The Background

You know what? I love context. I love to understand what are the reasons that brought this and that character to act a certain way. Don’t you wonder why Professor Snape is a nasty teacher? 

Two things: personal history and cultural background.

Personal background

1. He was raised by a neglectful mother and a violent father 

Snape’s memory of his father:

a hook-nosed man was shouting at a cowering woman, while a small dark-haired boy cried in a corner

Young Severus speaking of the atmosphere at home:

“How are things at your house?” Lily asked. A little crease appeared between his eyes. “Fine,” he said. “They’re not arguing anymore?” “Oh yes, they’re arguing,” said Snape. He picked up a fistful of leaves and began tearing them apart, apparently unaware of what he was doing. “But it won’t be that long and I’ll be gone.” “Doesn’t your dad like magic?” “He doesn’t like anything, much,” said Snape.

Young Severus’ body language speaks for itself:

He was on platform nine and three quarters, and Snape stood beside him, slightly hunched, next to a thin, sallow-faced, sour-looking woman who greatly resembled him.

And here are Harry’s comments on the boy’s appearance:

• His black hair was overlong and his clothes were so mismatched that it looked deliberate: too short jeans, a shabby, overlarge coat that might have belonged to a grown man, an odd smocklike shirt. Harry moved closer to the boy. Snape looked no more than nine or ten years old, sallow, small, stringy. 
• He was highly colored now, and Harry wondered why he did not take off the ridiculously large coat, unless it was because he did not want to reveal the smock beneath it.
• He had already changed into his school robes, had perhaps taken the first opportunity to take off his dreadful Muggle clothes.
• Harry, whose attention had been focused entirely on the two beside the window, saw his father: slight, black-haired like Snape, but with that indefinable air of having been well-cared-for, even adored, that Snape so conspicuously lacked.

It is mandatory, for many professionals such as nurses, medical practitioners or school personnel, to report plausible cases of child abuse and neglect. If any of them, in our non-magical world, had seen a dirty, skinny 9-10 yo boy with a messy haircut, wearing the oversized clothes of his parents, visibly poor and underfed, wandering all alone outside and suggesting his relationship with his father was complicated, they would have been in the obligation to report it at the very least for heavy suspicions of child neglect and domestic violence against a minor, and that would have probably led to Severus being placed in a foster home – temporarily or forever;

Nothing was done, of course. While Child Protection Services are lacking in real-life, they are non-existent in Rowling’s magic world.

They also say that Severus’ father never held back when it came to the whip:

Snape brought sarcasm and wit to the daily grind of the schooling year, but his secret bravery was kept hidden until the very end of the story. His first name, Severus, has its roots in Latin, directly translating to mean ‘stern’ or ‘harsh’. This was exactly the front that Snape put on as he swept down hallways like a bat and berated Harry for every wrong: a stern and harsh façade to hide what lay beneath. It was also an accurate description of the desperately lonely and unhappy childhood he had with a harsh father who didn’t hold back when it came to the whip.

Now, I know it’s a Pottermore thing that wasn’t even written by Rowling, but the books plant enough evidence that his childhood household was toxic and violent. Not to mention, the generation before Harry [Vernon, Aunt Marge, Arthur Weasley, Filch, Moody] sees physical violence as a normal thing or even the best solution for delinquency and child education:

‘I see,’ said Aunt Marge. ‘Do they use the cane at St Brutus’s, boy?’ she barked across the table. 

‘Er –’ 

Uncle Vernon nodded curtly behind Aunt Marge’s back. 

‘Yes,’ said Harry. Then, feeling he might as well do the thing properly, he added, ‘All the time.’ 

‘Excellent,’ said Aunt Marge. ‘I won’t have this namby-pamby, wishy-washy nonsense about not hitting people who deserve it. A good thrashing is what’s needed in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred. Have you been beaten often?’ 

‘Oh, yeah,’ said Harry, ‘loads of times.’ 

Aunt Marge narrowed her eyes. 

‘I still don’t like your tone, boy’ she said. ‘If you can speak of your beatings in that casual way, they clearly aren’t hitting you hard enough. Petunia, I’d write if I were you. Make it clear that you approve the use of extreme force in this boy’s case.’ [🖕]

Tobias, in particular, was a Muggle who lived under 1950-1960 mentality where corporal punishment was commonly practised, so it would be considered normal for Tobias Snape to beat his boy. He would if he believed, as so many claimed before (or even today!), that beating his boy would make him a man with a strong character and who’s extremely resilient to pain, or if he wanted to punish Severus for being magical. And as Whitehound says in her essay: 

Snape’s very jumpy, snarly, hyper-vigilant manner suggests that he is a survivor of serious physical abuse. […] if he was actually battered as a child, then part of his problem as a teacher, insofar as he has one, is probably that his mental goalposts have been shifted. If his concept of « treating children badly » is « thrashing them with a belt like my dad did », it may not occur to him that verbal hectoring can also be stressful and damaging to a nervy boy like Neville. […] he will be predisposed to think that snapping and snarling is gentle treatment.

2. He battled through his entire education, growing up under an extremely hostile environment, where he found violence from his teenage peers and neglect from his teachers

From a very young age, not only did Severus have to endure abuse at home, but it’s evident he was unpopular in his Muggle neighbourhood:

“I know who you are. You’re that Snape boy! They live down Spinner’s End by the river,” she told Lily, and it was evident from her tone that she considered the address a poor recommendation.

He spies on Lily, all alone – he spends his time talking with her about the magical world, as though he had no one else to talk too – and Lily becomes his only friend till perhaps his adulthood. An abused person sadly tends to fall back into the same type of abusive dynamics for a long while, and just like Harry, Severus might have been rejected or worse, bullied by the Muggles where he lived. And it didn’t end there. 

Harry had Hagrid barging at home to protect him from the abuse of his adoptive family, while Snape can only wait and hope to be liberated at Hogwarts. Whereas Harry finds a new family amongst the Weasleys as soon as he steps foot in the station of the Hogwarts Express, Severus stands with a mother who reeks of abuse and misery and doesn’t care to have him wear anything else than “dreadful Muggle clothes”; he watches as his best friend Lily gets bullied by Petunia who calls them freaks, partially because of his curiosity. Whereas Harry meets Ron and Draco envies a friendship with him, Severus gets accused by Lily of fucking up her relationship with her sister as soon as he rejoins her in the Hogwarts Express, and then immediately gets bullied by James and Sirius who bound over that. Severus spent all his early childhood craving for the safety of Hogwarts, but he found hell in there, a kind of hell that a well-loved Harry never experienced. Severus is an outsider amongst Muggles, then amongst magicfolk, the black sheep or ugly duckling or whatever you may call it. Harry meets his two best friends for life during his first year, like the Marauders got each other, while Severus loses Lily to his worst bully who, unlike Voldemort, will never pay for the evil he did. And all the teachers were fine with what was happening, fond of the Marauders, neglectful when it regarded Severus, or outright abusive when it came to Dumbledore silencing him after the Werewolf Incident, not content with making a Prefect out of Lupin and a Head Boy out of James (the equivalent of making Draco a Prefect and Tom Riddle, Head Boy). Slughorn, his own Head of House, is later seen rewarding assault if it’s stylish in his tastes, instead of punishing inter-student violence; he may very well have rewarded the “cool and popular” Marauders for assaulting Severus.

• “Oh dear!” chuckled Slughorn comfortably, looking around at Ginny, who was glaring at Zabini around Slughorn’s great belly. “You want to be careful, Blaise! I saw this young lady perform the most marvelous Bat-Bogey Hex as I was passing her carriage! I wouldn’t cross her!” 
• “He saw me hex Zacharias Smith,” said Ginny. “You remember that idiot from Hufflepuff who was in the D.A.? He kept on and on asking about what happened at the Ministry and in the end he annoyed me so much I hexed him — when Slughorn came in I thought I was going to get detention, but he just thought it was a really good hex and invited me to lunch! Mad, eh?” 

No wonder adult Snape sticks so much to enforce the rules of the school, not hesitating to serve punishments to any student he perceived misbehaving, any student who seemed to start emulating the Marauders: he strove to reestablish justice, perhaps to soothe his “inner child” as a matter of saying, who was never given the care and protection he deserved.

3. The next two father figures he had, who also happened to be his superiors, employed abusive tactics against him

Right after 7 years of extreme bullying, he was part of a cultish hate group whose leader employed manipulation, blackmail, threats, torture or even death at the slightest offense. Later, on top of that, he became Dumbledore’s spy, another master who used humiliation and emotional coercion on him, and who later paints a target on his back, which led to Severus’ death.

Voldemort says:

“I regret it,” said Voldemort coldly.

And Dumbledore says:

Poor Severus…

4. Snape never wanted to be a teacher in the first place, he was assigned at Hogwarts because his job as Dumbledore’s spy required it

It can be argued that he even dislikes children in general: 

Hagrid, like Ron, told Harry not to worry about it, that Snape liked hardly any of the students. 

And then, he had to teach Harry Potter. Even Hagrid knows why it’ll go bad:

‘But he seemed to really hate me.’ 

‘Rubbish!’ said Hagrid. ‘Why should he?’ 

Yet Harry couldn’t help thinking that Hagrid didn’t quite meet his eyes when he said that. 

‘How’s yer brother Charlie?’ Hagrid asked Ron. ‘I liked him a lot – great with animals.’ 

Harry wondered if Hagrid had changed the subject on purpose.

Snape was never to be a teacher. It wasn’t a career choice motivated by the transfer of knowledge and the care of kids. At least, not the transfer of knowledge in their presence, if it’s true that “Professor Vindictus Viridian”, literally “revengeful” and “blue-green”, is a pen name for “Professor Severus Snape”, the very inventor of Langlock which could be described as a tongue-tying hex.

Hagrid almost had to drag Harry away from Curses and Counter-Curses (Bewitch your Friends and Befuddle your Enemies with the Latest Revenges: Hair Loss, Jelly-Legs, Tongue-Tying and much, much more) by Professor Vindictus Viridian. 

‘I was trying to find out how to curse Dudley.’ 

5. Snape never studied how to educate

I believe that to become a teacher, you need, what, four or five years of study after highschool? Snape had none of that, he was thrown at the front of the classroom at 21 years old and he had to figure everything out by himself. Considering that he is extremely good at his subjects (Potions and Defense) but evidently lacks the pedagogy behind it, the lack of education in teaching practices must have had a huge impact on his teacher persona.

6. He became a teacher at only 21 years-old

This means that he was barely older than the students he was teaching, some of whom were his schoolmates, who assisted by his repeated humiliations at the hands of the Marauders, and knew him as Snivellus. If not his schoolmates, he could still expect their siblings and even at some point their children to keep on the Marauders’ legacy, and that certainly wouldn’t entice him to become a kind teacher. It doesn’t help that as a general rule, young and fragile-looking professors are the kind of prey that young delinquents favour. Some fans have hypothesised that his students could have learned, directly or not, that Snape was an ex-Death Eater – but even if that were the case, except for the pro-Voldemort crowd who might consider him with respect, this would only make Snape even more prone to be disrespected, hated or even attacked (for something he regretted enough to agree with suicidal missions, no less). 

Because he was so young and a choice target for bullying, it seems that Professor Snape had to cultivate a very strict persona to control his classroom. He had to learn how to be the bully in the class if he didn’t want to get broken and eaten alive. I do not want to even imagine the kinds of horrors young Snape must have gone through during his first years as a teacher.

