Fic Request/Bunny Farm

[Shepherd]

At no point in the books is there any suggestion that Snape does anything but put a recipe on the board, stalk around spooking the non-Slytherin students while they try to follow it, and set essays between classes.

The belief that Snape's classes amount to no more than brewing from written instructions, being harassed, and getting homework assignments could easily be the result of the incredibly small sample size we have to go by.

Canon has it that classes start the first week of September, with final exams held the first week of June. There are two week breaks for Christmas and Easter. That means there are about 42 weeks worth of classes each year.

According to a Potter fansite, Harry's yearly Potions schedule under Snape looked like this:

1st- 2 single periods and 1 double period.
2nd- 3 single periods.
3rd- 4 single periods.
4th- 2 single periods and 1 double period.
5th- 2 single periods.

15 weekly class periods over 5 years x 42 weeks/year = 630 class periods. Exactly how many of these classes were covered from Harry's PoV? 5? Maybe 10? We've only seen glimpses into maybe 1 or 2% of Harry's Potions classes, and the scenes we do see normally only cover fragments of those individual classes. A sample size like that would get you laughed out of any credible scientific journal.

Anything they learn of potions is from the books, on their own time, in spite of him, as far as I can see.

Ron Weasley got an Exceeds Expectations (the second highest grade possible) in his most hated subject due to self study? I find that to be way less credible than Snape being vaguely competent at doing his job.

Fics that try to make him better usually take it too far the other way, as the mountains of horrible Alan-Rickman-husbando-squee trash will attest.

The straw man fallacy occurs in the following pattern of argument:
Person 1 asserts proposition X.
Person 2 argues against a superficially similar proposition Y, falsely, as if an argument against Y were an argument against X.

Person 1 asserts "Snape is probably competent at his job".
Person 2 argues "bad fics make Snape seem awesome", as if "bad fics make Snape seem awesome" were an argument against "Snape is probably competent at his job".

If you want to go for that kind of argument, I can point to all the bad fics that have Snape purposefully sabotaging all non-Slytherins so nobody can meet the NEWT qualifications to become an Auror, thereby making it easier for Voldemort and his Death Eaters to take over. That is like the time someone on another site wrote a post about how much they hate Dumbledore for all the horrible things he's done to Harry in the fanfic he'd read. Bad fanon has no place in canon arguments.