#snape analysis

[casasupernovas]

so many people say snape was evil when his actions towards the end of the deathly hallows show his true character.

when dumbledore tells snape harry is a horcrux, he's telling him he can't redeem himself. not only that, he's telling him to also abandon lily. he can't do right by her now either if he has to tell harry his fate is to die.

snape very well could have said f*ck it and gone full blown villain there and then.

but he didn't.

[maxdibert]

The nickname “Snivellus” derives from the word “snivel,” which means crybaby. So, Snivellus was basically a way of mocking the fact that Severus might show his emotions—that instead of toughing it out like a stereotypical, macho, strong, hairy-chested man, he cried. I don’t think I need to explain why this nickname is problematic—any nickname used to bully someone is problematic—but a nickname that also references a supposed weakness, stemming from the expectations of a patriarchal society for men to display “unmanly” behavior typical of “weak” men, is not just problematic due to the bullying itself but also because of the misogynistic implications it carries. Because yes, misogyny and hegemonic gender roles also affect men by demanding certain traits from them to validate them socially. And I know the Marauders lived in the 1970s, and that Rowling is one of the worst when it comes to gender issues. But I find it quite ironic how Marauders Stans or Slytherin Skittles, who have built their trash fandom and constant Snape-bashing around the topic of LGBTQ+ themes, have the audacity to mock Snape using a nickname that directly attacks gender nonconformity and justifies a toxic, traditional masculinity that shames men who cry or show emotions, labeling them as less valid.

The Marauders weren’t social justice warriors, and James and Sirius, in particular, embodied the classic values of male success through the performance of stereotypical “macho” characteristics: as leaders, as “alphas” of the pack. Both are violent; both are cocky men who try to stand out and mark their territory. Both exhibit behaviors that have typically been excused in men just because they are men, such as abusive and reckless behavior. Their nickname for Severus stems from the idea that showing emotions—especially crying—if you are a man, is a reason for ridicule and mockery because men don’t cry. Men are supposed to be strong, puff out their chests, and keep going because that’s what men do. It’s a misogynistic and archaic mindset that continues to be perpetuated in social models and relationships to this day. And I find it incredibly hypocritical that certain people who claim to hate J.K. Rowling for being a transphobe then go on to appropriate the horribly sexist nicknames she created for a group of heterosexual men embodying toxic masculinity to bully another man for not performing the traditional masculine model expected of someone like him.

Because Severus wasn’t a “macho”. Severus was a studious introvert with a more passive character who didn’t fit into the masculine vision of the time. Everything about him, including his appearance, demeanor, and interests, is unmasculine from a hegemonic perspective given the historical context. But these people don’t care. They’re so limited, so ignorant, and so cynical that they not only ignore these kinds of nuances but even find it funny to reproduce insults that any real-life James Potter would probably have used against them.

Make no mistake: James Potter and Sirius Black wouldn’t have been your friends. They would have tortured you as much, if not more, than Snape. And that’s the most pathetic part of their fandom, unfortunately.

[four2andnew]

I'll never be a Snape apologist - I think he got the arc he deserved (other than having a fucking child named after him!!). I love how messy the canon Marauder-Snape dynamic is - I think it mirrors how messy the division in the wizarding world was (like Sirius says, the world isn't made up of good guys and Death Eaters).

I could literally spend days, weeks, months, even years discussing all the different facets of Snape and his relationship with each Marauder generation character, Harry, and Dumbledore.

Gonna leave it here since people seem to forget it.

[dinarosie]

Re-Reading Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire: Snape’s Moment of Unyielding Bravery

The scene I want to highlight in The Goblet of Fire is one that carries so much weight, and each time I re-read it, the gravity of the moment only increases. Imagine the setting: the hospital wing. It’s packed with people—Cornelius Fudge, Madam Pomfrey, Professor McGonagall, Bill and Molly Weasley, Hermione, Ron, and Harry. All eyes are on Snape as he steps forward, pulls up his sleeve, and reveals the Dark Mark burned into his skin.

“There,” said Snape harshly. “There. The Dark Mark. It is not as clear as it was an hour or so ago, when it burned black, but you can still see it. Every Death Eater had the sign burned into him by the Dark Lord. It was a means of distinguishing one another, and his means of summoning us to him. When he touched the Mark of any Death Eater, we were to Disapparate, and Apparate, instantly, at his side. This Mark has been growing clearer all year. Karkaroff’s too.

Let that sink in. Snape isn’t just showing a Mark; he’s exposing the deepest, darkest secret of his life. He’s standing in front of his students, his colleagues, and—let’s not forget—Cornelius Fudge, the Minister for Magic, and he’s admitting something most people would bury forever.

What makes this even more remarkable is that the choice to do this wasn’t something Dumbledore told him to make. This isn’t part of some grand plan discussed beforehand. Snape makes this decision on his own, in the moment, fully aware of how it will tarnish him in the eyes of others. Why?

Because Snape understands the stakes. Fudge’s denial of Voldemort’s return endangers the entire wizarding world. By exposing the Dark Mark on his arm, Snape hopes to convince Fudge to take Voldemort’s return seriously. His goal is clear: to push the Ministry into taking precautionary measures and preparing the wizarding community for the battle ahead.

And then there’s this haunting line:

“…We both knew he had returned. Karkaroff fears the Dark Lord’s vengeance. He betrayed too many of his fellow Death Eaters to be sure of a welcome back into the fold.”

What Snape doesn’t say, but what we understand, is that he knows he’s facing the exact same fate. When Snape goes back to Voldemort, he knows he’ll be met with pain, torture, and humiliation and even death. Where Karkaroff sees only a way out, Snape sees his duty—a stark contrast that underscores Snape’s resolve.

Here’s what makes this even more powerful: Snape is so determined to convince Fudge that he uses the suffering he knows awaits him as evidence. He stands there, knowing that returning to Voldemort will mean enduring unbearable torture, and he uses that as proof of Voldemort’s return. Snape essentially says, “I know what’s coming for me, and I’m still standing here to tell you the truth.”

Then we reach the next turning point in this scene:

“Severus,” said Dumbledore, turning to Snape, “you know what I must ask you to do. If you are ready . . . if you are prepared . . .”

Look at Dumbledore’s approach here. He’s cautious, almost hesitant. This is a sharp contrast to Half-Blood Prince, where Dumbledore gives Snape direct orders about killing him. Here, Dumbledore knows exactly what he’s asking of Snape: to return to Voldemort, to put himself in unimaginable danger.

And Snape’s response?

“I am.”

That’s it. Two words. No hesitation, no complaint. J.K. Rowling describes him as pale, his cold, dark eyes glittering strangely. Dumbledore, too, is described as watching Snape leave with a trace of apprehension on his face. Both of them know that Snape might not come back. Both of them know he’s walking into the lion’s den. And yet, Snape doesn’t waver.

This moment is a masterclass in bravery, but it also completely dismantles the argument that Snape’s good deeds are purely motivated by guilt over Lily or his promise to Dumbledore.

This scene also shows us that the promise Snape made to Dumbledore after Lily’s death wasn’t just about protecting Harry. It was about choosing a side. Snape made the decision to fight against Voldemort, no matter the cost. From that moment on, he dedicated himself to sabotaging the Dark Lord’s plans, enduring unspeakable pain and danger in the process.

And let’s not overlook this: Snape doesn’t just fight when Harry is in danger. He fights Voldemort at every opportunity because he knows it’s the right thing to do. He does it not because of guilt or obligation, but because his own moral compass demands it.

This scene in The Goblet of Fire encapsulates everything that makes Snape such a complex, fascinating character. It’s raw, vulnerable, and incredibly brave. Snape isn’t perfect—far from it—but this moment proves that he is so much more than the sum of his flaws. He’s a man who chooses to stand and fight, even when it means sacrificing everything.

[sevilynne]

"Snape was a b-tch because he outed Remus for being a werewolf." But when Sirius used Remus to make him a murderer concealed as a 'prank' to kill Severus, it's excused because he didn't know it would've gotten 'too far'? Severus outing Remus does not compare to Sirius trying to get Remus to kill someone. The double-standards is insane.

[wisteria-lodge]

Guys who Cry in the Harry Potter Books (and Why)

Men do 30% of the crying in the Harry Potter books, even though they represent 66% of the characters (and that's pretty much as expected).* I’m interested in why the crying happens though, and what it says about the characters. For the ladies, crying is neutral - they all cry, and for all sorts of reasons (tired, frustrated, stressed, emotionally overwrought...) Bellatrix, Augusta Longbottom, Ginny, Tonks… all cry. *Hermione* cries thirty separate times over the course of the books. 

Male crying though, that's something that gets mocked (usually by Slytherins.) Pansy calls Neville a “fat little cry baby,” and after Rita’s article (falsely) describes Harry crying, Draco comes in with “Want a hanky, Potter, in case you start crying in Transfiguration?” Of course there’s also “D’you think [Hagrid]’ll cry when they cut off his hippogriff’s - ” right before Hermione slaps him. So making fun of guys for crying is bad right? 

Let’s get into it. 

1 : Crying because of a death

The most “acceptable” reason for male crying. This happens a lot, we are definitely not supposed to think any less of the guys who do it. Mostly it happens *right* at the moment of death, or maybe at the funeral. The exception is Harry, who cries in Book 3 after talking about hearing his parents dying (although the narrative voice DOES let us know that he’s kind of embarrassed about this...)

“Harry suddenly realized that there were tears on his face mingling with the sweat. He bent his face as low as possible, wiping them off on his robes, pretending to do up his shoelace, so that Lupin wouldn’t see.” 

Then he cries again in Book 7, while visiting his parents' graves. But it’s definitely still crying over a death. Just one that Harry takes a little bit longer to process. 

Crying over a Death: Full Breakdown: 

Amos Diggory: 1 (Cedric’s death) 

Arthur Weasley: 1 (Fred’s death)

Harry Potter: 3 (Hedwig, Lily, James)

Rubeus Hagrid: 4 (Dumbledore, Buckbeak, Aragog, Harry) 

Argus Filtch: 1 (thinks Mrs. Norris is dead) 

Xenophillius Lovegood: 1 (thinks Luna is dead) 

Fillius Flitwick: (thinks Ginny is dead) 

Ron Weasley: 1 (Dumbledore’s funeral) 

Elphias Doge: 1 (Dumbledore’s funeral

2: Crying because of Pain

You’d think this one would also be acceptable. But… it really isn’t? Dudley cries when Vernon hits him (but Harry doesn’t.) Peter Pettigrew cries when he cuts off his own hand, Saw style, but it gets framed as blubbering weakness. Pettigrew is framed SO pathetically for the entire resurrection scene - and honestly, for the entire rest of the series.

