[HPforGrownups] Snape and Dumbledores trust

[Patricia Bullington-McGuire]

No: HPFGUIDX 54710

On Wed, 2 Apr 2003, beanneboy wrote:

<some stuff I snipped about Snape wanting the DADA job and Dumbledore 
possibly not trusting him enough to give him the job>

Other people have pointed out that there are no reliable sources saying
Snape wants the job, only Percy.  Since Percy has no special knowledge of
Snape's professional ambitions, I'm not incline to take his word for it.  
This may be evidence of Percy's willingness to believe anything he's told,
rather than evidence that Snape wants the job.

I would also ask, though, why placing Snape as the DADA teacher would
require any more trust than placing him as potions master.  What's so
special about DADA?  In either job, he's in a position to teach children
enormously dangerous information, or to gather information from around the
school and pass it on to others.  And preventing Snape from filling the
DADA job isn't going to stop him from using the Dart Arts if he's so
inclined.  I just can't see why the DADA professor needs to be even more
trustworthy than any other professor at the school.

Dumbledore must trust Snape enormously to have made him the head of
Slytherin house.  As Head of House, he is in a position to closely mentor
Slytherin students if he chooses, and to do so out of sight of other
students and teachers.  I'd say the Head of House position requires a
higher level of personal trust than any of the teaching positions.  Since
Dumbledore chose to give Snape the Head of House position, I have a hard
time believing there is any lack of trust there.

----
Patricia Bullington-McGuire	<patricia at obscure.org>

The brilliant Cerebron, attacking the problem analytically, discovered
three distinct kinds of dragon: the mythical, the chimerical, and the
purely hypothetical.  They were all, one might say, nonexistent, but each
nonexisted in an entirely different way ... 
                -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"