Acceptable Abuses?

[vmonte]

No: HPFGUIDX 95723

karenoc1 wrote:
We know, of course, that Dumbledore was angered about
Umbridge "manhandling" Marietta Edgecombe. And we suspect that he
would have been greatly angered if he knew about Harry (and Lee
Jordan, I think) suffering physical abuse in detention with
Umbridge. But where does Dumbledore stand on emotional abuse?

Here, I'm thinking mainly of the episode in PoA, when Neville could
not get his (shrinking?) potion to work properly. Snape gave Neville
time to fix it before administering it to Trevor, and we all know
that Trevor did not die because of Hermione's aid to Neville. But
Snape fully intended to administer what we can only assume to be
poison to Neville's pet. I know that this scene is a device to
demonstrate why Snape would be Neville's worse fear during the
boggart lesson, but why does Dumbledore allow a teacher to terrorize
a student so viciously?

There are also other abuses, like the crack Snape made about
Hermione's teeth in GoF and the occasions where he purposely
sabotaged Harry's work just to give him poor grades.

Is it any wonder that Harry is *amazed* that Dumbledore trusts Snape
implicitly, the teacher who abuses Hogwarts students so pleasurably?
After all, Dumbedore is supposed to know about everything that
happens at Hogwarts, right?


vmonte responds:
I agree that Snape is emotionally abusive. He is a powerful 
manipulator. In one of the books (I cannot remember where) I seem to 
remember MaGonagall (someone let me know if I'm remembering this 
correctly) stating that words are often more powerful than magic. 
This is how I feel about Snape. He is great at verbal manipulation. 
I sometimes think that Snape is not on the side of Dumbledore's OOTP, 
nor Voldemort's DE. He seems to have contempt for both sides, and 
enjoys manipulating people from both camps. 

I remember reading Agatha Christie's last Hercule Piorot book 
(Curtain?)as a kid. The murderer in that book never actually killed 
anyone (not physically anyway). The murderer was great at motivating 
other people to commit murders. The villian was so talented at 
emotionally manipulating others that he even makes them think that 
murder was their own idea.  

Oh wait, that also reminds me of Iago in Shakespeare's Othello.     

By the way...
How many times did Snape verbally attack Sirius while he was at OOTP 
headquarters? I remember him basically calling Sirius a coward. Snape 
knows Sirius, and he knows how to get to him. If he wanted Sirius out 
of the way, these verbal attacks would work to get Sirius out in the 
open, away from the safety of headquarters.