Snape's rationality (WAS: A theory regarding the "innocence" of Sirius )

[Tom Wall <thomasmwall@yahoo.com>]

No: HPFGUIDX 50988

Scott, thanks for your thorough and well 
thought out reply.  You made me want to make 
my point clearer, so I went to canon to look 
up some passages that supplement it. Please 
forgive me, but I still don't have my copies 
of PoA and GoF, so any references to those books 
will, of necessity, be from the old noggin.


SCOTT WROTE:
>From the beginning of the series, Harry has 
never given Snape a reason to
dislike him, at least not a believable one.
END.

I REPLY:
I have to contest this. I believe that Harry's 
given Snape multiple reasons to dislike him, 
starting with the fact that Harry doesn't 
like Snape:

"Maybe he's ill!" said Ron hopefully.
"Maybe he's left," said Harry, "because he missed out on the Defense 
Against the Dark Arts job again."
"Or he might have been sacked," said Ron enthusiastically. "I mean, 
everyone hates him –"
"Or maybe," said a very cold voice right behind them, "he's waiting 
to hear why you two didn't arrive on the school train."  (CoS 77-78) 

Although this comes from CoS, it illustrates 
my point better, maybe, than any other.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T.

Harry et al show Snape no respect.  Not only 
don't they show respect, they're downright 
DISrespectful of him.  It starts in PS/SS with 
the trio's completely false and unfair assumptions 
that Snape must be a) trying to kill Harry, and 
b) be trying to steal the Sorceror's Stone.

"Quirrell said Snape –" 
"PROFESSOR Snape, Harry." [empasis converted from italics]
"Yes him –" (Dumbledore and Harry on PS/SS 299-300)

Even Dumbledore, who clearly favors Harry, has 
to remind him to be respectful of a professor. 

And as we all know, this baseless dislike and 
disrespect continues throughout canon.  And 
although they often malign him, I don't think 
he's ever really actually guilty of their 
accusations. To date, the only wrongdoing of 
which Snape is actually guilty happened 
pre-canon, when he was a Death Eater.


SCOTT WROTE: 
Of course, Snape will later claim that his 
intense dislike of Harry stems from
Hary's disregard of the rules. <snip>
It seems to me that if Snape had such high 
respect for 'the rules,' he'd be the head of
Hufflepuff, not Slytherin. >From the Sorting 
Hat Song:

Or perhaps in Slytherin
You'll make your real friends,
Those cunning folks use any means
To achieve their ends.
-PS/SS
END

I REPLY:
I think you confuse "cunning" with "rule-breaking."  
Or, "cunning" <> (or ~=) "rule-breaking" (for the  
programmers...)   ;-P

First, "cunning" has nothing to do with rules 
at all.  It has to do with being crafty and clever. 

Second, I would hardly describe Harry et al as 
"cunning," since they're always getting caught 
in medias res rule breaking.  A "cunning" 
person is not someone who is likely to be caught 
breaking the rules.  

Slytherins respect "cunning" folks. They 
don't respect blatant rule-breakers.


SCOTT WROTE:
1) First thing: "I shall be interested to see how
Dumbledore takes this .
. . He was quite convinced you were harmless, you
know, Lupin . . . a tame
werewolf--" (PoA, The Servant of Lord Voldemort). 

Snape is a hypocrite.
END QUOTE

This is not "hypocrisy."  "Hypocrisy" would be 
if Snape was a danger to the students himself.

And he is not a danger to the students.  DANGER 
("harm") is the quality to which Snape is referring.  
AND as we see, via the transformation scene in PoA, 
Lupin, however gentle he may be in human form, IS 
a danger to the students.

And by the way, regarding what Snape owes 
Dumbledore: Snape is a SELF-reformed Death Eater 
who changed sides at great personal risk to himSELF.  
Dumbledore points out in GoF that he gave testimony 
to the effect that Snape, of his own volition 
and before the fall of Voldemort, switched sides 
to serve as a spy.  He owes Dumbledore less 
than for what your assessment gives him credit.  
Snape didn't come begging for mercy like the other 
Death Eaters.  He didn't lie and pretend to have 
been under the Imperius Curse.  He switched 
sides freely.


SCOTT QUOTED PoA:
Hermione, however, took an uncertain step toward Snape
and said, in a
very breathless voice, "Professor Snape--it--it
wouldn't hurt to hear what
they've got to say, w--would it?"
"Miss Granger, you are already facing suspension from
this school,"
Snape spat. "You, Potter, and Weasley are
out-of-bounds, in the company of
a convicted murderer and a werewolf. For once in your
life, hold your
tongue."
"But if--if there was a mistake--"
"KEEP QUIET, YOU STUPID GIRL!" Snape shouted, looking suddenly quite
deranged. "DON'T TALK ABOUT WHAT YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND!"
END QUOTE.


I REPLY:
Okay. I see your point here.  He loses his 
temper.

But look, there's a problem I've noticed that 
a lot of people have with dissecting these books:

They're written from Harry's perspective, and 
we're *supposed* to identify with him, by design.
We *all* naturally like and identify with Harry.
Otherwise we wouldn't be reading.

Many of us have difficulty viewing the beloved 
characters, like the trio, Dumbledore, Sirius, 
and Lupin, from any other perspective than the 
one we're fed by Rowling.  But remember, nearly 
ALL of the characters in the books do NOT hold 
the trio's P.O.V. (= point of view), and that 
is what makes the books work.

