Notes:

This is an analysis of the BOOKS.

I welcome analytical discussions and counterpoints as long as it's not redundant or just pure hate like "Snape is still a bully and if you're defending him you're terrible too! REEEE"

This happens on every Snape post and it doesn't really contribute to any meaningful discussion. If you don't like him that's fine you don't need to perform hate on every post that enjoys a character that you don't, that's like basic fandom etiquette.

If it's too long for you to read and process in it's entirety, that's fine, YOU DO NOT NEED TO READ OR ENGAGE WITH THE POST. Commenting without reading everything I've written is a little strange and just makes it confusing for everyone involved. It degrades the discussion as it forces me to repeat points I've already addressed. Overall that makes me think you just want to insert your opinion without knowing if it's even valid or relevant to what I'm trying to say.

References/citations for counterpoints are also appreciated for everyone's convenience as I would like to avoid bumping into headcannon arguments and people throwing around buzzwords. Remember that NOT EVERY HARRY POTTER FAN HAS READ THE BOOKS because it is that big of a fandom. Some only watched the movies or only read fanfiction.

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I have a theory (meta?) on why Snape is so intense when it comes to teaching and disciplining his students.

We all know he's strict and can definitely be vindictive, but his approach to teaching seems almost personal. It genuinely frustrates him when students don’t take it seriously or do other's learning for them (I'm looking at you, Hermione).

Obviously, Potions is already a dangerous subject to begin with. It’s the magical equivalent of a chemistry class, after all. Any decent professor would prefer to have a crying student than a dead one. So a professor who wants to teach and keep their students safe would be naturally strict about any of them not paying attention or playing around in a dangerous class. It's the kind of strictness I think Hagrid would have benefitted from and the kind professors like Madam Hooch and McGonagall, both of which who are also teaching very dangerous subjects, display.

But I think there’s something more to say about Snape's pedagogy and punishments than his being strict or harsh.

Domesticity of Potions and Snape being feminine-coded

If you think about it, Potions is actually a pretty domestic (and in a sense, feminized) discipline. It has a lot in common with cooking or baking—precise measurements, careful timing, managing heat, and knowing how different components interact. It's a very muggle-friendly subject because it does not strictly need magic to learn (it does require magic at some point to be effective but the process/reactions are something you can learn without using magic).

In a similar way, Snape is a very feminine-coded character. His patronus for one is female, he is friendly with women more than he is with men, he tends to have a soft spot for women, he takes his mother's name, and has parallels with the Lady of the Lake for his role in Harry getting the sword.

And then consider Snape’s background. It makes sense why he has a strong appreciation for skills magically-raised children so often lack. He grew up in a family in abject poverty, likely helping his mother with domestic labor. He probably washed dishes and laundry by hand, cleaned up after meals, and maybe even learned how to gut fish or prepare food while his drunkard father demanded his meal like the typical, patriarchal-kind father/husband. Unlike most Hogwarts students, especially rich pure-blood children, Snape would have learned the same basic, practical skills that muggle children born in a similar financial bracket to his family would know.

Magical children and "muggle" chores

In the Wizarding World, we know that children, especially rich pure-bloods, don’t grow up doing basic household tasks that muggle children do. House-elves are so common that even Hogwarts uses them, so children like Draco or Neville likely never had to lift a finger in their households, much less in the kitchen. Even with the Weasleys who are considered "poor", Molly appears to be doing most of the work, which must be hell to do for a woman with 7 children.

But Muggle-raised children? Especially from working-class families? Like Snape, they probably did help with cooking or at least picked up some basic skills at home. In the Muggle world, even young kids know how to cook simple meals or help their parents in the kitchen by washing dishes or cleaning up after eating.

Potions as a way to instill discipline and independence

One of his first words to Harry's class shows his dislike for undisciplined use of magic.

"As there is little foolish wand-waving here, many of you will hardly believe this is magic..." (PS 8)

Snape isn’t just being a harsh teacher for the sake of it—he’s also trying to teach and maintain basic and practical skills in his students that they should have learned to begin with at home and likely feel like they don't need to do in Hogwarts because house-elves are there to clean up after them and feed them. Unlike the more masculine, flashy, aggressively physical nature of the likes of Quidditch and Duelling, Potions teaches and maintains the kind of patience and discipline all children should have. It’s not about brute force or waving a wand and getting instant results.

