Snape and respect

[Eric Oppen]

No: HPFGUIDX 50999

My learned colleague Suzanne has made some very interesting points
concerning Professor Snape's dislike of the Trio, and how it stems from
their disrespect for him.  However, she overlooks an important point:

_From the first time they met,_ Professor Snape made it clear that he
disliked Harry.  In Harry's first day of Potions, Professor Snape went out
of his way to single him out for negative attention, throwing question after
question at him and then sneering when he couldn't answer.  This is not, to
put it mildly, a good way to start out a professional (professoral?)
relationship...I would have been seething inside had I been in that
classroom, even if I wasn't the kid on the spot.

I can understand, to a limited extent, some of his treatment of
Hermione---but in his boots, I'd deal with it differently.  When she's
constantly trying to answer _all_ the questions, I would merely say
something like "I _know_ that you know the answer, Miss Granger, and I do
thank you for your enthusiasm.  However, I _would_ like to hear from some of
the other students here, some of whom seem to have joined a new religious
order and taken a vow of utter silence."

A big part of Snape's problem, or so it seems to me, is that he's really,
really talented at Potions, but forced into a position where he has to
constantly deal with little kids who mostly aren't as interested and
certainly don't have anything like his level of talent.  Think "Paderewski
giving piano lessons to kids" and you might have an idea of what I'm trying
to say.  He resents their lack of interest, enthusiasm and talent, and is,
himself, temperamentally ill-suited to his job---I've known teachers that
could have had _History of Magic_ classes alert and enthusiastic, for the
gods' sake, and Potions, with its possibilties for amazing demonstrations of
potion-power, could be turned into the students' favorite class by someone
with a little of Gilderoy Lockhart's instinct for showmanship (but a lot
more talent and actual knowledge of the subject).