Professor Severus Snape is Harry Potter's most hated teacher, and the one that actively harasses him the most. Maybe there's a reason, though ...

From the very beginning, Professor Snape harasses Harry. He teases Harry for his stardom and accuses him of basking in the glory. In book 1, Harry and his friends suspect Snape of jinxing Harry during a Quidditch match and chasing the Sorcerer's Stone. As it turns out, Snape was trying to SAVE Harry, and he's the one that protected the stone.

Still, in the subsequent years, Snape continues to harass Harry, even to the point of actively attacking Sirius in the end of book 3. You learn that Snape was a member of the Death Eaters, one of Voldemort's SWAT team and was forgiven. Why is he so against Harry?

In Book 5, you finally start to learn some answers. Snape is a member of the Order of the Phoenix, one of the band that works against Voldemort. He is instructed to help train Harry to resist the dreams he is having. When Harry instead manages to get into some of Snape's memories, he learns that Snape was an awkward, quiet kid himself, and that Harry's father and friends would tease him mercilessly, just for being him. Harry feels very badly that his father was that arrogant, to simply harass a kid for being different. And he begins to understand why Snape is, even all these years later, hostile towards Harry.

The name Severus Snape is pretty clear that it's not friendly. Severus is almost exactly like "severe" which is what you never want a teacher to be. And "Snape" is both like "Snake", with negative connotations, and "Snap", which is what a mean teacher would do at students.

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This article is written by Lisa Shea.