You should have seen me in my first year
Every summer, I get a new pack of first-years. They stare at me, wide-eyed, afraid, after only one lesson, after I give them my first sermon, after I humiliate one or two of them, after I make sure right from the start I am far from easy-going. I like their fear, although if I am honest with myself I know it is second-best to respect – the one thing that is usually withheld from me.
I wasn't born a fear-inspiring man – it was hard work to become what I am today. You should have seen me in my first year – insecure, stuttering, hoping to achieve at least an acceptable standard in the profession I had not chosen for myself.
I never wanted to be a teacher. Driven into the shelter of my autistic cravings by the contempt of my fellow creatures, I suppose I wanted to 'show them all' – I suppose I wanted to be a hero of some kind. Having utterly failed any kind of heroic achievement in the context of – well, never mind. After my world, my faith and my good name were destroyed, I had to be grateful for the opportunity of making a decent living in any kind of safe environment. I agreed to teach Potions at Hogwarts.
Potions – you will never hear me say it in front of my feebleminded students – even for the smartest this knowledge would be harmful – but, let me be honest, potions are utterly boring. Especially when I was young, when I was teaching for the first time, I was still striving for the heroic, the dramatic – and the peacefully bubbling cauldron, beautiful and fascinating though I might call it later, often drove me to despair. The students sensed this. They sensed I would rather be out there, becoming the man I had always wanted to be, rather than stirring a cauldron. They felt I was vulnerable – vulnerable through my lack of love for my subject, vulnerable through the losses I had recently suffered, vulnerable for being a deficient resurrection of my former self. And they thrived on this.
For deficient I was, and they seemed to smell it like a hound can smell fear. I was barely out of school, barely out of my Death Eater adventures, and I had not really left behind the boy who was turned upside down and sexually abused in public by James Potter. And of course, some of my students knew. They had heard the story from their elder siblings, cousins or whoever, and shared it with their classmates. I remained the 'boy who had been –' Never mind. They knew, and I knew they knew. Deep in my heart, I felt the students must despise me, and so they despised me.
They ceaselessly talked in class. They talked back at me. They upended their cauldrons and messed about with valuable or even dangerous ingredients. They neglected their homework. They even stole and vandalised my possession. Most of all, they showed me they cared as little for my subject as I, in fact, did – and as little for me.
Of course I punished them. I took off housepoints – only to find the four houses in competition who would make me zero them first. I gave them detention and extra work – which they did as carelessly and as badly as their homework. I tried to humiliate them by showing off their ignorance – and found classes laughing at me, not the offender. Once, a student said in my face: "Snape, you have no authority." "That's Professor Snape to you," I replied lamely, only to harvest another laugh.
I was hoping for a new start in the subject I really wanted to teach – a dramatic, heroic subject which all students were taking seriously due to its sheer importance – unlike potions, I should say. It was of no use – I was never awarded that post, but had to remain in the dungeon I had learned to hate so much. Desperate, I even went to Minerva for advice, for she appeared to have a monopoly on authority. She told me what I already knew – that I should punish disobedient students, that I should be strict and make my point clear. She said things would become better over time – and they did.
Maybe all it took was to reach the point of really, truly hating my students. Maybe all it took was the determination to make their lives miserable. Over time, I learned to hit students where it hurt – verbally, of course, which can be much more painful than a physical blow. I learned to look for weak points in them and to exploit these shamelessly. The more I was ready to seriously hurt them, the better my life became. Being kind to a few chosen favourites even improved my situation, for all students suddenly strove to achieve, or to keep, the status of a favourite. Unkindness and injustice had achieved what I desired most – authority. I became notorious, and I liked it that way. These days, many first-year students are afraid of me before they meet me, inheriting the fear from their elder siblings. Even my subject has profited in many ways from my treatment of the students. Everybody takes potions seriously; nobody believes it is a trifle they can afford to fail anymore.
I like it that way. Teaching students to fear me was a hard piece of work over many years, and I do not regret a single detention, a single student's tear in my class. They are little monsters. If you do not show them who is the boss, they master you, and I never again want to be mastered.