Wondering.... about Snape & McGonagall

[dungrollin]

No: HPFGUIDX 116213


> Alla:
<snip>
> > The most interesting question for me is whether McGonagall 
> > trusts Snape to be fair. We NEVER hear her say that. What does 
> > it mean, I don't know.
> 
> 
> SSSusan:
> You're right, we don't hear her call him fair.  OTOH, we don't 
> hear her saying he's *not* fair, either, rolling her eyes 
> about "yet another Snape story" from the students, or etc.  She 
> *does* let her true feelings show--even in front of a classroom of 
> students--concerning Divination & Trelawney, so I'd rather expect 
> her to let *something* show, too, regarding Snape if, indeed, 
> she thought he wasn't fair.  
> 
> Perhaps she does know he's unfair at times but is bothered less by 
> that than she is by an entirely fraudulent subject, which is what 
> she sees Divination to be.  
<snip> 

Dungrollin:
I think that McGonagall and DD have a pretty good idea of how unfair 
Snape is.  One episode from CoS stick in my mind, though there must 
be others. It's just after the discovery of Mrs. Norris, when
Snape tries to get Harry taken off the Quiddich team, and McGonagall 
says something along the lines of `The cat wasn't hit over the
head with a broomstick.  There is no evidence at all that Potter has 
done anything wrong.'

Now, admittedly, McGonagall is somewhat partisan when it comes to 
letting Harry play Quidditch, but what Snape was suggesting is *so* 
blatantly unfair, she *can't* have missed it.

However, what I suspect that DD and MM aren't aware of, is the 
venomous malice with which Snape treats Harry when there aren't
any adult witnesses.  They're both aware that Snape can be unfair,
but since they don't see the full extent of his unpleasantness,
they 
assume that it can't be doing that much harm. Kids often take a 
teacher's attitude personally, so they may assume that Harry
hates Snape disproportionately to how much Snape hates Harry, thus 
laugh it off.  Potter'll grow out of it.  It won't do any
lasting
damage.

If they were fully aware of how nasty he can be, I think they'd 
disapprove somewhat.

Dungrollin