SNAPE the baby-sitter?

[chrusotoxos]

No: HPFGUIDX 119311


Hi again, and sorry if this has already been brought up. Have been out of 
touch for a while.

Was just wondering, we know that Snape favours Slytherin students (it's not 
only Harry's point of view; Percy tells him so his first night in Hogwarts, 
and we see the evidence of it) but what is intriguing me is why.

We're told that favouring the students of own's house is not common; 
McGonagall doesn't do that, and I don't see Snape as someone less strict 
than she is. We can assume that Sprout and Flitwick are nice to everybody.

I can understand Snape (as every other teacher/person) liking to recognize 
his own traits of character in someone else, and therefore favouring them, 
but the Slytherins we know about are not very Slytherin at all...

Crabbe and Goyle - do I need to argue?

The girls - they can't even make up an insult for Hermione at the Yule 
Ball, and a Slytherin attitude would have been a depreciating glare, not 
gaping like an idiot.

Slytherin Quidditch team - bunch of idiots, all of them. Through them we 
see how classist they are: no women in their team (Bellatrix is 
the only we know about in the DE, and Narcissa is finally being introduced 
to Fudge in GoF, after years of partnership between Lucius and the Ministry) 
and the richest do what they want to. But their captain is easily defeated 
by the Weasley twins in Ootp, and they are regularly defeated on the 
Quidditch pitch, resorting to brute violence in a last attempt to win. Not 
a very Slytherin tactic...

Draco - very intriguing. Possibly the only one Slytherin in his house that 
we know about - but one in fieri, still very ginger and clumsy. Still, a 
bay Snape. His attack when Harry was turned is very similar to Snape's on 
James (but Harry is not like his father...) and the consequences are 
similar: both found themselves in the air, one as a ferret and the other 
half-naked...and it seems that Snape enjoys Draco's flattering attitude 
(cf. Cos, "Why don't you become Headmaster?")

So why the hell Snape, so rigid and demanding, is supporting a group of 
idiotic teenagers when nothing compells him to?

I've read that helping them in reality he spoils them and makes them 
uneffective in war - but I don't like this theory. Even he should 
understand that Neville's bullying is not making him stronger...

And I've read that his task at Hogwarts is to find out who's going to be 
a DE and to try and convince them not to / or to train them.

Could this be?

What proves that Slytherin House is the one to produce the higher number 
of DE?  Pettigrew was a Gryffindor...and Sirius says at one point, "Snape 
was part of a Slytherin gang of which most turned out to be DE (i.e, 
Lestranges & co.)".  Unsaid: not every Slytherin became a DE in my days 
(the ones where Voldemort was strongest).

It seems to me that the Slytherins are an unpleasant crowd, right-winged 
and Victorian, but we can't assume that all the Oxonian turned nazist, 
can we? (i.e., probably very few of them did, of course)

So why is Snape baby-sitting them?

Waiting eagerly for your brain waves... 


-Chrusotoxos