Timeline Questions re Snape's and Trewlaney's Appointments

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 150922

Angie wrote:
> In OOP, Harry turns 15; Trewlawney said she'd been teaching for 16 
> years; and Snape said he'd been teaching for 14 years. 
> So, Trewlawney started teaching the year before Harry was born?  And 
> Snape the year after?   
> I'd always thought that Snape started teaching right about the time 
> of LV downfall, when Harry was one.  Is that right?  
> 
> So, we have a two-year gap b/w ST's appointment and Snape's?  We
know that Snape overheard the first prophecy during ST's interview and
we know that Snape "defected" to DD's side before LV's downfall, but
how long before?  I can't believe DD caught Snape eavesdropping two
years before and just let him go -- I guess I don't understand what
Snape was doing during the time b/w the eavesdropping and his own 
appointment.  
> I mean, I know he was busy being a DE, and at some point, a spy for
 DD, but I'm not clear on what happened when.  
> I also wonder if Snape would have been appointed to HW had DD not
caught him eavesdropping and had LV not taken a turn for the worse in
GH.  (I assume even DEs need paying jobs.) 
> Also, why was Snape eavesdropping in the first place?  Probably on 
LV 's orders, but why?  ST didn't have a rep for being a successful 
seer, after all. 
> Angie (who's never been good with "the math" and hoping this makes
sense)
>

Carol responds:

Well, we all know that JKRis bad at maths, so don't feel bad!

I'm not going to attempt to analyze the whole situation, which I also
find confusing, just make a couple of points.

First, Trelawney says in OoP that she has been teaching at Hogwarts
*nearly* sixteen years, whereas Snape says "fourteen years" without
qualification. That indicates to me that hers was an emergency
appointment in, say, November (it's a cold, rainy evening). I would
guess that the Divination teacher had unexpectedly died or become
incapacitated. But, yes, she started teaching before Harry was
born,immediately after the Prophecy.

But the DADA position would have been open, as always, before the
beginning of the year, and Snape would have applied for in, say, late
August. (Whether he applied in earlier years and was turned down
because of his age or the DADA curse, I don't know; I'm talking about
the year he was actually hired.) That year, the year of Godric's
Hollow, the Potions position was conveniently open as well (I'm
guessing that Slughorn had retired--he certainly was not dead),
enabling DD to hire young Snape for that position rather than the
cursed DADA one. (Snape at this time was already working for DD as a
spy "at great personal risk." It was safer to have him at Hogwarts.)
My point is, though, that unlike Trelawney, Snape was at Hogwarts from
the beginning of the year that he began to teach. He did not start
teaching after Godric's Hollow (October 31/November 1). He had already
been at Hogwarts since at least the first day of term (September 1).

For the record, I think that Trelawney's memory is distorted for at
least three reasons--her unawareness of the Prophecy, the distance in
time, and, erm, cooking sherry. She knows that young Snape eventually
became a teacher and has been around nearly as long as she has, so,
collapsing nearly two years into perhaps a week,she thinks he was
there to pickup hints on job interviewing. Not knowing that he was
ever a DE, she can't think of any other reason for his eavesdropping.
But, clearly, he was not applying for the DADA position at this time
whether or not he had done so earlier; it was not the beginning of the
school year.

Why Snape was in the Hog's Head (having a butterbeer?) I can't say,
but he certainly could not have known that Trelawney was going to make
a Prophecy. He probably didn't even know about the Divination vacancy.
Maybe he just saw DD and followed on an impulse.

As for a day job between the time Severus left Hogwarts and was hired
as Potions Master four years later, I've always imagined that he set
up a little potions shop with a basement lab, funded by his dear
friend Lucius Malfoy, as a front for the experimental, dangerous,
and/or illicit potions he was making for Voldemort. (Just a bit of fun
speculation.)

Doesn't answer all of your questions (or mine), but, yes, there was a
gap of nearly two years between Trelawney's hiring and Snape's. And,
no, Godric's Hollow had nothing to do with Snape's being hired. He was
already teaching when it happened, having been hired two months before.

Carol, who thinks that DD didn't know that Snape was a DE at the time
of the Prophecy or he wouldn't have let him go