[HPforGrownups] Re:Sirius and Snape frozen in time (WasSirius' Prank & Lupin )

[Amanda]

No: HPFGUIDX 34437

Gabriele stated categorically:
Snape does not have friends to discuss his problems,

------->We absolutely cannot state this as a fact with any basis in canon. Harry would not have any idea, any more than most students would, of the interpersonal out-of-school-time relationships of his teachers.

In fact, of the very few non-Harry-influenced scenes is the staffroom scene, where it *is* still Harry observing, but his presence is unknown to the participants and therefore does not affect it. And in that scene Snape takes the lead in bearding Lockhart, and the other teachers join in without missing a beat. That, to me, implies a level of at least professional camaraderie that a student would not necessarily perceive.

Gabrielle continued:
 he does not have social contacts to overcome the happenings of his Hogwarts time and also of the time as a Death Eater in discussions. IMHO it is only possible to digest and to analyse problems when you speak about them with other people who are interested in these problems 

------->You assume Snape *wants* to dwell and dissect and discuss. (A) his character does not seem the type to me; (B) I note that you and I are both women, and would find such discussions natural and probably endless, but most men that I know operate on a more "this is what happened, okay, move on" type mode. I think it is entirely possible for a man like Snape to have rather a lot of social contact, and to keep those contacts at a distance, precisely to *avoid* having to speak about his past, thus being lulled and comforted by the *not* speaking rather than the speaking.

Gabrielle concluded:
Obviously Snape was and is not speaking about his problems even with Dumbledore, who, I am sure, could help him a lot to change and develop his patterns of behaviour.

------>Again, you can't state this categorically based on canon. We have no idea the nature of Snape's devotion to Dumbledore, nor, with one exception, how much they communicate outside Harry's range of vision. [The one exception being that Dumbledore clearly did acquaint Snape with the realities of the Sirius/Pettigrew situation sometime between books 3 and 4, because Snape's reaction to Sirius' revealing himself at the end of book 4 shows only personal revulsion. It's been explained to Snape that Sirius is not a dangerous murdering lunatic, and because Dumbledore is one of the few people Snape would believe, the implication is that Dumbledore told him.] But that's it, that's all we know about their interactions off-camera.

You also assume that Snape *wants* to change. That's a heck of an assumption. I submit that he already did, a hell of a lot, on a tectonic-plate level, and his current nastiness is merely currents swirling the surface (with the occasional Shrieking Shack volcano). I don't think personal development is high on his list; I think his young adulthood was spent in a horrifying situation, his current life is one where he prefers not to think too much about his young adulthood, his resentment of Harry and Lupin stems partly from the fact that their mere existence *makes* him think about it, and he has otherwise been simply passing the time, making students' lives miserable, until the second great conflict (which he knows is coming) comes.

--Amanda



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