So for the sake of experiment, let's try to 
remove ourselves from the Harry/trio/reader 
P.O.V. for a second, okay?

When he walks into the Shrieking Shack, Snape is 
walking in on three students who disrespect him 
constantly (and who are illegally off the school 
grounds - AGAIN) and a werewolf-professor, all 
of whom are having a discussion with a convicted 
criminal/escapee who is considered so dangerous 
by the MoM that the dementors have been given 
leave to perform their kiss on him as SOON as 
he is caught.

And so he finds this, and sure, he gloats. Of 
course he does. Sirius tried to kill him when 
they were kids.  So after all these years, Snape 
finally has the upper hand.  Of course he 
gloats.  He assumes control, and what happens?

Hermione interrupts him.  When told to be 
quiet, what does she do?  She interrupts again, 
showing nothing but disrespect.

And then what happens? They ATTACK a professor.  
If that's not disrespect, and a reason for Snape 
to dislike Harry, then I don't know what is.


SCOTT WROTE:

fact of the matter is, this scene is why Snape bugs
me- his utter inability to listen to reason when his
temper is up.
END.

I REPLY:
I consider this to be an unfair remark. Why? Because 
most people have an inability to listen when their 
tempers are up.  Consider Sirius' insistence that 
Pettigrew die without delay. Or Harry and Ron's 
conflagration in GoF. This is normal human behavior.


SCOTT WROTE:
Harry, is rational. <snip> He is murderously angry at first (he wants 
to kill Sirius in the
beginning of the Shrieking Shack scene, but something holds him 
back), but
once he sees the facts, he is able to think clearly, and logically. 
If he
didn't, well, he wouldn't have believed Sirius in the end, would he? 

I REPLY:
Harry is *anything* but a rational character. That's 
why he's so real.  He's rude, he's got a tart tongue,
and he's anything but diplomatic. All one has to do 
is reread PS/SS with foreknowledge of the truth to 
see how irrational he is, and how often he jumps 
to conclusions, and how he acts falsely on those 
conclusions.  And I think you're forgetting 
something key here:  

WHY does Harry listen to the facts? 

Two reasons: one, he has his friends there to 
support him; two, Lupin shows Harry a sign of 
trust by returning their wands. Under those 
circumstances, it's easier to chill out a little 
bit.


SCOTT WROTE (re: above):
Snape however, is so enraged, he won't even 
listen to the facts.

I REPLY:
Snape has neither of those two conditions – 
no friends present, and no reason to trust the 
situation or the people in it.  From his P.O.V. he's 
alone, surrounded by a escaped murderer, a werewolf, 
and three students who obviously dislike him. And it 
doesn't help that the criminal/escapee already tried 
to kill him once before.  Snape, in essence, walks 
into a room with five adversaries consorting together. 
What would you do if you stumbled on this scene? I'd 
probably behave very similarly, for my part.


SCOTT WROTE:
It's not that I think Snape is an irrational person. I
do believe, however,
that he can NOT think clearly when it comes to certain
people. This isn't a
crime, not everyone can see every side of everything,
all the time.

I REPLY:
Precisely.  Not everyone can have our (mostly) 
privileged readers perspective.

I'm surprised that this has run as long as it has, 
but I'll make an effort to conclude with some 
attempt at brevity.  ;-)

First, back to Snape's deductions. Sure, at the 
end of PoA, when Sirius has escaped and Snape is 
sure Harry had something to do with it, it would 
seem that Snape is angry on a hunch.  But I 
challenge you: has Snape ever been wrong in his 
suspicions? Has he ever accused Harry of anything 
when Harry wasn't actually guilty?

Not to my knowledge. 

In fact, there are repeated references to Harry's 
early belief that Snape might be able to read minds. 
Why would Harry think that? Because Snape seems to 
know beyond explanation when Harry is doing 
something out of line. And he's not afraid to call him
on it.

And let's face it – Harry's a favored rule-breaker. 
He breaks rules excessively, and often to the danger
and detriment of others around him.

An easy, all around great instance: In CoS, Harry 
throws a firecracker into a cauldron in Potions 
class, sending swelling solution onto the students, 
putting them ALL at risk. He does this so that 
Hermione can STEAL some ingredients from Snape's 
office, so that they can make an illegal and dangerous
Polyjuice Potion in order to MASQUERADE as Crabbe, 
Goyle and Bulstrode (whom they will have to DRUG 
first.) All of this so that they can SNEAK into 
the Slytherin common room on another false and baseless 
assumption that Malfoy, for all of his crass 
behavior, is actually attempting to MURDER students.  

If that's rational, then I'm a purple bunny.

And what does Harry's excessive rule-breaking get 
him? Excessive clemency from Dumbledore.  Over and 
over again.

So, if many professors give Harry special leniency, 
Snape, to his credit, is the one who doesn't. Except 
McGonagall, and even then only in special circumstances, 
when her Quidditch interests aren't threatened.

So, on the whole, I would say that Snape behaves 
very realistically for the situations with which 
he's presented.  His actions, I believe, are 
completely justified in his own mind by the fact 
that Harry is conferred special status by nearly 
everyone, and that he gets away with nearly everything 
that would get any other students expelled. He doesn't 
appreciate the trio's blatant disrespect, nor does he 
approve of their blatant disregard for rules that 
are in place. And collectively, I would submit that this
illustrates extremely rational behavior.

Phew.

-Tom