Possible reason for giving Snape the job

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 135642

Kelly wrote:
> 
> Missy, I had thought about that as well, but I think there must be 
> more to it than that.  After all, Dumbledore was Dumbledore.  He
could have forced Snape to take Harry or even tutored him in potions.
 There must be another reason.  My real question is why did Jo make
Snape the DADA teacher?  What was her reason for writing the story
this way?  After all, she could have had Harry scrape an O in Potions.
> 
> Kelly, who never wanted to believe Snape was ESE!, but now can't
think about him without feeling angry.

Carol responds:
Here's a Good!Snape DADA theory. Maybe it will help you to regain your
faith in Snape. Let me say first, though, that if Snape had not killed
Dumbledore, the Death Eaters would have done so, and the thought of
Fenrir Grayback savaging Dumbledore is more revolting to me than Snape
killing him. (And note that Dumbledore died with his eyes closed and a
peaceful expression. Does that suggest an AK to you?)

At any rate, here's my Snape as DADA teacher theory. First, as Merry
links has pointed out, Dumbledore needed to free up the Potions
position to give it to Horace Slughorn. There's no way that Slughorn
(who uses the same textbook in his NEWT Potions class that he used
when Tom Riddle was his student), could have taught DADA.

Second, Snape seems to be a much better DADA teacher than he was as a
Potions teacher. Granted, he's a Potions genius, but he's also an
expert at fighting the Dark Arts. We see only one of his classes, but
we also see that he's teaching the students a very useful and very
difficult skill, nonverbal spells. Of course, they're not much good
against a Legilimens like Snape, nor does Harry yet have the skillsto
duel with Snape (assuming that he is indeed ESE!), but most Death
Eaters are not of his caliber in skills, intelligence, or power. In
this time of peril, Dumbledore wants the best DADA teacher available,
and that is Snape, the man who saved Dumbledore when the ring horcrux
would have killed him, and who later saves Katie Bell from the cursed
necklace (granted he doesn't cure her, but he slows the curse so she
doesn't die on the way to St. Mungo's) and heals Draco before Harry's
astonished eyes of the Sectumsempra curse he himself invented. It is
also thanks to Snape that Harry knows about bezoars. That was the very
first lesson Snape taught Harry and Harry would have done well to
remember it. As it is, his memory of bezoars is refreshed by the
teenage Snape's annotations in his Potions textbook. If it were not
for Snape, Ron would have died from the poisoned mead.

Why, then, has Dumbledore waited so long to place Snape in the DADA
position? There is, first, the reason that JKR gave in her interview
and that Snape gave to Bellatrix (and, presumably, to Voldemort): that
DD is afraid that exposure to the Dark Arts (even in a class intended
to defend against them) will turn Snape back into a Death Eater. That
may well have been his reason at first, but two months into Snape's
career as teacher, Voldemort was defeated and the Death Eaters were
being rounded up and sent to Azkaban. It seems unlikely that Snape
would have wished to join them.

There must, then, be another reason, and that reason has been place in
front of us in every book. The DADA position is jinxed, and as we now
know, that jinx was placed by Voldemort himself. Dumbledore, we know,
trusts Snape. Moreover, Snape is very useful to him, as we again see
from the first book. It is Snape who discovers that Quirrell is after
the Sorceror's Stone, Snape who casts the countercurse that keeps
Harry from falling to his death in his first Quidditch game, Snape who
makes the wolfbane potion that enables Lupin to remain at Hogwarts
without endangering the students, Snape who makes the veritaserum that
makes Barty Crouch's confession possible, Snape who informs the Order
that Harry has gone to the MOM. Throughout the first five books, it is
clear that Dumbledore depends on Snape. He trusts Snape, he needs him,
and he cannot afford to lose him to the jinx on the DADA position even
if it means having Delores Umbridge as DADA teacher.

This dependence is even greater in HBP. It is, as I've already said,
Snape and Snape alone who is capable of removing the Dark Magic from
the cursed necklace and the ring horcrux. It is Snape that Dumbledore
wants to see when he is poisoned trying to retrieve the locket horcrux. 

There is, however, another complication: The Unbreakable Vow. Clearly
Dumbledore already knows about it because Snape has already told him
about it. Even if he doesn't know exactly what Draco is supposed to do
and Snape must finish for him if he fails, he knows about the vow
itself. "Perhaps I understand more from this than you do, Harry," he
says, and perhaps we should listen.

For fifteen years, since before Voldemort's fall, Dumbledore has been
keeping the DADA position from Snape. Now, however, with the school
and the WW in peril, he cannot give the position to anyone else. He
must give it to the most qualified candidate, the man he trusts above
all others, the brilliant and powerful Severus Snape. Dumbledore knows
that between the jinx placed by Voldemort and the Unbreakable Vow,
neither he nor Snape will be at Hogwarts next year. Now, before the
peril grows any greater, he must give the position to Snape. There
will be no other chance.

I think that Dumbledore knew he would have to die by Snape's hand and
Snape knew it as well. Both of them did what they could in the
meantime, Snape teaching DADA, removing curses from dark objects, and
"helping" Draco by putting Crabbe and Goyle in detention, Dumbledore
by showing Harry memories that would aid him in his search for
horcruxes. But both know it cannot last and Snape will have to die,
failing to protect Draco and allowing the DEs to murder Dumbledore or
keep his oath and kill Dumbledore himself.

I am betting that Dumbledore has not lost his wisdom and that he was
right to trust Snape, both as DADA instructor in the last book and in
general. And whether he was right or not, Snape taught Harry some
valuable lessons in HBP. It will be well for Harry if he heeds Snape's
advice: leave the Unforgiveable Curses alone and keep his mouth shut
and his mind closed when he's fighting someone who's likely to kill
him. And that Snape doesn't do even when Harry is helpless and at his
mercy.

Carol, hoping that Harry keeps a bezoar in his pocket in Book 7