, what in Merlin's name is the matter?" she asked.
Harry told her what had happened down in the dungeon classroom, and she wasn't happy at what she heard.
"How dare he try and sabotage the Ministry like this?" she demanded rhetorically.
"Uh, the Ministry?" asked Harry in confusion.
"Isn't it obvious? Potter, you were appointed to your new position by the Ministry. By sabotaging your classwork and failing you as a result, Professor Snape attempting to discredit not only you but the Ministry. He is attempting to make it appear as though we selected the wrong person for the job and therefore compromise our mission here."
Harry doubted that Snape's goal had anything to do with the Ministry and was just a simple manifestation of the man's usual malicious attitude towards him, but if spinning the story this way could be used to get rid of Snape sooner, then who was Harry to argue? The greasy haired git was already on their "to observe closely" list, and it was long past time that the students of Hogwarts were allowed to learn potions in a productive and encouraging environment, free from disparaging comments and hatred.
"At this moment we are, unfortunately, powerless to have him removed from the castle," Umbridge continued "We can, however, document this incident and use it to advantage at a later date. I trust that you will be lodging a formal complaint?"
"I will," answered Harry "but I doubt that Dumbledore will pay it any mind."
"Which is why you will make multiple copies of your complaint," said Umbridge "Keep one copy for yourself and make one for my own records, then we'll send one to the Board of Governors, one to the Wizarding Examinations Authority at the Ministry and then one for Dumbledore to ignore, as you say."
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