Harry learning from Snape (was: stopper death)

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 114428

> Toto:
>   But that kind of maturing doesn't exist. You could put even 
some  kind of peace model prize and put them with a teacher 
who hates  their guts and you'll get nothing, or only a minimum. 
It's mentally  impossible, a student has to respect a teacher, and 
Snape is a  feared teacher, not a respected one.<

We don't know that Snape hates Harry's guts. I doubt it. We only 
have Quirrell's word that he hates Harry, and Quirrell, sharing his 
soul with Voldemort, is hardly a reliable judge. Harry keeps 
being mistaken about who hates who: he thinks that Lily hated 
James and that Sirius hated Kreacher. He doesn't really 
understand that you can treat someone badly and not hate them.

To respond to some other comments on this thread:

I don't think Harry has to *show* Snape anything; it's part of the 
problem that Harry thinks he does. The person Harry has to 
*show* is himself. Once he's realized that he's never going to be 
able to control the way he looks to other people, he can stop 
being so sensitive about his reputation, and Snape's jibes will 
lose their power.

As for Snape's duty to be mature, our society takes a different 
view of the teacher's role than Hogwarts does. If modelling 
mature adult behavior ever becomes part of the job description 
for Hogwarts teachers, then Snape won't be the only one who 
has to go. And I think Harry would rather put up with a dozen 
Snapes than lose Hagrid. 

That is one reason that Dumbledore is not going to sit Snape 
down -- the other reason is that as Dumbledore said in PoA, he 
has no power to make other men see the truth. Which is to say, 
that's one of the powers Dumbledore is too noble to use. If 
people share Dumbledore's views, it should be because they 
want to, not because Albus Dumbledore is good at being 
obeyed. Dumbledore has no more right to remake others in his 
image than Voldemort does.

Pippin