Here, Whitehound draws a parallel between him and John Nettleship, a Chemistry teacher who greatly inspired the creation of the Potions Master: 

Snape, of course, developed an abrasive teaching style in part because he began teaching when he was only twenty-one, with students some of whom were only a few years younger than him and had known him as the bullies’ favourite target. John had a similar problem, in that even in his late thirties he looked about eighteen. A group photo of the Science Department staff, taken in the mid to late 1970s, shows John – the Head of Department – looking like a bespectacled schoolboy who has wandered into the shot and then tagged along with the grownups.

And for information, John Nettleship was repeatedly bullied and assaulted by his own students for being weird and looking young:

All of this goes a long way to explaining why it was that somebody who when he was settled in himself was a most kind and patient man, could in the classroom be excitable enough to be instantly recognisable as Snape to just about everybody that knew him – and, by extension, why Snape is written the way he is. John had been attacked so many times both at Wyedean and at Caldicot that he must have been constantly on the alert for where the next blow would come from, and being attacked and beaten for being odd had traumatic childhood associations, as well as being painful and frightening in itself. By the time he was teaching Rowling he was also in the midst of a divorce and sick with sleeplessness, as well as the usual high-octane stress associated with teaching itself, and he was being actively bullied by some of the students – so it wasn’t surprising if he sometimes retaliated in an attempt to maintain order. Stella, one of The Sisterhood, who herself is a primary school teacher in Italy, commented that « If you have some bullying students, sometimes you just have to show them that there is someone in charge and that he is better at bullying than them, in order to make them stop… »

7. His role model seems to be McGonagall, and she is not a particularly good teacher on her own, even if Harry thinks she’s nicer

• He spoke in barely more than a whisper, but they caught every word – like Professor McGonagall, Snape had the gift of keeping a class silent without effort.
• If Snape had gone to fetch Professor McGonagall, head of Gryffindor House, they were hardly any better off. She might be fairer than Snape, but she was still extremely strict. [laughter of the public]

8. Snape was riddled with all kinds of trauma during work

He had to learn how to be a teacher and Head of Slytherin House while fresh from seven years of bullying, his Death Eater days, war, and from the trauma of losing Lily. 

Indeed, in the beginning of 1995, Severus states that he’s been teaching « fourteen years » at Hogwarts, setting his debut in 1981. Meaning that he had barely time to adjust to teaching before Lily died by the end of October. Life didn’t give him a break; he wasn’t given any time to grieve because he had students to teach the next days. Students who were overjoyed with Voldemort’s defeat and mostly uncaring that Lily died in the process. That must have felt great to be so disconnected from everybody in the school…

Hogwarts is a site of lifelong trauma for him.

You cannot heal in the very place you were broken. Of all places, Snape should never have worked there.

9. Snape’s working schedule was heavy. 

Snape had to teach all Potions classes from the equivalents of middle school to high school. 

Then you must add in:

• his night patrols
• his duties as a spy
• his duties as Head of Slytherin House

And some special activities, like: 

• keeping an eye on Quirrell
• assisting to Quidditch matches and even referring one to ensure Harry doesn’t die
• patrolling the corridors to ensure every student is safe and hidden while the Slytherin monster is on the loose
• brewing the Mandrake Restorative Draught and probably all of Pomfrey’s stock of potions (since he is « the Potions Master at this school »)
• brewing Wolfsbane perfectly every month for a year
• taking on Lupin’s Defense classes when he is sick
• teaching Harry Occlumency twice a week
• keeping an eye on Draco so that no one dies

For 17 years. For a job that he didn’t even like and which made him miserable every day.

Anyone could get a burnout with this kind of schedule. I wonder if Snape used potions to keep up.

10. Snape was engaged in a two decades-long war

As a soldier, a spy, was bound to suffer from war PTSD, and as a Redditor well explained, you do not throw soldiers fresh from or in the midst of a war into a school full of teenagers to teach without expecting some bad shit to happen. Even Rowling somewhat started to hint at this in an interview:

But you must not forget that Snape was a Death Eater. He will have seen things that…

11. Dumbledore doesn’t just fail to reign in Professor Snape, but also condones appealing teacher behaviour, and seems to actively encourage the discord between Snape and Harry

Dumbledore’s glaring neglect of getting Professor Snape, the Dursleys and other adults in the series to behave makes sense. Per Rowling’s interview, he approved of debatable teacher behaviour during class, notably by giving Snape a free pass to be as cruel as he wanted to the students: 

lhhicks99 asks: Why does Professor Dumbledore allow Professor Snape to be so nasty to the students (especially to Harry, Hermione, and Neville)? 

jkrowling_bn: Dumbledore believes there are all sorts of lessons in life…

jkrowling_bn: horrible teachers like Snape are one of them! 

Professor Snape is fiercely loyal to Dumbledore, so if he’d asked him to stop being a dunderhead, he would have obeyed. Instead, Hogwarts’ Headmaster operates under the belief that bullying students – being mean and horrible to them just for the sake of it – is a valuable and crucial experience to impart (even if he won’t do the dirty work himself). With his status as Headmaster, he’s at the very least a convinced, full-blown enabler. So Snape might have thought that he was doing what Dumbledore wanted, that it was the right thing to do! Dumbledore certainly thought so!

Yes, the Headmaster teases Snape for giving Harry many detentions, but he never condemns the punishments per say, he only objects to… thinking that Harry is closer to James than Lily.

“He is his father over again—” 

“In looks, perhaps, but his deepest nature is much more like his mother’s. […]”

 It seems like he just wants to contradict Snape for the sake of it.

(Also, did you notice Dumbledore admitted that James was a terrible person to make the point that Harry was not the same and was a good person like Lily?)

As for the punishments – all Dumbledore does is to make a joke about it:

‘Why? You aren’t trying to give him more detentions, Severus? The boy will soon have spent more time in detention than out.’ 

And:

“Ah, good evening, Harry. Sit down,” said Dumbledore, smiling. “I hope you’ve had an enjoyable first week back at school?”

“Yes, thanks, sir,” said Harry.

“You must have been busy, a detention under your belt already!”

“Er,” began Harry awkwardly, but Dumbledore did not look too stern.

“I have arranged with Professor Snape that you will do your detention next Saturday instead.”

If Dumbledore thought Snape’s punishment was too much, he could have arranged to cancel it altogether, but no. He finds it fun that Snape apparently starts showering Harry with detentions, and though later in HBP he remarks that Snape gives Harry lots of them, he never does anything to stop it. 

Since first year, Dumbledore knew that things were exploding between a teacher and a student, both with a particular history and relationship, and he had said teacher venting and ranting about said student in his office, which we can expect to have happened many more times (before and after the excerpt we get), so Dumbledore had plenty of occasions to intervene, to ease the tension between them. What happened? 

The office dissolved but re-formed instantly. Snape was pacing up and down in front of Dumbledore. 

“—mediocre, arrogant as his father, a determined rule breaker, delighted to find himself famous, attention-seeking and impertinent—” 

“You see what you expect to see, Severus,” said Dumbledore, without raising his eyes from a copy of Transfiguration Today. “Other teachers report that the boy is modest, likable, and reasonably talented. Personally, I find him an engaging child.” 

Dumbledore turned a page, and said, without looking up, “Keep an eye on Quirrell, won’t you?”

He doesn’t tell Snape “I know that Harry may be chippy and defiant, but that’s because he had bullies as a family / because he’s an orphan / because all of that environment is new and must be stressful for him and making him lash out, and if you treat him harshly he will be insolent to you, so be patient and you will see he’s not as horrible as you currently perceive him.” He doesn’t say something remotely like “I know Harry reminds you of his father, and your feelings are valid, but how can Harry be like his father when he wasn’t raised by him? so try to calm down and you and the boy will both be grateful for it.” He definitely doesn’t say “hold up, I heard you were unfair to him and started a mess for no reason on his first lesson, aren’t you the one being childish? Calm your ass because if I hear you’ve been cruel to the boy again you’re going to suffer the consequences.” Which would have been a solution, even if questionable considering that if Dumbledore did that for Snape then you’d expect the same attitude for all the other teachers…

Instead the Headmaster:

• sorta gaslights Snape, when Harry is in fact a determined rule-breaker, attention-seeking, impertinent and “delighted to find himself famous” in the sense that Harry has a hero complex
• invalidates Snape’s perceptions and feelings about Harry
• basically tells him that no one else in the school will believe him – least of all his manager, and that he can expect all teachers to treat Harry with unfair favouritism
• confirms that he took James Potter’s offspring as his favourite as well: “Personally, I find him an engaging child.” [PS]
• and finally sweeps the subject of Snape’s hostility to Harry under the rug. 

Could Dumbledore care any less?

The Headmaster’s body language indicates that he expected Snape to react badly to Harry, to “see what he ‘wants’ to see” (ie James Potter) and that such a discussion would happen. And what does he do? Dismiss the subject in under five seconds, not even doing Harry’s lifelong bodyguard the courtesy of looking up from his magazine to answer him, and just ordering him to keep an eye on Quirrell. 

So, Dumbledore chastises Snape for being too harsh on Harry, but in reality, at best it leaves him indifferent, at worst he finds it amusing and useful. His reaction is a tacit admission that he thinks that Snape is doing good (at least, not so bad he would personally intervene), so… why would his employee change his methods? 

It doesn’t help that this bit about Harry apparently being better than what Snape describes is at best useless, at worst only entrenches him in his conviction that he alone sees Harry for what he is and knows how to handle him rightly. That’s because Snape can’t trust Dumbledore (or the other teachers’ opinions) as he already demonstrated his insane bias when it comes to keeping his golden boys in the clean at Snape’s expense (see: the Marauders), which the Potions Masters expects to play out for Harry as well:

“[…] They’ve got away with a great deal before now… I’m afraid it’s given them a rather high opinion of themselves… and of course Potter has always been allowed an extraordinary amount of licence by the Headmaster –’

Snape is also aware that Harry became Dumbledore’s new favourite. In other words, if it wasn’t about saintly Harry Potter, then Dumbledore wouldn’t have said a single word about Snape’s teaching methods. Taking James Potters’ carbon-copy of a son as his favourite might very well induce nasty flashbacks of Dumbledore’s insane favouritism with the Marauders:

• “You might be laboring under the delusion that the entire wizarding world is impressed with you,” Snape went on, so quietly that no one else could hear him (Harry continued to pound his scarab beetles, even though he had already reduced them to a very fine powder), “but I don’t care how many times your picture appears in the papers. To me, Potter, you are nothing but a nasty little boy who considers rules to be beneath him.”
• ‘How extraordinarily like your father you are, Potter,’ Snape said suddenly, his eyes glinting. ‘He, too, was exceedingly arrogant. A small amount of talent on the Quidditch pitch made him think he was a cut above the rest of us, too. Strutting around the place with his friends and admirers… the resemblance between you is uncanny.’ 
• […] ‘Your father didn’t set much store by rules, either,’ Snape went on, pressing his advantage, his thin face full of malice. ‘Rules were for lesser mortals, not Quidditch Cup-winners. His head was so swollen –’

Plus that favouritism also sort of makes our daddy-issues-ridden Potions Master jealous?

“What are you doing with Potter, all these evenings you are closeted together?” Snape asked abruptly. 

“[…] I spend time with Harry because I have things to discuss with him, information I must give him before it is too late.” 

“Information,” repeated Snape. “You trust him … you do not trust me.” 

“It is not a question of trust. I have, as we both know, limited time. It is essential that I give the boy enough information for him to do what he needs to do.” 

“And why may I not have the same information?” […]

“Yet you confide much more in a boy who is incapable of Occlumency, whose magic is mediocre, and who has a direct connection into the Dark Lord’s mind!”

