Heads of Houses

[laureng58]

No: HPFGUIDX 42011

Hi, I am apologizing in advance if this question has already been 
addressed, but I didn't find it in the archives.

Does being the Head of a House carry with it any job 
responsibilities for the teacher so assigned, or is it an honorary 
title only?

Towards the end of GoF, when Harry asks for Mr. and Mrs. Diggory, he 
is told that they are with Professor Sprout, because "
she was
Head of Cedric's house, and knew him best." (p.693)

However, I see no other examples in the books of the teachers who 
are the Heads of the Houses making any extra efforts to get to know 
their own students. McGonagall is only seen in the Gryffindor common 
room on one occasion, when she arrives to tell them to quit partying 
and get to bed (PoA). She shows Harry some small favors, and Snape 
blatantly favors the Slytherin students, but the Heads of the 
Houses, like all the other teachers, eat with each other, have 
bedrooms and offices that don't seem to be that near to the
common rooms of their students, do not seem to act as guidance 
counselors in the selection of elective courses, etc. With the 
exception of having the capacity to expel one's own students, the 
Head of a House doesn't seem to have any more responsibility, 
relationship, or paternal/maternal feelings towards their charges 
than any other teacher.

The one exception of which I am aware is towards the end of PoA, 
when Lupin tells Harry that he has resigned because Snape "

accidentally let slip that I am a werewolf this morning at 
breakfast." (423) Of course, he might have meant that Snape told
the other teachers at the teachers' table; however, earlier,
Hagrid had said "Snape told all the Slytherins this
mornin'
."
The implication is that Snape was breakfasting with the Slytherin 
students. This is something that we haven't actually seen; it
seems that teachers all eat together and students eat only with 
their housemates. (An exception to *this* being the Christmas dinner 
in PoA where Dumbledore dispensed with separate tables and had the 
dozen attendees sitting together, but this was due to the fact that 
there were so few people that it seemed silly to sit at separate 
tables and had nothing to do with who was in whose House.) Of course,
breakfast at Hogwarts always seems to be very informal; still, that 
division between teacher and student seems to hold up, even at 
breakfast.

Now, with all the rereading I've been doing of all four books
(I've been reading the series to my son, who is too young to read
it on his own, and I have been trying to be prepared to discuss any 
difficult parts with him) I am *really* enjoying Snape as a 
character, but still, I would be very upset to see him as the only 
Head of a House to take a personal interest in his students. From 
what I've been reading in this listserv (I'm new here, can
you tell?) most posters put Snape's age as mid-thirties and as
one of the younger teachers at the school, which might ordinarily 
make a teacher more accessible to his students. However, Snape's
sadistic treatment of certain weak students, such as Neville, his 
scary looks, and his almost constant bad temper make it really hard 
to believe that any students would want to get to close to him, even 
his favored Slytherins.

Any thoughts?

Lauren