Snape's Cruelty Has Purpose (Was Re: lily/snape)/Why I Hate Snape

[nrenka]

No: HPFGUIDX 150599

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "gelite67" <gelite67 at ...> wrote:

<snip>

> I guess part of the reason I am so convinced that DD knows about 
> Snape's nastiness is that I can't imagine that DD would be so out 
> of touch as to not know how his teachers treat their students and I 
> can't see any other reason than "to protect Snape's status as a 
> spy" that would explain why DD allows Snape to be so nasty. 

I can.  Dumbledore is canonically quite hands off in many ways and 
areas--see the post-HBP interview where JKR talks about Dumbledore 
letting Hagrid stew in his hut by himself before going to talk to 
him, because he thought Hagrid would be better if he got through it 
himself.  

In a similar way, Dumbledore has some idea of what Snape's general 
demeanor and actions are like.  He'd probably like Snape to change 
(he certainly would have liked, say, Occlumency to work out 
differently), but he's not going to force him to do it.  Force 
doesn't work with things like that.  So he lets Snape be Snape out of 
a general approach to letting the teachers be themselves: he also 
lets Trelawney be a flighty fraud, and Binns be a deathly (hee!) bore.

Now, if we want to argue about the problems of this approach and 
whether Dumbledore has mis/underestimated what the effects are to be 
the target of Snape's nastiness, partially because he himself is much 
older and comfortably in the superior position, that's another issue.

-Nora does the happy dance of awaiting some major travel