(Which is strange when you think about it. Like objectively, Pettigrew did GOOD. Sure he only likes Voldemort because he’s powerful, but so do most of the Death Eaters, that’s nothing special. Peter found Voldemort, resurrected him single-handedly (ha.) Found Bertha Jorkins,  i.e. the reason Voldemort was able to plan his comeback. Obviously he has god-tier bluffing and lying abilities, as well as enough willpower to cut off a limb. Being able to turn into a rat would make him a really useful spy. Also his spell, the one that killed thirteen muggles and destroyed a street? Most magic we see does not have a blast radius like that. Peter’s formidable. But somehow his job is to hang out and be Snape’s servant? (Is it because he’s not cute?  Is this JKR’s fatphobia rearing its ugly head? Unclear.)

Our last guy crying in pain is Book 1 Neville, after he breaks his wrist during flying lessons. He also “sniffs,” while walking into the Forbidden Forest for detention, which *might* count as crying? But really, Neville cries surprisingly little. We get a lot of “looked as though he might cry” and “on the verge of tears”... but that's not actually crying. And I think that’s because… early-books Neville, yes we’re supposed to see him as a little pathetic. But definitely not as pathetic as Dudley or Pettigrew. 

3: “Childlike” Crying

Sometimes the people who cry are literally little boys. This is also okay. No one is going to judge infant Harry for crying when Voldemort is in the house, or little Severus for crying when his parents are fighting. Interestingly, when Myrtle is talking about Draco crying in her bathroom, Harry assumes she’s talking about someone much younger: 

“There’s been a boy in here crying?” said Harry curiously. “A young boy?” 

But of course, when an adult is crying in a childlike way, it immediately becomes… pathetic. Again we have Pettigrew, who “burst into tears. It was horrible to watch: He looked like an oversized, balding baby, cowering on the floor.” In the Horcrux cave, crying Dumbledore is described “like a child dying of thirst.” Which is also meant to be pathetic, but in more of a ‘Harry has to be the adult now’ sort of way. Also, the potion seems to have made Dumbledore mentally regress back to his youth, so it’s *closer* to a literal “child crying” moment. 

(I considered putting Dumbledore drinking the potion in the ‘pain’ section, but at least in the book I think it’s clear he’s mostly in emotional rather than physical pain.)

Where this gets messy is with the house-elves. House-elves are not children, but they are presented as childlike. They are small and in-your-face, direct even though their problem-solving tends to be very convoluted/not especially logical. I like the present-tense, no pronouns way they speak, but I can’t deny it is kind of baby-talk adjacent. And… house elves are *really* emotional. Dobby, Kreacher (and Winky) cry a LOT. If I had to guess, I would say JKR likes treating house-elves as childlike so it’s more of a surprise when it turns out that one of them was behind everything. But considering that they are slaves, it is gross - considering that one of the main real-world justifications for slavery was ‘slaves are childlike, and unable to take care of themselves.'

There’s also Hagrid. With seventeen separate instances of crying, Hagrid easily cries more than any other guy in the Harry Potter books. And… well… he’s also presented as oddly childlike. He seems much more like Harry and Ron’s contemporary than a peer of the other professors - which is weird, since  if he went to school with Voldemort fifty years ago, he’s in his sixties now. But still, he’s helpless in the face of criticism, he’s comically out of his depth whenever he deals with the Ministry, he’s constantly letting things slip or drastically misjudging danger levels. The first three books all use “Hagrid gets in trouble, the gang has to bail him out” as a plot point, and in Book 4 his sideplot with Madame Maxime gets treated like a schoolboy’s first crush, with all these jokes about him wearing suits that don’t quite fit, and trying and failing to style his hair. Not to mention, we know she’s flattering him because she wants insider info on the Tournament. But he doesn’t know that. 

4. Crying because of Sports

Oliver Wood cries when Gryffindor wins the Quidditch cup. That's all.

And that brings us to our stragglers. The only non-childlike guys who cry for reasons other than death, pain, or sports are as follows: 

Harry Potter: 1 instance of crying

Draco Malfoy: 2 instances of crying

Severus Snape: 2 instances of crying

Albus Dumbledore: 4 instances of crying

Horace Slughorn: 1 instance of crying

Let’s see what’s going on here. 

Harry Potter

Dumbledore had weakened himself by drinking that terrible potion for nothing. Harry crumpled the parchment in his hand, and his eyes burned with tears as behind him. Fang began to howl. He clutched the cold locket in his hand so tightly that it hurt, but he could not prevent hot tears spilling from his eyes

There’s a lot going on in this moment: Harry is tired, frustrated, disappointed, overwhelmed. But even though it is a complex moment, probably the main emotion is still Harry’s attempt to process Dumbledore’s death, now that he finally has a second to do so. So this honestly could have gone in the “Crying because of a death” category. It’s just different enough that I want to specially call it out. 

Draco Malfoy

We hear about Draco crying once from Myrtle, and then see it first hand: 

Malfoy was crying — actually crying — tears streaming down his pale face into the grimy basin.

The narrative takes a second to let us know that he was ACTUALLY CRYING, just to hammer in that this is something unexpected and not-normal. I think I want to attribute Draco’s tendency to cry - and cry because he’s overwhelmed, scared, lonely - to the character’s slight femme coding. What can I say, he cries for ""girly"" reasons. And so does Snape!

Severus Snape 

“Snivellus” is clearly a nickname meant to evoke the idea of “crybaby,” since “sniveling” is a synonym for crying. We also get this: 

Snape was kneeling in Sirius’s old bedroom. Tears were dripping from the end of his hooked nose as he read the old letter from Lily. 

Crying over Lily’s letter could count as crying over a death… but since he’s crying over a letter, not over a grave or her body (like in the movie), I’m going to say that he’s probably crying because of guilt, emotional overload, or love (especially because he rips the ‘love Lily’ off the end of that letter.) Like Draco, Snape might be getting little bit of femme-coding here. He’s the mean-girl type of bully (versus the mean boy) He cries, he threatens to poison people - which is something we only see women (and Draco) actually doing in these books. Idk, he’s an odd one who JKR clearly has very complicated feelings about. 

Albus Dumbledore 

I was actually really surprised that Dumbledore cries as much as he does, and at such unusual times! He cries when he sees Snape’s doe patronus - because of love or just because he’s emotionally overwhelmed. He cries all through the Horcrux cave, primarily because of guilt. He cries twice during the King’s Cross Station vision-quest, once because of his complicated feelings about Harry while he asks for forgiveness, and once over … Grindlewald.

“They say he showed remorse in later years, alone in his cell at Nurmengard. I hope that it is true. I would like to think he did feel the horror and shame of what he had done. Perhaps that lie to Voldemort was his attempt to make amends . . . to prevent Voldemort from taking the Hallow . . .”  “. . . or maybe from breaking into your tomb?” suggested Harry, and Dumbledore dabbed his eyes.

And okay. JKR announced that Dumbledore was gay just a few months after book seven was published, and I think she was folding in deliberate queer-coding as early Book 6. My proof of that is Dumbledore's increased emotionality - as we can see, it’s pretty unusual for men to cry in the Harry Potter books because of “softer” emotions like love, regret, stress etc. It’s something she associates with femininity, and I’m sure she associates gay guys with femininity as well (I mean, that’s a very common thing to do.)

There’s also this interesting passage from Book 6: 

This younger Albus Dumbledore’s long hair and beard were auburn. Having reached their side of the street, he strode off along the pavement, drawing many curious glances due to the flamboyantly cut suit of plum velvet that he was wearing. “Nice suit, sir,” said Harry, before he could stop himself, but Dumbledore merely chuckled.

Now, this is subtle. Wizards out and about in the muggle world often wear unusual colors like purple and emerald green. However. That adjective flamboyantly is only used one other time in the entire series, to describe Fudge’s hand gestures. But here, it is used to describe an outfit, a purple velvet suit which is honestly more than a little bit Oscar Wilde. And “flamboyantly gay” … those are two words often heard together. 

Also, correct me if I’m wrong, but I am pretty sure this is the only opinion about clothing Harry ever expresses aloud. And, I think @niche-pastiche hit the nail right on the head, saying that Harry's "Nice suit, sir" is "SO the response of a young adhd boy in the early 2000s trying not to say "thats gay." 

Horace Slughorn

Horace Slughorn cries at Aragog’s funeral, not really out of grief for Aragog, but mostly out of a maudlin sense of togetherness, nostalgia, and camaraderie. And… I do think we have one more slightly morally ambiguous femme-coded guy on our hands? Like Dumbledore, Slughorn is very much a flashy dresser, with shiny hair and gold buttons on his waistcoat. He loves treats and candies (hey… so does Dumbledore. They’re the only adults with a sweet tooth like that.) He loves fancy dinner parties, and is well-connected without being ambitious the way Lucius is. He also (like Draco) is aligned with pureblood-supremacy, but hyper avoidant of violence and confrontation. Except for the Harry example, I think I’d be comfortable with calling all of these last few instances “Femme-Coded Crying.” 

* Methodology - My list of 208 Harry Potter characters comes from TV Tropes, which had the most complete breakdown. I am excluding characters from Cursed Child and the Fantastic Beasts Films. 

In order to find instances of crying, I searched for the words “cried/cry/crying” “tears” “sob” and “sniff.” I counted each crying episode as one, even if crying was brought up multiple times throughout the scene. I made the fairest call I could whenever I hit a “the crying intensified” or the “the tears restarted,” but I mostly judge pretty conservatively when I’m ringing up data.

[dr-george-ordell]

Saw this particularly heartbreaking comment on Cinema Therapy's video about snape that sums up my thoughts about the dynamic between him and Potter

[lines-in-limbo]

Harry and Snape’s Clashing Communication Styles

It's interesting to think that Harry and Snape don’t have longer conversations in the series, but when they do, their communication styles are so different that they often clash.

Harry’s way of communicating is practical and straightforward. He tends to break down complex ideas into simpler terms that he can easily understand. This makes sense, given his upbringing in a non-magical world and his tendency to rely more on gut instinct than deep theoretical knowledge. For Harry, things are usually black and white, and his directness shows his desire to cut through the confusion and get straight to the point.

