grandpa Riddle / Snape / A LOT OF BASELESS SPECULATION about The Prank

[catlady_de_los_angeles]

No: HPFGUIDX 39342

Ronale wrote:

> Tom Riddle was 16 years old fifty years ago in COS. The Lexicon 
> puts his birth in 1927. He's definitely old enough to be James's
> father and Harry's grandad.  In fact, he's just the right age..

I don't believe that Riddle was James Potter's father because it is 
Such a Big Deal and James and Harry are Potters, and I don't believe 
that Riddle was James's mother because sex-change doesn't seem to 
have been one of his habits. I could believe that he is James's 
mother's father and James inherited his looks from his mother, if you 
can make the dates fit. Let's see. If he was born in 1927, he could 
have fathered a child born in 1947 (it is not altogether necessary 
that he was married to the mother or that the child was planned), 
who... would have been 12 in 1960, and only 10 if James was born in 
1957 like I think. No.

Pip wrote:

> He should be preparing to check that his students are all in bed. 

I believe that the prefects do that, not the House Masters. This has 
been an irrelevant nitpick.

> Third: (And most important) Snape DOESN'T delay Harry. Harry has
> failed to get into Dumbledore's office and decided to look for 
> Dumbledore in the staff room. He is running there when Snape CALLS 
> HIM BACK. And then spends 30 seconds or so establishing that he 
> wasn't trying to be helpful, honest, look he's being ever so 
> obstructive.

Finally! A plausible argument that Snape wasn't just being a total 
git!

> breaking into the castle to get Peter (he *did* try to include 
> someone else in his plans, but that didn't work, did it?), 

He DID try to get someone else to help with Scabbers? Do you mean 
Crookshanks?

A lot of the broken potsherds of what went on with Sirius and Severus 
and James and Remus could be fitted into a consistent pattern if one 
could believe that if young Severus was going to involuntarily fall 
into love/lust/infatuation with one of his hated Gryffindor enemies, 
it could be quiet Remus rather than handsome Sirius or popular James. 

Of course, everyone would be in deep denial about this very socially 
unacceptable (both same-sex and different-gang) feeling... granted 
that Severus and Sirius likely had hated each other since the first 
moment they met on the Hogwarts Express and that Severus hated both 
James and Sirius for getting marginally better grades than him and 
being popular, still rather than sneaking around after the Marauders 
trying to get them expelled, he was sneaking around after Remus for 
reasons quite unclear to himself, not clear whether he thought Remus 
was being victimised in some scheme to get those prettyboy jocks 
their good marks and would be grateful to be rescued by heroic 
Severus, or whether he was trying to prove to himself that Remus was 
just as bad as the othr Gryffindors. Of course, his love-object 
hanging out with his enemies would give him one more thing to be 
jealous about. 

Sirius observing his enemy spying on his friend would naturally 
assume the worst and get Loyally Protective as in your explanation of 
his character, but Sirius's motives would also be complicated by 
emotions that he was careful not to be aware of, perhaps ordinary 
sexual jealously of another male sniffing around after *his* piece of 
tail, or maybe a vague awareness of sexual undertones leading the 
idea that Severus was trying to *rape* Remus to temporarily bubble up 
into his conscious mind... 

PEOPLE WHO DELIBERATELY AVOID READING FANFIC LEST IT CORRUPT YOUR 
PURITY OF VISION, STOP READING THIS POST *H*E*R*E* !!!!!

Cindy Sphynx wrote:

> Now, if Snape were thinking straight, he'd have realized that James 
ability to transform into a stag meant that James really *didn't* 
risk his life saving Snape to the extent Snape has always imagined. 
It might even wipe out Snape's life debt to James on a technicality.

The way I think that stuff happened, knowing that James hadn't risked 
his life as much as Severus had thought would make Severus hate James 
even more. I envision a scene in which James, running fall out (on 
uneven footing, with head down for low ceiling) catches up with 
Severus before Severus gets to the Shack and tells Severus to go back 
to Hogwarts, fast, because this is dangerous! At first they have an 
argument in which Severus insists that James is only lying to him 
about the danger in an attempt to keep some secret. James, thinking 
he hears low sounds of growling and scratching up the tunnel, gets 
desperate to tell Severus that it is a monster that is kept in the 
tunnel and its patrol time is about to start. Severus sneers that if 
that were true, James would also be in danger, and offers to fight 
with him ("I can endanger you, if you like danger so much"). The 
growling gets louder... 

The growling gets louder, James gets more frantic, and declares that 
he is safe because he can jump into a special safe niche, which 
Severus can't. The growling changes to wild howling. Severus gets 
nervous but tries to conceal suvch cowardice as he proclaims that 
James is lying. There are sounds of wood (a door that blocks the 
tunnel entrance to the Shack) being bashed up and shredded. James is 
desperate, but realizes that Severus won't believe him even if he 
swears on his word of honor. His last-ditch effort is: he throws his 
wand down and his hands up (to show his sincerity) and says intensely: 
"Please. I beg you. Please get the hell out of here!" Sounds of torn 
wood shattering and a particularly terrifying howl as a bit of light 
appears in the end of the tunnel, and Severus breaks. He believes he 
sees the werewolf's eyes glowing evilly, approaching. He turns and 
runs. 

James, breathing a prayer of gratitude to whatever god or luck he 
believes in, transforms into stag form and lowers his antlered head 
to fight Moony to hold him off long enough for Severus to escape ... 
Prongs has a fighting chance against the werewolf, better chance than 
a human would, but his own survival is by no means a sure thing. 
Severus, on emerging from under the Whomping Willow, calms enough to 
realize that he ran away from danger, cowardice of which to be 
ashamed, and, worse yet, his enemy didn't run away (was braver), and 
worst of all, his enemy SAW this disgrace. He feels utterly 
humiliated, and furious, needing vengeance on the people who caused 
this humiliation. He feels even worse when he thinks it was a plot to 
humiliate him than when he thinks it was a much more respectable plot 
to murder him. When he realises that he was beating himself up about 
James being braver than him, but in fact James was not braver, just 
knew he was in less danger, then he will feel utterly furious at them 
for tricking him into feeling even more humiliated than was actually 
necessary.

It might be a clever Slytherin strategy to lure the stupid Gryffindor 
into the monster's den by pretending to need to be rescued, then 
knocking out the Gryffindor and leaving him for the monster to eat, 
and escaping safely while the monster is distracted by eating the 
Gryffindor. But to actually NEED to be be rescued, and to actually 
FEEL AFRAID, and to INVOLUNTARILY behave contrary all to that his 
Livian Rome style warrior culture believes is right and manly... 
that's shameful, not clever. Who said, poor Slytherins, assigned to a 
House all of whose characteristics are scorned by their culture?