[HPforGrownups] Snape as a teacher

[manawydan]

No: HPFGUIDX 98152

Siriusly Snapey Susan wrote:
> I'm just curious if you could expand on this more, because widespread
> *discrimination* against the Slyths by teachers, students & the
> general public is not something I recall [and I'm not saying it

Interesting comment about the general public, especially the ones that we've
had sight of.

Because of the books' settings, a lot of the people from outside Hogwarts
that we see are Ministry wizards (and we see a little of the internal
workings of the Ministry via Arthur and Percy). But there's never any
mention of what House they were in at school.

I find that a bit surprising, though it may just be because we're seeing
things through Harry's eyes rather than what goes on when he's not around.

Because of the entry requirements to the Ministry, even to what appears to
be its most junior grades, then they must do most of their recruiting from
Hogwarts graduates. Because of the size of the Ministry (think about the
depictions of them all arriving for work in OoP), the Ministry most probably
takes _most_ of the Hogwarts graduates each year, into its various
departments. So the bulk of the Hogwarts students go straight from school to
an environment where they are working with many former classmates.

While they've been in school, they've been in an environment where the first
loyalty is to their House, with the regular and engrained competition for
the House Cup, the Quidditch Cup, and for the esteem of the Head of House.

So shouldn't that automatically carry forward to the Ministry? It seems
likely to me that a lot of the internal power politics within the MoM are
tied up with House loyalties from their schooldays: if your head of
Department was in the same House, you get a better chance of promotion, if
not, you don't.

Without knowing whether there's any connection between particular Houses and
jobs in the Ministry generally, it's hard to speculate about how Slytherins
would stand, but it seems to me that they'd have a good chance of prospering
in that rather poisonous environment...

But JKR alone knows all

Ffred

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