Dumbledore has proven to be wrong about his golden boys, for instance: Harry is a rule-breaker and isn’t motivated by pure love – he’s also motivated by pettiness and a desire for revenge. Snape seems to believe that Dumbledore is being fooled by Harry, clouding his judgement where the boy is concerned:

“It’s no one’s fault but Potter’s, Karkaroff,” said Snape softly. His black eyes were alight with malice. “Don’t go blaming Dumbledore for Potter’s determination to break rules. He has been crossing lines ever since he arrived here —” 

And we must remember that Dumbledore has a habit of using beautiful, poetic explanations in his lies surrounding Harry. The PS explanation of Snape’s reason for helping Harry comes to mind:

‘Funny, the way people’s minds work, isn’t it? Professor Snape couldn’t bear being in your father’s debt… I do believe he worked so hard to protect you this year because he felt that would make him and your father quits. Then he could go back to hating your father’s memory in peace…’ 

As well as his bullshit about Harry being Lily deep within, when Harry inside is just… Harry:

“Why? You aren’t trying to give him more detentions, Severus? The boy will soon have spent more time in detention than out.” 

“He is his father over again—” 

“In looks, perhaps, but his deepest nature is much more like his mother’s. […]”

Or that time Dumbledore told Snape he could discuss a secret mission with Harry without fearing that Voldemort would spy on that information through their mind connection, only to later tell Snape not to show himself when giving Harry the Sword of Gryffindor least Voldemort spies through Harry’s mind and discovers that Snape is a traitor. Snape, of course, isn’t surprised that Dumbledore destroyed his own argument but still refuses to tell him about the secret mission, even if there’s no sustainable reason to gatekeep the info anymore:

“And you still aren’t going to tell me why it’s so important to give Potter the sword?” said Snape as he swung a traveling cloak over his robes. 

“No, I don’t think so,” said Dumbledore’s portrait.

There’s a reason Snape isn’t surprised by the revelation. He seems to expect those kinds of lies from Dumbledore, after all these years of working together.

All of these explain why he visibly doesn’t trust his manager where Harry and his education are concerned. He will go over the top to keep Harry in line, probably to compensate for all the leniency that’s unfairly given to him (and which damages Harry by letting him fuck around at the risk of his life when he should be studying) – and Dumbledore will only reinforce the message that Snape is doing well because he won’t actually set limits to what his employee can do (other than the obvious “don’t go around killing children”). Let alone when students other than Harry are involved. 

If that’s Dumbledore’s stance when it comes to treating a boy he claims to love and considers his favourite, I’m not daring to imagine what Dumbledore would do to a student he actually hated as much as Snape hated Harry.

However, it couldn’t remain at that, could it? Dumbledore doesn’t just condone bullying when it comes to student education. No: he seems to have actually fueled the hostility between Snape and Harry.

‘Yes, him – Quirrell said he hates me because he hated my father. Is that true?’ 

‘Well, they did rather detest each other. Not unlike yourself and Mr Malfoy. And then, your father did something Snape could never forgive.’ 

‘What?’ 

‘He saved his life.’ 

‘What?’ 

‘Yes…’ said Dumbledore dreamily. ‘Funny, the way people’s minds work, isn’t it? Professor Snape couldn’t bear being in your father’s debt… I do believe he worked so hard to protect you this year because he felt that would make him and your father quits. Then he could go back to hating your father’s memory in peace…’

In light of what we learn in the next books, this bout of dreamy poetry is a magnificent lie, a lie that set Severus and Harry’s enmity in stone. Not only Harry is left with the idea that Snape only saved him this time because he owed a debt to his father (otherwise he apparently would have left him to die… like the other teachers supposedly?), but it’ll make Harry despise his teacher for the wrong reasons and misunderstand Snape’s hatred against him – or rather, his father.

« I told you to shut up about my dad! » Harry yelled. « I know the truth, all right? He saved your life! Dumbledore told me! You wouldn’t even be here if it wasn’t for my dad! » 

Snape’s sallow skin had gone the color of sour milk. 

« And did the headmaster tell you the circumstances in which your father saved my life? » he whispered. « Or did he consider the details too unpleasant for precious Potter’s delicate ears? » 

This is perfect: Not only Snape hates Harry even more now, but Dumbledore is perpetuating the trauma of the werewolf incident and the deceiving hero-worship of James Potter at Snape’s expense. In the Prince’s Tale, we see that the Marauders had taken care of spreading to everyone the tale of James being a supreme hero saving Snivellus out of the goodness of his heart (without the context, of course), and even Lily fell for it. Now, when the Marauders aren’t the ones using Snape’s silencing to their advantage, it is the Headmaster – the same individual who forbade Snape from ever telling the full truth of what happened that night and never truly punished the Marauders.

(Dumbledore’s lie is doubly genius in that it invalidates Severus’ very legitimate reasons to loathe James Potter. God forbid we ever inform Harry that Snape hates him because his dear father James treated his teacher like absolute shit. Apparently, Snape must hate James for a pathetic reason. Because to Dumbledore, Snape himself is pathetic. It’s like when Lupin framed Snape’s hatred of James as jealousy over his Quidditch skills. Gaslighting and defamation! The utter destruction of the victim’s credibility!)

Did Dumbledore have to lie? No. He could have simply said “it is a teacher’s job to protect their students”. In fact, even if he thought James was good, he could have told Harry that the kind of unforgivable things his father did to Severus amounted to – BULLYING. Because Harry was bullied by Draco and Dudley, he certainly could have understood and sympathised with Snape, and maybe it could have gotten much better between the two before it was too late to soothe their mutual hatred. Or you know, if Dumbledore cared about Snape’s privacy, he could have avoided telling Harry that James bullied Snape and instead said: “Your father did things to Professor Snape that he could never forgive, and you remind him of your father, so he doesn’t like you, but that doesn’t mean he’ll let you die either, you’re still one of his students, and he will save you as many times as needed.”

That Dumbledore decided instead to make up such a hurtful lie for 11 yo Harry to gobble down, combined with his glaring neglect of the discord between him and his teacher, indicates that not only Snape was still being abused by a father figure (the same old headmaster who severely neglected him at school), but that Dumbledore intended for the relationship between Snape and Harry to go sour. (Which, by the way, is one of the theories explaining why Dumbledore would set Snape to teach Harry Occlumency instead of doing it himself.)

Cultural background

a. Temporo-spatial setting: A British Boarding school in the 1990s 

Between the 1990s and today, we have 30 years of cultural, social and societal differences. Abusive teachers were commonplace. In fact, canning was so widespread it was nicknamed “the English vice”. At that time, canning was starting to get banned. A quick read on Wikipedia on School corporal punishment:

In state-run schools, and in private schools where at least part of the funding came from government, corporal punishment was outlawed by the British Parliament on 22 July 1986, following a 1982 ruling by the European Court of Human Rights that such punishment could no longer be administered without parental consent, and that a child’s « right to education » could not be infringed by suspending children who, with parental approval, refused to submit to corporal punishment. In other private schools, it was banned in 1998 (England and Wales), 2000 (Scotland) and 2003 (Northern Ireland). [Hogwarts is located in Scotland btw]

Although:

• Prior to the ban in private schools in England, the slippering of a student at an independent boarding school was challenged in 1993 before the European Court of Human Rights. The Court ruled 5–4 in that case that the punishment was not severe enough to infringe the student’s « freedom from degrading punishment » under article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The dissenting judges argued that the ritualised nature of the punishment, given after several days and without parental consent, should qualify it as « degrading punishment ».
• R (Williamson) v Secretary of State for Education and Employment (2005) was an unsuccessful challenge to the prohibition of corporal punishment contained in the Education Act 1996, by several headmasters of private Christian schools who argued that it was a breach of their religious freedom.

And even today:

• In response to a 2008 poll of 6,162 UK teachers by the Times Educational Supplement, 22% of secondary school teachers and 16% of primary school teachers supported « the right to use corporal punishment in extreme cases ». The National Union of Teachers said that it « could not support the views expressed by those in favour of hitting children ».

(Weren’t there new laws recently passed in the USA that reintroduced corporal punishment too?)

Though canning had been recently banned in the 1990ies, the culture of violence against children was still very well ingrained – and canning wasn’t the only way a teacher could discipline a student:

In the English-speaking world, the use of corporal punishment in schools has historically been justified by the common-law doctrine in loco parentis, whereby teachers are considered authority figures granted the same rights as parents to discipline and punish children in their care if they do not adhere to the set rules. […]

According to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), there are three broad rationales for the use of corporal punishment in schools: beliefs, based in traditional religion, that adults have a right, if not a duty, to physically punish misbehaving children; a disciplinary philosophy that corporal punishment builds character, being necessary for the development of a child’s conscience and their respect for adult authority figures; and beliefs concerning the needs and rights of teachers, specifically that corporal punishment is essential for maintaining order and control in the classroom.

UK boarding schools like Hogwarts, in particular, were hell on Earth. The parents were even more powerless to intervene if child abuse or bullying of any kind occurred (unless, of course, those parents had power and money, and even then, those parents could be abusive themselves). More “traditional”/conservative and often religious boarding schools controlled every aspect of the children’s lives, leaving them with little to no private life, could easily perform corporal punishment if they wanted and of course, they left no hope for the children to escape. 

And remember that Snape was written as a teacher of the 1990ies by a woman who attended school during the 1970ies and 1980ies. Whitehound in her essay on John Nettleship, Rowling’s Chemistry teacher who greatly inspired Severus Snape:

[…] he was both like and unlike Snape. « Unlike » because Snape in the books is extremely un-physical: we never see him touch a student at all, or anybody else that I can remember, until he hauls Harry away from the Pensieve towards the end of fifth year. « Like » because my informant seemed to think that John flicking people was a heinous crime, even though it doesn’t seem to have been intended as a punishment but simply as a jokey way of saying « Get a move on there », whilst dismissing the frighteningly severe punishment beatings handed out by Mr Mooney as being of no significance.

Flicking a student with a screwdriver would probably be seen as illegal now, but caning them definitely would be. If a severe caning is acceptable, a little flick or rap must surely be; and if a flick is unacceptable then a beating must be so much more so. Like Snape, John was blamed out of all proportion while others got a free ticket for much worse offences, because his slightly odd manner and striking appearance and his offbeat charisma made whatever he did disproportionately noticeable. And this, mind you, was in a school where – according to the forums – the metalwork master routinely made the first years cry, and often picked them up by the scruff of the neck, like kittens.

You can see remnants of that culture in fictional books such as Roald Dahl’s Matilda (1988), with her parents and Miss Trunchbull. But Snape is no Miss Trunchbull: he’s much closer to Jill Murphy’s Miss Hardbroom from The Worst Witch (1974).

Indeed, Snape-like teachers were particularly appreciated at the time because they were competent, they genuinely cared for the students and they weren’t physically violent. As tumblr user ironborealis said in a comment:

For me, Snape’s teaching style is within normal limits and at least it wasn’t false advertising. I saw popular teachers bully disabled students, throw coffee mugs, and choke slam 9 year olds. Those teachers were never punished. I preferred the hard asses who didn’t pretend, but also didn’t go half so far as those much beloved teachers. These were in schools that had long banned corporal punishment by teachers, by the way.

As for my personal experience: one of my teachers in middle school was a jaded English teacher who’d mastered sarcasm and could control a chaotic classroom full of thugs that was later able to push another teacher to break in sobs and quit her job after throwing a firework in class. Well, that English teacher saved the life of one of my friends, who’d have committed suicide if no one had interevened. And yes, the fanfiction trope of a teacher pretending to give detentions to a student as an excuse to take them out of a round of bullying in the playground and let them rest in class has happened in real-life.