Snape, on the other hand, has a more complex and layered way of speaking. His language is precise and often sarcastic, which reflects not just his intelligence but also his disdain for what he sees as Harry’s lack of subtlety. Snape’s use of imagery and metaphor, especially when he describes consepts, gives his speech a poetic, almost philosophical quality. He takes pleasure in showing off his superior knowledge and uses this as a way to belittle Harry.

We see this clash clearly in OOTP during Harry’s first Occlumency lesson:

Snape looked back at him for a moment and then said contemptuously, “Surely even you could have worked that out by now, Potter? The Dark Lord is highly skilled at Legilimency —” “What’s that? Sir?” “It is the ability to extract feelings and memories from another person’s mind —” “He can read minds?” said Harry quickly, his worst fears confirmed. “You have no subtlety, Potter,” said Snape, his dark eyes glittering. “You do not understand fine distinctions. It is one of the shortcomings that makes you such a lamentable potion-maker.” Snape paused for a moment, apparently to savor the pleasure of insulting Harry, before continuing, “Only Muggles talk of ‘mind reading.’ The mind is not a book, to be opened at will and examined at leisure. Thoughts are not etched on the inside of skulls, to be perused by any invader. The mind is a complex and many-layered thing, Potter . . . or at least, most minds are. . . .” He smirked. Whatever Snape said, Legilimency sounded like mind reading to Harry and he did not like the sound of it at all.

For Harry, when Snape mentions Legilimency, it immediately sounds like “mind reading,” which is a reasonable but overly simple way to understand such a complex concept. His quick jump to this conclusion shows his need to make sense of something that feels threatening, but it also reveals his limited grasp of the deeper nuances.

Snape, however, can’t resist mocking Harry’s lack of subtlety. His response is laced with condescension as he insists on the complexity of the mind and dismisses the idea of “mind reading” as something only muggles would think of. Snape’s explanation is detailed and philosophical, contrasting sharply with Harry’s desire for a straightforward answer.

Another great example of their different communication styles comes in HBP when Snape puts Harry on the spot, asking him to explain the difference between an inferius and a ghost:

“Let us ask Potter how we would tell the difference between an Inferius and a ghost.” The whole class looked around at Harry, who hastily tried to recall what Dumbledore had told him the night that they had gone to visit Slughorn. “Er — well — ghosts are transparent —” he said. “Oh, very good,” interrupted Snape, his lip curling. “Yes, it is easy to see that nearly six years of magical education have not been wasted on you, Potter. ‘Ghosts are transparent.’ ” Harry took a deep breath and continued calmly, though his insides were boiling, “Yeah, ghosts are transparent, but Inferi are dead bodies, aren’t they? So they’d be solid —” “A five-year-old could have told us as much,” sneered Snape. “The Inferius is a corpse that has been reanimated by a Dark wizard’s spells. It is not alive, it is merely used like a puppet to do the wizard’s bidding. A ghost, as I trust that you are all aware by now, is the imprint of a departed soul left upon the earth . . . and of course, as Potter so wisely tells us, transparent.” “Well, what Harry said is the most useful if we’re trying to tell them apart!” said Ron. “When we come face-to-face with one down a dark alley, we’re going to be having a shufti to see if it’s solid, aren’t we, we’re not going to be asking, ‘Excuse me, are you the imprint of a departed soul?’

Once again, Harry demonstrates his practical and straightforward approach. He gives a simple, clear distinction based on what would be most useful in a real-life situation—whether the entity is solid or transparent. This shows how Harry tends to focus on what’s immediately relevant and actionable, and Ron’s defense of Harry’s answer highlights this practicality. Ron even points out that in a real-world scenario, Harry’s answer is actually the most helpful, contrasting it with Snape’s more academic approach.

Snape, though, dismisses Harry’s answer as too simplistic and mocks him for stating what he sees as the obvious. Snape’s communication is more about the theoretical and precise understanding of magical concepts. He emphasizes the deeper, more complex nature of an Inferius, which, while academically accurate, is less practical in the context that Harry is thinking of. Snape’s disdain shows that he values this deeper, nuanced understanding more than the direct, practical knowledge that Harry offers.

These moments really bring out the deeper divide between Harry and Snape. Harry approaches things with instinct and a straightforward mindset, while Snape is all about nuance, precision, and seeing the layers in everything. Because they see the world so differently, they struggle to communicate, which only adds to the distrust and misunderstanding between them—a tension that echoes throughout the entire series.

[roseburning]

Where the story in which instead of begging for Lily's life, Severus just looks Voldemort dead in the eye and says:

“Make sure James Potter suffer before dying.”

[dinxieyinxie]

look what I found in my local bookshop 👁️👁️

this is a pretty hefty book im ngl, well at least for me it is as someone who don't read much lol

i didn't know there was an actual analysis book for snape so im going in blind!

[casasupernovas]

there is no question that severus snape was a bully, but i don't think his bullying had as far a reach as most people think.

he only ever really specifically targeted harry's class. and then it was still mainly the trio by proxy of being harry's friends and neville. i'm sure other gryffindor's like dean and maybe lavender caught strays at some point, but it's really just them. remember, the gryffindors mainly had classes with the slytherins.

we see other students be rather blasé about snape. other years barely mention him, ernie macmillan thought he was a great teacher (lol) and he was in hufflepuff. the most the twins say about snape us that he can get nasty. but considering what kind of students they were...lol. anyway, while i think dumbledore's reasoning for not pulling snape up on his behaviour is bs, i also think it's a fair possibility that it is also because it probably hadn't been much of a big deal up until recently.

i also think about the first book, ron and harry (well at least harry) clearly were shocked at how awful he was, because fred and george's advice was completely different to what ended up happening. while hagrid clearly knew more than he was letting on, hagrid is always downplaying snape as well.

i think snape skates by in the books because he probably warranted maybe an annoyed comment and eyeroll than complaints for a good while. at best he hands out too much homework and too many detentions which is pretty standard teacher fare. but not the level of bullying we see levied toward harry and neville.

then again, severus snape himself doesn't even view his behaviour as bullying, calling it 'criticism' to sirius, which is alarming. so, there's that.

we know why he bullies certain students. harry - you see what you want to see. many layered and complex but bullying nevertheless. hermione - she parrots textbooks with little innovation on her own part, something snape finds annoying but begrudgingly still accepts her cleverness. neville - read the occlumency chapters. ron - i don't think he cares too much for ron or has any particular reason as to why, but he clearly includes him as the friends he mentions to bellatrix and narcissa that are the reason harry is still alive. and he's obviously biased towards his own house like every other teacher. but never rewards points.

feel free to add any comments from other students about him if i've forgotten!

[maxdibert]

One thing that really pisses me off is how Snaters or anti-Snape people, or whatever the hell they want to call themselves, decide to twist canon to fit Severus into their image of an irredeemable son of Lucifer whose actions are driven by absolute evil. Some of the claims they make while blatantly ignoring canon are:

Severus is resentful toward Harry because Lily chose James. False. This is one of the most common narratives that stems from the idea that Severus is a creepy, obsessive stalker fixated on his childhood friend. It's literally NOT true. Severus isn’t resentful toward James because of Lily. He has plenty of reasons to resent James that have nothing to do with Lily, such as being bullied by him for seven years, being given a horrible nickname, or being stripped in front of the entire school just because he "existed." Ignoring that James was a bully—specifically to Severus—is a way of villainizing the victim while completely disregarding the fact that this wasn’t a love triangle issue. It was a case of abuser and victim, and Severus was the victim. And seeing the face of his abuser constantly on a rude kid who keeps questioning him and recklessly putting himself in life-threatening situations is obviously triggering as hell.

Severus was an incel stalker obsessed with Lily. Since when? Severus was canonically friends with Lily years before they went to Hogwarts. They hung out together and had a friendship. He wasn’t stalking her; he was her damn friend. F-R-I-E-N-D. They stayed friends until their relationship fell apart. She cut ties with him, and he didn’t go chasing after her or spying on her. There’s no point in the canon where it’s implied that Severus was stalking Lily after their friendship ended, let alone after Hogwarts. And that nonsense about him hugging her dead body? Spoiler: THAT NEVER HAPPENED IN THE BOOKS. It’s exclusive to the movies and therefore not canon. And the “incel” accusation? Did Severus ever ask her out? Did he insult or assault her for not wanting to be his friend anymore? No, he accepted that she told him to get lost and left with his tail between his legs. That’s not incel behavior.

Severus wanted to be a hero but was selfish. False. Severus never, ever, in his life wanted to be a hero. He had a debt to himself, to his guilt over his actions, and he wanted to atone for his sins, period. Even Dumbledore questions him by asking if he really wants to hide "his best side" from others, and Severus prefers it that way. He never wanted people to see his good side or know how much he had sacrificed. He wasn’t interested.

Severus deserved the bullying he suffered because he tried to get the Marauders expelled. False, because no one deserves to be tormented by rich brats abusing their privileges out of boredom. And false because Severus didn’t want the Marauders expelled—he wanted his abusers expelled, which is entirely different and absolutely justifiable, because anyone in his shoes would want to see the people tormenting them gone.

Severus only did what he did because of Lily and his obsession. False, because first of all, it wasn’t an obsession—it was grief, guilt, and enormous remorse. And doubly false, because when Dumbledore tells him that Harry (whom Severus has literally risked his life for several times to protect out of guilt over Lily) has to be sacrificed, he still goes along with the plan. By then, he isn’t driven only by his debt to Lily but by a genuine desire to defeat Voldemort.

Snape is a murderer. False. There’s no indication in canon that Severus killed anyone besides Dumbledore, and that was euthanasia—Dumbledore himself asked for it. There’s also no evidence that he tortured anyone.

Snape was a Nazi and a racist. False. The Death Eaters are not equivalent to Nazis, and blood purity isn’t equivalent to racism. With that cleared up, Severus was literally half-Muggle because his father was Muggle, and he grew up in a Muggle environment. His early life was in a Muggle world, and he even mentions that his father disliked magic. His prejudice against the Muggle world comes from having an extremely negative personal experience, knowing only a poor, resource-starved Muggle world, with an abusive and violent Muggle father. That alone justifies his need to cling to the magical side of his heritage. Moreover, being a kid with zero financial resources, no family support, coming from a violent environment, and experiencing further bullying and ostracism at school by wealthy pure-blood kids who targeted him as their punching bag made him the perfect target for any extremist cult—especially when the future leaders of that cult were in his house, where he had to fit in or face more bullying and isolation. Ignoring all the social background of the character to push the narrative that he’s evil because he made a terrible decision at 17 is classist and prejudiced. Plus, remember that Severus spent almost 20 years serving Dumbledore. He switched sides practically right away.

