#comment answer

Character - Zhongli From Genshin Impact

I don’t have the energy to write a well-thought-out meta but I wonder if another factor in his harshness was that he started teaching so young - the older students in his first couple years would’ve been in school with him, and perhaps he felt that he needed to be strict in order to gain their respect.

I can’t speak directly for Severus Snape, for the obvious reasons, but from my own experience and experience of my co-workers I would say that the the age difference does play an important role in creating one’s teaching persona in general. Especially if the age difference between you (general you) and your students is small and/or some of your students know you very well on personal level from before you’ve started teaching.

The small age difference makes you... conscious about certain things and how they will work out in the end. Sure it may help, because - theoretically at least - you may understand your students better. As for teaching people you’ve known well beforehand... let’s say it’s not so bad if they are smart, behave yourself and don’t try to make use of that connection, expecting some better treatment or simply creating problems for you. Which sadly not always must be the case.

And how does is apply to Severus? First, of course, he was not that much older than the oldest kids he was supposed to teach. Second, some of these kids definitely had known him as a student and the victim of bullying, spectacularly from SWM, too. Third, some other kids, even if they didn’t know him in person beforehand, definitely had some older siblings or friends who were more than eager to share some tales.

I don’t even think his harshness was as much about respect, although it was a factor, too, as it was about keeping an order in his classroom. I seriously doubt he had ever been liked much as a student, it’s easy for me to imagine that at least some of Hogwarts students tried to make the use of that knowledge of him they had and intentionally tried to create some problems for him, simply because they could (either for personal reasons or simply for fun). And the older the kids in question, the worse such behaviour is =_=

And what’s the easiest way to deal with troublemakers? (Please, not that I wrote “the easiest” and not “the best” and “the most proper”, because these are completely different things.) To punish them harshly, of course, or to ridicule them or both. (Which definitely is not what is considered as proper ways of dealing with troublemakers these days.) What may have been a necessity (from his point of view) at first, was probably quickly adapted into his usual teaching persona as it worked well for him and served his purpose - no disturbance in his class.Although I should rather describe it as some semblance of order in his class, because I definitely remember Harry’s classmates not always behaving... properly.

tl;dr - Without saying he was right in everything he did (because we all agree, I think, that some things he could have done differently), the age difference and teaching kids who knew him as a student definitely may have a huge part in Severus Snape becoming the kind of a teacher we got to see in the series.

I am a Lupin fan as well as a Snape fan, and I think this meta is fair. But I also think that the way Lupin famed it was not so intentional on his part but came from a place of guilt and avoidance of that. A subconscious voicing of separating himself from the conflict between him and Snape, while also maybe choosing to avoid going into some details on the matter with Harry. Cause he dose try to avoid his issues. I mean, what he says to Sirius about never standing up to them about Snape clearly shows that he acknowledges his own wrongdoings on the issue, and feels remorse about it, but of course he can’t bring himself to ever do anything about it, like apologize to Snape. And let’s be honest, such an apology wouldn’t go over well with Snape anyway, so Lupin avoids it.

I do actually agree with this assessment of it being not exactly intentional. More than once Remus seems torn between what his own deeds mean to himself and to the others. In POA he admits that the night wanderings during the full moon nights at least once ended up with some “near misses”, but at the same time it means a lot to him that he had his friends together with him (POA, chapter 18). When Harry confronts him and Sirius about SWM, he does admit his compliance, but later he will say thing that I personally read as an attempt to shift at least part of the blame on Severus himself for being an oddball with a strong interest in the Dark Arts (OotP, chapter 29). In DH, he decides that leaving Tonks, pregnant at the time, would be the best thing to do under the circumstances and something that James would have wanted him to do (DH, chapter 11).

In general it creates the picture of a man who is not a bad person, but does some bad things sometimes and... I’m not exactly sure how to phrase it. He realises some things he does are bad, is deeply uncomfortable with this knowledge, and sometimes tries to look for some justification for his deeds to make himself feel better I suppose, because he’s not proud of some of them. Which is very human and rates higher in my book than absolute conviction “I can do no wrong no matter what I do”.

