Poor, Picked-on Snape? (Was Depictions of Mental Illness)

[kiricat2001 <Zarleycat@aol.com>]

No: HPFGUIDX 51482

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, Irene Mikhlin 
<irene_mikhlin at b...> wrote:
> 
> 
> Elkins wrote:
> 
> > And then there's Severus Snape, who I would say has some rather
> > serious difficulties and possibly always has had.  What sort of
> > person knows all of those curses at the tender age of eleven? 
> 
> The person that had some serious need to use them? I wonder how 
Sirius 
> discovered his repertoire, anyway. It's not likely Snape was 
wondering 
> around the school cursing students at random. Maybe he was getting 
even 
> for innocent jokes of some popular students who have oh so much 
more 
> sense of humour than he did? :-)


I know the assumption exists that Snape was the friendless outcast, 
mercilessly picked on for seven, long years by the mean, handsome, 
popular, arrogant, jocks that make up MWPP, but canon seems fairly 
thin to support this.  I could just as easily say that intelligent 
Snape was taught these curses by his parents, for whatever reason, 
and decided one day early in his Hogwarts career to cement his 
reputation among his fellow Slytherins like Evans and Rosier by using 
one or two curses on that slow, pudgy, stupid Gryffindor first-year 
Pettigrew.  However, Pettigrew was rescued by his friends, who also 
were no slouches when it comes to magic, and, lo and behold, a 
rivalry was born.

Marianne