[HPforGrownups] Re: Snape's Title, married Hermione

[Amanda]

No: HPFGUIDX 37739

Dave said:

> If so I would suggest this is evidence of Snape's formality in
> dealing with colleagues and students.  The others are teachers, which
> to me smacks of primary and state secondary school terminology (I'm
> British, I have children at both), while at my then Direct Grant
> Grammar, now private, school, teachers were masters (no mistresses,
> it was an all boys school)
>
> So it may not be the WW, but Snape, who is archaic in this matter.

It also may simply be that he can't shake the habit. Recall that Snape was
at one time the student of these people; if he was contemporary with James
et al, he was a student of McGonagall's, I believe Dumbledore was the
headmaster then as well (if not, he too was a teacher), and Hagrid was
probably the Keeper of Keys and Grounds (he was a contemporary of
Voldemort's, and thus would have been well adult when Snape was a student).
I know from personal experience that even when you have no ooky past to
haunt you, shaking the ingrained habit of calling professors by "Dr.
Whoever" instead of "Firstname" is way hard, even when they rag you about it
and tell you to stop being so formal. "Dr. Whoever" is just who they *are.*

Snape doesn't seem so formal with those who are his age or younger, but the
sample of those where we've seen the interaction is both tiny and limited to
people he hates, so that may not prove anything.

If that made sense.

--Amanda