Severus also genuinely cared About Voldemort, probably even vice versa to a certain extent, (as much as Voldemort is capable there of)

See, that’s the thing I actually always wonder about. Without any second thought Severus went to Dumbledore, fully expecting he may be killed at the spot (DH, chapter 33, the scene and the hill top), and yet he clearly didn’t trust Voldemort to keep Lily alive. This is what always baffles me about the claims of his being 100% loyal back then, up to the point Lily’s life was threatened. A loyal DE would act like Bellatrix, when she tried to reason with Narcissa, and put their hopes in the Dark Lord, not went to some other wizard to look for help. It would not occur to them even to think about looking for help elsewhere. And yet, Severus not only thought about it, but actually did it. This is why I do wonder how much invested he was in the whole DE business and when his doubts started and why.

And here we have the main question. Did he really care about Voldemort? Ever? Or did he perhaps care about the cause? There is nothing in the books that points to him caring about Voldemort per se. He joined DE in search for power and hopes of making his life better, to which his general story points and comments made by JKR in the interviews. Just like she said once he would have never joined DE if he had been given the choice again. I would rather say he wanted power, and not necessarily fully supported the ideal that DE may have had, but he didn’t care about others enough to think about the consequences that DE actions may have had for others. The expected benefits exceeded what he thought to be the cost, so he didn’t even look into the whole matter that much to find out what the cost really was. A very foolish thing to do, IMO. I never made it a secret that I see joining DE as signing down a pact with the devil with your own blood - of course what you get from it is not what you expect it to be. A very bad life choice, indeed. Even if his main motivation wasn’t the prejudice.

what I see in General is that severus is trying to make his students to think on their own, but fails

I would like to think that in the moment when it was obvious to him he was stuck with teaching, no matter what his feelings about the matter were, he went all like “I’ll show you now how it’s done!” only to realise that some things are easier said than done. He simply underestimated er... the resentment some students may feel toward acquiring new knowledge. So in turn he was forced to bring his expectations down.

as for care for Voldemort, I think they were Partners in bad life as the Russians would say, People who lived through abuse and came out damaged, they had common interests (potions, dark magic) and common Problems (shitty fathers (well Voldemort is more complicated but from his Point of view this was the case) and all. Out of all death eaters at some Point severus was one of the most valued and I do wonder if there was something aside of his skills that made him such

The problem I have with seeing it, is that it would require for Voldemort to share his whole past with his DE or at least a few of them, which goes against what Albus Dumbledore said about him in HBP - when Tom Marvolo Riddle came back, he came back with a new name and so changed that hardly anyone could recognise in him the man he once was. In other words he cut himself from his past to the point where most people were unaware of the fact that Voldemort was Tom Marvolo Riddle once. I would risk the statement that even his Hogwarts classmates didn’t know everything about him, but some carefully crafted version of his life.This is why I personally doubt in any sense of real camaraderie between Voldemort and Severus.

Yes, Severus may have been valued in some way, but only after Voldemort’s second comeback or should I rather say afer he killed Dumbledore. Sadly, the way I see Voldemort valuing him is not dissimilar to valuing a favourite tool or possession. Like seriously, Nagini had more Voldemort’s respect that any DE of his ever had, save for Bellatrix perhaps. All was well as long they were useful to him. So no, I see no closeness here.

From a certain pov, Harry wasn´t wrong: Snape WANTED to help Draco, just not the way Harry thought and he was also a spy of the order. :) I guess Harry thought about all this years after.

Personally, I consider it damage control, but I suppose it also counts as help from a certain point of view.

I reread that passage and found this gem, too:

It is an act that is crucial to success, Draco!’ said Snape. ‘Where do you think I would have been all these years, if I had not known how to act? (HBP, chapter 15)

Ugh mate, feel you big time <3 I've lost count of how many posts I've started of late, and then after spending an inordinate amount of time on them, have just deleted...