Why does Snape teach?/ Molly & Ginny/SHIP: Ginny&Draco

[pigwidgeon37 at yahoo.it]

No: HPFGUIDX 21275

Sincere thanks to Ebony for the things she wrote about teaching. I 
profoundly agree with her.
Anyway, I was thinking about snape today and I seriously asked 
myself: Why has he become a *teacher*????

Jenny from ravenclaw wrote:
"I am sure that he loves passing on his knowledge 
to his students, even if he isn't too crazy about them.  I am waiting 
for the day when Harry really needs Snape's help (and I believe he 
will), because I think Snape will help him.  As nasty as he is to a 
good portion of his students, I never felt that Snape hated 
teaching.  I can't prove that - just call it teacher's intuition, I 
guess."

Snape does not hate teaching, but he hates children: He hates their 
way of being, of behaving and thinking, their way of 
not "Understanding the beauty of the simmering cauldron...." (unexact 
quotation from SS, sorrry for that). Old Sevvie is a top potion 
maker, why did he not try and earn his money by opening a wizards' 
drugstore? 

Calculating Hogwarts wages: Dumbledore offered Dobby 10 galleons a 
week, for cleaning, cooking etc. I suppose that a teacher's income 
should at least be the double, which would make 80 galleons a month 
and 960 galleons a year (seems reasonable, as the price money the 
winner of the Triwizard Tournament gets would be about a year's 
income of a teacher)

Certainly, by selling his potions, Snape would earn a lot more than 
that. Which brings us once more to the crucial question: why the heck 
does he teach? Possible answers:
1) He is an idealist and puts his teaching vocation above everything 
else. No, I certainly wouldn't say that.
2) He has another reason why he would rather stay at Hogwarts than 
anywhere else. Much more plausible, IMHO. Knowing about his troubled 
and certainly not unstained past as a DE who then *betrayed* 
Voldemort, the only secure place for him to go was logically 
Hogwarts. 
As the post of gamekeeper was already occupied, what else could he be 
than a teacher? And what else could he teach than what he was best at?

As for what Jenny from ravenclaw or Ebony wrote about his mentor- 
relationship with Draco, I'm sorry, but I can't agree with you on 
this point. Even if I wouldn't say that he's showing favouritism 
towards Draco because he hopes to get some privileges out of it by 
way of Lucius (I don't think he's a materialist or ambitious kind of 
person the Way Fudge is), I'm sure that in Draco he sees the 
most "adult" (ín he worst sense of the word, because Draco is only 
copying his father) student of this particular class ( we don't know 
how he behaves to other classes and whom he favours there). And, of 
course, he's head of Slytherin House that welcomes "the most 
ambitious", and has also been in Slytherin- which explains perfectly 
why he's taking points from the others and giving them to Slytherin, 
mostly in the person of Draco: He wants his house to win because he's 
ambitious. (Think of his very sharp comments about the Quidditch Cup 
to McGonagall)

Anyway, to me, Snape is one of the (alas, too many) teachers who have 
chosen this professsion not by vocation, but because of some other 
reason(in Snape's case, I think it's to be protected from the revenge 
of Voldemort)., and who therefore feel bad about teaching, not 
admitting this to themselves, but making their students pay for it by 
bullying them and treating them unjustly.

As to Molly & Ginny: 
Ebony wrote:

"The problem is, we don't know much about Ginny.  Reading between the 
lines, 
I think she either has a very close relationship with her mother or 
her 
mother has simply kept her close."

I thought about this and would have given the answer that Andrea gave:

"I think that the only hint we've been given about
Ginny's beliefs on this matter so far is in GOF when
Molly is trying to talk Bill into letting her cut his
hair and Ginny pipes up that she likes it long and
Molly is being too old-fashioned."

Ginny is certainly in a very difficult situation: she's the youngest 
of seven. assuming that Molly had her first child rather early (she 
and Arthur were a couple when they both were at still Hogwarts) let's 
say at the age of 20, that would lead to the following scheme (always 
based on the belief that witches, as Muggle women, are pregnant for 9 
months and giving her a bit of a rest between each birth):

Bill        Molly 20
Charlie     Molly 22
Percy       Molly 27 (because Percy is in his 4th year when
                    charlie is already working as a dragon keeper)
Gred&Forge  Molly 29
Ron         Molly 31
Ginny       Molly 32

Therefore, in GoF, Molly would be about 45. For the last 25 years, 
she has been playing- and IMHO gladly- the role of the loving wife 
and mother. she certainly had no easy time with her Muggle-loving 
husband who isn't ambitious in the least, never promoted and entirely 
relying on her when it comes to manage the household and getting 
their children school books and clothes out of his modest salary. 

In fact, there might be a conflict coming on between her and Ginny, 
who certainly won't fit into her mother's role but seems to have 
ideas quite of her own.
Might Ginny fall in love with a Muggle???? Or decide to live an 
independent life of her own? Ginny strikes me as a possible rebel of 
the Weasley family, getting completely off the family line. She might 
even be attracted to Draco, merely because he could offer her enough 
power and money to pursue her very own goals in life.

susanna