Snape's Insignificant Question During Occlumency

[Caius Marcius]

No: HPFGUIDX 76290

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, Buttercup <cathio2002 at y...> 
wrote:
> Perhaps this has been asked and answered before. If
> so, I missed it. During the first Occlumency lesson,
> why would Snape ask Harry "To whom did the dog
> belong?" Why would he care? It wasn't anything
> important that I can see. He asks about a dog, yet he
> doesn't ask the more interesting question about the
> sorting hat telling Harry he would do well in
> Slytherin. You'd think that would interest him more.
> Who cares about his Aunt Marge's dog? I don't get it.
> Could this have been another clue?

It happened during the first lesson, the first time Snape penetrates 
Harry's mind. Snape has always been so accustomed to assume that 
Harry is a carbon copy of James - "he's so arrogrant, criticism just 
bounces off him" - that he might have been taken aback to catch these 
glimpses of just how much Harry was abused and humiliated in his 
childhood (we don't know how much Snape knows of Privet Drive).  
Perhaps this points - if not to a full reconciliation - to at least a 
lessening of hostility between the two in the future.

  - CMC