[HPforGrownups] Re: Snape in love (and Imperio curse)

[Amanda Lewanski]

No: HPFGUIDX 3807

Jinx wrote:

> OTOH, we are talking Snape here, and he's just the obsessive type to hold
> grudges for a very long time indeed.  I don't know if he'd be mad at Lily,
> but certainly it'd be one more thing to blame James for.

Okay, this is a bit of personal history for those of you who have not had
experience with this sort of pit-bull emotional baggage and who think Snape is
a non-realistic extreme mental case. Grudges *can* and do last that long. It
takes an exceptional act of will and lots of mental energy, and a tie to a
very strong emotion. Example: My brother died at age 7 (I was 4). My mom's
brother and family were at our house a month or two later. We were all
listening to the last (audio) tape we'd made with Kelley in it, and my cousin
(about 13) was flipping through a Reader's Digest instead of paying attention.
This infraction, ignoring Kelley's voice, infuriated my father. After a long,
perceivable but (according to Mom) undivertable slow burn, my dad threw them
all out of the house. We were forbidden any contact with them. This meant no
calls, no visiting (at least that Dad heard about), no present exchanges, etc.
And this lasted until my late high school years, when things thawed.

My father was not unbalanced. My father was not abusive. But my father was
highly intelligent with debatable "people skills" and did have problems with
handling deep emotions like that grief. He sublimated it off onto my uncle and
family, and it took twelve or fifteen years for us to be able to speak their
names aloud.

The point is, grudges can be held and cherished until they are grudges for
their own sake, if there's enough emotion behind the original trigger. The
trigger itself may be nothing. But Snape's character, and his longstanding
hatred of James, seems totally believable to me. Not common, not reasonable,
but realistic.

--Amanda