[HPforGrownups] Re: I Hate Snape...

[The Fox]

No: HPFGUIDX 56294

From: "darrin_burnett" <bard7696 at aol.com>
>Hobbit boy, opening himself up to the Snape-lovers out here, wrote:

>>Now, I'm not saying that he's evil.  Snape might truly be working for the 
>>Light.  He might even be helping Dumbledore to work off a life-debt, or 
>>just out of good old-fashioned pragmaticism.  I don't deny that Snape may 
>>be a good character, or a character who is working for good.  He may even 
>>give the final sacrifice to defeat Voldemort in the end, for all I know.  
>>I still hate him, though.  Snape could kill Voldemort with his own hands 
>>and hand his head to Dumbledore on a silver platter, and I would still 
>>hate him - just because of 4 simple words.
>>
>>"I see no difference."
>
>Last year, when my good friend Jenny from Ravenclaw and I were in a 
>knockdown, drag-out debate about Hagrid's worth as a teacher, I brought 
>this quote up when saying that Snape is the worst teacher in school. I 
>still believe that.

Ah, ah -- we have no idea about Professor Sinistra, do we?  She (I assume 
it's a she) might be even worse.  :-)

>My guess has always been that Snape puts down Hermione at every chance 
>because he's afraid she will someday outstrip his achievements. He's one of 
>those teachers scared of smart students, that they might make him look bad 
>by asking a question he doesn't know the answer to.

My own feeling is that Snape was a lot like Hermione when he was a kid -- 
few friends, not particularly attractive, head and shoulders above the rest 
of the class academically -- and resents like hell that she doesn't appear 
to be suffering with it the way he did.  There's not a lot of evidence for 
this, I'll grant, but let's think:

Snape is a young guy.  He was at school with James Potter, making him about 
twenty years older than Harry -- so in PS/SS, he's maybe thirty-one, and 
he's been teaching at Hogwarts for at least a year (because Percy knows 
him), but probably much longer.  He may, at that time, be the youngest 
teacher on the staff; he's almost certainly the youngest Head of House.  (We 
don't know how old Professors Sprout and Flitwick are, now that I think 
about it, do we?  But Professor McGonagall is easily twice Snape's age.)  
And yet there's no question of his qualifications, academically speaking -- 
in fact, he could be teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts *or* Potions.  
(This is a less-solid point, since presumably if he were as qualified to 
teach DADA as he thinks he is, Dumbledore would consider him for the gig one 
of these days.)

To have gotten where he is as quickly as he did, Snape must have an uncommon 
intelligence.  As does Hermione.  But she has friends who care about her (as 
early as Halloween of first year, when Harry and Ron save her from the 
troll); he was lured almost into striking range of a werewolf.  And so 
forth.  Whatever else he may be, Severus Snape is a bitter, bitter man.

Not that this excuses his cruelty to Hermione.  Everything else he does and 
says, to her, to Harry, to Neville, I can either overlook (or at least take 
with a grain of salt, coming to us, as it does, from the POV of a teenager) 
or explain away, but "I see no difference" is really, really awful.  The 
best I can come up with is that when she runs away to the hospital wing, he 
doesn't stop her and insist that she stay through class -- which isn't much.

>How to redeem that one line? It's corny, but I would like to see, sometime 
>before the Big Showdown, Snape get a moment with Hermione.
>
>"Miss Granger, I have had to portray a certain... image for the greater 
>good, but you should know that a teacher hopes that one student in a 
>generation is like you."

[choke]
[g]

>Or something less sappy. But you get the idea.

Indeed.  ;-)

Fox

...
Come on, Nature
Just because I don't feel weak
Don't mean I feel so strong.
-- the Proclaimers
..............................

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