Snape's many good points (and Sirius' many bad points)

[uilnslcoap]

No: HPFGUIDX 34726

> A lot of people here have given various excuses for "The Prank."  
> However, I don't see the prank on Snape as the worst thing Sirius 
has 
> done.  Instead, I think it's his actions in PoA.  Sirius has 
this "I'm 
> going to get revenge on Peter single-handedly, no matter what it 
> costs" attitude that causes other people a lot of suffering.  
People 
> have said how Snape scares the students -- what about Sirius?  The 
> students think a murderer is in the school, and Ron thinks Sirius 
> tried to stab him.  Because of Sirius, there's Dementors at the 
school 
> all year, who scare all the kids, make Harry faint, depress Hagrid, 
> and try to give Harry "The Kiss."  Think of all the punishment 
Neville 
> gets when Sirius steals his passwords -- he suffers for a lot 
longer 
> than from any punishment Snape ever gave him.  The whole wizarding 
> world is terrified, with kids in London not being allowed out 
alone.  
> No work is getting done at the ministry. Even the muggles are 
scared. 
> And, Sirius could have avoided all this, just by sending Dumbledore 
an 
> owl saying "Check out Ron Weasley's rat!" 
> 
> If it's OK for Sirius to injure and terrify people, why is it so 
awful 
> for Snape to be snippy and threaten students with detention?  
Anyway, 
> Sirius did more than cause fear.  He slashed the Fat Lady for no 
> reason, and she is discribed as being quite traumatized by it.  And 
he 
> broke Ron's leg, and apparently never apologized.

All right, I didn't want to get in on this Snape/Sirius business, but 
the above has forced me.

I respect Snape.  He has done things that, I'm sure, were beyond the 
capability of almost any wizard.  He managed to dupe Voldy.  That 
alone is worth a lot in my book, in terms of his respectability.  
Whatever duty he is about to embark upon (or already has embarked 
upon) is obviously frightening to him, and yet he will do it anyway.  
Whether, as some speculate, he was driven back to Dumbledore by the 
ill treatment of Voldemort and a realization he would not get 
promotion in the ranks of the Death Eaters or whether he went back 
for utterly altruistic reasons, he has been (what must have been 
exactly the upcoming adverb, knowing things about Voldemort) 
unflinchingly brave and fantastically cool-headed.  I'm looking 
forward to hearing about his exploits in the next three books.

That doesn't mean I like the guy though.

Heck, I would HATE him if I were a student, and I could never be 
friends with a man so vicious and cruel and unthinking (much of the 
time).  Please, Snape fans, don't be mad at me.  He's been all of 
these at some point, no matter what he may have been through or seen, 
he's been pretty...well...*mean* to kids before, to people he has 
power over.  Kudos to him for saving Harry from Quirrell's (is it 
spelled like that, one r?, one l?) curse in the first book, and for 
having enough guts to go and try to take down Lupin AND Black (yes, 
I'm certain he didn't know the Invisibility Cloak was there when he 
first left).  Yay, Snape!  But his comments (like the one mentioned 
about Hermione's teeth, thanks to whoever understood my emotional 
rant earlier and mentioned that particular Snape insult, Laura, was 
it?) and actions (no matter whether he had the antidote or not, even 
pretending he would poison Trevor is rather atrocious) don't make me 
want to sit down and have dinner with him.

Sirius and "the Prank".  For the love of all that is good in this 
world, doesn't ANYONE remember what it was like to be that age?  
Teenagers do stupid things that could've gotten people killed all the 
time!  "Dare you to run into the street right now.  See if you can 
make it across before the light turns green."  Or some such 
nonsense.  Then when it turns out okay, they laugh and go on (which I 
think is akin to the Marauders laughing at the "near misses" in their 
Hogwarts, not out of spite or cruelty, but as a kind of relief and 
also as a sort of "boy, aren't we invincible from trouble" kind of 
thing).  And people don't just do it to their friends, but their 
enemies as well.  Does anyone else remember Elkins's story about 
those kids who almost lit her hair on fire?  (Speaking of which, my 
condolences, Elkins.  If those had been my enemies, I'd think about 
hitting them with a nice, solid baseball bat.  Wouldn't actually do 
it, but it would give me incredible pleasure to imagine it.)  That 
doesn't mean I think Snape should forgive Black.  Nope, never, not 
for that.  That was inexcusable and childish.  But it happens all the 
time to the young.  Maybe it's easier for me to remember (I'll be 21 
in four months and I go to college where a lot of stupid, reckless 
things still happen), but all the same, it was just something a kid 
did that was stupid and foolish.  There are people, I'm sure, that 
you know personally that got involved, in one manner or other, in a 
situation fraught with danger.  They wouldn't do it now, but they did 
it then.  I'm sure Sirius would never do such a thing again, but I 
don't think his never apologizing is a sign of complete wickedness.  
It's pretty awkward and difficult to apologize for something you did 
decades ago.  Maybe that didn't even cross Black's mind in the 
Shrieking Shack (which would be completely forgiveable considering 
all the things happening at the time).  So I think Black, while he 
should never be forgiven by Snape, should be given some slack by 
readers.  You probably did REALLY dumb things when you were little, 
too.

All right, the next, and I'm supposing last, thing I want to talk 
about refers more directly to the quotes above.  Sirius does not do 
what the sane, reasonable person would do and write to Dumbledore, 
saying "Dumbledore, I wasn't the Secret-Keeper.  It was Pettigrew, 
who's alive and well and disguised as a rat with the one of the 
Weasleys.  I saw him in a picture with them in The Daily Prophet.  
Watch the hell out, and tell me when I can come out of hiding when 
you prove Pettigrew is alive.  Thanks, Sirius".  Key words in the 
above sentence: sane, reasonable.  Black just came out of Azkaban, 
which sucks both of these things (I would imagine) right out of you.  
The same could be said for Black's apparent need to catch Pettigrew 
himself (he probably doesn't even consider the possibility of getting 
help--maybe time in Azkaban drives the nasty need-for-revenge bits of 
a human being up).  Same for his (admittedly savage) attack on the 
Fat Lady.  The reason we have two Siriuses is because one is post-
traumatic stress syndrome of the worst kind Sirius who only 
(apparently) starts to get REALLY better about a year after he 
escapes.  The other is kindly, but still a Marauder, and a risk-
taker, Sirius.  He probably STILL has nightmares about Azkaban.  I 
think we can afford to give him a reprieve on his actions in the year 
of PoA.  He had been driven quite near insanity, I imagine, and is 
recovering rather well.

So, I hope this at least gets to a few people who thought Black was 
thoughtless (which he was: in both his adult years, because he'd been 
in a place with Dementors for twelve years with insanity calling his 
name, and in his teenage years, simply because he was a teenager) for 
absolutely no reason.  Forgive me for the length of this.  Good day.

Devin