Why would Snape want the DADA position? (Was: It's over, Snape is evil)

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 137706

Cathy Drolet wrote:
<snip> Snape could have taken out DD anytime, I'm sure they were alone
together many times: when Snape was telling DD the Dark Mark on his
arm was returning; when, as someone else just said, Snape was
*healing* him from the horcrux curse, during the argument by the
forbidden forest, during all the times Snape begged for the DADA job.
<snip>

Carol responds:
I've snipped most of your arguments because I agree with them and have
nothing to add (interested posters please go upthread), but I want to
address the last phrase. We're not told that Snape ever "begged" for
the DADA job, only that he routinely applied for it.

I think that originally, when he was still only twenty or twenty-one
and a loyal DE, he applied for the position and was rejected (having
just been caught eavesdropping on DD and Trelawney). Then, after
changing sides and spying for Dumbledore "at great personal risk," he
applied again, having been sent by Voldemort as a spy but having
revealed his true loyalties to Dumbledore and was given the position
of Potions master (for which he was equally qualified) instead--in
part because Dumbledore feared that the DADA post might cause a
relapse, but primarily because DD knew that the position had been
jinxed (or cursed) by Voldemort himself. The Potions position gave
Snape a safe haven at Hogwarts for nine months of every year, whereas
the DADA position would have lasted only one year--and DD at that time
had no way of knowing that Voldemort would be separated from his body
only two months after he hired the young professor.

After Voldemort's fall, Snape reapplied for the DADA position
repeatedly, yet he could not have failed to see that the jinx (or
curse) on the position was no mere rumor among the students. Every
year for the fifteen years he was Potions master, the DADA position
became vacant, and often the fate of the DADA master was grim.
Quirrell died; Lockhart lost his memory; Moody was locked in his own
trunk for nine months, Imperioed and barely alive; Fake!Moody had his
soul sucked out by a Dementor. Surely Severus Snape didn't want a
similar fate. However much he preferred the DADA position to Potions
(which, in fact, he seemed to enjoy and certainly excelled at--setting
aside his treatment of his students and looking only at his knowledge
of his subject), why would he want to risk a fate as bad as Quirrell's
or Fake!Moody's by accepting the position?

Maybe repeatedly applying for it was part of his cover as that was the
position he had originally been sent by Voldemort to apply for, but
surely he didn't really want it? When he applied yet again before HBP,
Dumbledore must have said something like, "Severus, I have refused to
give you the position in previous years because I feared that the jinx
on the position would have terrible consequences for you. But this
year I will have great need of your expertise in that subject. 
moreover, I wish to hire Horace Slughorn as Potions master as I will
need him at Hogwarts as well. Please consider carefully before
accepting this position, as it will mean that this is our last year
together. It may mean that you will fall into darkness or that you
will die. And yet, Severus, I trust you and I need you. Do not fail me
now." At that moment, could Snape really think that he had finally
accomplished his objective, that the DADA position was the recognition
he craved and a reward for his faithful service? Could he possibly
think that he, unlike every previous DADA professor, could somehow
escape the curse, especially if DD informed him that it had been
placed by Voldemort himself? Even if Snape was disloyal to Dumbledore
and had already fallen back into darkness, didn't he realize that it
could mean his death, that accepting the positon would doom him to
some terrible fate? Was it loyalty or disloyalty, folly or great
courage that led him to accept it? Or did Dumbledore, needing the
memory from Horace Slughorn, give Snape no choice in the matter?

Dumbledore speaks of his mistakes. Was this the greatest mistake of
all, the one that set all the others in motion? If Snape had not taken
the DADA position, perhaps there would have been no Unbreakable Vow,
and Snape could somehow have saved Dumbledore from the poison
protecting the fake Horcrux, or prevented him from going after it at all.

I have additional thoughts on how the DADA jinx relates to Lupin's
current plight but I'm afraid to add them here for fear that someone
will snip the main post and focus on the postscript!

Carol, noting that the villain of the book is Voldemort, not Snape,
and all the characters, including Dumbledore and Snape, are caught in
Voldemort's web