We see magically-raised students like Neville and Ron (who come from old wizarding families) struggle with following the simple instructions Snape gives them like chopping ingredients properly. Neville even brings his PET TOAD in class, which proves he doesn't take it as seriously as he should (keep in mind he's already a THIRD year at this point, he's had two years of Snape). This makes sense because of how most magical children view magic.

Bias against "muggle" work and how it connects to blood supremacy

Death Eaters, who typically start as magically-raised children biased against muggles, grow up thinking magic makes them superior. To them, they don’t need to learn "muggle" skills because magic can do everything for them. This is true even for students who aren't necessarily blood supremacists, like Ron. They believe magic can take care of everything, something that muggles are "missing out on" essentially.

Snape, as a professor, and as someone who had grown up around blood-supremacists, knows that that kind of reliance on magic can make people careless, arrogant, and—ironically—more vulnerable, specifically to this kind of rhetoric. So when he drills into his students the importance of following the instructions he gives them, maybe he’s also trying to instill another lesson: that magic isn’t everything and just knowing it doesn't necessarily make you superior to those without it. He’s instilling discipline, patience, and a sense of responsibility to children when dealing with magic—things a lot of his students likely didn't have a lot of opportunity to learn at home.

Snape's punishments (manual labor)

Think about the way he punishes students—how he uses icky manual labor. He makes them gather ingredients from animals (GoF 14, 18; HBP 9, 11), scrub bedpans in the hospital wing without magic (PoA 9), and do other menial tasks that resemble the kind of chores a child would learn at home—like cleaning, gutting fish or chicken for cooking, or washing laundry and dishes. He’s forcing them to develop basic, practical skills that muggle children their age would already have, which they, like most magically-raised children, would otherwise ignore or find useless.

Possible counterpoint: Why does Harry struggle?

Now, why does Harry still struggle in Potions when we know he’s had to do chores in the past? Shouldn’t he, in theory, have a better grasp of these basic skills than his magically-raised classmates?

Well, let’s be real—Harry isn’t exactly described as great at cooking. What we see him do at most is watch the stove to make sure Dudley’s birthday bacon didn’t burn (PS 2). The Dursleys might have made him cook in theory, but that doesn’t mean he was carefully measuring out ingredients and creating high quality meals. He was likely doing the bare minimum to avoid punishment. This is something we've observed him doing even in Hogwarts.

Second, and arguably the bigger issue: his relationship to Snape himself.

Harry is highly emotionally driven. We see this all the time. His ability to perform well in a subject is often tied to his emotional state. And Snape, from day one, treated him unpleasantly. It’s not surprising that Harry would struggle to focus or feel motivated in his class. When you deeply dislike someone, following their instructions to the letter—especially when they seem to be waiting for you to fail—becomes a lot harder (and I would know because I hate being told what to do lol).

When we remove Snape from the equation? Harry excels. In Half-Blood Prince, when he follows Snape’s own written instructions in Slughorn’s class (without realizing they’re Snape’s), he essentially becomes the class' top student. This means that the problem was never that Harry couldn’t follow directions—it’s that he wouldn’t or simply wasn’t motivated enough to pay attention, because he resented the person giving them.

I don’t think a lot of people consider this perspective when they talk about Snape’s teaching methods aside from the “he’s a mean bully” perspective. Yes, he’s mean. Yes, he can be unfair sometimes. But I genuinely think part of his strictness comes from a place of wanting his students to actually learn something beyond “silly wand-waving”.

And I think that speaks a lot to his character and why so many people end up disliking him more than they do arguably worse characters or professors—because he pulls us away from the fantasy and reminds us of real life. Just look at how people feel about Umbridge. It's for a similar reason. Many children grow up resenting strict authority figures, whether it’s teachers reprimanding them or chores imposed by adults. From a child’s perspective, Snape’s strictness and punishments feel harsh and unfair when we're trying to enjoy a world with magic, creating negative associations of real life experiences of strict authority figures. But from an adult viewpoint, his actions—while often unpleasant—aren't entirely unjustified, as they stem from enforcing discipline and safety to children he is forced to teach.

References

Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone. Chapter 8. The Potions Master.

Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone. Chapter 2. The Vanishing Glass.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Chapter 14. The Unforgivable Curses.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Chapter 18. The Weighing of Wands.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Chapter 9. The Half-Blood Prince.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Chapter 11. Hermione's Helping Hand.

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Chapter 9. Grim Defeat.