Snape's Insignificant Question During Occlumency

[daluben4]

No: HPFGUIDX 76346

> --- 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
 
--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Caius Marcius" 
<coriolan_cmc at h...> wrote:
> 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.

I got the impression that Snape was amused.  He hates Harry so much 
that he found the idea of him being chased by a dog funny.  But, I'll 
have to pay close attention when I read it again and see if it comes 
across different.

I was inclined to believe that there might be a lessening of 
hostilities between Snape and Harry, too, but their relationship only 
seemed to get worse in OOTP and I thought JKR made a comment in one 
of the immediate pre- or -post OOTP interviews that we shouldn't 
start liking Snape too much.