[dinarosie]

James Potter and Sirius Black were better than Snape. They matured enough to sacrifice themselves to protect Harry, while Snape never grew and never moved beyond his grudges

It’s easy to admire the kind of hero who sacrifices everything to protect those they love—their family, their child, their cherished godson. That kind of bravery is noble, no doubt.

But do you know what’s even more extraordinary? What’s more selfless and heroic?

True heroism is not about protecting those who love you in return. It’s not about fighting for gratitude or recognition. It’s about standing alone, fighting for people who don’t care about you, who misunderstand you, who will never see or value your sacrifice.

It’s about a man who endures hatred, mockery, and indifference—and still chooses to protect those very same people. A man who saves lives that openly scorn him, who risks everything for a world that will never celebrate him.

His heroism isn’t adorned with glory. It isn’t written in songs or remembered in tales. It’s quiet. It’s relentless. It’s profoundly human.

He doesn’t do it for fame or reward. He does it because he knows the right thing must be done, even if no one will ever know it was him.

So tell me: is there any greater hero than the one who fights without glory, loves without reward, and sacrifices without being asked?

Because if you look closely, you’ll see him—the man who gave everything, not because he had to, but because he chose to.

This is Severus Snape.

[fanfictionroxs]

Lily Evans has abandonment issues thanks to Petunia and Severus. Petunia is the major contributor as that's her big sister who should have been her eternal confidant and best friend, but who has been abandoning her in increments their entire lives. Petunia, whose love remains conditional and prejudiced, who loathes Lily's very being, her jealousy turning to spite and bigotry because if she cannot have magic then it is wrong, immoral, unnatural... and so is her sister by extension. And Lily, who has only ever wanted two people in her life, watches one of them abandon her for no fault of her own. And then there's Sev, and I know I said Petunia was the major contributor to Lily's abandonment issues, but Sev was her hope. He was the hope Lily carried that she was worthy of love, that she deserved better despite her own sister's screams of freak! Sev was the one who assured her of this every time she cried about Tuney, Sev understood her, Sev would never choose anyone other than Lily, right? Wrong! Sev chooses Voldemort and abandons Lily for a side that wants her own eradicated, expecting Lily to remain content with him treating her unlike 'other' muggleborns. She's the 'special' one from the group of filth he despises, she's the one who 'deserves' to live, she's expected to fall in line and watch her own people burn while the bigots rejoice. At the end of fifth year, it may have been Lily that walked away, but it was Sev who stole her hope the second he called her mudblood. For in the 'mudblood!' resounds the 'freak!', Tuney and Sev's voices blending as one, attacking Lily's very essence, destroying her hope and faith. So, Lily takes the abandonment issues and vows to take down Voldemort and kill every damn death eater that dares cross her path on the battlefield. She will have no other friends, her trust gone up in flames, her Gryffindor courage extinguished in the face of her fear of being abandoned once more. And she carries that fear and nurtures it against James, so fearful yet resigned of him leaving her (he never will and he will spend their lifetime proving it to her). Lily nurtures that fear far more than she ever gets to nurture Harry, the one love she hopes will never leave her. And yet, it is her who leaves him because there's no other way to save Harry. But her magic stays, her love stays, Lily stays. The girl who got abandoned stays for her baby boy. The girl Lily Evans, the freak, the dirty blood envoking old powerful magic, her blood taking down Voldemort in life and in death for her own creation, her baby Harry. Lily stays.

[wisteria-lodge]

Manipulative/Morally Grey Dumbledore? An In-Depth Canon Analysis

So when I look at Harry Potter, my goal is to separate what I think the books are intending to say, from what they actually say, from what the movies say… and what the common fan interpretation is. So today I’m interested in Dumbledore, and specifically in the common headcanon of  Manipulative/Morally Gray Dumbledore. Is that (intentionally or unintentionally) supported by the text?

PART I:  Omniscient Dumbledore

“I think he knows more or less everything that goes on here”

In Book 1, yes Dumbledore honestly does seem to know everything. He 100% arranged for Harry to find the Mirror of Erised, publicly left Hogwarts in order to nudge Quirrell into going after the Stone, and knew what Quirrell was doing the whole time. It is absolutely not a stretch, and kind of heavily implied, that the reason the Stone’s protections feel like a little-end-of-the-year exam designed to put Harry through his paces… is because they are. As the series goes on this interpretation only gets more plausible, when we see the kind of protections people can put up when they don’t want anyone getting through. 

Book 1 Dumbledore knows everything… but what he’s actually going to do about it is anyone’s guess. One of the first things we learn is that some of Dumbledore’s calls can be… questionable. McGonagall questions his choice to leave Harry with the Dursleys, Hermione questions his choice to give Harry the Cloak and let him go after the Stone, Percy and Ron both matter-of-factly call him “mad.” The “nitwit, blubber, oddment, tweak” speech is a joke where Dumbledore says he’s going to say a few words, then literally does say a few (weird) words. I know there are theories that those particular words are supposed to be insulting the four houses, or referencing the Hogwarts house stereotypes, or that they’re some kind of warning. But within the text, this is pure Lewis Carroll British Nonsense Verse stuff (and people came up with answers to the impossible Alice in Wonderland “why is a raven like a writing desk” riddle too.) 

This characterization also explains a lot of Dumbledore’s decisions about how to run a school, locked in during Book 1. Presumably Binns, Peeves, Filch, Snape are all there because Dumbledore finds them funny, atmospheric, and/or character building. He's just kind of a weird guy.  He absolutely knew that Lockhart was a fraud in Book 2 (with that whole “Impaled upon your own sword, Gilderoy?” thing after Lockhart oblivates himself. ) So maybe he is also there to be funny/atmospheric/character building, or to teach Harry a lesson about fame, or because Dumbledore is using the cursed position to bump off people he doesn’t like. Who knows.

(I actually don’t think JKR had locked in “the DADA position is literally cursed by Voldemort” until Book 6. )

Dumbledore absolutely knows that Harry is listening in when Lucius Malfoy comes to take Hagrid to Azkaban, and it’s fun to speculate that maybe he let himself get fired in Book 2 as part of a larger plan to boot Lucius off the Board of Governors. So far, that’s the sort of thing he’d do.  But in Books 3 and 4, we are confronted with a number of important things that Dumbledore just missed. He doesn’t know any of the Marauders were animagi, he doesn’t know what really happened with the Potter’s Secret Keeper, doesn’t know Moody is Crouch, and doesn’t know the Marauders Map even exists. But in Books 5 and 6, his omniscience does seem to come back online. (In a flashback, Voldemort even comments that he is "omniscient as ever” when Dumbledore lists the specific Death Eaters he has in Hogsmeade as backup.) Dumbledore knows exactly what Draco and Voldemort are planning, and his word is taken as objective truth by the entire Order of the Phoenix - who apparently only tolerate Snape because Dumbledore vouches for him:

“Snape,” repeated McGonagall faintly, falling into the chair. “We all wondered . . . but he trusted . . . always . . . Snape . . . I can’t believe it. . . .”  “Snape was a highly accomplished Occlumens,” said Lupin, his voice uncharacteristically harsh. “We always knew that.”  “But Dumbledore swore he was on our side!” whispered Tonks. “I always thought Dumbledore must know something about Snape that we didn’t. . . .”  “He always hinted that he had an ironclad reason for trusting Snape,” muttered Professor McGonagall (...) “Wouldn’t hear a word against him!”

McGonagall questions Dumbledore about the Dursleys, but not about Snape. I see this as part of the larger trend of basically Dumbledore’s deification. In the beginning of the series, he’s treated as a clever, weird dude. By the end, he’s treated like a god. 

PART II: Chessmaster Dumbledore

“I prefer not to keep all my secrets in one basket.”

When Dumbledore solves problems, he likes to go very hands-off. He didn’t directly teach Harry about the Mirror of Erised - he gave him the Cloak, knew he would wander, and moved the Mirror so it would be in his path. He sends Snape to deal with Quirrell and Draco, rather than do it himself. He (or his portrait) tells Snape to confund Mundungus Fletcher and get him to suggest the Seven Potters strategy. He puts Mrs. Figg in place to watch Harry, then ups the protection in Book 5 - all without informing Harry. The situation with Slughorn is kind of a Dumbledore-manipulation master class - even the way he deliberately disappears into the bathroom so Harry will have enough solo time to charm Slughorn. Of course he only wants Slughorn under his roof in the first place to pick his brain about Voldemort… but again, instead of doing that himself, he gets Harry to do it for him. 

Dumbledore has a moment during Harry’s hearing in Book 5 (which he fakes evidence for) where he informs Fudge that Harry is not under the Ministry’s jurisdiction while at Hogwarts. Which has insane implications. It’s never explicitly stated, but as the story goes on, it at least makes sense that Dumbledore is deliberately obscuring how powerful he is, and how much influence he really has, by getting other people to do things for him. But the problem with that is because he is so powerful, it become really easy for a reader to look back after they get more information and say… well if Dumbledore was controlling the situation… why couldn’t he have done XYZ. Here are two easy examples from Harry’s time spent with the Dursleys:

1. Mrs. Figg is watching over Harry from day one, but she can’t tell him she’s a squib and also she has to keep him miserable on purpose:

“Dumbledore’s orders. I was to keep an eye on you but not say anything, you were too young. I’m sorry I gave you such a miserable time, but the Dursleys would never have let you come if they’d thought you enjoyed it. It wasn’t easy, you know…”

It’s pretty intense to think of Dumbledore saying “oh yes, invite this little child over and keep him unhappy on purpose.” But okay. It’s important to keep Harry ignorant of the magical world and vice versa. fine. But once he goes to Hogwarts… that doesn’t apply anymore?  I’m sure when Harry thinks he’s going to be imprisoned permanently in his bedroom during Book 2, it would’ve been comforting to know that Dumbledore was sending around someone to check on him. And when he literally runs away from home in Book 3… having the address of a trusted adult that he could easily get to would have been great for everybody. 

