Trusting your instincts about Snape WAS: sexy Snape

[Merry Kinsella]

No: HPFGUIDX 139582


"trouble_h2o" <trouble_h2o at y...>
wrote:
>From personal experince with abuse during my teen years, Professor Snape would have been the only teacher at Hogwarts that I might have told what was going on at home.
> <hugh snip>
from my life experinces I see a man that can be trusted with 
 personal secrects and demons and able to act in very difficult 
 situations.  Someone I can respect but not like all the time.<<<

merylanna says:

Thanks for this post.  This is how I've felt about Snape since OoTP.  This is the aspect of Snape that resonates for me more than any other.  In OoTP, Dolores Umbridge stood in contrast to Snape - Snape was a model of consistency compared to her.  As a reader, no matter how Harry felt about it, I felt relief and safety when Harry was in potions.  If a student did the work, Snape might not kiss their ass but there was a good chance come OWL time the student would acquit themselves better than they would in many other classes with more user-friendly instructors.  I don't even need to know why DD trusts Snape, I can FEEL - and see, per canon, til "Lightning Struck Tower" why DD trusts him.  DD may have been a gift to Snape at a critical moment in SS's life, but I think SS was an invaluable gift to DD the second he returned to the side of right.

The list of Snape's good deeds is only reported in the books, not often dramatized, and when they are dramatized, they are not gift-wrapped to us as "good" - unlike many other scenarios, JKR often gives us Snape's actions unadorned.  She doesn't tell us how to feel, and I think this is deliberate misdirection on her part.  But from combing the forests for the missing kids to reporting Harry's warnings about Sirius, to helping Katie Bell's hex to helping Dumbledore's hand, to healing Draco, to summoning stretchers for Sirius et al. beside the lake, to muttering countercurses while Quirrell tried to de-broom Harry - I think we've only skated the surface of Snape's activities on the side of right.

Snape, in the books, seems to be the kind of guy who takes a good performance as lowest common denominator, and thus not deserving of extra points, and has no patience for slackers or dilatentes.  We have seen in the pensieve - and in every other instance - that Snape is the furthest thing from a slacker or dillatente one could envision - he's not setting a standard for his pupils that he doesn't meet himself, and didn't meet himself as a student.

It's canon, via Harry, that Snape "favors" Draco, but can anyone tell me an instance where Snape awards Slytherin a bunch of points?  I can't recall him deducting points from Slytherin (while he's seen to deduct a lot from Gryffinder, but also from Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff).  Does anyone remember where Snape awarded any house, anywhere, points?

(despite rhetorical sounding question, am ready to be reminded of where Snape did award house points to Draco or some other Slytherin)


Merylanna