Bully!Sirius, "Coach" Twins, Snape's Grudge, and Stoned!Harry

[ssk7882]

No: HPFGUIDX 43316

People were astonished that I thought the twins behaved like bullies,
and so I provided a list of the traits that researchers in the field
have found over the years to typify people who bully in school.

Irene read it, blinked, and then said:

> Is it just me, or did anyone else at this point felt compelled to 
> say "Hello, Sirius Black!" ?

Oh, excellent.  A new topic!  

Well...er.  Ish.

Yes.  It does describe Sirius rather well, I think, and I do believe 
that this is one of the main reasons that so many readers *do* jump 
to that conclusion that Sirius must have been a "popular bully" back 
in his schooldays.  I touched briefly on this in that same post, 
actually, when while talking about the twins' dismissive manner of 
speaking of those they have designated outsiders, I tossed off as a 
quick parenthetical aside:

> (It is also, I might point out, very similar to the sneering tone 
> with which Sirius Black always speaks of Severus Snape -- a 
> character touch which has led more than one reader to deduce that 
> Sirius himself might have been a bit of a bully back in his 
> schooldays).

Indeed, I think that it is difficult for many people to read Sirius' 
sneers about "slimy, oily, greasy-haired" Snape in GoF, for example, 
and not see it as a quite recognizable depiction of the popular 
charismatic bully, all grown up and still utterly lacking in any 
particular sympathy for his adolescent victim.  His derisive snort 
and sneering of "it served him right" in the Shrieking Shack also 
contributes to this impression, I think, as does his allowing Snape's 
head to bang on the ceiling as they make their way out of the shack.  
By then, of course, Sirius has perfectly valid reasons to be feeling 
more than a mite bit peevish about Snape -- I'd feel pretty darned 
cranky too if someone had gloated to me about handing me over to the 
dementors to be Kissed and wouldn't even *listen* to the proof of my 
innocence -- but all the same, I do think that these character 
touches combine to suggest a certain lack of maturity and 
perspective, as well as a weak balk instinct -- a refusal to respect 
others' vulnerabilities -- all of which are traits strongly 
associated with those inclined to bullying.  It is revelatory 
behavior in much the same way that the twins' stepping on Malfoy et 
al at the end of GoF is revelatory behavior, IMO, and I do think that 
it serves to suggest certain things about Sirius' inclinations and 
tendencies, about his character.


Irene:

> I read the whole huge thread on bullies in one go, and it helped me 
> to answer a question that bothered me for a long time: why it seems 
> widely accepted opinion among Snapefans that Sirius was a "popular 
> bully" when canon gives us nothing to support that? 

Hmmm.  Well, I'm also one of those Snapefans who definitely received 
the impression that Snape was hassled by James' group of friends, and 
particularly by Sirius, back in the day (we few, we happy few...), 
and I think that the extent to which Sirius matches the classic bully 
profile very likely *does* have much to do with the popularity of 
that reading.  I don't know if I'd say that there is nothing to 
support this reading in the canon, though.  

<waits for groans and jeers to die down>

No, no, seriously.  A while back, Dicentra accused those who came by 
this reading of suffering from "fanfic contamination," and I have to 
say that this did strike me as a rather odd accusation, maybe just 
because I've read all the wrong fanfic.  Most of what I've read has 
not gone particularly far in portraying the Marauders as Snape's 
boyhood tormentors.

No, I'd say that those who felt, while reading the books, that Sirius 
was a charismatic bully in school and Snape a creepy outcast are 
suffering far less from "fanfic contamination" than they are 
from "real life contamination."  And from "genre convention 
contamination."  And from "comedic trope contamination."  Not to 
mention from...well, from what I guess we might just call "canon 
contamination."  <g>

Sirius *does* fit the personality profile of those who bully in 
school.  Snape, on the other hand, struck me even from the very first 
book as a classic victim-bully. Most of the direct canonical support 
that one can cite to defend this reading comes from PoA and GoF, but 
I have to say that I found it an instinctive reading of the character 
long before PoA.  I was reading Snape as the grown-up incarnation of 
the creepy unpopular kid from the start.  PoA merely confirmed that 
reading for me.

