Snape, James and Harry

[kiricat2001 <Zarleycat@aol.com>]

No: HPFGUIDX 48129

I do believe he (Snape) has a code of 
> > morals, and iron self control, and enough sensitivity not to push 
> > Harry beyound taunting and into the grounds of real, damaging     
> > cruelty.

Right, he uses Neville Longbottom, the kid whose parents were 
tortured to insanity, as his punching bag.  Mr. Sensitive to the 
max...
 
> In PoA, Ch.19, Snape screams at Harry "You'd have died like your 
> father, too arrogant to believe you might be mistaken in Black." 
[p. 
> 265 ]. Earlier, in Ch. 14, he tells Harry his version of James 
> saving his life, which is extremely unflattering to James.
> But he has never, ever used against Harry what he must quite surely 
> realise - that the father whose memory Harry idolises is the man 
> whose faulty judgement killed himself and Lily, and nearly killed 
> Harry himself.
> In a sense, Harry is an orphan because James Potter *was* too 
> arrogant to believe his friends would betray him. Dumbledore 
offered 
> to be his Secret Keeper. James was warned that one of his friends 
> was a traitor. [Ch. 10 of PoA]. But he preferred not to believe it.

Yikes, I don't know that I would characterize that as "arrogant" 
behavior.  Willful blindness, a complete unwillingness to believe 
that one of the people you've know and trusted and who are part of 
the pattern of your life is trying to kill you...I could never 
characterize that as arrogance.  Rather, it's denial.  If Dumbledore 
said (did he say in canon???) "James, let me be the Secret Keeper 
because I know someone close to you is a traitor."  And James' 
response was "No, that can't be possible, I KNOW these guys, it can't 
be one of them..."  That, to me, is a perfectly understandable 
reaction, and arrogance has no part of it.


> But Snape has never said 'your father nearly got you killed', 
or 'if 
> it wasn't for your father, you wouldn't be an orphan'. That has 
been 
> left for Harry to work out. 

It is very hard to put the precise blame for an event on one person 
for their (re)actions at a particular moment in time.  So many other 
things enter into it. At the time of the Potters' death, so much of 
the Wizard world was in turmoil. Is it so unusual to think that James 
(and Lily?) might have clutched onto the thought that at least in the 
middle of all that madness, he felt he could trust his long-time 
friends?  A tragic mistake, but not remotely arrogant.  

As for Snape never saying to Harry that it was all James' fault that 
he and Lily were killed and Harry orphaned, I think Snape knows full 
well that that life is not necessarily a black/white, either/or 
bargain. People do what they think is right at a particular moment, 
using the information they have at hand.  That information is 
filtered through their own beliefs and past experiences, and then 
acted upon.  And sometimes, the action results in tragedy.

> What Snape *has* said is that James wasn't a hero, wasn't a saint, 
> and struck Snape, at least, as arrogant.

I'm sure that James is not saintly, and I have mentioned in other 
posts that I think Harry will find out some things about James that 
will show him in an unflattering light. But, knowing the uneasy 
history between Snape and James, I hardly think that Snape's 
assessment can be considered balanced and even-handed.
 
Marianne