Snape is the classic figure of the severe and nasty professor that you end up liking a lot because he’s the one who cares for you the most, who barks rather than bites, and because you come to understand and relate to him as an adult over how shitty life can be. 

As for Snape being rude to his students – sarcastic and acidic comments were (and still are) regarded as being witty and funny in UK culture, so that would shock no one either.

Rowling’s writing of absurdly violent teachers in an absurdly dangerous world pertains to the same fantasy era as Roal Dahl’s works, like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. A style that can be found again in works like Made in Abyss (Ozen, orphanage director) or Warriors (the cat saga), or even The Worst Witch. 

It is okay for Wonka to punish the spoiled children with torture and life-lasting body deformities, and for Charlie to think they deserved it, and the whole narrative approving it, because the biggest villains there were the children rather than the parents.

It’s okay for the clans’ cat leaders to set life-threatening tests as rituals of adulthood, because that’s how it must work in a humanlike fantasy cat society, after all they live in the wild. 

Made in Abyss… what more shall I say in a series that’s already plagued with barely-veiled pedo fetishes?

It was an era where child abuse was a sign of love, tough love if you want, and the best way to prepare the children for the adult world, as long as it was assumed it was backed by “good intentions”. You were taught that in truth, it wasn’t child abuse; that gentler treatment, “shielding you from the real world”, was the real abuse here, as you would be left prime to be preyed upon.

It couldn’t count as child abuse because it came from the right person. It could be swept under the rug because it came from the one you were taught to love.

Judging one’s morality based on the assumed goodness of their intentions. That, right here, may be touching on one of the main reasons Potter fans viscerally hate Snape while adoring McGonagall, why for them Snape is evil for the same things or less than his peers. It’s the core principle of Rowling’s character writing, their in-world -assigned morality.  It’s the in-universe society’s mentality in which Snape and Harry grew, in which Snape as well as Dumbledore and McGonagall operate. 

It’s a society-scale abuse-apologistic mindset that, like for many other things, harms and implicates everyone, for generations, where the most targeted can replicate the harm more than anyone else. 

I personally don’t believe morality to be a thing other than a set of rules in human communities with assigned spiritual value that we coin as “good” or “evil” in a world where the law of the strongest (which includes “we are stronger together”) is the logical consequence of an order system that implies similar laws such as “on Earth the scales tip depending on the heaviest object”, so I am less interested in a character’s morality than how personally enjoyable they are. But if we’re making moral judgements then I prefer consistency.

The primary point isn’t to determine whether someone is inherently evil or not. In truth, morality and inherent goodness aren’t intrinsically linked, neither are they with lovability. They’re not the most important things either. And as it turns out, despite the HP saga’s implications through the differential appreciability treatment that Snape gets compared to other characters, “good intentions” are a poor tool to determine someone’s morality or their goodness. 

Because then how do we apply that principle?

1. “Dumbledore had good intentions while Snape had evil ones, so even if both did wrong, Dumbledore’s actions are justified and pardonable, while Snape’s are not.”

This system of logic is based on the claim that Dumbledore has good intentions and Snape evil ones, except that first you must prove it.

Some who lean into evil-Snape argue that he bullied Harry for sadistic intentions. They argue he was a sadist because he bullied Harry – a circle argument. Alternatively: because who else than a sadist would bully a kid?

[shrugs]

An adult who never thought he was being a bully. 

An adult who wanted to prevent that kid from becoming a bully.

An adult who sought justice, “just” in the wrong way. 

An adult who believes that bullying a kid can be morally good. Don’t think I’m not looking at you Dumby. Nor you the Marauder fans who believe that kid Sev getting bullied is a good thing. That is sadistic.

You could totally make the argument that Snape’s intentions were good: he desired to prevent Harry from becoming like his father James, an evil person, and if it was too late at least ensure justice by punishing him one way or another for being bad. 

Whether his preconception that Harry would be the new James is irrelevant when we’re talking about intentions. Whether his hatred of Harry is acceptable or even justified isn’t relevant either. If you truly believe that one’s goodness is determined by the rightfulness of their intentions, then Snape must be a Hero as out of all the HP characters, he’s of the most fervent justice-seekers.  

2. “McGonagall had good intentions and Snape had evil ones, so if both had been exposed to healthier educative methods, McGonagall’s abusiveness would have vanished, proving she was a wonderful teacher who was just misled, while Snape would still have remained a bully.”

Except that systemic abuse has far greater consequences, in turn making the benefits of erasing it far greater than you realize.

Let’s forgo for a moment the problem of assuming that McGonagall would cease his abuse while Snape wouldn’t if things were different, in a world where McGonagall at her best committed greater crimes than Snape at his worst, and in a world that condemns Snape for holding similar emotionally-led preconceptions.

Let’s also forgo the fact that a person’s ability to change their problematic behavior can involve other factors that make moral comparisons biased – for instance it’s harder to call someone as evil as your random bigot if their bigotry is tied to internalized hatred and the tax they must endure for their “undesirable” difference. 

If a healthier mentality had been introduced in Hogwarts, then not only Snape could have preferred those methods for their sheer efficiency, he might not have become a bully in the first place. If his toxic behavior is rooted in cultural practices and trauma, then a healthier world with better practices could heal that trauma, transforming him into a better teacher. Snape could have become his Cursed Child 60 yo self at age 30: a friendly man with a biting sense of humor who made peace with his past and is still willing to give up his life to save the world, beyond his original objective to give Lily’s son a chance to live in it. 

Write a healthier world where McGonagall’s abusive streak is magically unmade whereas Snape remains as cruel as he’s been in the original books without all that led up to it, and you’re missing the point of this character’s tale. 

That Snape wasn’t evil by nature, that he was a victim of systemic violence of which he then became an actor too, that you can find the truest heroes among the cast out, that you can save lots more people than you realize if you fight for a better world where your loved ones aren’t allowed to commit evil either, a world where growing into a good or evil person isn’t so dependent on the privileges of your birth.

3. “In the narrative, Hagrid is a good guy, while Snape is ambiguous and oftentimes presented as outright evil, so it doesn’t matter how their actions were written: to know who the characters truly are and whether we should hate them or call them evil or not, we should follow the author’s intentions.”

The last one is obviously trash because you’re setting yourself up to blindly adhere to all the potentially harmful messages conveyed by the media, cancelling any spirit of critical reading. That gives: 

• “It’s a good thing that Hagrid calls Dudley a pig because Rowling wrote him as a good guy and Dudley’s fatness is a sign of his inherent evilness”.

But also:  

• “If people are ugly then it means they’re evil”; 
• “Anatomically male -looking people in fem clothes are ridiculous and deserved to be laughed at”; 
• “Bullying our social-lessers, luring them to get them mauled to death by a rabid man-hunting wolf is harmless if committed by our friends”;
• “Child abuse is not child abuse as long as the right people are doing it.” 

You’re not a safe person if you believe any of those.

By the same spirit you should also consider Snape a good guy and a redeemed hero solely based on the saga’s epilogue. And Cursed Child, the author-approved 8th entry in the saga:

HARRY: Albus Severus, you were named after two headmasters of Hogwarts. One of them was a Slytherin  and he was probably the bravest man I ever knew. […]

HARRY: Those names you have — they shouldn’t be a burden. Albus Dumbledore had his trials too, you  know — and Severus Snape, well, you know all about him —  

ALBUS: They were good men.  

HARRY: They were great men, with huge flaws, and you know what — those flaws almost made them  greater.

Couldn’t get more explicit.

“Good intentions”, on top of being subjectively determined, are rarely sufficient – only when the outcomes were drastically different from the intended and reasonably predictable results, due to us being fallible and not in total control of our fate. 

“Good intentions” won’t protect your favs from getting labelled as abusers if their actions don’t match their words. 

b. Society setting: The Society of Wizarding Britain

Where children abuse by parents and adults in general is normalised and often not even acknowledged as such. 

Rowling said that Arthur Weasley was the best father in HP, and the Weasleys were pictured as a sweet, fun family full of love. How do the Weasley parents truly fare? 

After being raised at a time where whipping the students was allowed in Hogwarts, it is heavily implied that Molly routinely spanks her children, even when they’re (almost) legally adults. Hermione uses the threat of being beaten by their mother to keep Fred and George in check:

“No,” she said, her voice quivering with anger, “but I will write to your mother.” 

“You wouldn’t,” said George, horrified, taking a step back from her. 

“Oh, yes, I would,” said Hermione grimly. “I can’t stop you eating the stupid things yourselves, but you’re not giving them to first years.” 

Fred and George looked thunderstruck. It was clear that as far as they were concerned, Hermione’s threat was way below the belt. 

If Fred and George were beaten by their parents, it’s no wonder the teachers have trouble regulating them. The only thing they truly fear now is the parental beating – everything that comes before that is a joke.

Molly isn’t the only one to blame. Ron in HBP about his dad Arthur Weasley:

“Fred and George tried to get me to make [an Unbreakable Vow] when I was about five. I nearly did too, I was holding hands with Fred and everything when Dad found us. He went mental,” said Ron, with a reminiscent gleam in his eyes. “Only time I’ve ever seen Dad as angry as Mum, Fred reckons his left buttock has never been the same since.” 

Now I know: it’s implied that’s the only time Arthur beat his son, and he was legitimately angry (and scared) because Fred and George could have gotten Ron killed. But if we really want to apply 2020s standards in child education and welfare in HP, then I’m not sure it would be acceptable that Arthur’s solution or first instinct was to unleash his rage by violently spanking his son to the point Ron vividly remembers it with horror ten years later and Fred jokes that he keeps a scar of sorts down there. Instead of stopping the ritual, confiscating Fred and George’s wands, scolding them and, you know, use other methods to teach them this should never be done.

Not to mention Ron’s remark:

Only time I’ve ever seen Dad as angry as Mum

Implying that his mother going mental enough to use corporal punishment (on top of her usual emotion/verbal abuse) on her children is a common occurrence. 

Molly is the same mother who sent a freaking Howler to her 12 yo son, purposefully humiliating him in front of the whole effing school in a display of what would be now easily considered verbal and emotional abuse. It’s as though she wanted to effectively disown her son in public in an attempt to save her face after she and her husband broke Wizarding law:

Neville stuffed his fingers in his ears. A split second later, Harry knew why. He thought for a moment it had exploded; a roar of sound filled the huge hall, shaking dust from the ceiling. 

“—STEALING THE CAR, I WOULDN’T HAVE BEEN SURPRISED IF THEY’D EXPELLED YOU, YOU WAIT TILL I GET HOLD OF YOU, I DON’T SUPPOSE YOU STOPPED TO THINK WHAT YOUR FATHER AND I WENT THROUGH WHEN WE SAW IT WAS GONE —” 

Mrs. Weasley’s yells, a hundred times louder than usual, made the plates and spoons rattle on the table, and echoed deafeningly off the stone walls. People throughout the hall were swiveling around to see who had received the Howler, and Ron sank so low in his chair that only his crimson forehead could be seen. 

“—LETTER FROM DUMBLEDORE LAST NIGHT, I THOUGHT YOUR FATHER WOULD DIE OF SHAME, WE DIDN’T BRING YOU UP TO BEHAVE LIKE THIS, YOU AND HARRY COULD BOTH HAVE DIED —” 

Harry had been wondering when his name was going to crop up. He tried very hard to look as though he couldn’t hear the voice that was making his eardrums throb. 

