Snape and respect

[pippin_999 <foxmoth@qnet.com>]

No: HPFGUIDX 51121

Shaun said:

>>Even if I accept that's true - and I do to an extent - even if I 
accept that Hermione is a soldier, for that to even start to excuse 
Snape's behaviour, he'd have to be a drill instructor.
I don't believe he is. He's a teacher. She is a school girl. A 
teacher should *never* lose sight of that, even if the child 
does.<<<

You're referring, perhaps,  to the incidents when Hermione set 
Snape on fire, broke into his office and helped knock him 
unconscious? If they were both adults, I'd say she had it coming. 
<g> 

Now, it's clear that Snape has no appetite for children, and in the 
real world he shouldn't be teaching.  But the Potterverse isn't the 
real world, it's a place where the adult world contains Beings like 
Hags, whose appetite for children is of quite a different sort <g> 

Stories with a child protagonist  can be as shallow as 
Scooby-Doo or as profound as Twain, but seldom will you find 
that the child's victory depends on  anybody taking  pity on the 
child for childhood's sake.  Usually, when an adult takes pity on a 
story-child, it's a Very Bad Sign (cf. the witch in Hansel and 
Gretel). The adult will in the end prove to be ineffectual if not 
actually villainous.  To have it otherwise would make the adult 
rather than the child into the protagonist -- Greek  *proto* first, 
agonistes, actor, combatant, (from *agonizesthai*, to contend, 
from *agonia*, contest, from *agon*, from *agein*, to drive, lead.

As to your other point, Snape *is* The Trio's drill instructor, in a 
sense--his antagonism does much to force the Trio into a unit in 
Book One.  And while 14 year old Hermione does indeed need a 
space where she doesn't have to be a soldier, a corridor full of 
Slytherins, one of whom has threatened her life more than once, 
is not it. 

Even if  Hermione learns from this that she shouldn't rely on 
Snape, or any of her teachers, to protect her--that may have been 
his intention or part of it. Two of Hermione's teachers have 
proved to be less than protective, to say the least. It is already 
clear at the time of the incident that something is once again 
rotten in the state of Hogwarts, and that no student could have 
confunded the Cup.

 As to all that goes on in Snape's head I couldn't begin to guess, 
but I will submit a  LOLLIPOPS apologia for Snape's behavior in 
this scene. He has once again arrived just too late to prevent a 
Muggle-born witch from taking a curse meant for Harry Potter. 

Pippin