Oh, excellent point. I'm not at all ready to say that JKR doesn't see him as a fully 3-dimensional character because, as you say, he's more than that in canon. Not only do we have these scenes but he gives advice that is helpful even if it's ignored. I was going with the idea that he's horrible, period, mostly because this is what the premise of the post I was reacting to was. I swing back and forth about how I think JKR sees the characters. Snape's pensieve scene clearly invokes sympathy since Harry and Lily both react sympathetically. I wonder more about Draco's many humiliations since they're more often brushed off and have no fallout. But this could totally be a set-up for something later. I feel sympathetic in the ferret scene and the B&B scene and I feel I'm reacting to stuff that's there in the text for that reason, but not everyone reads those scenes the same way I do.

I figure also that a character like Snape has got to have grabbed her interest and once he has her interest he has to start to grow. More than one review, by contrast, pointed out how one-note (and therefore tiresome) Draco has become as a character which would indicate they feel that the author, too, isn't interested in him. But again that could easily be a set up and explained by Harry's limited pov.

No, I've had this teacher in post-graduate studies and he's pretty hopeless the

Heh. Yeah, I felt like I was really stretching even with that. I was like, "Well, at least get him away from children. Maybe college...no...okay post-graduate?" I was literally thinking he might attract the kind of masochistic students who like teachers who demean them, though maybe that's more of a dance teacher thing. In general, though, I don't think he's a teacher at all and definitely would be happier in the lab.