“—ABSOLUTELY DISGUSTED — YOUR FATHER’S FACING AN INQUIRY AT WORK, IT’S ENTIRELY YOUR FAULT AND IF YOU PUT ANOTHER TOE OUT OF LINE WE’LL BRING YOU STRAIGHT BACK HOME.” 

A ringing silence fell. The red envelope, which had dropped from Ron’s hand, burst into flames and curled into ashes. Harry and Ron sat stunned, as though a tidal wave had just passed over them. A few people laughed and, gradually, a babble of talk broke out again. 

Pause for a moment and consider. Do you seriously think that’s a mature and responsible attitude to have towards your children? Even when they fucked up? And especially while they’re recovering from a threat of expulsion from Hogwarts and probably, per Molly’s own words, a near death experience? At which point do you think it is acceptable that a mother yells at her child like that – using a magical contraption to amplify her already loud yelling a hundred times louder to the point that the hall shakes with the force and Harry’s eardrums throb – telling her son that his father was about to die of shame from him, threatening him to stop his education at school, verbally treating him like a punching bag – not to mention, in public, inside the very school where he will spend the rest of his magical education – in the express purpose of totally humiliating and half-disowning her child in public, as if the whole school population had to be involved? What if Ron’s classmates had started to bully him from then on, would he have deserved it in Molly’s eyes as well? Did she count on it? I’m two inches from slapping a verbal and emotional abuser stick on her forehead. What the fuck is this:

YOU WAIT TILL I GET HOLD OF YOU

WE DIDN’T BRING YOU UP TO BEHAVE LIKE THIS

ABSOLUTELY DISGUSTED

Oh and:

YOUR FATHER’S FACING AN INQUIRY AT WORK, IT’S ENTIRELY YOUR FAULT

No! No that’s – that’s not Ron’s fault if his father, who was the Head of the Misuse of Muggle Artefacts Office, broke the very law he was meant to uphold by enchanting a Muggle car! 

Couldn’t Molly have at least first expressed her relief that Ron and Harry arrived at school safe and sound? Or asked Ron to explain himself before giving him the yelling of his life?

By the way, thank god Draco doesn’t have the hypersensitivity of an autist to sound, or he might have said “Father will hear about this” and I personally would have approved for once. It also sucks for those who like to headcanon that Neville is autistic… Blocking his ears with his fingers might have not sufficed.

While Molly Weasley has the reputation of screaming like a banshee for nothing:

Mrs. Weasley’s yells, a hundred times louder than usual

Her threats here:

IF YOU PUT ANOTHER TOE OUT OF LINE WE’LL BRING YOU STRAIGHT BACK HOME

Were scary enough to prevent Ron from asking either of his parents to buy him a new wand, for a whole year, even though it represented a huge security hazard and prevented him from learning magic properly. He would rather spend the rest of the year with a useless, stupid wand – even after the slug-vomiting spell mishap – than face another round of verbal and emotional abuse from his mother:

“Stupid — useless — thing —” 

“Write home for another one,” Harry suggested as the wand let off a volley of bangs like a firecracker. 

“Oh, yeah, and get another Howler back,” said Ron, stuffing the now hissing wand into his bag. 

Great way to keep your child’s trust, Molly. You put Walburga’s screaming portrait to shame.

Should I mention that, of course:

• Molly repeatedly neglects Ron and puts him through humiliating situations: we just saw the Howler scene, but you must remember that time she made him wear his Great-Aunt Tessie’s clothes for the Yule Ball, causing him to be laughed at by people from the three magical schools during a special event?
• The Weasleys have no money… unless Harry is involved – where suddenly they can afford an expensive and handsome suit for the Yule Ball.
• The Weasleys lack so much money… and they had 8 children in a row – that they put through poverty and the shame that comes with it, as well as evident emotional neglect. Completely irresponsible and that ought to account as a form of abuse.
• Immediately after the Weasleys get financially comfortable by the end of CoS, they travel to Egypt. It’s kind of surprising for a family that lived so poor for so long, and thus would be prone to keep the habits and mindset of the poor for a good while. Especially when they still have 5 kids to raise, 6 if you count Harry. You would expect Molly and Arthur to save a significant part of their newly acquired money just in case and/or for future important expanses, or primarily use it for priorities and long-lasting items (that may “spark joy” a lot more), and not chuck it out merely days later in a random trip to Egypt.
• Nearly all the Weasley offsprings were hit by poverty, particularly Ron, but Ginny, the last of the family, is curiously exempt from having to use a hand-me-down wand or a rat as a pet. Keep in mind the corrupted Slytherin Locket will torment Ron by taunting him that Molly wanted a girl (Ginny) instead of him.
• Molly favours Harry, and while it’s sweet that she wanted to treat him like one of her sons, it’s evident her treatment of Harry is vastly different from her biological sons Ron and the twins – which could have made them feel incredibly unworthy of love, invisible, emotionally neglected and so painfully jealous of Harry that they could have broken their friendship with him… you saw the impact when Ron had to confront Slytherin’s locket.
• Molly conditions parental love and care to her children’s school performance:
  • They have no money… unless their child gets good marks – at which point they buy them their own wand, owl and fresh-new books (see: Percy Weasley)

(Curiously, Ron’s first wand used to be Charlie Weasley’s, implying that for some reason Charlie separated himself from his wand, gave it to his younger brother and got a new wand afterwards. The only logical scenario I can get from this situation – that wouldn’t have the Weasley parents buy Charlie two wands and have him give one to Ron – is if it wasn’t actually Charlie’s wand and that he originally got it as a hand-me-down too. Meaning that the Weasleys were poor starting with their second child already, and they decided to keep producing even more children that they couldn’t appropriately care for. And then none of Ron’s older brothers cared to buy him a wand of his own.)

• Molly shames her twin sons for not performing well in school, even when their business is running extremely well.
• Academic performance was so important among the Weasleys that Ron’s deepest wish in PS was to be Prefect and Quidditch Captain like his brothers – Hermione-level standards in short
• Rowling says that poor students can attend Hogwarts thanks to a scholarship but then the Weasleys being so short on money when it comes to offering satisfactory conditions for their children’s education is peculiar. Either the scholarship doesn’t exist, or the parents held the money. When children realise in adulthood (when they gain financial independance and knowledge of “real life”) that something is off and the poverty they suffered doesn’t align with what their parents financially gained, they can come to the conclusion that they were victims of child abuse by neglect and (deprivation), motivating them to go low contact with their parents. Ironically, Bill, Charlie and even Percy have gone low contact with Molly and Arthur. Percy’s motives are different as far as we know, but what about Bill and Charlie? It’s not book-canon, but Rowling once said that all students could attend Hogwarts even if they were poor because they would receive financial aid if needed, but if so, where did it go when it came to give the Weasley children their school material? Did the parents keep the money for themselves at the cost of their children’s education and wellbeing or what?
• Why do you think Ron’s older brothers were so obsessed with having great marks in school, but quickly left home and seem to have little contact with their parents?

The best family in HP, based on the traditional catholic family living in the countryside, with a stay-at-home mother who’s prone to yell her lungs out at her children for nothing, the “cool” working dad and lots of high-performing children, is riddled with red flags of child abuse and neglect by today’s standards. Which was to be expected given the type of family that it was based on. I’m not saying Arthur and Molly are evil or full-fledged abusers. Like Snape, they probably knew no better. But I hope you now get a bit of the ambiance and mentality of the time.  

Needless to say that the Boy Who Lived was no stranger to child abuse himself. 

Dumbledore argues in PS that he won’t give Harry to be raised by a wizard family because the fame would be too much for him. (Like his father? Is Dumbledore subconsciously acknowledging that he’d rather have Harry abused than get another James Potter in Hogwarts?) Fair enough, but it could also have been relatively easy to raise Harry outside of too much wizarding influence since there does not seem to have primary schools and Harry could have been homeschooled. Or you know, well-taken care of by his adoptive parents who could have shielded him from the fame and taught him how to healthily deal with it? I get why you wouldn’t want to give Harry to the Weasleys considering what we know of their favourable treatment of him in his teen years since book 2 – that would have given us a new James Potter – but surely they were other candidates?

So later, starting from OotP, Dumbledore instead argues that he had Harry raised by the Dursleys because the bond of blood based on Harry and Petunia sharing Lily’s blood allowed Dumbledore’s charm to take hold, making use of ancient magic so powerful that it could prevent Voldemort and any of his allies from harming Harry. 

Putting aside the fact that Dumbledore’s explanations are quite contradictory and vague, since:

• he first argues that Lily left a super-protection on Harry through her blood, then that it is Dumbledore’s charm that protects him after all
• or the fact that Dumbledore says Harry could be protected as long as he returned to the Dursleys once a year, meaning that Harry could have lived elsewhere at the very least starting from the end of PS, only to return to the Dursleys one day per year to “replenish” the blood protection 
• or the fact that Harry may have been able to be protected through blood if he’d carried a pendant or a vial of Petunia’s willingly donated blood in a new foster home or even inside Hogwarts 
• or the fact that Dumbledore both says the magic will fail when Harry stops calling Petunia’s house his home (which he already did by his 3rd Hogwarts year) and that it will thus fail at Harry’s 17th birthday even though turning of age doesn’t mean you stop calling your family’s house home…

Dumbledore admits he saw that Harry had been abused by the Dursleys, and yet he never intervened. 

“Five years ago, then,” continued Dumbledore, as though he had not paused in his story, “you arrived at Hogwarts, neither as happy nor as well nourished as I would have liked, perhaps, yet alive and healthy. You were not a pampered little prince, but as normal a boy as I could have hoped under the circumstances. Thus far, my plan was working well.” [eek]

He will never intervene until 6th year, when Harry has lost all parental figures, long after the damage was done, when Dumbledore’s about to die and he must launch Harry into the Horcrux quest to later sacrifice himself.

“You did not do as I asked. You have never treated Harry as a son. He has known nothing but neglect and often cruelty at your hands. The best that can be said is that he has at least escaped the appalling damage you have inflicted upon the unfortunate boy sitting between you.” 

Oh, bless Harry – at least, it was made sure that he wasn’t damaged by being spoiled like Dudley!

Either Dumbledore knew all that from the beginning, and it makes him a direct enabler of child abuse, who’s as responsible for Harry’s child abuse as the Dursleys – remember that this is the same guy who, per Rowling, considered being bullied a valuable experience for children, he’s the one who gave Harry to be raised by the Dursleys, and he’s Harry’s unofficial wizard guardian/representent/proxy.…

Or he didn’t know until Snape or someone else in the Order reported to him at the end of 5th year that Harry had been mistreated by his family, despite the tell-tale signs since first year. But that doesn’t negate the fact that Dumbledore never went to check on Harry to see how he was faring or how his Muggle family was handling the surprise raising of a wizard child together with their own child, right after Petunia’s sister was murdered by evil wizards and during her postpartum? One year after birth…]. Overall, he purposefully gives Harry to a family he can guess will treat him abusively starting from day 1, only to then present Hagrid and himself as saviours for barging in Harry’s life after most of the damage was done (damage that they indirectly caused), and even then, it’s just too convenient to have Harry spend his summers in hell. 

McGonagall, who was present with Dumbledore and is the Deputy Headmistress, is not any better. She too never checks up on Harry. She does protest against leaving Harry to the Dursleys, but NOT out of concern that he will be abused. Only because… they’re different. They’re a Muggle family, so for her, of course, they’ll be badly suited to raise a wizard child! I wonder what she thinks of the families of her Muggle-Born students then…

‘Dumbledore – you can’t. I’ve been watching them all day. You couldn’t find two people who are less like us. And they’ve got this son – I saw him kicking his mother all the way up the street, screaming for sweets. Harry Potter come and live here!’ 

