Imagine being a Slytherin just kinda trying to get through school and puberty lmao

 

I agree with that. There are countless things to point out that Snape did wrong, but taking points was within what could be expected from simply a harsh teacher.

But did all of them deserve that? While there is a chance they all were like Draco, if there weren't there wasn't really much they could do about it. They can't change the House and going against Snape would end with a lot misery for the rest of their stay at the Hogwarts. All they can do is focus on education and maybe try to help their House win the prize, even if they can't win approval of others.

Then Dumbledore decides that their satisfaction of the job well done is less important than allowing the Boy Who Lived show off his awesomeness to the masses. No wonder that when Voldemort returned and said he's going to kill the Headmaster they all lined up to sign into his Death Eaters.

 

Do we have any evidence that Snape took points away from people other than Harry and company? There are, after all, Houses other than Slytherin and Gryffindor. It might just be that the instances where we see Snape deducting points "unfairly" have more to do with a bias against a handful of specific students rather than non-Slytherins as a whole and Gryffindor in particular.

 

I'm pretty sure other Gryffindors bitch and moan about Snape. The text mentions Snape turning a deaf ear to complaints about Slytherins being mean to Gryffindors, when he should be docking points or giving them detention. Again, balancing out Snape's unfair point reduction is neither something Dumbledore made any effort to do, because there is no calculation as to how many points he took or gave unfairly, nor is it even a sensible thing to do, because he could just walk over to Snape's office and say 'straigthen up or you're out of here'. I'm pretty sure he only gets away with it because he needs to maintain his cover and because he's a spectacular potions master.

 

No, we don't see much of any interaction between him and the non-main characters.

 

Hot Take: DLP hates snape to the degree we do because early DLP was Snape and self loathing comes naturally to us.

*sips tea*

 

I'd hate myself too if I were you.

 

Y’all are making this a lot more complicated than it needs to be. Snape deserved what he got, and so did the Slytherins. They’re all a bunch of dark wizards anyway, don’t you know.

 

I think this was partly JKR's reasoning, but I never understood it. Think about the role Snape had to play. In the first war, Voldemort believes that Snape is his spy against Dumbledore. Dumbledore believes he's his spy against Voldemort. Then Voldemort dies and Dumbledore vouches for Snape, securing his freedom.

Does it make sense for Snape to continue to act like a wannabe Death Eater in Hogwarts?

Dumbledore's allies, and every student's parents, would expect him to make Snape-the-known-Death-Eater toe the line, at least as a decent teacher. Voldemort's allies would expect Dumbledore to make Snape toe the line, regardless of his true sympathies. After LV's return, Snape could plausibly claim that he continued spying on Dumbledore for him, but the old man forced him to act like a decent human being in exchange for his freedom.

Instead, Snape is allowed to be as cruel as he wants without turning his wand on a child. He's allowed to show outrageous favoritism to Slytherins. He's allowed to let Slytherin become the exact kind of place it would be if a Death Eater were in charge of it: rampant bigotry, favoritism to Death Eater kids, no punishment for awful behavior, etc.

This has the effect of turning Slytherin into a recruiting ground for the next generation of Death Eaters, doing serious longterm damage to the house. Does Dumbledore think this is necessary to maintain Snape's cover? That seems foolish. If anything, it would blow Snape's cover as Voldemort's man if he allows his Death Eater sympathies to show in Hogwarts. It might put him in the good graces of Death Eater children, but it seems like Voldemort ought to be mighty suspicious of Dumbledore allowing that. Surely he doesn't believe the old man is that dumb.

tl, dr: Strategically, it doesn't make much sense for Dumbledore to let Snape behave the way he does, unless he's afraid Snape will turn on him if he's not allowed to be a sadist. Or am I missing something?

 

I feel like being as cruel and petty as he likes without using slurs or directly harming students basically constitutes toeing the line. In secret meetings with old Death Eaters, he probably says things like 'oh, it's all I can do not to wring the neck of this one little mudblood, but I have to keep up the act around Dumbledore'. I think the central point here is that it's going to be ten times harder for Snape to convince Voldemort of anything than it is for him to convince Dumbledore of anything, because only Dumbledore knows his true motivations. The short version is, if he acts more like Dumbledore's man than Voldemort's, chances are Voldemort is just going to kill him rather than take the risk.
We may be imagining the middle ground of the wizarding world differently. I was under the impression the majority of people didn't really give a shit if some people didn't like those of a lower blood quantum, and the parents of the kids with the lowest blood quantum would not effectively have any way of complaining about the way the Slytherins were treating them. A former Death Eater being mean to kids at Hogwarts would most likely not create a PR nightmare, sort of like if one of the old Nazi scientists who worked on the Apollo project used a bunch of racial slurs at some point.