2. When Vernon is about to actually kick Harry out during Book 5, Dumbledore sends a howler which intimidates Petunia into insisting that Harry has to stay. Vernon folds and does exactly what she says. If Dumbledore could intimidate Petunia into doing this, then why couldn’t he intimidate her into, say - giving Harry the second bedroom instead of a cupboard. Or fixing Harry’s glasses. In Book 1, the Dursleys don’t bother Harry during the entire month of August because Hagrid gives Dudley a pig’s tail. In the summer between third and fourth year, the Dursleys back off because Harry is in correspondence with Sirius (a person they fear.) But the Dursleys are afraid of all wizards. Like at this point it doesn’t seem that hard to intimidate them into acting decently to Harry. 

PART III: Dumbledore and the Dursleys 

“Not a pampered little prince”

JKR wanted two contradictory things. She wanted Dumbledore to be a fundamentally good guy: a wise, if eccentric mentor figure. But she also wanted Harry to have a comedically horrible childhood being locked in a cupboard, denied food, given broken glasses and ill fitting/embarrassing clothes, and generally made into a little Cinderella. Then, it’s a bigger contrast when he goes to Hogwarts and expulsion can be used as an easy threat. (Although the only person we ever see expelled is Hagrid, and that was for murder.)

So, there are a couple of tricks she uses to make it okay that Dumbledore left Harry at the Dursleys.’ The first is that once Harry leaves…  nothing that happens there is given emotional weight. When he’s in the Wizarding World, he barely talks about Dursleys, barely thinks about them. They almost never come up in the narration (unless Harry’s worried about being expelled, or they’re sending him comedically awful presents.) They are completely cut from movies 4, 6, and 7 part 2 - and you do not notice. 

The second trick… is that Dumbledore himself clearly doesn’t think that the Dursleys are that bad. During the King’s Cross vision-quest, he describes 11-year-old Harry as “alive and healthy (...) as normal a boy as I could have hoped under the circumstances. Thus far, my plan was working well.”  

Now, this could have been really interesting. Like in a psychological way, I get it. Dumbledore had a rocky home life. Dad in prison, mom spending all her time taking care of his volatile and dangerous sister. Aberforth seems to have reacted to the situation by running completely wild, it’s implied that he never even had formal schooling… and Albus doubled down on being the Golden Child, making the family look good from the outside, and finding every means possible to escape. I would have believed it if Molly or Kingsley had a beat of being horrified by the way the Dursleys are treating Harry… but Dumbledore treats it as like, whatever. Business as usual. 

But that isn’t the framing that the books use. Dumbledore is correct that the Dursleys aren’t that bad, and I think it’s because JKR fundamentally does not take the Dursleys seriously as threats. I also think she has a fairly deeply held belief that suffering creates goodness, so possibly Harry suffering at the hands of the Dursleys… was necessary? To make him good? Dumbledore himself has an arc of ‘long period of suffering = increased goodness.’ So does Severus Snape, Dudley‘s experience with the Dementor kickstarts his character growth, etc. It’s a trope she likes.

It’s only in The Cursed Child that the Dursleys are given any kind of weight when it comes to Harry’s psyche. This is one of the things that makes me say Jack Thorne wrote that play, because it’s just not consistent with how JKR likes to write the Dursleys. It’s consistent with the way fanfiction likes to write the Dursleys. And look, The Cursed Child is fascinatingly bad, I have so many problems with it, but it does seem to be doing like … a dark reinterpretation of Harry Potter? And it’s interested in saying something about cycles of abuse. I can absolutely see how the way the play handles things is flattering to JKR. It retroactively frames the Dursleys’ abuse in a more negative way, and maybe that’s something she wanted after criticism that the Harry Potter books treat physical abuse kind of lightly. (i.e.  Harry at the hands of the Dursleys, and house-elves at the hands of everybody. Even Molly Weasley “wallops” Fred with a broomstick.) 

PART IV: Dumbledore and Harry

“The whole Potter–Dumbledore relationship. It’s been called unhealthy, even sinister”

So whenever Harry feels betrayed by Dumbledore in the books - and he absolutely does, it’s some of JKR’s best writing  - it’s not because he left him with the Dursleys. It’s because Dumbledore kept secrets from him, or lied to him, or didn’t confide in him on a personal level. 

“Look what he asked from me, Hermione! Risk your life, Harry! And again! And again! And don’t expect me to explain everything, just trust me blindly, trust that I know what I’m doing, trust me even though I don’t trust you! Never the whole truth! Never!” (...) I don’t know who he loved, Hermione, but it was never me. This isn’t love, the mess he’s left me in. He shared a damn sight more of what he was really thinking with Gellert Grindelwald than he ever shared with me.”

Eventually though, Harry falls in line with the rest of the Order, and treats Dumbledore as an all-knowing God. And this decision comes so close to being critiqued…  but the series never quite commits. Rufus Scrimgeour comments that, “Well, it is clear to me that [Dumbledore] has done a very good job on you” - implying that Harry is a product of a deliberate manipulation,  and that the way Harry feels about Dumbledore is a direct result of how he's been controlling the situation (and Harry.)  But Harry responds to “[You are] Dumbledore’s man through and through, aren’t you, Potter?” with “Yeah, I am. Glad we straightened that out,” and it’s treated as a badass, mic drop line. 

Ron goes on to say that Harry maybe shouldn’t be trusting Dumbledore and maybe his plan isn’t that great… but then he abandons his friends, regrets what he did, and is only able to come back because Dumbledore knew he would react this way? So that whole thing only makes Dumbledore seem more powerful? Aberforth  tells Harry (correctly) that Dumbledore is expecting too much of him and he’s not interested in making sure that he survives:

“How can you be sure, Potter, that my brother wasn’t more interested in the greater good than in you? How can you be sure you aren’t dispensable (...) Why didn’t he say… ‘Take care of yourself, here’s how to survive’? (...) You’re seventeen, boy!”

But, Aberforth is treated as this Hamish Abernathy type who has given up, and needs Harry to ignite his spark again. There’s a pretty dark line in the script of Deathly Hallows Part 2:

Which at least shows this was a possible  interpretation the creative team had in their heads… but then of course it isn’t actually in the movie. 

So in the end, insane trust in Dumbledore is only ever treated as proper and good. Then in Cursed Child they start using “Dumbledore” as an oath instead of “Merlin” and it’s weird and I don’t like it.

PART V: Dumbledore and his Strays

“I have known, for some time now, that you are the better man.”

So Dumbledore has this weird relationship pattern. He has a handful of people he pulled out of the fire at some point and (as a result) these people are insanely loyal to him.  They do his dirty work, and he completely controls them. This is an interesting pattern, because I think it helps explain why so many fans read Dumbledore’s relationship with Snape (and with Harry) as sinister. 

Let’s start with the first of Dumbledore’s “strays.” Dumbledore saves Hagrid's livelihood and probably life after he is accused of opening the Chamber of Secrets - and then he uses Hagrid to disappear Harry after the Potters' death, gets him to transport the Philosopher’s Stone, and he’s the one who he trusts to be Harry’s first point of contact with the Wizarding World.  Also, Hagrid's situation doesn’t change? Even after he is cleared of opening the Chamber of Secrets, he keeps using that pink flowered umbrella with his broken wand inside, a secret that he and Dumbledore seem to share. He could get a legal wand, he could continue his education. But he doesn’t seem to, and I don’t know why. 

So, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality is a well known fix-it fic that basically asks “What if Harry Potter was a machiavellian little super genius who solves the plot in a year?” I enjoyed it when it was coming out, but the only thing I would call a cheat is the way McGonagall brings Harry to Diagon Alley instead of Hagrid. Because a Harry Potter who has spent a couple of days with McGonagall is going to be much better informed, better equipped and therefore more powerful than a Harry spending the same amount of time with Hagrid. McGonagall is both a lot more knowledgeable and a lot less loyal to Dumbledore. She is loyal, obviously, but she also questions his choices in a way that Hagrid never does. And as a result, Dumbledore does not trust her with the same kind of delicate jobs he trusts to Hagrid.

Mrs. Figg is another one of Dumbledore’s strays. She’s a squib, so we can imagine that she doesn’t really have a lot of other options, and he sets her up to keep tabs on (and be unpleasant to) little Harry. He also has her lie to the entire Wizangamot, which has got to present some risk. Within this framework, Snape is another very clear stray. Dumbledore kept him out of Azkaban, and is the only reason that the Order trusts him. He gets sent on on dangerous double-agent missions… but before that he’s sort of kept on hand, even though he’s clearly miserable at Hogwarts. Firenze is definitely a stray - he can't go back to the centaurs, and who other than Dumbledore is going to hire him? And I do wonder about Trelawney. We don’t know much about her relationship with Dumbledore, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if she was a stray as well.

I think there was an attempt to turn Lupin into a stray that didn’t… quite work. He is clearly grateful to Dumbledore for letting him attend Hogwarts and then for hiring him, but Lupin doesn’t really hit that necessary level of trustworthy that the others do. Most of what Dumbledore doesn’t know in Book 3 are things that Lupin could have told him, and didn’t. If had to think of a Watsonsian reason why Remus is given all these solo missions away from the other Order members (that never end up mattering…) it’s because I don’t think Dumbledore trusts him that much. Lupin doubts him too much. 

“Dumbledore believed that?” said Lupin incredulously. “Dumbledore believed Snape was sorry James was dead? Snape hated James. . . .”

 We also see Dumbledore start the process of making Draco into a stray by promising to protect him and his parents. And with all of that… it’s kind of easy to see how Harry fits the profile. He has a very bleak existence (which Dumbledore knows about.) He is pulled out of it by Dumbledore’s proxies. It’s not surprising that Harry develops a Hagrid-level loyalty, especially after Dumbledore saves him from Barty, from his Ministry hearing, and then from Voldemort. Harry walks to his death because Dumbledore told him too. 

