Snape as Neville's teacher (was:Re: Snape as Noble teache...

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 168437

Dana: 
> > Granted as Carol points out as well but a pharmaceutical company 
> > that produces medication is still not the same as a hospital. 

Carol responds:
Actually, my point was that the teachers and staff members at Hogwarts
are essentially specialists both in and out of the classroom. It's
Sprouts's job to grow the Mandrakes, Snape's job to brew the Mandrake
Restorative Potion, and Pomfrey's job to administer the potion--a
logical division of labor based on the specialized knowledge or duties
of each staff member. I certainly wasn't saying that a pharmaceutical
company is the same as a hospital, but where would the hospital be
without the pharmaceutical company?

Dana:
<snip> He might be able to if he wanted to use his knowledge that way,
I'm sure, but he does not have to compassion to heal the sick and
therefore he is not a healer. He just has knowledge. <snip>

Carol:
A lot of people are dependent on his knowledge and skill, including
the Basilisk's victims and Madam Pomfrey herself, as well as Lupin in
PoA and DD, Katie Bell, and Draco in HBP. (I do think that Snape has
compassion in Draco's case, but that's beside the point.) In the early
books, we see Snape's knowledge and skill as a Potion maker (and in
HBP, we see that he's actually a genius who improves on standard
methods for preparing potions). It's only in HBP that we see him
applying what for want of a better word I've been calling Healing
skills. Life-saving skills might be better--first aid for Dark curses
will do. the point is, he has skill and knowledge that no one else at
Hogwarts has, neither the great Dumbledore nor Madam Pomfrey (who is
not so much a doctor diagnosing ailments as a nurse dispensing
treatments; she is referred to as a nurse in one of the books, IIRC).
No one is arguing that snape has compassion or that he's a Florence
Nightingale. I can't imagine him changing jobs with Madam Pomfrey.
They complement and rely on each other. Both are needed, just as human
beings require both a heart and a brain to live. 
 
Dana:
> > Who says he diagnosed Katie and not the necklace? Again I am not 
trying to downplay Snape's knowledge but you also should not 
romanticize his efforts in to assuming he has the natural instincts to
be a healer because he doesn't posses the compassion for it. ,sent>

Carol responds:
I agree with you regarding the necklace. McGonagall sent the opal
necklace to Snape because only he could detect (and presumably remove)
the curse on the necklace (and in any case, it was his job as DADA
teacher to deal with Dark magic--good thing the DADA teacher wasn't
Umbridge or Lockhart!). But it's also Snape, not Madam Pomfrey, who
stabilizes Katie so that she can be sent to St. Mungo's for further
treatment. Snape is a teacher, not a professional healer, and he can't
spend months at Katie's side watching over her. Not even Madam Pomfrey
can do that. She needs a hospital and a full staff of healers.
Nevertheless, Snape saved her life, and no one else at Hogwarts could
have done that.

I don't think that anyone is "romanticizing his instincts." We Snape
fans are just surprised and delighted to find this new side of Snape,
who applies his knowledge of the Dark Arts to *defend against* the
Dark Arts. Call him DADA!Snape or Life-Saver!Snape if you think that
Healer!Snape has the wrong connotations. What I had in mind by using
the term Healer!Snape was essentially Life-Saving!Snape, without whom
DD would have died before HBP and Katie and Draco would have died
during it. (Even the Bezoar incident ties in since Snape's knowledge,
as opposed to Snape himself, saves Ron's life.) It's a new side of
Snape that we haven't seen, and it partially explains DD's reliance on
and trust in him. He knows more about countering Dark magic than
anyone on the staff because he knows Dark magic itself (though he only
rarely uses Dark magic, inventing Sectumsempra and casting a single
AK). Perhaps his knowledge of the Dark Arts is theoretical whereas his
knowledge of DADA, like his knowledge of Potions, is applied. It is
all, of course, intellectual; no one is calling him the Potions
master/DADA teacher/Order member/DE with a heart of gold.

So we're dealing with semantics here, I think. "Healer" has the wrong
connotations in your view; and certainly "pharmacist" doesn't cover
what he does, nor does "paramedic," since he does both jobs, and in
Draco's case, actually heals him as well (and recommends dittany to
prevent scarring and finish the job). The point I'm making is that he
has a specialized knowledge that no one else at Hogwarts has. No one
else could have saved Katie or Draco (or DD from the ring Horcrux).
"It is Severus that I need," says Dumbledore after the cave (of
course, unforeseen events interfered and Snape doesn't have the chance
to do whatever DD has in mind here). And when Harry says, regarding
Snape's preventing a rapid spread of the curse that attacked Katie
Bell, "Why him? Why not Madam Pomfrey?" DD says, "Professor Snape
knows much more about the Dark Arts than Madam Pomfrey, Harry" (HBP
Am. ed. 259). IOW, Madam Pomfrey is qualified to treat the ordinary
magical injuries that routinely occur at Hogwarts as the result of
Quidditch and such dangerous classes as Potions, COMC, and
Trnasfiguration--not to mention kids hexing each other in the
corridors. But a dangerous Dark curse that could actually kill a
student calls for expertise of a different sort--Defense Against the
Dark Arts, to be specific. Compassion has nothing to do with it. It's
skill and knowledge that matter here.