(Err – how could a 1 year-old child kick his mother all the way up the street? Babies of that age have barely learned how to walk on two feet… And if she meant kicking his mother in her arms – Dudley’s still a baby at that time, why assume he’s evil for wanting more sweets?)

The way she speaks about Harry Potter is like she sees him as a name, a hero and a celebrity rather than… a baby human being who just lost his parents like so many others in this war.

She mentions Dudley as a reason not to let Harry be adopted by his aunt and uncle but only to suggest that the Dursleys spoil their son. She immediately follows up by saying that Harry will be famous in the wizarding world, so he must be treated like the celebrity he is, and she doesn’t have a problem with that. So… spoiling a kid is not okay unless it’s Potter’s son. If it’s a Muggle, it’s bad. 

She’s almost worse than Dumbledore because she couldn’t fathom that maybe all this fame that Harry would get since a very young age would be unhealthy or even dangerous for him if exposed to it too soon and without preparation. 

‘[…] These people will never understand him! He’ll be famous – a legend – I wouldn’t be surprised if today was known as Harry Potter Day in future – there will be books written about Harry – every child in our world will know his name!’ 

‘Exactly,’ said Dumbledore, looking very seriously over the top of his half-moon glasses. ‘It would be enough to turn any boy’s head. Famous before he can walk and talk! Famous for something he won’t even remember! Can’t you see how much better off he’ll be, growing up away from all that until he’s ready to take it?’ 

Professor McGonagall opened her mouth, changed her mind, swallowed and then said, ‘Yes – yes, you’re right, of course. […]’

If she feared that the Dursleys would favour their son over Harry and/or that their son would be enabled to mistreat his cousin, she never does anything about it. She was Harry’s Head of House and Deputy Headmistress, but just like she wouldn’t intervene when it came to Ron and Neville’s families, she either would never pick up on the signs of Harry’s child abuse, or she would but she never did anything about it. She never once brings Harry to her office to speak to her about how things are going in his adoptive Muggle family, and of course, she never checks up on him while he’s still a pre-Hogwarts child.

Despite all the tell-tale signs of abuse, such as 11 yo Harry being alone on the train station until Molly arrives, the Twins finding Harry locked in his bedroom with cell bars on his window and being cut off from the outside world, or his classmates knowing since CoS that he hates the Muggles he lives with, or Harry packing up and leaving in PoA because he would rather sleep on the street than stay one more day at his aunt’s, or Harry apparently starving in GoF, or the repeated comments to Sirius and Lupin about how the Dursleys don’t like him and don’t care about him and would rather he gets hurt, and Harry so obviously wanting to leave their house even if it means living in Grimmauld Place – nothing really changes for him.

Sure, the Weasley family has helped him, and they may have saved Harry from going down a genuinely dark path. They tried to ease his situation with food and presents, frequently invited him to leave the Dursleys, gave him some of the affection a child needs to develop well, wanted to check up on him, basically became his new family and, over the years, repeatedly expressed their intention to get Harry out of there (?). So at least they knew something was up and they tried to do something. They’re not perfect, but congratulations still.

However, the only moment anything gets done against the Dursleys, the only moment Harry’s situation is taken seriously, is at the end of OotP, where the whole Order openly threatens the Dursleys to keep them in check. The reason the Order finally intervenes is not made clear, although we could very well theorise that the breaking point was when Snape witnessed streams of memories after memories of Harry being abused by his family as a child during the Occlumency lessons, after which he probably had a word about it to Dumbledore or other members of the Order (such as the Weasleys). It’s in character. He’s in charge of Harry’s protection and he was subject to family abuse himself. Combine that with the fact he mirrors Harry – who empathised with him after seeing some of his worst memories (like the one where child Sev was hiding from his abusive father). Finally he must know that Harry needs support after losing his godfather.

Anonymous: 

Do you think Snape had anything to do with the why the Order confronted the Dursley’s at then end of OotP? I always found it odd that this happens after Harry’s Occlumency lessons.

Deathdaydungeon: 

Yeah, I read it that way.

Prior to this, there are other characters who are somewhat aware of Harry’s plight (Ron and the twins save Harry in CoS, for instance), but this intervention feels as if there’s been some extra pressure from someone whose opinion carries weight.

Snape is important here for two reasons:

1)  The Order know for a fact that Snape has been looking into Harry’s mind, so they can’t write this off as a mistake or children who are ‘telling tales’ – Snape has witnessed this activity directly.

2)  Snape outwardly – and openly – dislikes Harry, and if he’s saying, “Woah, there’s something really wrong, you need to have a word,” – then it suggests the behaviour he’s witnessed is awful.

I think both of those mean that the adult Order members take his warning seriously and intervene.

frederick-the-great:

[…] In the beginning of Order of the Phoenix, the Order goes to Privet Drive to pick up Harry but they purposefully lure the Dursleys away in order to spirit Harry away.

This dialogue takes place:

Harry, I’ve left a letter telling your aunt and uncle not to worry —”

“They won’t,” said Harry.

“That you’re safe —”

“That’ll just depress them.”

“— and you’ll see them next summer.”

“Do I have to?”

Lupin smiled but made no answer.

Harry here is rather obvious about the Dursleys not caring about him but Lupin presses on, still laboring under the misapprehension that the Dursleys will care. It is worth point out that Harry doesn’t really give specifics as to how he’s treated. It is interesting that Lupin doesn’t press for details, perhaps dismissing Harry’s comments as teenage angst or something of the sort.

However, at the end of the book when Moody, Lupin and the others confront the Dursleys they are very specific:

“Yeah,” growled Moody. “About how he’s treated when he’s at your place.”

“Anyway, that’s not the point,” interjected Tonks. “The point is, if we find out you’ve been horrible to Harry —”

“— and make no mistake, we’ll hear about it,” added Lupin pleasantly.

“Yeah, if we get any hint that Potter’s been mistreated in any way, you’ll have us to answer to,”

Now it’s just not a question of indifference, of the Dursleys not caring. It’s a question of the Order finally getting wind of the fact that they have been “horrible” to Harry, that Harry has been “mistreated” which is something that could only have come from the memories because Harry is very rarely explicit about what the Dursleys do to him.

Even when Harry tells Sirius:

“I’d feel a lot better about the hearing if I knew I didn’t have to go back to the Dursleys,” Harry pressed him.

“They must be bad if you prefer this place,” said Sirius gloomily.

He is not explicit about what goes on. 

Plus, it is worth pointing out that in PoA, Harry had already hinted to Sirius that he doesn’t like living with his uncle and aunt but nothing got done. Ron and the twins probably knew about it as well but they either never told their parents or weren’t listened to when they did. In the Chamber of Secrets, Justin tells Harry he could be the Heir of Slytherin because he’s heard Harry “hates the muggles he lives with” so this was something that was generally known – what wasn’t generally known was the specifics of the situation which could only have come from the details Snape sees in Harry’s memories.

Sideprince:

It’s also a subtle nod to how abusers get away with the things they do. Children are rarely taken seriously. […] Harry and Snape probably both learned the lesson early on that when they ask for help it will be treated as though they’re merely whining and dramatizing. People are often much more hesitant when someone suffering asks them for help directly, than if a third party intervenes and points that suffering out.

Thanks to which we get:

[Moody] turned from Uncle Vernon to Harry. “So, Potter… give us a shout if you need us. If we don’t hear from you for three days in a row, we’ll send someone along…” 

It’s a neat interpretation, but what it implies is also incredibly sad. Harry’s situation wouldn’t be taken seriously until Snape, of all teachers, had a word about what he saw inside Harry’s head. For anyone to report for child abuse in this society, a child would need to offer up their very memories, however triggering and private they might be. If the Muggle world operated the same, well, nothing would get done. Because no one can invade a child’s mind with Legilimency and any comment from a child suggesting that they have it bad at their foster family would be repeatedly written off as a child being dramatic. Harry’s saving grace was that the Weasleys were so friendly with him they’d be ready to adopt him, which they unofficially, symbolically did. But in real life, victims of abuse are often isolated, sometimes intentionally by their abusive family [see: Vernon forbidding Harry all communication with his friends] and for those who have friends, their families would never go to the Weasleys’ extent. It basically stays a child’s dream.

Dumbledore was especially right to fear that Harry’s popularity would backfire at him. It especially did in GoF and OotP, where the press kept harassing a 14-15 yo child before outright defaming him in the eyes of the entire Britain wizarding society, right after he personally witnessed a classmate’s murder. Stuff that could easily send a teenager to suicide. But does anyone give a fuck in this hellhole of a magical community? And it’s such a shame that Dumbledore chooses that exact moment to avoid Harry like the plague till his godfather gets murdered as well, even though the boy clearly begs for emotional support and a good parental figure to help him out. You know, after he witnessed a classmate being murdered by Voldemort and nearly got murdered himself by his parents’ murderer who got resurrected by violating Harry’s body and who also happens to be the greatest world threat now. Of course, McGonagall is still absent from the picture.

Finally, let me introduce you to Neville’s wonderful family experience.

‘Well, my gran brought me up and she’s a witch,’ said Neville, ‘but the family thought I was all Muggle for ages. My great-uncle Algie kept trying to catch me off my guard and force some magic out of me – he pushed me off the end of Blackpool pier once, I nearly drowned – but nothing happened until I was eight. Great uncle Algie came round for tea and he was hanging me out of an upstairs window by the ankles when my great-auntie Enid offered him a meringue and he accidentally let go. But I bounced – all the way down the garden and into the road. They were all really pleased. Gran was crying, she was so happy. And you should have seen their faces when I got in here – they thought I might not be magic enough to come, you see. Great-uncle Algie was so pleased he bought me my toad.’ 

This is horrendous. This was such horrendous treatment that it likely caused Neville some form of PTSD. At 11 yo, he already has memory and concentration issues, and he’s prone to shake and cry at anything remotely intimidating. As a result, he keeps failing school and his self-esteem is shattered. 

Rowling’s Pottermore article paints an even more horrifying picture:

Thus, the very moment that Neville Longbottom was born, the Quill attempted to write his name and was refused by the Book, which snapped shut. Even the midwife who attended Alice Longbottom had failed to notice that Neville managed to shift his blankets more snugly over himself moments after birth, assuming that his father had tucked the baby in more securely. Neville’s family persistently missed faint signs of magic in him and not until he was eight years old did either his disappointed great aunts and uncles, or the old stickler of a Book, accept that he was truly a wizard, when he survived a fall that should have killed him.

Torture and near-death experience by his family at 8 years of age. Because Neville’s family would rather risk his death than him turning up as a Muggle. OH THAT’S GREAT!

So, to congratulate Neville for not being a worthless, magicless, disappointment of a grandson – Algie – the guy who almost killed Neville – gifts him Trevor the Toad. In PS, Hagrid says:

‘[…] Tell yeh what, I’ll get yer animal. Not a toad, toads went outta fashion years ago, yeh’d be laughed at […]’

Rowling in Pottermore, about Toads:

By the time Harry arrived at Hogwarts, possession of a pet toad conveyed neither cool nor status; indeed, it was something of an embarrassment.

So not only Trevor was the symbol of Neville’s near-death experience, a reminder that he would long have been dead if he hadn’t been a true wizard, but the one pet they offer him… is one that will make him laughed at in school. Not to mention that Trevor keeps getting Neville in trouble and causing him distress.