Genre conventions came strongly into play there, as did comedic 
trope.  The nasty vindictive sarcastic schoolteacher who everyone 
knows just *had* to have been unpopular as a child is one of the 
classic comic figures of the school story.  Even Buffy the Vampire 
Slayer, usually quite sympathetic to the "unpopular," has made use 
of it in its depiction of the reverted-to-teenagerhood Principal 
Snyder.  It's a classic.  

(I'd also like to suggest here, BTW, the possibility that the use of 
this type as a "figure of fun" -- ie, a target of aggressive humor --
  may well be slightly more common, as well as more socially 
acceptable, in the UK than in the US.  Here in the US, having 
been "unpopular" as a child often carries with it a certain cache of 
moral virtue.  "Popular" can be a bit of a bad word in some circles 
in the US, I think, because we tend to assume that all schoolboy 
targets are ipso facto innocent victims.  I don't know, though, if 
this is necessarily as common an assumption in the UK.  When I was 
living in Wales, for example, I frequently heard "you really weren't 
very popular in school, were you?" used as a snarky but light-hearted 
way of indicating to someone that their behavior had become 
obnoxious.  So there may well be some cultural differences that 
come into play when it comes to our emotional responses to textual 
indications that Good Guys like James and Sirius used to pick on 
Snape quite a lot -- very much, in fact, as I suspect there may be 
some trans-Atlantic issues that come into play when we talk about
the twins.)

Snape really does fit this comic type, I think, as well as matching 
up rather closely, IMO, to our real world understanding of unpopular 
students who grow up to take out all of their adolescent frustrations 
on the world at large.  And you don't have to look all that deeply 
into the text to find evidence of who Snape himself likely perceived 
as his childhood tormentor, do you?  Who does he hate?  Whose 
athletic prowess makes him absolutely snarl?  Whose child does he go 
out of his way to victimize?  

I do think that it's a fairly instinctive reading of PS/SS, and PoA 
merely confirms the reader's suspicions.  It not only gives us the 
pr*nk, it also gives us Sirius Black and the Marauder's Map.  And it 
also, as Irene points out, gives us a direct and authorially 
suggested parallelism between James and Sirius and the twins.

Irene wrote:

> And after some soul-searching I think it's a projection of Fred and 
> George pair to James and Sirius.  As was established, it is 
> possible to make a solid case of the twins being popular bullies 
> based on the canon (solid case does not mean the prosecution is 
> necessarily going to win it, mind). Is there some basis to 
> establish similarity between the two pairs? Several characters 
> comment on how the twins remind them about James and Sirius: 
> McGonagall, Madame Rosmerta and Hagrid, if I'm not mistaken. So it
> is possible the canon works on some subconscious level and makes 
> Sirius "guilty by association".

<nods>

Yes.  The text does go out of its way to lead us to draw that 
generational parallel, I think, not only through the comments of 
McGonagall, Rosmerta and Hagrid, but also (and I think perhaps even 
more powerfully) through the Marauder's Map, which serves as a 
physical and tangible link between generations: both the literal 
generations of Father James and Son Harry, and also the "school 
generations" of soon-to-be-leaving-school twins and soon-to-be-
upperclassman Harry.  "Noble men," Fred says of MWPP, "working 
tirelessly to help a new generation of law-breakers."

The twins' bestowal of the map upon Harry is not merely a gift.  It 
is a *legacy.*  "We bequeath it to you," George says, and he is only 
half-joking.  With the conferral of the map come certain rights and 
responsibilities above and beyond that of simple mischief-making.  It 
is not only to be used for selfish purposes.  Later on in the 
series, the twins will borrow it back from Harry briefly in order to 
provide the supplies for a party for Gryffindor House as a whole.  
This is the twins' social function, their self-perceived duty, and 
the Map is an essential tool in fulfilling that function.  
By "bequeathing" it to Harry, they have effectively declared him as
their heir apparent.  When they are gone, bucking up the morale of 
the House in this fashion will be Harry's job.