Just to be clear, I don’t think this pattern is deliberate. I think this is a side effect of JKR wanting to write Dumbledore as a nice guy, and specifically as a protector of the little guy. But Dumbledore doing that while also being so powerful creates a weird power dynamic, gives him a weird edit. It’s part of the reason people are happy to go one step farther and say that the Dursleys were mean to Harry… because Dumbledore actively wanted it that way.  I don’t think that’s true. I think Dumbledore loves his strays and if anything, the text supports the idea that he is collecting good people, because protecting them and observing them serves some psychological function for him. Dumbledore does not believe himself to be an intrinsically good person, or trustworthy when it comes to power. So, of course someone like that would be fascinated by how powerless people operate in the world, and by people like Hagrid and Lupin and Harry, who seem so intrinsically good. 

PART VI - Dumbledore and Grindelwald

“I was in love with you.” 

I honestly see “17-year-old Dumbledore was enamored with Grindelwald” as a smokescreen distracting from the actual moral grayness of the guy. He wrote some edgy letters when he was a teenager, at least partly because he thought his neighbor was hot. He thought he could move Ariana, but couldn’t - which led to the chaotic three-way duel that killed her. 

One thing I think J. K. Rowling does understand pretty well, and introduces into her books on purpose, is the concept of re-traumatization. Sirius in Book 5 is very obviously being re-traumatized by being in his childhood home and hearing the portrait of his mother screaming. It’s why he acts out, regresses, and does a number of unadvisable things. I think it’s also deliberate that Petunia’s unpleasant childhood is basically being re-created: her normal son next to her sister’s magical son. It's making her worse, or at the very least preventing her from getting better. We learn that Petunia has this sublimated interest in the magical world, and can even pull out vocab like “Azkaban” and “Dementor” when she needs to.   She wrote Dumbledore asking to go to Hogwarts, and I could see that in a universe where Petunia didn’t have to literally raise Harry, she wouldn’t be as psychotically into normalness, cleanliness, and order as she is when we meet her in the books. After all, JKR doesn’t like to write evil mothers. She will be bend over backwards so her mothers are never really framed as bad.

And I honestly think it’s possible that J. K. Rowling was playing with the concept of re-traumatiziation when she was fleshing out Dumbledore in Book 7. We learn all this backstory, that… honestly isn’t super necessary? All I’m saying is that the three-way duel at the top of the Astronomy Tower lines up really well with the three-way duel that killed Ariana. Harry is Ariana, helpless in the middle. Draco is Aberforth, well intentioned and protective of his family - but kind of useless, and kind of a liability. Severus is Grindelwald, dark and brilliant, and one of the closest relationships Dumbledore has. If this was intentional, it was probably only for reasons of narrative symmetry… but I think it's cool in a Gus Fring of Breaking Bad sort of way, that Dumbledore (either consciously or unconsciously) has been trying to re-create this one horrible moment in his life where he felt entirely out of control. But the second time it plays out… he can give it what he sees as the correct outcome. Grindelwald kills him and everyone else lives. That is how you solve the puzzle.

If you read between the lines, Dumbledore/Grindelwald is a fascinating love story. I like the detail that after Ariana’s death, Dumbledore returns to Hogwarts because it’s a place to hide and because he doesn’t feel like he can be trusted with power. I like that he sits there, refusing promotions, refusing requests to be the new Minister of Magic, refusing to go deal with the growing Grindelwald threat until he absolutely can’t hide anymore, at which point he defeats him (somehow.) I like reading his elaborate plan to break Elder Wand’s power as both a screw-you to Grindelwald, the wand’s previous master, but also as a weirdly romantic gesture. In Albus Dumbledore’s mind, there is only Grindelwald. Voldemort can’t even begin to compare. I like the detail that Grindelwald won’t give up Dumbledore, even under torture. And, Dumbledore doesn’t put him in Azkaban. He put him in this other separate prison, which always makes it seem like he’s there under Dumbledore authority specifically.  Maybe Dumbledore thinks that if he had died that day instead of Ariana…he wouldn’t have had to spend the rest of his life fighting and imprisoning the man he loves.

And then of course, Crimes of Grindelwald decided to take away Dumbledore's greatest weakness and say that no, actually he was a really good guy who never did anything wrong ever.  He went all that time without fighting Grindelwald because they made a magical friendship no-fight bracelet. Dumbledore is randomly grabbing Lupin’s iconography (his fashion sense, his lesson plans, his job) in order to feel more soft and gentle than the person the books have created. Now Dumbledore knows about the Room Requirement, even though in the books it’s a plot point that he's too much of a goody-two-shoes to have ever found it himself. He loved Grindelwald (past tense.) And Secrets of Dumbledore is mostly about him being an omniscient mastermind so that a magical deer can tell him that he was a super good and worthy guy, and any doubt that he’s ever felt about himself is just objectively wrong and incorrect. Also now Aberforth has a neglected son, so he’s reframed as a bit of a hypocrite for getting on his brother’s case for not protecting Harry. 

So to summarize, I think Dumbledore began the series as this very eccentric, unpredictable mentor, whose abilities took a hit in Books 3 and 4 in order to make the plot happen. He teetered on the edge of a ‘dark’ framing for like a second… but at the the end of the series he's written as basically infallible and godlike. I’ve heard people say that JKR’s  increased fame was the reason she added the Rita Skeeter plot line, and I don’t think that’s true. But I do think her fame may have affected the way she wrote Dumbledore. Because Dumbledore is JKR’s comment on power, and by Book 5 she had so much power. In her head, I don’t think that Dumbledore is handing off jobs in a manipulative way. She sees him as empowering other less powerful people. That is his job as someone in power (because remember - people who desire power shouldn't wield it.)

Dumbledore’s power makes him emotionally disconnected from the people in his life, it makes him disliked and distrusted by the Ministry, but it doesn’t make him wrong. That’s important. Dumbledore is never wrong. Dumbledore is always good. That’s why we get the Blood Pact that means he was never weak or procrastinating. That’s why we get the qilin saying he was a good person. It’s why we get the tragic backstory (because giving Snape a tragic backstory worked wonders when it came to rehabilitating him.) And that is why Harry names his son Albus Severus in the epilogue, to make us readers absolutely crystal clear that these two are good men. 

[sendandburn]

An analysis of Severus Snape as a teacher

"Three things always come up in the context of Snape’s abusiveness. One of them is not something Snape does but a reaction to him.

1. Threatened to Poison Neville’s Toad

This is one of two direct interactions between Snape and Neville in the books. Since it merits real-time narration, it must stand out: Snape is at his worst at this moment.

A particularly nasty mood is understandable:

“have you heard? Daily Prophet this morning — they reckon Sirius Black’s been sighted.” “Where?” [...] “Not too far from here,” said Seamus.

Snape believes that Black betrayed the Potters and wants to go after Harry. Black also nearly murdered Snape in their fifth year, so Snape has reason to be on edge.

His potion, which was supposed to be a bright, acid green, had turned — “Orange, Longbottom,” said Snape, ladling some up and allowing it to splash back into the cauldron, so that everyone could see [Harry assumes]. “Orange. Tell me, boy, does anything penetrate that thick skull of yours? Didn’t you hear me say, quite clearly, that only one rat spleen was needed? Didn’t I state plainly that a dash of leech juice would suffice? What do I have to do to make you understand, Longbottom?” Neville was pink and trembling. He looked as though he was on the verge of tears. “Please, sir,” said Hermione, “please, I could help Neville put it right —” “I don’t remember asking you to show off, Miss Granger,” said Snape coldly, and Hermione went as pink as Neville. “Longbottom, at the end of this lesson we will feed a few drops of this potion to your toad and see what happens. Perhaps that will encourage you to do it properly.”

Not great. Snape is not a suitable teacher for an introductory class, or for insecure children like Neville, but abusive, this is not. The fact that Neville brought Trevor to class shows that Neville never expected to be very severely sanctioned for doing that or for Trevor to come to any harm, before that lesson. Snape is at the end of his rope with Neville and wants him to take the lesson seriously. He states his motives plainly - to get Neville to understand.

Did he mean harm to Trevor? Snape is competent enough that if he’d wanted that toad dead, it would be. In any case, the potion turned out alright, and Snape knew it - he can tell from the way the potion looks. Snape also has a bottle of the antidote in his other pocket:

Snape picked up Trevor the toad in his left hand and dipped a small spoon into Neville’s potion, which was now green. He trickled a few drops down Trevor’s throat. There was a moment of hushed silence, in which Trevor gulped; then there was a small pop, and Trevor the tadpole was wriggling in Snape’s palm. The Gryffindors burst into applause. Snape, looking sour, pulled a small bottle from the pocket of his robe, poured a few drops on top of Trevor, and he reappeared suddenly, fully grown.

Is he sour because he hoped to kill Trevor? Why give it the antidote, thus saving it? Maybe he is sour for the reason he says he is:

“I told you not to help him, Miss Granger. Class dismissed.”

This is also why he docks five points, not because Neville got it right. This was a misguided attempt to teach. Nothing was ever going to happen to Trevor.

[Sidenote: Animal cruelty is commonplace at Hogwarts. sentient or semi-sentient animals are experimented on regularly in Transfig. They even vanish cats. Even the herbology plants seem able to feel pain, but 2nd year students are expected to chop up humanoid mandrakes. Flitwick demonstrates levitation on Trevor, and Harry practices Accio on him.]

Let's be clear here: putting the wrong number of spleens into a potion suggests someone who either doesn't consider the instructions to be important, or simply doesn't care.

Something else to consider is just how dangerous someone like Neville is to the class. In university, one of the requirements for my degree was Organic Chemistry, which contained a large lab portion to it. Organic Chemistry, for those who don't know, is chemistry that focuses on carbon-containing compounds, which includes things like oils and chloroform. To put it mildly, it's dangerous. Many of the compounds used are either explosive, or are placed in potentially explosive situations. Many of the chemicals are directly dangerous all on their own, too.

Rules in that lab were particularly strict, they have to be, because one wrong move could end disastrously. Case in point, one of the experiments involved a type of round bottom flask which were needed to heat a set of chemicals in. Critically, the pressure had to be relieved from the flask. The instructor told us what happened in a prior class when someone had failed to do so: it exploded, and everyone in the lab was lucky none of the glass had cut anyone. That particular person was ejected from the lab for it, and with good reason.

Potion class seems just as dangerous at the end of the day, perhaps more so since unlike chemistry where adding different amounts of ingredients is more likely to cause the reaction to fail, people like Neville appear to be able to produce something, it's just something that's likely to be toxic or have completely unexpected effects. We know from the books that producing an antidote to a blended toxin is a complicated, almost quantum endeavour, I shudder to think what you need to do to properly reverse or mitigate the effects of a poorly blended potion are.

