Teaching Styles

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 147898

Alla:
> > Are you SURE Betsy that Umbridge is not a suck up to Snape?
> 
Betsy Hp responded:
> Yes.  Because JKR wrote Umbridge as hostile to Snape.  Even Harry
picked up on the hostility.  So I'd say this isn't opinion, it's 
canon. <snip> And JKR makes it very clear that Umbridge and Snape do
not get along.

Carol adds:
I agree with Betsy. Far from sucking up to Snape, Umbridge asks if
he's been applying for the DADA position every year and has failed to
get it, to which he replies with cold anger, "Obviously," and when she
asks Dumbledore's reasons, he responds even more coldly, "I suggest
you ask Dumbledore." (Quoted from memory but essentially accurate.)
She also states that the Ministry is checking the teacher's
backgrounds, implying that she knows he's a former DE. She does not,
however, find anything to criticize in his teaching methods and
consequently does not put him on probation (at least not until much
later, when he refuses to provide her with Veritaserum to use on Harry
before Harry runs off to the MoM).

Alla wrote:
> > You have some proof that Slytherins who graduated while Snape was
a teacher had not become DE?
> 
Betsy Hp responded:
> I'd say the burden of proof is on your side actually.  Show me that
under Snape's leadership, Slytherins have been flocking to Voldemort.
I will say that the recruitment numbers were probably low all over 
while Voldemort was Vapor!Mort.  And none of the Death Eaters we've
met so far have been young enough to have been recruited, straight
from Hogwarts in the last two years.  

Carol adds:
Again, I agree with Betsy. The only Death Eaters we've seen, aside
from Draco, are those who were with Voldemort in VW1. He hasn't had
time to recruit any new ones. He was Vapor!mort for eleven years, then
he was in Quirrell's head, then he was vaporized again, then he was
Baby!mort. The DEs he called to the graveyard at the end of GoF were
all old "friends" from VW1. For the next year, he was obsessed with
the Prophecy. He arranged for the escape from Azkaban of ten DEs, but
as far as we know, he didn't recruit any new ones. We do see DEs in
HBP who are new to *us,* but Snape's mention to Bellatrix of Yaxley
and the Carrows indicates that they, too, were around in VW1. At any
rate, they're adults, as are Gibbon (who died) and the unnamed big
blond DE. The only young DE, as far as we know, is Draco. There could
be more, but surely we would have heard if, say, Theo Nott was also a
DE. (Pansy Parkinson and Blaise Zabini clearly aren't, nor are Crabbe
Jr. and Goyle Jr. If they were, they would know what Draco was up to.)

That aside, how can Snape be blamed if Draco becomes a DE? He's
following in his father's footsteps, not Snape's. His father's arrest
is clearly the stimulus for his joining Voldemort, as we can see as
early as the end of OoP. And if Snape as HOH is somehow to blame for
Draco's foolish decision, then Slughorn must be to blame for young
Snape's decision to become a DE twenty-some years earlier. Not to
mention that Lucius Malfoy, Bellatrix and the Lestrange brothers,
Macnair, Crabbe S., Goyle Sr. and just about every other DE we know of
who came from Slytherin was in that house when Slughorn was head of
it. I assume that you don't blame Slughorn for their decision to join
Voldemort--or McGonagall for Peter Pettigrew's. How, then, can you
blame Snape for Draco's? Draco may be sixteen, but a sixteen-year-old
is old enough to be held responsible for his own decisions.

Carol, noting that Snape is teaching *Defense against* the Dark Arts,
not the Dark Arts themselves as Draco thinks he should