Tabouli has written of the twins' role "coaches," whose job is to 
lead the House, in part, through bolstering the Gryffindors' morale.  
Abigail also touched on this aspect of the twins' role, when she 
wrote about the scene at the end of GoF, in which Harry exhorts 
the twins to serve a similar function for the WW as a whole.  In this 
respect, Harry's bestowal of his prize winnings onto the twins 
parallels the bequeathment of the Marauder's Map.  Just as the twins 
are the defenders of Gryffindor House, so Harry is the defender of 
the Wizarding World; just as the twins inspire and moralize
members of their House through their activities, so Harry inspires 
and moralizes the WW by simple virtue of his continued survival.  
Just as the twins have appointed Harry to step into their shoes as 
they leave school, so Harry then appoints the twins to serve *his* 
function in the adult world while he himself is prevented from doing 
so fully by virtue of still being a schoolboy.

So the Map is a legacy item.  It is not merely a useful device, but 
also a symbol.  It represents a specific social function.  With its 
conferral come duties and obligations. It is passed down across the 
generations. It bridges the gap between the twins and Harry.  It 
bridges the gap between Harry and his father.  And in doing all of 
that, I think that it also links Sirius and James with Fred and 
George in a very powerful way.

The Map's *explicit* function is to serve as an aid to "Magical 
Mischief-Makers."  Its implicit function is to serve as a tool to 
those who help to bolster the morale of the House.  But what else 
does the Map do?  

-----------------

"As though an invisible hand was writing upon it, words appeared on 
the smooth surface of the map.

"'Mr Moony presents his compliments to Professor Snape, and begs him 
to keep his abnormally large nose out of other people's business'

"Snape froze.  Harry stared, dumbstruck, at the message.  But the map 
didn't stop there.  More writing was appearing beneath the first.

"'Mr Prongs agrees with Mr Moony, and would like to add that 
Professor Snape is an ugly git'

"It would have been very funny if the situation hadn't been so 
serious.  And there was more...

"'Mr Padfoot would like to register his astonishment that an idiot 
like that ever became a Professor.'

"Harry closed his eyes in horror.  When he'd opened them, the map had 
had its last word.

"'Mr Wormtail bids Professor Snape good day, and advises him to wash 
his hair, the slimeball.'"

--------------------


An implicit part of the social function that the map represents is 
the targetting of the designated enemy for mockery and abuse.  

Small wonder that Snape "freezes!"  I think that it is safe to assume 
that this unpleasant little encounter with the map is serving as a 
most unwelcome revisitation of the past for him, just as his journey 
to the Shrieking Shack later on in the book will have nightmare 
overtones of a revisitation of the night of the infamous pr*ank.

The Map does not seem to be a Riddle's Diary.  It does not chat with 
Harry.  It does not, for example, allow him to have virtual 
conversations with a kind of ghost of his father as a teenager.  It 
does not seem anywhere close to fully sentient. It does occasionally 
show signs of self-awareness -- as when it reveals to Harry the 
secret of getting past the statue -- but it would seem to do so only 
when this is a necessary adjunct to its actual function.

So the implication to my mind is that insulting Snape *is* in some 
sense a part of the Map's function.  It is part and parcel of the 
social role which the Map represents, the same social role that the 
Twins have occupied within House Gryffindor: they defend and build up 
the morale of "us" in part by levelling their aggression against 
designated members of "them."  

This is what the Map does.  It is what the twins do.  I find it very 
difficult to imagine that it was not something that James and Sirius 
used to do as well.

Certainly, I personally find it simply impossible to read this scene 
without coming to the conclusion that the map's little zingers are in 
fact *precisely* the sort of verbal abuse with which James and his 
friends used to taunt Snape back in their schooldays.  The Map's 
insults are fundamentally childish.  They are *schoolboy* 
insults: "abnormally large nose," "ugly git," "idiot," 
"slimeball," "advises him to wash his hair."  