Similarly, Snape isn't being cruel when he docks points for Hermione's successful recovery of Neville's toxic potion, because in actuality what we see here is an academic offense; Neville is essentially presenting someone else's work as his own." (reddit)

Plus, bringing a pet to class always causes problems,specially if it is to the wixen equivalent of a chemistry class.

Granted his bad mood does not in any way excuse or justify his actions towards neville but it does help explain them.

2. Neville’s Boggart

"True, his boggart is Snape.

This does not mean that Snape is truly scary. (assuming Snape is scary because Neville fears him because he is scary is circular reasoning). His fear of Snape is not overwhelming or traumatizing. Neville’s fear is on par with Ron’s fear of spiders (which itself was caused by the twins, who are much scarier), Dean’s fear of hands, etc.

If Snape had been abusive, other students would not have found this funny, and Neville would not have smiled. If the fear had been overwhelming, Neville would not have defeated the boggart on his first try.

Neville looked around rather wildly, as though begging someone to help him, then said, in barely more than a whisper, “Professor Snape.” Nearly everyone laughed. Even Neville grinned apologetically. Professor Lupin, however, looked thoughtful. “Professor Snape... hmmm… Neville, I believe you live with your grandmother?” “Er — yes,” said Neville nervously. “But — I don’t want the boggart to turn into her either.”

Neville seems more scared of admitting he fears Snape than of Snape. He does not want to confront his grandmother either, probably because, like Snape, she makes him feel inadequate, which is what really scares him. But she should have loved Neville unconditionally and not compared him to his parents, and Snape is his teacher, whose job it is to let him know when he is doing poorly.

Neville defeats his Snape boggart on his first attempt because it’s a trivial fear. Molly, an adult witch and the bad-ass who killed Bellatrix, fails to beat her boggart, in OOTP, because there’s nothing trivial about her fear of losing her husband or her children.

Snape is listed among the meaningless boggarts the kids defeated with ease:

“Did you see me take that banshee?” shouted Seamus. “And the hand!” said Dean, waving his own around. “And Snape in that hat!” “And my mummy!”

This is the textbook definition of a boggart:

Hermione put up her hand. “It’s a shape-shifter,” she said. “It can take the shape of whatever it thinks will frighten us most.” “Couldn’t have put it better myself,” said Professor Lupin.

The boggart is whatever’s on your mind, not your true deepest, darkest fear (unless Ron is a monster for fearing spiders when just last year, he nearly lost Ginny). POA already introduces a creature that actually makes you relive your worst moments - Dementors. Introducing two creatures that do essentially the same thing is redundant. Snape’s on Neville’s mind because this lesson immediately follows the toad scene.

If that does not convince you: Hermione’s boggart is McGonagall (but actually, failure).

An out-of-universe explanation for Neville’s fear of Snape is that his parents’ story, just like the Cruciatus curse, did not exist at the time of writing the boggart scene. You’d think Draco would tease Neville about it, if it had existed by POA.

This passage is from GOF, after the lesson about unforgivables, in which Neville was clearly thinking about his parents:

“What was that?” said Seamus Finnigan, staring at the egg as Harry slammed it shut again. “Sounded like a banshee... Maybe you’ve got to get past one of those next, Harry!” “It was someone being tortured!” said Neville, who had gone very white and spilled sausage rolls all over the floor. “You’re going to have to fight the Cruciatus Curse!”

This scene shows that Harry is unlike the rest of his classmates because his fears are real and serious. It provides comic relief, because the big meanie is in drag. It’s the beginning of Neville’s arc from someone who fears Snape in Y3 to someone who leads the DA in Y7 and fears nothing. It hints at the Snape-Marauders relationship. It’s used to make Snape’s behavior in the werewolf lesson seem petty and vindictive, to obfuscate the fact that it actually takes place right after Sirius infiltrates the castle for the first time, which is what’s actually bothering him.

In conclusion, the boggart says nothing about Snape, only about Neville.

3. I see no difference

In context:

“And what is all this noise about?” said a soft, deadly voice. Snape had arrived. The Slytherins clamored to give their explanations; Snape pointed a long yellow finger at Malfoy and said, “Explain.” “Potter attacked me, sir —” “We attacked each other at the same time!” Harry shouted. “— and he hit Goyle — look —” Snape examined Goyle, whose face now resembled something that would have been at home in a book on poisonous fungi. “Hospital wing, Goyle,” Snape said calmly. “Malfoy got Hermione!” Ron said. “Look!” He forced Hermione to show Snape her teeth — she was doing her best to hide them with her hands, though this was difficult as they had now grown down past her collar. Pansy Parkinson and the other Slytherin girls were doubled up with silent giggles, pointing at Hermione from behind Snape’s back. Snape looked coldly [as opposed to his usual smirk/smile, when he enjoys whatever he’s saying. Also, what’s the difference between being “calm” and being “cold”? Harry is awful at reading people, and at reading Snape in particular] at Hermione, then said, “I see no difference.” Hermione let out a whimper; her eyes filled with tears.

Snape is demanding an explanation from Malfoy, not the trio. Harry admits that both of them attacked each other. You’d think Snape will never miss an opportunity to punish Harry, who attacked his favorite, right? Wrong. He sends Goyle to the hospital wing calmly, despite Goyle being in pretty bad shape. Ron seems to expect Snape to be helpful, otherwise, why does he direct his attention to Hermione? The Slytherin girls hide their giggling from Snape, as if expecting him to discipline them if he sees them. But he simply says he sees no difference. Why is he acting this way, so out of character? Because at this point, in GOF, the Dark Mark is already growing darker and Voldemort is coming back. Snape will soon have to resume his spying role. He cannot act like he otherwise would have, which is to punish everyone, including the Death Eaters’ children - he is downplaying the whole thing to avoid punishing anyone.

Did he absolutely have to mock Hermione? No. Does he ever do that in any other context? No. It was an easy way to demonstrate his hatred of Harry and supposed disdain for his Muggle-born friend, when he needed to reinforce that image of himself.

Some resentment is understandable: Hermione had set Snape on fire, stolen from him, and slammed him against a wall, knocking him unconscious. That she gets away with a mean-spirited comment indicates that he doesn’t hate her.

He wasn’t even necessarily thinking of her teeth. He might have meant “ISND between what Malfoy did to you, and what Potter did to Goyle”, “ISND between what I told Goyle to do, and what you should do”. We know he can insult her outright when he wants to, and nothing stopped JKR from writing “your teeth look the same as yesterday.”

Maybe he was thinking about how, just a few chapters previously, McGonagall had watched Moody torture Draco, and instead of asking Draco how he was feeling (redundant question, since he was visibly in pain, but it would have been her duty nonetheless), and sending him to the Hospital Wing, she had allowed Moody to drag him away for more punishment, meaning it was she who had set the precedent that students in obvious distress can be dismissed.

She gets over this comment instantly. She even defends Snape later in the same book, and up until he kills Dumbledore.

Snape is definitely an asshole. Here are other bad things he does:

The first Potions lesson: calls Neville an idiot and then accuses Harry of not helping Neville because he wanted to look good. Absurd.

“Longbottom causes devastation with the simplest spells. We’ll be sending what’s left of Finch-Fletchley up to the hospital wing in a matchbox.” Hilarious, but ouch!

Calls Hermione an insufferable-know-it-all (which she was), following several more civilized attempts to shut her up.

Reading the article about Harry in front of everyone, when the Trio is discussing it in class instead of working, then separating them, ordering Harry to sit next to him, and taking the opportunity to taunt him, culminating in calling Harry a “nasty little boy” and threatening to use Veritaserum on him. This is clearly an empty threat, or Snape would have simply slipped him some without warning him, like Umbridge (not that the legilimens needed to).

Doesn’t punish the Slytherin who hexed Alicia Spinnet before the big Quidditch game (McG before that: “I’ve become accustomed to seeing the Quidditch Cup in my study, boys, and I really don’t want to have to hand it over to Professor Snape, so use the extra time [from the lack of homework] to practice, won’t you?”

In the first occlumency lesson, calls Harry a lamentable potions maker (irrelevant and uncalled for), as well as implicitly calling him stupid: “The mind is a complex and many-layered thing, Potter… or at least, most minds are.” Why should Harry know how legilimency works? He’s never heard of it. Even that can be explained away, though: Voldemort might be spying on the lesson through Harry’s eyes.

When escorting Harry from the train to the school in HBP, he calls Tonk’s Patronus weak, and needles Harry. He accuses Harry of only wanting attention: “I suppose you wanted to make an entrance, did you?” Then he says this: “No cloak. You can walk in so that everyone sees you, which is what you wanted, I’m sure.” Make up your mind, Snape.

When Harry says ghosts are transparent: “Yes, it is easy to see that nearly six years of magical education have not been wasted on you, Potter.” When Ron points out that this is the most useful way to tell ghosts and inferi apart, because inferi are solid, he says this: “I would expect nothing more sophisticated from you, Ronald Weasley, the boy so solid he cannot Apparate half an inch across a room.” Possible explanation: Harry and Ron were publicly discussing Snape’s and Fletcher’s involvement in the Order, so shutting them up was imperative.

That’s 9 things, so with the toad scene and ISND, that’s 11 bad things Snape does to students, in 6 years. Snape is the teacher we spend the most time with, so we get a large enough sample to have an accurate impression of him. All of his transgressions are insults of varying severity, and that’s it.

He’s rude to everyone, not just his inferiors: Tonks and Sirius, fellow Order members, Bellatrix, a “fellow” Death Eater, and even Dumbledore, his superior in every way. Yes, he should have been gentler with students. He is harsh, unkind, strict, impatient, and overbearing, but not bullying or abusive.

His treatment of Harry is truly unfair. He projects the trauma James had caused him onto Harry, which is completely undeserved (but he also protects Harry out of guilt and love for Lily, which is also, strictly speaking, undeserved). Snape doesn’t see Harry for who he is, but even that is not as superficial as it seems, and it’s not entirely the result of Snape’s “immaturity” (i.e., long-term trauma).

PS: When they first make eye-contact, both of them are set on the wrong path because of Quirrell. Harry feels a pain when Snape is looking at him, pulls a face, and continues to stare at Snape. The legilimens might be sensing Voldemort in him. Harry then sasses at him in the very first lesson, and nearly knocks him off his broom.

