Looks aren't everything! (was:Re: Sirius / Severus)

[serious_schwartz]

No: HPFGUIDX 86694

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "jwcpgh" <jwcpgh at y...> wrote:

> Laura again:
> 
<snip>
> Now, about "Severus as victim".  I still argue that canon is 
> inconclusive on this.  We learn that James and Snape hated each other 
> on sight (DD says this in SS/PS).  I seem to recall some reference to 
> James and Snape hexing each other-am I making this up?  Anyhow, I 
> can't believe the nastiness was all one-sided.  We have no evidence 
> at all for who threw the first curse-but we do know who was the 
> premature expert on the dark arts.
> 
> Snape is not weak, whatever else he may be, and I don't think he was 
> weak when he came into the school.   Where do you get the idea that 
> Snape needed his Slytherin friends to protect him?  The only 
> reference we have to them is that they almost all turned out to be 
> DEs.  We don't know that they acted as Snape's bodyguards or if Snape 
> even wanted them to do that.
> 
> I don't know why people expect James and Sirius to have reached 
> across houses to make friends with Snape when that kind of behavior 
> is clearly not the norm at Hogwarts.  Nor do I see that Snape ever 
> wanted to be friends with them.  We have no idea what, if anything, 
> they knew about each other or each other's families before they got 
> to school.  For all we know, the hostility started with Snape.  
> 
> Laura, who respects Snape enough to believe that he gave as much as 
> he got

Can I add here that the entire pensieve scene is Snape's memory? Harry only 
sees the scene through Snape's eyes, and as we all know we tend to color 
our own memories. It is true that Remus and Sirius admit to their personality 
failings, but it is Snape recalling his view of James and Sirius, the taunts, the 
hexing, and so forth.  JK is cunning enough to let us think the pensieve scene 
is an objective view, but it is not. We can't judge everyone there based on it.

Just my two cents

Serious, who is learning to like Snape more than she used to.