"Allow me a moment to consider the matter, Mr. Weasley," Snape softly replied, but Harry heard the dangerous undertone in his father's voice. Uh-oh.... He sat on pins and needles while Snape studied the scroll he'd taken from Ron, the feeling only growing worse when his father stood up and from a high shelf, fetched the heavy roll of parchments that held the rest of Ron's sentences. One by one he unrolled the scrolls and examined them, his dark eyes rapidly assessing the massive amount of work Ron had accomplished.
Quite obviously, Snape didn't consider his revenge sufficient yet. His voice was rich with unholy glee when he finally announced, "It appears you have misspelled impugn on every one of these ten thousand sentences." Shaking his head with obviously false sympathy, he pronounced, "You will simply have to begin again and do the entire set over, Mr. Weasley."
For a moment, absolute silence permeated the dungeons. Then it was broken by incoherent rage.
"I'm not doing the entire set over!" Ron screamed, his face going a tomato-red shade that was really very ugly.
"Professor, that's just vindictive," Harry pointed out, trying to keep his voice calm. Snape respected reasoned argument far more than emotional scenes, after all. "If the spelling really matters to you so much," he offered by way of compromise, "then require Ron to fix each sentence, all right? Don't make him start from scratch."
Ron, Harry noticed, didn't tell him to mind his own business, not that time. In fact, he looked between Harry and Snape with a light in his eye that almost looked like he hoped Harry had a little family influence to put to use...
"Since I went to the trouble of writing the sentence out for Mr. Weasley in the first place," Snape told Harry, "the least he could have done was honor his punishment enough to copy it correctly."
"I copied it perfectly!" Ron yelled, his color only getting redder, though Harry would have sworn that wasn't possible. "I spelled impune just like you did! I know, 'cause I checked! Harry told me it was spelled wrong, and I snuck a peek at the one you wrote, and I was writing it the way you said! I can prove it!"
"By all means," Snape said, his tone confident and relaxed about the matter. Well, it should be. Harry didn't think the Potions Master ever spelled anything wrong.
Ron curled a lip and stomped pell-mell over to his bookbag, where he made a mess of the table, strewing things left and right as he searched for the spare bit of parchment Snape had written on, all those weeks ago. For a while there, Harry thought he must have lost it and the argument would be moot. But then, at the very bottom of the largish leather pouch, Ron's fingers encountered a scrap he snatched up and held triumphantly in the air. "See?" he crowed. "See?"
"I suggest you see," Snape recommended. "After which you can clear my table of the detritus you've littered across it. Then, you may begin again at number one."
Ron bared his teeth and glared down at the model sentence Snape had written. Without warning, the most horrible look Harry could imagine crossed his face--purple by then. The expression was raw fury, and confusion, and then wiping both those out, an absolute longing to kill someone with his bare hands.
Someone? It seemed pretty clear the one he wanted to kill was Snape.
"You blood-sucking Slytherin!" he screamed, his voice going hoarse with the force of it. "This paper said impune with a U-N-E, I know it did! I checked! And now it says something else, 'cause it was hexed to change the minute I'd completed my detention, wasn't it, you great greasy git!"
"Ron!" Harry shouted, appalled.
"Oh, don't believe me?" Ron snarled, turning his ire on Harry. "What, you think I'm a liar? You think I'm so stupid I don't know a G from an N? Or that I'm trusting enough of him not to check, for Merlin's sake, when you said I was making a mistake?"
"I believe you!" Harry shouted back, because he did. He knew Ron well enough to be sure. "But stop calling Snape names before you get in worse trouble! Let's just get this worked out, all right?"
"I'm perfectly amenable to a resolution," Snape calmly announced, which heartened Harry until his father went on, "It merely needs to include another ten thousand lines."
So much for not calling names, Harry decided. "You really are being quite an arse about this whole thing," he told his father in a conversational tone.
"Yeah!" Ron shouted. He fell silent at a glare from Harry.
Snape raised an eyebrow. "I believe I told you that I knew what would best instruct Mr. Weasley. Accepting substandard results is decidedly not it. I don't believe your friend has learned much at all from the past several weeks of detention."
"Ron," Harry announced, turning his way, "tell him you're sorry, all right? Tell him you know he wasn't doing anything nasty to me, 'cause you know full well he wasn't. Those were rotten things you said. Now apologize and mean it!"
Ron swallowed something. Whatever it was, it looked huge. Turns out, it was. He had swallowed his pride. "I'm sorry, Professor," he choked out, looking at the floor instead of at Snape. "I.... That was bad, saying you were.... you-know, with Harry here. I know that's not the case." When Snape appeared absolutely unmoved, Ron added in a panicked rush, "I'll never say anything like that again, I swear! Not to anyone!"
"I'm certain you shan't," Snape remarked in a tone so smooth it was almost oily. "After all, twenty thousand lines is bound to deter anyone. Now, clean my table off and get to work!"
"Stop it!" Harry ordered, at the same moment Ron screamed, "I won't!"
Snape chose to reply to Ron's statement instead of Harry's command.
"You won't?" he echoed, brows lilting. "That's quite a thing to say to your Potions Master. You won't... Well, I believe that Hogwarts policies are quite clear about what happens in an instance like this, Mr. Weasley. Should you choose to reject your chastisement, that is certainly your prerogative. Mine is to expel you, and do not think for an instant that I'll hesitate to do just that."
"You wouldn't," Ron and Harry both gasped at the same time.
"Didn't I just say I would?" Snape inquired of the air. "I thought I was quite clear."
"That is so unfair!" Harry shouted. "He did your punishment already!"
"He hasn't done the punishment I had in mind by any means," Snape calmly disagreed, a hint of a smile playing about his mouth. "Whether he will or not is up to him, but one thing not to be tolerated in Britain's premier school of wizardry is outright defiance."
"Fine, expel me!" Ron declared, stomping to the table and shoveling all his belongings into it. "I don't care. Fred and George are getting along nicely without a fancy-pants Hogwarts diploma, and so will I!" He began to head for the door.
"You need your N.E.W.T. scores if you're to have a decent career!" Harry called out to forestall him.
"Oh yeah, you and my Mum agree on just everything these days, don't you?" Ron sniped. "Well, I say Fred and George had the right idea. They had more pride and guts than to put up with Umbridge's shite, and I have enough respect for myself and Gryffindor, than to put up with his!"
The door was open by then, Ron practically yanking it off its heavy hinges, his pull was so violent. "Don't go," Harry implored. "We can work something out. I'll write some of your lines for you, for God's sake!"