 

I've always thought he acts a lot like how an edgy teenager would imagine a spy pretending to be a death eater pretending to be a teacher would act.

 

I believe Snape also takes points in the very first lesson from Harry when he can't answer the questions on ingredients and potions, and I think he takes some in GoF when Pansy gives them the Witch Weekly article with the article about the Krum/Hermione/Harry love triangle before he reads it out loud to the class. In the fifth book and maybe in others Snape also gives Harry no mark for some of the potions he makes in class, once because Snape breaks the phial with Harry's potion. He also gets low marks for disagreeing with Snape on how to fend off dementors in DADA in HBP.

More reasonable instances they get docked points by Snape happen when Ron and Harry physically restrain Neville from trying to fight Malfoy in OotP, and I think Ron at some point throws a crocodile heart in Malfoy's face which he loses 50 points because of.

But yeah, I think it's an interesting observation that Snape always has a seemingly legitimate reason, but he is definitely one of those people who play the system to make life miserable for a few people of his choosing.

 

Snape is a dick, no question about it, but I don't think you can say he is way overboard with favoritism when it comes to points. I mean, ultimately in PS Slytherin ended up with only a 50 point lead to Ravenclaw after a year of lessons, which should mean at least 500 lessons where Snape is teaching a group of Slytherins. If Snape really was showing blatant favoritism, the gap should be way higher.

The real asshole when it comes to taking points in the first book is McGonagall; she takes 50 points each from the trio for being outside the dorms at night. That's way too harsh a punishment no matter which way you look at it, especially compared to the five points she gives Harry and Ron for risking their life to save a fellow student from a troll. Or indeed the sixty points Dumbledore gives Harry for defeating Voldemort again...

 

A part of me wonders how much of Snapes “nastiness” in the first few books can be relegated to unreliable narrators/perspective. We very much perceive Hogwarts through Harry’s eyes. It’s entirely possible Harry makes Snape out to be far eviler or nastier than he actually was

 

Turning up unprepared for class, and reading a magazine in class. Both perfectly reasonable things to punish pupils for.

That's Harry saying he expects low marks on an essay because he's disagreed with Snape. Nothing about house points I don't think.

That's an interesting one. She is unreasonably harsh in the context of other point assignments we see, but also quite reasonable. 5 points being taken for giving lip, 50 for being out after curfew, putting yourself potentially at risk. I can see how that is reasonable scaling. The reason it seems unreasonable is a comparison to 5 points for saving the life of a fellow student (personally I think she'd have given more points if they'd gone to a prefect or teacher for help rather than risking their own lives).

Presumably its a "points are hard to gain and ready to lose" thing, which does make sense as a disciplinary philosophy.

 

As I recall, the issue with McGonnagall in PS was that she had concluded that Harry and friends duped Malfoy into breaking curfew with an outlandish story about a dragon, so she took 20 points from Malfoy for breaking curfew alone, and 50 each to the trio for that plus their seeming deception.

 

The thing that makes Snape's point-taking seem (and be, imo) completely biased is that quite a lot of instances are Harry and others responding to provocations, and Snape punishing them while completely ignoring said provocations (when he is not the one provoking himself). Malfoy insults everyone's family for a while? Snape just so happens to arrive in time to see Ron attempt to punch him. Snape insults the Gryffindors' ignorance (about a subject they weren't meant to study, btw)? Well shut up, know-it-all, how dare you answer my question while I'm mocking your stupidity? Or all the other times he's just baiting by being his usual bully (the time he mocked Hermione's cursed teeth and then took points from Ron and Harry for insulting him comes to mind, and I'm pretty sure it's not the only one).

Also, he seems to be pretty much the only one to not award points to students for success, which might be a case of him being a generally shit teacher rather than bias, but in canon it mainly means he's the only one not giving ~30 points per lesson to Hermione, so it adds to the bad impression.

 

@Mordecai punishing a student for not being prepared for class is fair, but that particular example is literally their first class, when he asks Harry some random questions. It's like expecting someone attending their first physics lesson ever to remember what, say, Boyle's Law is.

 

Idk about unfairness, but Snape was definitely nasty. That whole teeth thing where he tells Hermione, “I see no difference” is unquestionably fucked up. Also making sure that Neville will test his potion on his pet, regardless of whether or not anything would happen, is fucked up.

Without a whole overview of points, it’s hard to say how fair or unfair Snape is, but my mans is definitely nasty. Especially when you consider he’s a dude in his 30s being mean to teenagers

 

The problem is the unequal application of the punishment. As far as we can see, he basically only punishes students from other houses. The unfair application of just regulations can still be unjust.



Also, Snape a bitch.