The Start Of A Very Bad Year
There must be a bad year ahead if you're only in the door and already thinking about escape.
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The one advantage of being a teacher, though Professor Snape as he stalked into his classroom and intimidated the new crop of first years, is that you only have to put up with them for seven years and then you never see them again. Even the most obnoxious ones, he thought, scanning the room for trouble-makers, idiots and praise-the-heavens-if-there-is-one a student with some feel for the subject, leave or get expelled eventually. As soon as potions became an option, most of idiots dropped it - hard subjects, subjects that need more than luck and require some logic and thought are always despised by the dim. Really, when you add in holidays, you barely spend any real time with individual students.
He stormed out ahead of the students when class finished. The stench of a badly-followed experiment still sullied the room and he needed fresh air. He immediately took a wide side-step to let Professor MacGonagle into the hallway. She didn't even smile. The problem with teaching was that you were stuck with the other professors. All of them except for the teacher in charge of Defense Against the Dark Arts. He'd watched an ever greater collection of idiots take over the post and bail out after a single measly year. Morons. Of course, it was one of the flashier subjects, which made it a great shame that the students were being so short-changed.
It had taken Snape a few years to get his feet as a teacher - it's not something that comes easily to anyone. Public speaking, crowd control and counselling, they are the roles of a teacher. Fly-by-night DA teachers never even picked up the basics before moving on. Why couldn't Dumbledore hire someone competent? This latest guy, Quirrell, would dissolve if some real dark arts ever came his way. He's a one-trick troll.
Professor Binns wafted through the wall on his prescribed daily route. Part of Snape's nose tingled, as he failed to completely avoid the ghost that never paid attention to the world around him. Another problem with teaching was the fact that your longest and most adult conversations took place with students, who had been at least ten years his junior when he started and the age gap only got bigger. It was no wonder that everyone in the school was so childish when the professors never got together to discuss philosophy or poetry. Everyone just assumed that their own subject, being superior to all others, fostered jealously in the other teachers and precluded any common ground.
Thank the heavens for holidays and the ability to engage with adults and catch up on the crossword.