Dana:
And your suggestion that he might always wanted to become a healer is
ridiculous because he came to school knowing more (dark) curses then
most kids in the 7th year. Curses are harmful to people, someone with
a natural instinct to be a healer would never want to know so many
ways to harm another human being. Snape did not know these curses so
he could one day counterfeit them, he knew them because he wanted to
stand out knowing more about the Dark Arts then  any other student.  

Carol:
Please, let's not call other people's arguments ridiculous. Let's just
address the question at hand and see whether your logic applies.

You say that Sirius black's statement that eleven-year-old Severus
came to school knowing more curses than most seventh years makes
nonsense of the argument that the adult Snape was a healer. Setting
aside the semantics of "healer," which have already been discussed, an
eleven-year-old's abilities and attitudes are not necessarily an
indication of what he will become. Nor is Sirius Black a reliable
witness regarding Severus Snape (or vice versa).

But suppose that elveen-year-old Sevvie really did know more curses
than most seventh years. You're supplying the word "dark." It's not in
the text. How many seventh-years in the books go around casting Dark
curses? We've seen Slytherins hexing Gryffindors by making their
eyebrows grow, and Draco makes Hermione's teeth grow (though he was
aiming at Harry), but how that's worse than Harry's spell, which
causes Goyle to develop boils (though he was aiming at Draco), I don't
know. Harry certainly doesn't think that the HBP's clever little hexes
(the toenail hex, Langlock, Levicorpus) are Dark; he happily uses them
himself on Crabbe, Filch, and others. 

I think you're assuming that the word "curse" applies only to Dark
spells, but to me it seems like a general term for hexes and jinxes
(minor curses). Note the list of curses at the Lexicon:

Babbling Curse, Blasting Curse, Body-Bind Curse, Cruciatus Curse,    
Curse of the Bogies, Entrail-Expelling Curse, Impediment Curse,
Imperius Curse, Jelly-Fingers curse, Killing Curse, Leg-Locker Curse,
   Reductor Curse, Sponge-Knees Curse, Thief's Curse, Unforgivable
Curses. 

I doubt that seventh-years routinely cast Unforgiveable Curses or the
Entrail Expelling Curse, but probably most would know the other curses
on the list. Harry himself has used the Body-Bind Curse (Petrificus
Totalus), which we first see when Hermione uses it on Neville, and the
Impediment Curse (Impedimenta) and the Reductor Curse (Reducto) from
the Third Task onward; Draco casts the Leg-Locker casts (Locomotor
Mortis) on Neville, but Sirius casts it on Severus, so it's probably
not Dark magic. (Harry also, of course, attempts the Cruciatus Curse,
but not until his fifth and sixth years, and even then it fails or is
deflected. But he doesn't go around routinely casting it, nor do "most
seventh years.") 

Note, too, that when Lily tells James to "take the curse off
[Severus]" in SWM, she's referring to Sirius's Locomotor Mortis (OoP
Am. ed. 648), not to any "harmful" curse.

So, IMO, Black is speaking rather loosely (and perhaps exaggerating
the eleven-year-old Severus's precocity) when he says that Severus
knew more curses than half the seventh years. He's certainly not
talking about a little boy going around casting Unforgiveable Curses
or any kind of Dark curses, or he'd have been expelled at the very
least. Even Sectumsempra, the lone Dark curse that we know Severus to
have invented, was either never used or only used once in a very
controlled form, depending on your reading of SWM, and it was not
invented until his fifth or sixth year (again depending on your
reading of the scene). Again, had he used it as Harry did, he'd have
been expelled and perhaps imprisoned.

Where Sirius Black got the idea that "the little oddball" was "up to
his eyeballs in the Dark Arts" (quoted from memory), I don't know, but
I doubt that he based that judgment on the assortment of hexes and
jinxes that the precocious Severus knew as a first-year. Or, if he
did, perhaps it was a mistaken judgment. We can't say what was in
Severus's mind because we just don't know.

At any rate, knowing a lot of hexes and jinxes as a little kid has
nothing to do with later developing healing skills as those skills
relate to Dark magic. That's the adult Snape, a former Death Eater who
really does know Dark magic and uses that knowledge to defend against
Dark curses and save lives.

