Thanking Snape? & Apologies

[kiricat2001]

No: HPFGUIDX 36626

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "cindysphynx" <cindysphynx at c...> wrote:
 
> But wizards seem to have trouble with Real Apologies.  The kind of 
> apology that sticks in your throat.  The kind of apology when you 
are 
> owning up to a problem you shouldn't have created.  The kind of 
> apology you owe when you really did the wrong thing.  

 
> That said, I have to kick myself, because I overlooked perhaps the 
> biggest, most important apology in the books.  In my favorite scene 
> in my favorite book, no less:
> 
> "Forgive me, Remus," said Black.
> "Not at all, Padfoot, old friend," said Lupin, who was now rolling 
up 
> his sleeves.  "And will you, in turn, forgive me for believing you 
> were the spy?"
> 
> Now, what on earth are Black and Lupin apologizing for here?  Back 
> when Voldemort fell, no one knew whom to trust.  Neither did 
anything 
> wrong by failing to trust the other.  It was nothing personal, and 
it 
> was unavoidable.  Yet there they are, going out of their way to 
> apologize before, uh, murdering someone in cold blood.  A lot of 
> people have expressed dissatisfaction with this scene, and perhaps 
> one reason is that neither character has any good reason to be 
> apologizing.  I don't know.


Your points on general wizard cluelessness regarding Real Apologies 
are well taken.  I would, however, include the Sirius/Remus apologies 
in the category of well-meaning, but not satisfactory.  Yes, they 
have every reason to apologize to each other.  And, I think it was 
indeed very personal.

Here are two people, very close friends, who each suspect the other 
of being a traitor.  How did they each get to that point?  Granted, 
all sorts of horrible things were happening at the time, and I'm sure 
that a great deal of the fear that people had was caused by living 
with the unsettling feeling of suddenly not knowing who to trust.

But, Sirius and Remus had a long history, they stuck together through 
Hogwarts, they dealt with the whole werewolf thing.  And then, every 
thing falls to pieces.  Sirius can't see Peter as the traitor, so 
assumes it's Remus.  Unless he has some sort of "proof" of Remus' 
betrayal, it seems that Sirius is pretty quick to decide Remus is the 
traitor/spy.  Sirius then makes his disastrous decision to trust 
Peter as the Potters Secret Keeper. 

 Whether Remus suspects Sirius before the death of the Potters is 
unclear.  He certainly believes Sirius to be guilty of these crimes 
after the fact. I can cut Remus some slack here, as the evidence 
against Sirius seems so incontrovertible.  But,we have no evidence 
that Remus needed any convincing to believe Sirius guilty.  As far as 
we know, he didn't lift a finger to try to ascertain whether there 
may have been some horrible mistake and that Sirius was really 
innocent.  Remus seems to accept that Sirius would cold-bloodedly 
arrange for the death of his best friend.

On the other hand, maybe Remus' reaction is a result of another 
potential instance of a lack of a Real Apology.  Perhaps Sirius never 
apologized to Remus for "the prank."  Remus could have seen this as a 
form of betrayal by one of his friends.  And, in Remus' view, perhaps 
that incident left enough of a seed of doubt within him regarding 
Sirius, which made it that much easier to believe him capable of 
turning traitor.

Marianne