[HPforGrownups] Another look at the prank...

[wynnde1 at aol.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 46995

Well, SophineClaire has spun a lovely story to explain the punishments" dealt 
out by Dumbledore: 

>What is DD to do? punish both boys. He tells Severus (since he is 
>the hypothetical Victim) that he won't be suspended and can remain a 
>prefect but will not be considered for Head Boy. At all.

>DD tells Sirius that due to the nature of the prank, he will not be 
>considered for the Head Boy position. It is too late in the year to 
>remove him from his prefect position for it to have any real effect 
>but Sirius will have bigger problems then the loss of the Head Boy 
>position when he has to explain to Remus Lupin the 'WHYs' of the 
>incident.

While this is tidy and not contradicted by canon as far as I can see, I still 
have one question:

Why didn't Sirius get EXPELLED?????

Severus a "hypothetical victim?" Are you kidding? How can you possible 
compare sneaking around the school and spying with setting up a situation 
where a fellow student could lose his life????? My word, we've seen enough of 
Harry, Ron and Hermione sneaking around the school and spying, and no one 
seems to think anything of it. But when it's Snape, then obviously he's evil 
and deserved to die? 

Perhaps there is more to this whole thing than meets the eye - maybe we 
haven't yet heard the entire truth about what happened, and we will 
eventually learn that there is some mitigating factor - Imperius!Sirius, for 
example. But based on what we know canonically: 

(Prisoner of Azkaban, Chapter 18)

"Professor Snape was at school with us. He fought very hard against my 
appointment to the Defense Against the Dark Arts job. He has been telling 
Dumbledore all year that I am not to be trusted. He has his reasons . . . you 
see, Sirius here played a trick on him which nearly killed him, a trick which 
involved me - "

Black made a derisive noise.

"It served him right," he sneered. "Sneaking around, trying to find out what 
we were up to . . . hoping he could get us expelled . . . "

"Severus was very interested in where I went every month." Lupin told Harry, 
Ron and Hermione. "We were in the same year, you know, and we - er -didnt' 
like each other very much. He especially disliked James. Jealous, I think, of 
Jame's talent on the Quidditch field . . . anyway, Snape had seen me crossing 
the grounds with Madam Pomfrey one evening as she led me toward the Whomping 
Willow to transform. Sirius thought it would be - er - amusing to tell Snape 
all he had to do was prod the knot on the tree trunk with a long stick, and 
he'd be able to t in after me. Well, of course, Snape tried it - if he'd got 
as far as this house, he'd have met a fully grown werewolf - but your father, 
who'd heard what Sirius had done, went after Snape and pulled him back, at 
great risk to his life . . . Snape glimpsed me, though, at the end of the 
tunnel. He was forbidden by Dumbledore to tell anybody, but from that time on 
he knew what I was . . . "

That is ALL we know in canon. So Severus was spying, like Harry and Co are 
often wont to do. But we can justify it with Harry and Co, because they are 
wandering around spying in the service of "good." Right? Well, we don't know 
what reasons Severus had for the spying he was doing. We are led to believe 
that he just hated them and wanted them expelled out of spite. But, a bit 
earlier in the evening, Remus had admitted: 

"They (James, Peter and Sirius) sneaked out of the castle every month under 
James' Invisibility Cloak. They transformed . . . Peter, as the smallest, 
could slip beneath the Willow's attacking branches and touch the knot that 
freezes it. They would then slip down the tunnel and join me . . . <snip> 
Soon we were leaving the Shrieking Shack and roaming the school grounds and 
the village by night."

When Hermione comments, "What if you'd given the others the slip, and bitten 
somebody?"

Lupin answers, "A thought that still haunts me, " said Lupin heavily. "And 
there were near misses, many of them. We laughed about them afterwards. We 
were young, thoughtless - carreid away with our own cleverness."

The Marauders were engaging in an activity which was extrememly dangerous to 
anyone in the vicinity. So an argument can be made that Severus suspected 
they were up to something dangerous, and just wanted to prove it so he could 
make certain they stopped before anyone got hurt. Sounds like Harry and Co, 
doen't it? 

Perhaps it was purely spite on Snape's part. But that really *doesn't matter* 
in the long run. Unless we find out some big piece of this picture that we've 
been missing, Sirius did something which could easily have cost Severus his 
life. I see absolutely no justification whatsoever for Dumbledore not 
expelling him immediately.Full stop. Yes, we've seen second chances and we've 
also seen Harry and Co get away with lots without getting expelled. But 
they've not gotten away with attempted murder. Or, manslaughter at the very 
least.

And often, this turns into a "which one is nastier - Severus or Sirius" 
debate. I've started this one myself, with my earlier comments. <G> But in 
the end that doesn't matter, either. Even if we find out that Snape was 
murdering people right alongside Malfoy and Avery, it won't change the fact 
that Sirius did something really awful for which he still shows no remorse. 

Wendy
(Who agrees entirely that Remus is most certainly the person most 
*victimised* by this whole series of events, and who also knows that probably 
everyone on this list knows quite well the canon she quoted, but quoted it 
anyway, as she finds that re-reading things often gives her a clearer 
perspective than just thinking about them from memory).


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