COS: Harry arrives at school by flying car, launches a seemingly random attack on Slytherins, the appears to be encouraging the snake to attack Justin.

POA: Harry displays recklessness truly worthy of his father, sneaking off to Hogsmeade, throwing snowballs at Malfoy, lying about it

GOF: Harry becomes the center of attention. Snape resents this, as do Ron and Sprout. Twice, the legilimens is looking into Harry’s eyes while Harry is fantasizing about hurting him.

OOTP: Harry violates Snape’s privacy and endangers him, Snape does not know that Harry regrets the whole thing. He also catches Harry at this:

“What are you doing, Potter?” said Snape coldly as ever, as he strode over to the four of them. “I’m trying to decide what curse to use on Malfoy, sir,” said Harry fiercely. Snape stared at him.

This must have been flashback-inducing. What we see as fiercely, Snape sees as vicious.

6. HBP: Harry hexes people at random, including Filch, and worst of all, Snape catches Harry casting Sectumsempra on Draco.

Snape has a disincentive to try with Harry: He knows he will return to Voldemort as a spy. The cover story is, “I thought Voldemort was finished, and that Harry did it.” Becoming buds with Harry would have been inexplicable; becoming buds with Harry and then NOT using that to deliver Harry to Voldemort (i.e., what BCJ has done) - unforgivable. Snape relied heavily on half-truths and misdirection but there was one thing he could be honest with Voldemort about: He hates Harry with a passion. That, ironically, helped him protect Harry.

FWIW, I believe the memory of Snape ranting about Harry, and Dumbledore dismissing Snape and telling him he’s wrong, is included as an apology.

Snape’s three biggest victims are Harry, who names a child after him; Hermione, who doesn’t mind him and even likes him; and Neville, who clearly got over it with ease.

Dumbledore will never fire Snape. He has a free pass to be as cruel as he wants, because he has a cover to keep. Other than the DADA teachers and Hagrid, he is the least experienced, and he is the youngest by far except for, briefly, Lockhard and Lupin. Hogwarts is a site of lifelong trauma for him. Since he is so young, some of his students probably saw or heard about him being publicly humiliated. It also meant that he was initially barely older than some of the students' siblings, so he had to cultivate a very strict persona to control his classroom.

Hence, if you find judging teachers’ conduct in a children’s book a worthwhile pursuit (I don’t think it is, but here we are), Snape should be judged less harshly, not more harshly.

He has no incentive to dial down his cruelty and a wealth of excuses for being cruel, so the cruelty we see in him is the worst he could do, despite being under extreme stress. Yet it is limited to sarcastic remarks, docked points, and mild detentions.

He never lays a hand or a wand on a student, except when pulling Harry out of the Pensieve and then blowing up a jar over his head. Pulling him out was obviously justified - Harry not only violated his privacy and humiliated him, he also risked showing Voldemort classified memories. I believe that if he had wanted the jar to hit Harry, it would have, and he missed on purpose. He never takes advantage of his position over students or his relationship with them, and his punishments are never dangerous.

But he is biased, right?

Not as biased as people think. He has issues with the Trio+Neville, but not other Gryffs, or with students in other houses. He assigns zero house points, including to Slytherins, and his deductions are rarely substantial. He does not bend the rules to get a 1st year student on the Quidditch team, and he does not give 170 last minute points.

Unlike points, grades do matter, and he grades fairly:

According to Lucius in COS, Hermione beat Draco in every test, including potions:

“I would have thought you’d be ashamed that a girl of no wizard family beat you in every exam,” snapped Mr. Malfoy.

Harry expects Snape to grade him fairly, when he tries:

Determined not to give Snape an excuse to fail him this lesson, Harry read and reread every line of instructions on the blackboard at least three times before acting on them.

Harry does fail. This is the Strengthening Solution they work on over two lessons. In the second lesson, Harry isn’t paying attention because he is too busy listening in on Umbridge’s interrogation.

Except the bit where Harry's vial breaks, there is no evidence that he grades unfairly. This was petty, but Hermione is the one who vanished the rest of the potion and prevented him from being able to turn in a second sample.

At the end of the lesson he scooped some of the potion into a flask, corked it, and took it up to Snape’s desk for marking, feeling that he might at last have scraped an E. He had just turned away when he heard a smashing noise; [...] His potion sample lay in pieces on the floor, and Snape was watching him with a look of gloating pleasure. “Whoops,” he said softly. “Another zero, then, Potter…” Harry was too incensed to speak. He strode back to his cauldron, intending to fill another flask and force Snape to mark it, but saw to his horror that the rest of the contents had vanished. “I’m sorry!” said Hermione.

This is after Harry views SWM. Assuming Snape did this on purpose (we don’t know), he might have been vindictive or he might have been putting on a show of it because Voldemort was watching through Harry’s eyes.

Snape appears unfair in the sense that when Harry does poorly, he receives poorer grades than he deserves (in Harry’s opinion), but when Harry does well, he expects to be graded fairly (OOTP29). Specifically, Harry complains that Snape grades only him unfairly, and not Ron or Neville, meaning that the issue is with Harry and not with all Gryffindors (OOTP12+15).

Snape’s bias shows only in that he does not punish his own students for their wrongdoings on-page. However, Slytherins wait until Snape’s back is turned to misbehave, and that includes Draco, Snape’s favorite:

In the ISND incident, Pansy and her friends giggle behind Snape’s back.

Draco flashes his Potter Stinks badges when Snape’s attention is directed elsewhere.

Draco taunts Harry with his “remedial potions?!” jeer when Snape isn’t looking.

Right before the toad incident, Draco was pretending to be badly hurt, and pointed out to Snape that Ron (who was sitting next to him and whom Snape had asked to help Draco) wasn’t helping him properly. Draco lowers his voice to admit he pretends to be hurt partly because it means Snape will have someone help him.

They routinely bother to hide their nastiness, because they expect some sort of sanction. McGonagall sends Slytherin transgressors to Snape for punishment, meaning she expects him to handle them.

Snape also assigns Crabbe and Goyle detentions liberally to make sure they “pass their DADA OWLs”. This is also done to thwart Draco’s attempts to kill Dumbledore, but nobody is surprised at this.

Snape is a very effective teacher and the students don’t all hate him

In Y2, Snape teaches students about Polyjuice Potion, which exceeds the curriculum requirements. Umbridge’s objective is to discredit Dumbledore’s hires, but even she recognizes that his class is advanced. Snape constantly explains to the students what they did wrong, even if Harry calls this bullying. His exam pass rate is high: The trio earns two Es and one O even though Harry and Ron don’t care about the subject. Snape is an effective, albeit very imperfect, teacher (Harry, Ron, and Hermione all earn the same grade in Potions as they do in Charms and Transfiguration; Neville can be deduced to have passed his Potions and his Transfiguration OWLs with an A).

He only admits O students into his NEWT potions class, whereas Minerva is “very pleased” with Harry’s E. This is not as restrictive as it sounds:

This is the composition of Harry’s 6th year Potions class:

The four Slytherins took a table together, as did the four Ravenclaws. This left Harry, Ron, and Hermione to share a table with Ernie.

Everyone but Harry and Ron had earned Os, because they all had the textbook already. That’s at least 10 out of 28* students in Harry’s year who got the highest grade.

*There is some debate about the size of Harry’s year. I’m only counting students who have names.

25 out of 25 eligible students take DADA with Snape in their 6th year:

”Before we start, I want your dementor essays,” said Snape, waving his wand carelessly, so that twenty-five scrolls of parchment soared into the air and landed in a neat pile on his desk.

The missing ones are Crabbe and Goyle, who failed their OWLs, and Abbott, who left.

Neville definitely took DADA with Snape:

Typically, ten minutes into the lesson Hermione managed to repel Neville’s muttered JellyLegs Jinx, a feat that would surely have earned her twenty points for Gryffindor from any reasonable teacher.

Harry whines, but note that Snape doesn’t take points from Neville for muttering, either.

That’s how unbiased students talk about Snape:

“Harry,” Ernie said [...], “didn’t get a chance to speak in Defense Against The Dark Arts this morning. Good lesson, I thought.”

Safety is his top priority

Snape:

stops Ron from hitting Draco

Upon hearing that a student had been taken into the Chamber - he was distressed enough that he had to grab a chair "very hard" (even though his Slytherins alone were not in danger)

is the one who nags Lupin to drink his potion in POA, and not the other way around

runs into the Shrieking Shack to face Black and Lupin on the full moon to save the trio

when the egg starts screaming in GOF, runs toward the sound of someone screaming as though they’re being tortured in the middle of the night

Supplies Umbridge with fake Veritaserum

Orders Harry to release Neville when he thinks Ron and Harry are fighting him

Saves Neville from being choked by Crabbe

Runs toward a woman screaming in the middle of an occlumency lesson (it’s Trelawney getting fired)

Makes an unbreakable vow to protect Draco, keeps it

Runs toward Myrtle’s cries of a murder, not knowing who was hurt or how and what danger he might face there

Steers Hermione+Luna out of harm’s way before the Astronomy Tower battle

After killing Dumbledore, he stops Death Eaters from Cruciating Harry when Harry confronts him. Harry tries to curse Snape, including an attempt at Crucio, yet Snape risks breaking cover to spare Harry pain

He is the one Dumbledore assigned to keep students safe during DH. Snape did not have to stay at Hogwarts at that point, both of them knew Harry won't be attending next year, so this had nothing to do with the original mission, Dumbledore just trusted him this much, and rightly so - nobody is reported to have died during Snape's year as headmaster, which is more than can be said for Dumbledore. Within this, he Sent the silver trio to Hagrid as a form of "punishment" for trying to steal the sword.

Only in one of these cases is Harry even in the picture (that Snape knows of before springing into action). I omitted things like saving Harry in PS. In one case, he leaves Harry to go see what’s going on. Also not included are multiple instances of Snape saving students at no risk to himself or to his cover, by brewing potions or using his Dark Arts expertise (COS, HBP). His attempts to save adult characters are not included either.

“Her [the Doe Patronus’s] presence had meant safety.” (r/harrypotter on reddit)

Note: the writer of this post said it the the title that Snape is the best teacher at Hogwarts, wich i frankly do not agree with as, despite being a master in his subjects and prioritizing safety, Snape comes of as unaproachable to his students wich causes strugling students like Neville to go to peers for help instead of him, wich is far from ideal.