Augusta sends her grandson Howlers, in Molly Weasley fashion:

The school owls swooped into the Great Hall, carrying the post as usual, and Neville choked as a huge barn owl landed in front of him, a scarlet envelope clutched in its beak. Harry and Ron, who were sitting opposite him, recognised the letter as a Howler at once – Ron had got one from his mother the year before. 

‘Run for it, Neville,’ Ron advised. 

Neville didn’t need telling twice. He seized the envelope and, holding it before him like a bomb, sprinted out of the Hall, while the Slytherin table exploded with laughter at the sight of him. They heard the Howler go off in the Entrance Hall – Neville’s grandmother’s voice, magically magnified to a hundred times its usual volume, shrieking about how he had brought shame on the whole family.

Keeping up the good ol’ family traditions, I see! 

Neville’s family keeps making him feel like a failure for supposedly not living up to his parents’ legacy:

“[…] He’s a good boy,” she said, casting a sternly appraising look down her rather bony nose at Neville, “but he hasn’t got his father’s talent, I’m afraid to say…”

That’s not going to happen if you give Neville his father’s wand instead of his own, dumbass! 

Even after Neville nearly died in the Department of Mysteries fighting against Death Eaters:

“We didn’t face him, though,” said Neville, emerging from under the seat with fluff and dust in his hair and a resigned-looking Trevor in his hand. “You did. You should hear my gran talk about you. ‘That Harry Potter’s got more backbone than the whole Ministry of Magic put together!’ She’d give anything to have you as a grandson… ”

And: 

“Why do you want to continue with Transfiguration, anyway? I’ve never had the impression that you particularly enjoyed it.” 

Neville looked miserable and muttered something about “my grandmother wants.” 

“Hmph,” snorted Professor McGonagall. “It’s high time your grandmother learned to be proud of the grandson she’s got, rather than the one she thinks she ought to have – particularly after what happened at the Ministry.” 

Finally someone said it!

Neville turned very pink and blinked confusedly; Professor McGonagall had never paid him a compliment before.

Goddammit –

But we know when Neville finally gets the praise that he deserves!

• When he risks death by throwing himself into a last-minute mission with Harry against Death Eaters and Voldemort in OotP – well, not praised by his grandma but by his Head of House, so that’s a start
• When he risks death and gets tortured by the Carrows all year long during his 7th year
• And when he risks death again during the Battle of Hogwarts!

The longer Harry looked at Neville, the worse he appeared: One of his eyes was swollen yellow and purple, there were gouge marks on his face, and his general air of unkemptness suggested that he had been living rough. […] 

“But they’ve used you as a knife sharpener,” said Ron, wincing slightly as they passed a lamp and Neville’s injuries were thrown into even greater relief. 

“Doesn’t matter. They don’t want to spill too much pure blood, so they’ll torture us a bit if we’re mouthy but they won’t actually kill us.”

Trauma-bonding, my old friend! What you wouldn’t do when you crave some love and validation from your foster family! 

“[…] Anyway,” Neville laughed, “Dawlish is still in St. Mungo’s and Gran’s on the run. She sent me a letter” he clapped a hand to the breast pocket of his robes, “telling me she was proud of me, that I’m my parents’ son, and to keep it up.”

Oh thank GOD they didn’t disown him in the end! Why, he constantly risks his life, fighting in a war as a 15 to 17 yo child and willingly gets tortured for nothing! I’m sure Alicia and Frank would have approved after being Crucio’ed to insanity themselves, trying to spare their son a similar fate! Oh yeah, keep it up Neville! Maybe I’ll send you a letter that’s slightly bigger if you hit the mark of 50 Cruciatus-es in Row!

…And there still are Snape-haters out there having a fit about how he debilitated Neville with trauma while unironically stanning Augusta Longbottom, saying she’s the goat and an unsung hero and had the best redemption arc and everything. Fucking hypocrites…

One more case of obvious child abuse that could have easily been prevented, of course, is Severus Snape himself, as we explained earlier, with him being a victim of domestic abuse in his family, severe bullying at school that fell into criminal territory, and the teachers personally enabling/performing it. 

If Arthur and Molly, parents that Rowling meant to portray as the best, Dumbledore, Rowling’s so-called « epitome of goodness », and McGonagall, a « strict but fair » teacher, set these standards as normal/caring child treatment, then why are you so surprised that there are nasty and bullying teachers in Hogwarts? Do you get my point when I tell you that adults in Harry Potter are almost all guilty of what would be considered child abuse in our eyes because of the wizarding society’s standards of the time, and that Snape’s not an outsider at all?

c. Educational system: Hogwarts, Wizarding Britain’s science experiment

Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry is one of the 3 magical schools of Europe and supposedly the best (the others being the plainly elitist schools of Durmstrang and Beauxbâtons). How does the school fare?

See: Snape vs Other Teachers. Simple as that. But I know you want more, so…

Between:

• Victorian-era morality and practises (detention at midnight when 11 yo need sleep for their development and, you know, to keep awake for the next day)
• corporeal and life-threatening punishments 
• fucked-up safety measures (see: the Forbidden Forest, Quidditch, the door to Fluffy, the Whomping Willow)
• systemic selection/dividing of students that results in toxic competition and the creation of a (système de castes?)
• incompetent and evil school personnel (Lockhart freeing Pixies during class…)
• (House Elf slavery…)

Hogwarts is a dumpster fire of a school. 

Teachers routinely abuse their students, and they stopped using corporal punishments only recently.

I once read in Whitehound’s essay:

We must also remember that extreme corporal punishment was practised at Hogwarts well into Dumbledore and McGonagall’s watch (we’re told that Arthur Weasley was scarred for life by his punishment for being out after curfew with Molly), and may well have still been in place when Snape himself was a schoolboy. 

After checking many sources, it turns out to be true. However horrific it might sound.

In OotP (year 1995-1996), McGonagall says that she’s been teaching in Hogwarts for “thirty-nine years this December”, setting her debut in 1956. According to HP Wikia, there was an Arthur Weasley page in Pottermore that indicated he was born in 1950. That means he started school in 1961. At the very least, we know he’s been studying while Apollyon Pringle was a caretaker at Hogwarts (until 1973, as we’ll see), so he can’t have been born any later than 1955, and he attended Hogwarts at most since 1966. Thus, in any case, he was studying under McGonagall.

In GoF, we read:

“Your father and I had been for a nighttime stroll,” she said. “He got caught by Apollyon Pringle — he was the caretaker in those days — your father’s still got the marks.”

Scars that Arthur Weasley got while McGonagall and Dumbledore were Professors in Hogwarts; probably already Head of House, Deputy Headmistress and Headmaster. 

In PS, Filch says:

‘Follow me,’ said Filch, lighting a lamp and leading them outside. ‘I bet you’ll think twice about breaking a school rule again, won’t you, eh?’ he continued, leering at them. ‘Oh yes… hard work and pain are the best teachers if you ask me… It’s just a pity they let the old punishments die out… hang you by your wrists from the ceiling for a few days, I’ve got the chains still in my office, keep ’em well oiled in case they’re ever needed… Right, off we go, and don’t think of running off, now, it’ll be worse for you if you do.’ 

Which strongly suggests that Filch did torture students at some point in his career, until the old punishments “died out” (indicating that this was a progressive measure, not a sudden ban). 

McGonagall says about Filch in DH:

‘Yes, Peeves, you fool, Peeves! Haven’t you been complaining about him for a quarter of a century? Go and fetch him, at once!’

That means that Filch started working as a caretaker around 1973, the year Apollyon left, torturing children for a while. Now, remember that Snape started attending Hogwarts in 1971. So, well into McGonagall and Dumbledore’s careers, and well into Snape’s time as a student, physical punishment was commonly practised at Hogwarts. And while McGonagall and Dumbledore might have not set the punishments themselves, it was their duty to ensure to watch over the students: they certainly had the power to forbid the caretakers from torturing children. 

That Snape’s teachers practised what would be now considered torture would have even more of an influence on him than his father’s idea of discipline. He doesn’t repeat the exact same mistakes as his old instructors, and he never condones physical violence as a solution to student delinquency, but that lack of a good role model certainly didn’t help him choose the right path. Once again:

[…] he will be predisposed to think that snapping and snarling is gentle treatment.

As for McGonagall and Dumbledore, you might think they changed, but given that Dumbledore thinks that horrible teachers or an encounter with the ol’ Voldy are a valuable lesson to the students and that McGonagall sends four 11 yo kids to the Forbidden Forest or essentially locks a 13 yo boy out of his rooms while an alleged serial killing terrorist has twice attempted to break into Gryffindor Tower and kill a student there, I think they mostly traded torture for an outright risk of death and severe psychological distress (fear for one’s life), which isn’t much of a (positive) change. 

These are the norms in Hogwarts: in this fictional school functioning under a mix of 90ies, Victorian and medieval standards, child abuse is normalized, even glorified. What you might call an adult bullying children is just a strict but effective teacher in this world. 

Hogwarts Despot: in GoF, Dumbledore says that there hasn’t been a week since he became Headmaster where he hasn’t received a complaint yet he never relents, either we believe the Malfoys have complained against him generation after generation, or we can suspect that other parents complain about him but he never relents, Dumbledore is like a “gentle” dictator in Hogwarts that can defy Wizarding Britain’s government (and we are supposed to think this is okay because those who wanted to end his despotism were the bad guys)

Dumbledore (the headmaster) or McGonagall (deputy headmistress and Harry’s head of house) should have intervened to ease down the tensions so that both Snape and Harry have a better time in class. 

The magical world of HP is unsafe for children in general.

You would never want to send your children to Hogwarts. 

d. Where does Snape fit in all this?

Except for that time some of them believed he hexed Harry’s broom during Quidditch, all Hogwarts teachers accept Snape as one of their own. 

He sustains a healthy rivalry with McGonagall, teasing each other about the Quidditch Cup:

‘Seriously,’ said Professor McGonagall, and she was actually smiling. ‘I daresay you’ll need to get the feel of it before Saturday’s match, won’t you? And Potter – do try and win, won’t you? Or we’ll be out of the running for the eighth year in a row, as Professor Snape was kind enough to remind me only last night…’

Snape shows happiness and excitement that she returns from St Mungo’s at the end of Harry’s fifth year:

“Professor McGonagall!” said Snape, striding forward. “Out of St. Mungo’s, I see!” […]

“well, I think Potter and his friends ought to have fifty points apiece for alerting the world to the return of You-Know Who! What say you, Professor Snape?” 

“What?” snapped Snape, though Harry knew he had heard perfectly well. “Oh — well — I suppose…” 

It’s kinda cute.

McGonagall remains unfazed with Snape’s requirement that only O students could go into his NEWT lessons. Well no, screw that – it’s actually funny to her:

“Then you ought to do Charms, always useful, and Potions. Yes, Potter, Potions,” she added, with the merest flicker of a smile. “Poisons and antidotes are essential study for Aurors. And I must tell you that Professor Snape absolutely refuses to take students who get anything other than ‘Outstanding’ in their O.W.L.s, so —” 

McGonagall trusts Snape to discipline his students correctly:

‘What utter rubbish! How dare you tell such lies! Come on – I shall see Professor Snape about you, Malfoy!’ 

And in return, Snape fetches McGonagall when her own students mess up:

“Silence!” snapped Snape again. “Most unfortunately, you are not in my House and the decision to expel you does not rest with me. I shall go and fetch the people who do have that happy power. You will wait here.” […] 

Ten minutes later, Snape returned, and sure enough it was Professor McGonagall who accompanied him.

