Snape's Insignificant Question During Occlumency

[rubyxkelly]

No: HPFGUIDX 77076

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "T.M. Sommers" <tms2 at m...> wrote:
> Buttercup 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?
> 
> I think he asked that particular question precisely because it was 
> uninteresting.  He wanted to show Harry that he really could see his 
> memories, so that Harry would take the lessons seriously.  By asking 
> such an innocuous and impersonal question he got his point across 
> without needlessly angering or embarassing Harry.  Since such 
> consideration is unusual for Snape, it indicates to me that he also was 
> taking the lessons very seriously.

I must say I completely disagree. I think the reason that question was asked was because Snape was startled, startled enough to actually ask a personal question (not something he's exactly known for).
Seeing Harry experiencing being the brunt of cruelty at the hands of those whose were raising him and in whose care he was in seems very likely to have been the first time he saw what the reality of Harry's life at Privet Drive has been. Up until then, Snape-along with most of the magical community-would have assumed that "The Boy Who Lived" was in the care of some doting relatives.
Seeing that Harry was not only not with a family who spoiled or indulged him (as seems likely with James) was probably the first time it ever crossed Snape's conciousness that the spoiled brat who caused him so much misery at school was quite different from the orphaned child left behind. It likely showed him that although Harry may look like his father, and share some of his personality traits, Harry has suffered some of the very kinds of things Snape did. 
Then just as this realization is starting to sink in a bit, Snape puts a little trust in Harry-who immediatly violates it. I think much of Snape's anger over the incident was directed as much at himself as Harry, for being so "foolish" to trust James' son.
I also think that the memorymight have been one that Dumbledore requested Snape put away, not wanting Harry to deal with the shock of seeing his father in a more realistic light on top of everything else the boy was dealing with. (Amistake, perhaps, but an understandable one.) Snape would have been furious that Harry had seen something the Headmaster had wished to keep secret-after all, from what we know about Snape I think he personally would have been more than happy to let Harry see the kind of schoolmates he'd had in James and Sirius.
KAT/rxk