tbh i agree that rowling bungled snape’s redemption arc - i think she got too used to using him as a red herring narrative hook (esp considering one of her major cliffhangers is built around snape’s inscrutability) and struggled to find a way to competently answer the question of “is snape good or bad” and did it in a way so dissatisfying people still have heated opinions about his redemption. i’ve said this before, but his redemption is ultimately badly planned because it’s presented to the reader in the past tense - we never really see him redeeming himself in the narrative as it’s happening, we only get the story of it from his memories as it’s already happened. that makes it immediately less vivid to the reader and takes away a lot of the power his redemption arc could have had, had we seen it in motion.
so yeah, i agree rowling bungled that one. but where i disagree is that snape’s narrative spot in the books could have been done if he had just given them too much homework/too many detentions. like. there’s other teachers who do that in the books. snape did have to be extra mean/nasty because his job in the story is to be a central antagonist and obstacle to harry & co in a way mcgonagall or trewlany can’t be. he is the Mean Teacher and no, i don’t think that can be accomplished necessarily by simply giving them detentions.
take book one. the central tension of that book (as a kid - as an adult, it’s definitely easier to see through, but considering book one is the 100% meant to be a children’s book, we can leave that aside for now) is that harry & co know - they just Know! - that snape is the one trying to get on the third floor and to the stone. i don’t know that they would be as convinced it was snape if he just gave them extra homework or more detentions - they have to seriously believe that snape is nasty enough to be actively trying to steal the stone. there’s a reason the plot twist works well in that book: we’re given two teachers, one innocuous and seemingly inoffensive, and one obviously, in-your-face Nasty, and we’re told that one of them is doing Bad Things. obvs kids (and the characters!) believe it’s the in-your-face Nasty teacher, so the twist when it’s the innocuous teacher instead is much stronger! and it wouldn’t be as strong if snape was just blandly annoying or strict - he needs to be Mean.
and that’s true for a lot of the strength of snape as a narrative hook and red herring. because harry and co believe so strongly in snape’s unerring meanness, it’s a lot easier to hinge plot twists on snape doing unexpected things. and it’s part of the reason that his redemption even works at all, despite the bungled set-up: we’ve been told and seen that snape is Mean and Hurtful all this time, so it’s an effective twist to see that he IS actually one of the good guys, and DID actually work against voldemort. even the follow-up that he did all of that for love - something harry & co would never have suspected as a motivation for him precisely because of how Mean he is, which means they (and the reader) couldn’t have predicted snape’s behavior - adds to the twist.
idk man. that kind of narrative power just isn’t going to be accessed by a teacher who just gives extra detentions. he needs to be Mean and Hurtful and Heartless. the characters (and the readers) need to have inscrutable proof that he is an asshole... because it makes it that much bigger of a shock when it turns out he’s doing the Right Thing anyway, you know?
and since you brought up draco - in many ways, he is a minor version of snape, but he also fulfills a different narrative role than snape. until book six, we aren’t actually ever relying on draco for narrative tension. his role in the story is to be the rival, its own obstacle role and one that is meant to highlight the best parts of the protagonist and their values. like we joke about narrative foils a lot on tumblr, but that’s definitely draco’s role for most of the books - he is meant to be the antithesis of harry in many ways, and showcases harry’s positive qualities as a protagonist. draco’s role becomes more complex as the books become more complex, but ultimately he is less about providing narrative tension for the reader and more about providing thematic tension as a foil to harry.
i wouldn’t argue that rowling portrayed all of this in an indefensible way or that she couldn’t have done it better (in many ways i think she could have!). but i do think that the (usually adult reader) anger over snape’s attitude and treatment of the students is in part because the narrative necessity it is to underline his particular position in the books and the effective way (yes! effective!) it’s used to provide particular narrative plot twists goes entirely unexamined. (idk about you, but little!me was 100% shocked that snape was not The Bad Guy at the end of book one. i never saw quirrell coming, and it was one of the first times anyone had pulled that particular narrative twist on me.) my point in the original post is that we also have to examine characters as they work in the books - and that snape’s Meanness is a trope and narrative hook as much as it is anything else. and the kids in the book largely see him as The Nasty Teacher and obstacle that he is, not as like... a traumatizing abuser.
