Agreed that Dumbledore's hiring practices are eccentric and his reasons for retaining certain teachers (such as Trelawney and Binns) are obscure at best. But Snape appears to be in a different category from any of the one-year DADA hires, or even most of the other long-term staff -- he's part of Dumbledore's inner circle, an administrative triumvirate of which McGonagall and the Headmaster himself are the only other members. Even Flitwick -- a perfectly competent, proven, amiable teacher and Head of House -- doesn't have the same status as Snape does, in that respect.
So we're stuck with a nasty, verbally abusive Potions professor with (apparently) very few redeeming qualities or attractive features, who has been at the school for years and whose personality and habits are well known (especially to Dumbledore), yet who holds an position of unusual trust and responsibility at the school in spite of all that. Why? Why Snape, and not some other, much more amiable and ordinarily competent professor like Sprout or Vector or Sinistra? I'm not saying I know the answer, but I keep thinking there must be an answer, somewhere down the line...
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Re:
Date: 2003-03-24 04:44 pm (UTC)So we're stuck with a nasty, verbally abusive Potions professor with (apparently) very few redeeming qualities or attractive features, who has been at the school for years and whose personality and habits are well known (especially to Dumbledore), yet who holds an position of unusual trust and responsibility at the school in spite of all that. Why? Why Snape, and not some other, much more amiable and ordinarily competent professor like Sprout or Vector or Sinistra? I'm not saying I know the answer, but I keep thinking there must be an answer, somewhere down the line...