McGonagall would trust Snape with her life and everyone else’s:

“This is all my fault,” said Professor McGonagall suddenly. She looked disoriented, twisting her wet handkerchief in her hands. “My fault. I sent Filius to fetch Snape tonight, I actually sent for him to come and help us! 

Then we got Dumbledore, who lets Snape do as he pleases because, according to Rowling, he approves Snape’s “hard lessons about life”. His employee trusts Dumbledore enough to vent in his office about Harry:

The office dissolved but re-formed instantly. Snape was pacing up and down in front of Dumbledore. “—mediocre, arrogant as his father, a determined rule breaker, delighted to find himself famous, attention-seeking and impertinent—”

tolerates Dumbledore making a crack at the Snape in a vulture hat event during the Christmas feast:

Crackers!’ said Dumbledore enthusiastically, offering the end of a large silver one to Snape, who took it reluctantly and tugged. With a bang like a gunshot, the cracker flew apart to reveal a large, pointed witch’s hat topped with a stuffed vulture. 

Harry, remembering the Boggart, caught Ron’s eye and they both grinned; Snape’s mouth thinned and he pushed the hat towards Dumbledore, who swapped it for his wizard’s hat at once.

values Dumbledore’s trust deeply, to the point he seems a bit jealous of the attention he gives Harry:

“Information,” repeated Snape. “You trust him… you do not trust me. […]

“Yet you confide much more in a boy who is incapable of Occlumency, whose magic is mediocre, and who has a direct connection into the Dark Lord’s mind!”

gets upset when Dumbledore reminds him that he’ll have to kill him:

“After you have killed me, Severus—” 

“You refuse to tell me everything, yet you expect that small service of me!” snarled Snape, and real anger flared in the thin face now. “You take a great deal for granted, Dumbledore! Perhaps I have changed my mind!”

He’s so loyal he spontaneously defends Dumbledore from the accusations of foreign competitors:

“Don’t go blaming Dumbledore for Potter’s determination to break rules. He has been crossing lines ever since he arrived here —” 

“Thank you, Severus,” said Dumbledore firmly, and Snape went quiet, though his eyes still glinted malevolently through his curtain of greasy black hair. 

It’s like Snape seeks a mentor, perhaps a father figure, in the Headmaster. And at times, Dumbledore returns the favor, offering his protection:

but Dumbledore told me explicitly that Snape’s repentance was absolutely genuine — Wouldn’t hear a word against him!” 

The staff shows a united front in Chamber of Secrets, and Snape is amongst them. He’s the first to insult Lockhart, prompting Sprout, Flitwick and McGonagall to join him:

Snape stepped forward. “Just the man,” he said. “The very man. A girl has been snatched by the monster, Lockhart. Taken into the Chamber of Secrets itself. Your moment has come at last.” 

Lockhart blanched. 

“That’s right, Gilderoy,” chipped in Professor Sprout. “Weren’t you saying just last night that you’ve known all along where the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets is?” 

“I — well, I —”sputtered Lockhart. 

“Yes, didn’t you tell me you were sure you knew what was inside it?” piped up Professor Flitwick. 

“D-did I? I don’t recall —” 

“I certainly remember you saying you were sorry you hadn’t had a crack at the monster before Hagrid was arrested,” said Snape. “Didn’t you say that the whole affair had been bungled, and that you should have been given a free rein from the first?” Lockhart stared around at his stony-faced colleagues. 

“I — I really never — you may have misunderstood —” 

“We’ll leave it to you, then, Gilderoy,” said Professor McGonagall. “Tonight will be an excellent time to do it. We’ll make sure everyone’s out of your way. You’ll be able to tackle the monster all by yourself. A free rein at last.” 

Yet again, they are shown united in GoF:

Harry, still staring at the place where Moody’s face had been, saw Albus Dumbledore, Professor Snape, and Professor McGonagall looking back at him out of the Foe-Glass.

Hagrid sides with Snape: 

Harry told Hagrid about Snape’s lesson. Hagrid, like Ron, told Harry not to worry about it, that Snape liked hardly any of the students. 

‘But he seemed to really hate me.’ 

‘Rubbish!’ said Hagrid. ‘Why should he?’ 

Yet Harry couldn’t help thinking that Hagrid didn’t quite meet his eyes when he said that. 

So when Harry complains that Snape hates him, Hagrid first cements the idea that it’s normal, then he gaslights Harry about Snape hating him (and as such, being more at risk of treating Harry unfairly). While it’s sensible of Hagrid not to tell what exactly made Snape hate Harry, he could have very well said, « Your father was very mean to Professor Snape so he expects the worst of you ». Hagrid could have also contacted Snape and told him to calm down, or contacted McGonagall (Harry’s Head of House and Snape’s superior as her elder and Deputy Headmistress) so she has a word with him, and we know that he listens to her! 

Hagrid gets furious when the Trio accuse Snape of trying to steal the Stone and kill Harry at Quidditch:

‘I’m tellin’ yeh, yer wrong!’ said Hagrid hotly. ‘I don’ know why Harry’s broom acted like that, but Snape wouldn’ try an’ kill a student! Now, listen to me, all three of yeh – yer meddlin’ in things that don’ concern yeh. It’s dangerous. You forget that dog, an’ you forget what it’s guardin’, that’s between Professor Dumbledore an’ Nicolas Flamel –’ 

In HBP, Hagrid would rather think Harry was knocked on the head and suppose that Dumbledore told Snape the spy to go with the Death Eaters – which is right, as we learn later – than think a second that Snape killed him.

“He’s dead. Snape killed him… ” 

“Don’ say that,” said Hagrid roughly. “Snape kill Dumbledore — don’ be stupid, Harry. Wha’s made yeh say tha’?” 

“I saw it happen.” 

“Yeh couldn’ have.” 

“I saw it, Hagrid.” 

Hagrid shook his head; his expression was disbelieving but sympathetic, and Harry knew that Hagrid thought he had sustained a blow to the head, that he was confused, perhaps by the aftereffects of a jinx… 

“What musta happened was, Dumbledore musta told Snape ter go with them Death Eaters,” Hagrid said confidently. “I suppose he’s gotta keep his cover. Look, let’s get yeh back up ter the school. Come on, Harry… ” 

Snape is on good terms with Filch, who tends to the wound caused by Fluffy:

Snape and Filch were inside, alone. Snape was holding his robes above his knees. One of his legs was bloody and mangled. Filch was handing Snape bandages. 

Professor Burbage begs Snape to save her from Voldemort, calling him by his first name:

As she revolved to face the firelight, the woman said in a cracked and terrified voice. “Severus! Help me!” […] “Severus… please… please…” […] For the third time, Charity Burbage revolved to face Snape. Tears were pouring from her eyes into her hair. Snape looked back at her, quite impassive, as she turned slowly away from him again.

You know Snape wished hard that he could save her. But he couldn’t and had to shut down all signs of sympathy as Burbage was tortured, killed, then eaten by Nagini. In the movie, Burbage even says they’re friends.

Slughorn seems definitely happy whenever Snape’s mentioned:

“Snape!” ejaculated Slughorn, who looked the most shaken, pale and sweating. “Snape! I taught him! I thought I knew him!” 

Him again, at his Slug Party:

“Stop skulking and come and join us, Severus!” hiccuped Slughorn happily. “I was just talking about Harry’s exceptional potion-making! Some credit must go to you, of course, you taught him for five years!” 

Trapped, with Slughorn’s arm around his shoulders, Snape looked down his hooked nose at Harry, his black eyes narrowed. 

As Harry figures out since first year:

‘But we’ve got no proof!’ said Harry. ‘Quirrell’s too scared to back us up. Snape’s only got to say he doesn’t know how the troll got in at Hallowe’en and that he was nowhere near the third floor – who do you think they’ll believe, him or us? It’s not exactly a secret we hate him, Dumbledore’ll think we made it up to get him sacked. Filch wouldn’t help us if his life depended on it, he’s too friendly with Snape, and the more students get thrown out, the better, he’ll think. And don’t forget, we’re not supposed to know about the Stone or Fluffy. That’ll take a lot of explaining.’

Additionally, there is no account of a parent requiring that Snape calms down or gets sacked. In fact, they respect him and expect their children to do the same. For instance, the Weasleys, who were in direct contact with Dumbledore and Snape through the Order, could have long asked that Snape changes attitude. Instead:

“Snape?” said Harry blankly. 

“Professor Snape, dear,” said Mrs. Weasley reprovingly. “Now come on, quickly, he says he can’t stay long.” 

In a long series of:

• ‘Quirrell said Snape –’ 

‘Professor Snape, Harry.’ [Dumbledore, PS]

• “Yeah, Snape told me,” Harry muttered. 

“Professor Snape, Harry,” Dumbledore corrected him quietly. [OotP]

• “If I’m having lessons with you, I won’t have to do Occlumency lessons with Snape, will I?”

‘‘Professor Snape, Harry — and no, you will not.” [HBP]

• “There is, actually, sir,” said Harry. “It’s about Malfoy and Snape.” 

“Professor Snape, Harry.” [HBP]

And as we know, it is Professor Snape that Narcissa asks to protect her son.

As Deathdaydungeon concludes:

If we accept your stance that Snape was abusive, then we either have to accept that there are no influential people – during almost two decades – capable of speaking out, or that if they did speak out, they were silenced by the Headmaster (likely due to Snape’s wider worth during the war).

The former seems unlikely, as we see Lucius Malfoy behaving in such a way in CoS following the events of PS. The latter also seems unlikely, as there is a significant period of time when Dumbledore is not regarded as being Headmaster of Hogwarts – during OotP – and the school is effectively ruled by the Ministry’s spokesperson. This would be an ideal time to rid Snape of his post.

Consequently, the only reasonable conclusion we can draw is that Snape’s behaviour is deemed acceptable. Dumbledore certainly accepts his behaviour, and we see other respected teachers – such as McGonagall – interacting with him favourably. Furthermore, McGonagall and Flitwick both behave in ways that are comparable to Snape, which adds weight to the argument that Snape’s behaviour is not unacceptable within the bounds of the universe.

So there’s the answer; there was no outcry, because the characters within the universe did not deem his behaviour to be particularly problematic. Which is not wholly surprising, because this is a magical world with completely different rules – and it was set in the early 90s, written by someone who went to secondary school in the late 70s.  

Conclusion?

While context cannot excuse everything, cannot invalidate the characters’ feelings and does not cancel one’s accountability, you just cannot reasonably judge and criticise a character’s actions without it. 

We got our fair share of young teachers on social media who ranted against Professor Snape in a thousand ways, and in their criticisms, there systematically was a lack of context. Maybe it is purposeful, for instance because it’s trending to hate on Snape and/or they personally hate that character. Maybe it isn’t, for instance because they parrot what the others say or because, since today’s trending subjects regarding children education is centered on verbal and emotional abuse as well as positive vs negative feedback, rather than physical punishment and tests of survival for the young, they pick up on Snape’s problematic actions while remaining pretty much blind to all the other elements, like the other characters or the environment from where that behavior was born, sustained, where it pertains. 

It is great that school systems have evolved in such a way that real-life students have lesser risks of encountering what are now consider abusive teachers. But when it comes to reviewing Professor Snape in a fantasy book, these sorts of judgments without a frame of reference are just cheap. And it’s of immense bad faith when those same teachers praise people like McGonagall and Hagrid in the same breath.

Given the shitty hellhole Snape was coming from and all the child abuse that was enabled and occuring around him, it’s surprising that he – the infamous, gloomy, nasty, Dark Arts-obsessed, ex Death Eater Potions Master – wasn’t any more cruel or dangerous than he was actually written to be.

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