School! Snape the bully? (was: Is Draco worse than James Was?)

[jwcpgh]

No: HPFGUIDX 77960

 Laura:
> >
> > Now wait a minute.  We read in canon more than once that James and
> > sirius were popular.  Bullies tend not to fit that description. 

Carolin Mönkemeyer <shokoono at g...> wrote:

> The bullies that were in my class were the most popular. That's 
what I had
> to feel when I tried to defend myself (I was totally unpopular).
> So it's not always that bullies anunpopular.... the more popular 
they get
> the better their chance is to go on with what they are doing and 
not being
> stoped!
> 
> Yours Finchen

Laura again:

Hmm.  It sounds like bullies have changed since my high school days, 
lo those many years ago.  I don't think of bullies as smart or 
likeable, and James and Sirius were both.  Also, in my day, smart 
kids were very rarely jocks of any sort, as James was.   Smart kids 
tended to be sort of isolated in their (our) own group and the 
general attitude toward them was a mixture of respect (because our 
school was very college-oriented and everyone knew that the winners 
of the high-school game were the ones who went to the "best" 
colleges) and contempt (because we tended to be more socially awkward 
than jocks or popular kids).  So maybe these lines have blurred in 
the intervening years.

And it depends on how you define bullying.  The kind of relentless, 
merciless teasing to which J&S subject Snape is one kind; subjecting 
people to actual physical harm is another.  J&S are clearly fond of 
indulging in the former kind, but there's no canon suggesting that 
they truly put Snape in harm's way (until, perhaps, the prank).  In 
the pensieve scene, James humiliates SS, without a doubt.  But SS 
slices James's face open.  I'm not saying it's unprovoked, but it's a 
different order of magnitude.  

Moreover, I think of bullies as people who are indiscriminate in 
their attacks-whoever is in their way gets run over.  J&S don't give 
me that impression; they seem to save their harsh treatment for 
Snape.  Bullying is done to gain power.  J&S already have it-they 
don't need to hurt or intimidate people.  It seems like their 
nastiness was reserved for SS, who, let's face it, didn't put up much 
of a fight.  Sure, he threw hexes and jinxes at James whenever he 
could, but verbally he wasn't in the game at all.  

I guess my point is that I don't think any of the three boys was a 
bully in the conventional sense of the word.  They clearly had a 
personal war going, but there isn't any indication that it extended 
beyond the three of them.  We don't see student!Snape go after Peter 
or Remus (again, the prank is an exception, but even then Snape 
wasn't trying to hurt Remus physically).  Adult!Snape takes out his 
festering anger at J&S on Remus in PoA, but I imagine it's only 
because neither James nor Sirius is available.  In OoP, Snape leaves 
Remus alone and does all his fighting with Sirius.

It figures that of the three of them, the one who seemed to mature 
the most quickly died first.