Why does Snape wants DADA job if it cursed? LONG

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 148905

Tonks wrote:
> 
> Ok, how about this one:
> SS wants the DADA position because he knows the Dark Arts and would 
> be a very good teacher of the subject.  And (due to the whole LV 
> killed Lily and James and now I am a bitter and damned man) he hates 
> LV and wants to teach the young wizards how to defend themselves 
> against him.  "Don't be a fool like I was in my youth", "Don't fall 
> for the Dark Lord's lure".  DD can't give the job to him because it 
> would "out" Snape as DD's man. 
> 
> Or maybe Snape wouldn't come straight out and say those thing but 
> would teach the class with those thoughts in his mind.  Snape's 
> secret which he is able to conceal in any other job would, because 
> of his strong emotional connection to the whole James and Lily 
> death, guilt and damned thing, would just come out at some point in 
> class no matter how much he tried to hide it. Draco would see this 
> and tell.  And then Snape's cover would be blown.
<snip>

Carol responds:
I think you've hit close to the mark. Teaching Potions, however useful
the subject may be and however exceptional his own abilities in the
subject may be, does not provide Snape with a way to teach the
students to fight Voldemort (except indirectly, for example, the
lessons on bezoars and antidotes). DADA, at which he also excels (and
has done for a long time, as his DADA OWL and Potions book indicate),
*does* provide that opportunity. Since Snape also excels at putting
two and two together, he must know that the course is cursed and who
cursed it (he would know the fates of his immediate predecessors and
of the professors who taught the subject when he was in school and put
that together with LV ordering him to teach it), but he may believe
that he can overcome the curse. I suspect, however, that he knows why
DD won't give him the post for the first fifteen years--not just
because his cover would be blown, but because of the danger in which
it would place him. 

Yes, others are of necessity exposed to the same danger, Lupin and the
real Moody among them, but DD knows that Snape, unlike those other
wizards, has a unique knowledge of DADA and the Dark Arts combined.
The teachers at Hogwarts don't just teach, they perform duties related
to their position--Sprout grows the Mandrakes for the Mandrake
Restorative Potion (which Snape presumably prepares); Lockhart is
*supposed* to go after the monster in the Chamber of Secrets; Snape
prepares the Wolfsbane Potion, etc. It stands to reason that DD
expects Snape in his position as DADA teacher to handle cursed objects
and heal Dark curses beyond Madam Pomfrey's capabilities, but he is
saving him until the last minute, even allowing Umbridge to take the
position rather than giving it to Snape, knowing that the DADA
position could destroy him (kill him or expose him as a DE, real or
fiegned or force him to commit some evil deed). Now DD's options have
run out; Voldemort is back and he desperately needs Snape's expertise.
Moreover, there really is no one else he can hire. At the same time,
he needs Slughorn to take the Potions position so he can protect *him*
and get that memory (and have him available to act as HOH when Snape
inevitably loses the position).

IMO, they both know that the jig is up. They are out of options. And
there's just the slightest hope that Snape can end the curse,
returning as either DADA or Potions master the following year. If it's
a triumph for Snape, it's a grim and dark one. But that he is indeed
the best man for the job, both as a teacher and as a staff member who
can either heal Dark curses, or at least prevent them from being
fatal, is, I think, made abundantly clear by HBP. But that the
position is still cursed, and that both Snape and DD are its victims,
is also, to me at least, abundantly clear.

Carol, certain that the spell LV silently casts in DD's office ten
years after he leaves B&B has nothing to do with Horcruxes and
everything to do with the DADA curse