I'm not sure what you mean by "counterfeit," which means "fake," as in
"counterfeit money." Possibly you mean "counter"? In any case, of
course, Severus didn't learn those curses so that he could one day
counter them. We're not sure why he knew them. Maybe it was
self-defense; maybe he just experimented with various hexes and jinxes
from an early age. 

Note that the first book to catch Harry's eye in Diagon Alley is
"Curses and Countercurses (Bewitch Your Friends and Befuddle Your
Enemies with the Latest Revenges: Hair Loss, Jelly-Legs, Tongue-tying
and Much, Much More") (SS Am. ed. 80). Rather than scolding Harry for
his interest in such a book, Hagrid merely tells him that he'll need
"a lot more study before yeh get ter that level" (80). Severus, it
appears, was already at that level and beyond when he entered his
first year. Had Harry known him then, he would probably have envied
him (and perhaps held his skill against him because he was a Slytherin
rather than a Gryffindor). But the interest in curses for both revenge
against enemies and showing off for friends looks very much like a
typical schoolboy thing to me. Unless you want to consider Harry a
Dark wizard in the making. ;-)

Colebiancardi:
<snip>  His [Snape's] passion is to find the cure, if you will, by
learning what causes the curse and creating a potion for it.  He may
not be a healer (I really don't think that word describes Snape) but
he is a person who creates cures or expands on existing cures to make
them better. <snip>

Carol responds:
I don't think that Snape finds a potion to cure a curse; it seems to
me that potions have their antidotes and curses have their
countercurses. Snape, both as a boy and a man, is interested in both.
As a boy, he exercises his ingenuity by creating clever spells, both
hexes and useful charms like Muffliato, and by improving existing
potions through research. I'm not sure that he has invented any
potions though I don't doubt that given the opportunity (at Hogwarts,
he has the facilities but lacks the time), he could do so. I think
he's perfectly suited to be a researcher at St. Mungo's (though he's
also be useful for wand-on countering of Dark spells--leave tending
the patients and nursing them to the Florence Nightingales and Madam
Pomfreys).
> 
Colebiancardi:
> Also, another key to Snape's brilliance as a "healer" (again, need a
better word here), is the fact that Dumbledore, several times in HBP,
refers to Snape - "and for Professor Snape's timely action when I
returned to Hogwarts, desperately injured, I might not have lived to
tell the tale" HBP UK ed, p 471 - not to mention the Katie Bell
incidient and when Dumbledore insists that Harry get Professor Snape
after the cave trip
> 
> It isn't that Snape and Madam Pomfrey don't have similar jobs;
instead, I view Madam Pomfrey as a general practictor, whereas Snape
is a specialist in curing those curses/illnesses that no one else
wants to or can touch.  This should not and does not, IMHO, discount
Poppy as a healer, nor should does it discount Snape's talent either.

Carol:
Or Snape is a researcher who sometimes has to step in as a specialist
healer, and Madam Pomfrey is a nurse who administers prepared potions
like Skele-gro, heals routine injuries like broken bones and broken
noses, and deals with hexing in the hallways, whether it's boils or
elongated teeth. Dark magic like the curse on the opal necklace is
beyond her skill, just as patient monitoring of an injured student is
simply impossible for Snape (who rescues Montague from a toilet and
saves Draco from Sectumsempra, but sends them both to Madam Pomfrey to
finish the job).

Colebiancardi:
  Snape doesn't deal with Hermione's teeth because that isn't
something he normally may deal with - Madam Pomfrey is the better
person for Hermione to go to.  

Carol:
Right. Whether he knows the countercurse or not, it's not his job to
stand there holding up a mirror for Hermione and asking her to tell
him when to stop shortening her teeth. It's his job to restore order
and get the kids into the classroom for their Potions lesson. There's
a division of labor at Hogwarts in which staff members perform their
own jobs, not someone else's. For Snape to step in and fix Hermione's
teeth would be as inappropriate as Lockhart offering to make the
Mandrake Restorative Potion (Snape's job) or fix Harry's broken arm
(Madam Pomfrey's job).

Someone (I think Dana in the post that Colebiancardi is responding to)
mentions that Madam Pomfrey uses potions other than those Snape makes.
That seems to be true; I think Skele-gro and Dr. Ubbly's Oblivious
something or Other (used on Ron after the brain attack) can be ordered
from an apothecary. But I doubt that she brews any potions herself.
She never seems to leave the hospital wing except to sleep and
possibly eat). For the most part, it seems, the Potions master brews
the potions and the nurse or whatever we want to call Madam Pomfrey
administers them.

Carol, who agrees that Snape in Madam Pomfrey's role would be absurd,
but so would Madam Pomfrey in Snape's