They are also precisely the sort of insults that get levelled against 
creepy unpopular kids by their socially superior adversaries.  The 
focus on physical detail is particularly suggestive of this dynamic.  
We know that Snape is not, and has never been, an attractive fellow.  
Sirius, on the other hand, was "handsome," handsome enough that even 
a thirteen-year-old boy can identify him as such from a photograph.  
Sirius and James were popular not only with the student body, but 
also with their teachers and other adults.  Hagrid, Rosmerta, 
Flitwick and McGonagall all speak of their schoolboy incarnations 
with undeniable fondness, and in Rosmerta and McGonagall's lines, I 
detect hints of attraction as well.  James and Sirius would seem to 
have been attractive to women.  We have never seen any sign of Snape 
exercising an equal romantic appeal, or for that matter, *any* 
romantic appeal.  (Er, well, within the *canon,* that is.)  Nor have 
we seen any signs that he was at all well-liked by his teachers or 
other adults. Indeed, Snape's indignation, even some twenty years 
after the fact, over the outcome of the prank strongly suggests that 
from *his* perspective, at any rate, there had been strong bias in 
play.  

So yes.  I do think that it is quite strongly suggested by the canon 
that Snape was often taunted by James and his friends back in their 
schooldays, as well as that they held the upper hand in terms of 
social popularity.  Everything about the Map's insults speaks to me 
of just such a dynamic.

In fact, I see this dynamic as rather central to the endgame of PoA, 
and I believe that it is precisely to establish it firmly in the 
reader's mind that JKR included the encounter with the Map in the 
same chapter that also first hints at the prank -- the chapter that 
is entitled "Snape's Grudge."

The chapter title is significant, IMO.  Grudge-holding is indeed 
Snape's great hamartia, but one does not generally refer to someone 
as "holding a grudge" if they did not have an at least somewhat 
legitimate cause for grievance in the first place.  Snape has a sense 
of grievance that he is just not letting go; that he is not letting 
it go is a problem, but that he should ever have developed it in the 
first place is not; and I think that the encounter with the Map is 
written into this scene not merely to serve a comedic function, but 
also to lead the reader to this understanding.  What is eating away 
at Snape is not mere envy, and it is not mere malice.  It is a sense 
of thwarted *justice,* and one that derives from rather more than the 
fact that Sirius Black once tried to feed him to a werewolf, that 
nobody was ever expelled for this, and that Snape himself wound up 
with an utterly unwanted debt (whether "official" life-debt or debt 
of honor) to a hated rival as a result.  The prank may have been 
the most blatant and egregious *manifestation* of what Snape is 
holding a grudge over, but it is hardly the entire story, and I think 
that the encounter with the Map -- and what it implies about Snape's 
past relationship with attractive, popular, athletic, brilliant 
Sirius and James -- is there to show us a bit more of the story.  It 
serves to define somewhat more clearly the social context in which 
the prank took place.  Like Sirius' sneering, it compells us to read 
the prank not as an isolated incident, but as a reflection of an 
entire social dynamic, one that is fundamentally a dynamic of 
injustice.  Without that understanding, the parallelism between Snape 
and Sirius in the Shrieking Shack (and beyond!) loses a great deal of 
its raw power and impact, IMO, as does the entire endgame of PoA.

There are strong parallels between Snape's encounter with the Map and 
the prank itself, parallels which will later be extended to encompass 
the entire endgame of PoA -- and I again, I think that these are 
essential for establishing in the reader's mind the full nature and 
extent of Snape's sense of grievance.  The language with which Snape 
tries to read the map is to my mind highly suggestive.  "Reveal your 
secrets," he commands it.  Sirius will describe him later as 
always "sneaking around" after James and his gang, trying to get them 
in trouble.  Snape is trying to force the map to reveal its secrets 
in the first place in order to prove that Harry has been "out of 
bounds," in violation of the school rules.  As a teenager, he tried 
to learn the secrets of MWPP in similar hopes of proving them out of 
bounds, and by doing so to get them in trouble with the authorities.  
And of course, in the endgame of PoA, Snape makes his way to the 
Shrieking Shack one last time, his use of the invisibility cloak once 
more placing his behavior firmly into the Slytherinesque category of 
"sneaking," hoping to apprehend Remus and Sirius, whom he believes to 
be dangerous criminals, and hand them over to the authorities for 
justice.  

And he gets trounced, each and every time.  He does not learn the 
secrets of the Marauder's Map.  Instead, the Map insults him.  He 
does learn Lupin's secret, but only at the terrible cost of being 
saddled with a debt (whether "official" life-debt or merely debt of 
honor) to James.  And at the end of PoA, he winds up first knocked 
unconscious, then foiled in his attempts to ensure that Black finally 
gets punished for his crimes, and finally dismissed as a raving 
lunatic by the Minister of Magic himself.

