His black robes seemed especially heavy today, as though he had gathered up an entire stretch of shadow from the corridor and draped it over his shoulders.
He ascended the podium with calm precision—left foot onto the first step, then right, the interval between them exactly the same as when he walked down a corridor, as if he had turned walking itself into a calibrated procedure. He stopped behind the lectern, both hands resting on the edge of the desk, his fingertips curled inward, the joints standing out distinctly beneath his skin. His gaze began at the left side of the classroom and moved row by row to the right at an even pace, lingering for roughly the same amount of time on each row, like an instrument running a standardized inspection process.
Before he spoke his first word, the temperature in the classroom had already dropped by about two degrees.
"Professor Lockhart..." Severus Snape began.
His voice still possessed that distinctive silky quality, every syllable polished smooth around the edges, without a trace of roughness. "...left behind a... complete set of lesson plans during his year of teaching." He made an almost imperceptible pause on the word "complete"—a pause just long enough to be interpreted as, "I wanted to find a more appropriate word than 'complete' but could not," or as, "I have already found the most appropriate word; you simply may not be able to hear it."
He pushed a folder resting at the edge of the lectern a few inches outward. Written across its cover in Lockhart's distinctive flowing hand were the words: "Lockhart's Defense Against the Dark Arts Lesson Plans—Final Draft."
"I have reviewed these lesson plans," Severus Snape continued, his gaze never leaving the folder. "They include several practical guides to basic defensive spells, as