Who was it who made the comment that history may not repeat itself, 
but it rhymes?

Poor Severus just can't catch a break, can he, and JKR plays that 
fact for pathos as well as for laughs, I'd say.  I do think that we 
are meant to read a certain degree of pathos into this portrayal of 
Snape as the constant voyeur: a hostile outsider, yes, but always an 
outsider trying to look in.  I also think that the reader is meant to 
sympathize a great deal with Snape when he finally Just Plain Snaps 
at the end of PoA, even while also laughing at him.  Certainly 
I've always found that sequence just plain heart-breaking, even while 
I also take enjoyment in its (*deeply* malicious!) humour.

(Wasn't it you, Irene, who once cited end of PoA as just plain killer 
in terms of Snape sympathy?  I seem to remember wanting to slip a "me 
too" at the end of a sig sometime to you for that one, but then 
somehow never quite managed to get around to it.)

So in short <pause for everyone to laugh derisively>, I certainly do 
think that there are a number of things in the text which support a 
reading of Sirius as a bully.  I also think that this is partially a 
reflection of the series' thematic approach to questions of power, 
justice, vengeance and mercy.

Sirius may be depicted as a bullying type, but the text emphasizes 
quite strongly that James himself was not, in that he did respect 
vulnerability, he did know when things were going too far, and he had 
a very well-developed balk instinct.  This aspect of his persona is 
absolutely *pounded* home to us in PoA, I'd say.  James went after 
Snape and saved him from the potentially lethal effects of the 
Prank.  Pettigrew claims that James would have shown him mercy.  
Harry (on the basis of no real evidence, mind) concurs; he cites 
James as his role model in prevailing upon Sirius and Remus to spare 
Peter's life.  And when at the end of the novel, Harry's patronus 
takes the form of James' animagus form, when he is told that he truly 
is his father's son, we as readers are inclined to believe that 
indeed mercy, the balk instinct, the willingness to overlook even 
genuine grievance in the face of another's profound weakness, must 
have been one of James' primary characteristics.

By emphasizing these aspects of James' character, while also 
providing us with evidence that Sirius himself lacks those traits, I 
think that the text is drawing an important distinction between the 
traditional values of House Gryffindor and the WW's warrior culture, 
which while admittedly useful are also inherently ethically flawed, 
and the values which are being set forth as the truly *heroic* 
alternatives: those which are capable both of transcending the usual 
dynamics of conflict and strife, and of effecting the spiritual 
transformation of man.  Sirius and the twins (who "take care" to step 
on Malfoy et al in the train at the end of GoF) represent the 
former.  James and Harry (who takes care to step *over* them) stand 
in for the latter, as does Lily, whose self-sacrifice served to 
circumvent the normative zero-sum equation of conflict in the WW.  

Here we touch on TBAY's Stoned!Harry: Harry as the living embodiment 
of the Philosopher's Stone, as an agent of spiritual renewal and 
transcendence.  By intervening in the Shrieking Shack, Harry is not 
really saving Pettigrew at all.  (If Pettigrew is to be saved, which 
I rather suspect that he is, then that will come later; right now, 
the poor devil is just about as lost as they come.)  Harry may be 
setting the *groundwork* for Pettigrew's later development, but he is 
not saving him.  He is saving *Sirius* (and also Remus), just as 
James once saved Sirius and Remus by intervening in the prank, and 
just as Harry and James will soon symbolically unite to save Sirius 
from the dementors.  By intervening to insist upon the recognition of 
a higher moral code than "he deserves it," Harry is acting as an 
agent of transformative and redemptive moral change, one which can 
serve to heal both the wounds of injustice and the wounds of the 
past.  There is no direct confrontation with Voldemort in PoA in 
part, I believe, because Harry's role as savior in PoA is absolutely 
not defined in terms of his ability to overcome his antagonists in 
any direct fashion.  Rather, it is defined in terms of his ability 
to inspire spiritual transformation in others and in doing so, to 
begin to correct some of the problems of power with which the series 
is so intimately concerned. 


-- Elkins 

who was unsurprised that there was a gleam in Dumbledore's eye