[HPforGrownups] OOtp Spoilers Ahoy: Snape

[Jean Lamb]

No: HPFGUIDX 67041

>Now, to the other matter, D-Dore was unable or perhaps unwilling, to
penetrate Snape's mind to the point where he could grasp the depth of
Snape's hate for James. Or perhaps he never asked, "Severus, can you
do this?"

D-Dore can be fooled, especially if Snape was practiced enough.

Darrin

--Or maybe Snape thought he _could_ do it, only to have the pensieve
incident strain his (limited) patience past its limits, which argues that he
didn't expect Harry to snoop the way he did. Maybe there's a _lot_ more to
the underpants incident than we saw, too, making it even more traumatic than
what we were allowed to observe.

Four on one is nasty, even if the one is _Snape_, and even if one of the
four is the Glorious James. And James was angry by this time by Lily telling
him off, and probably exerted his imagination even further once Lily was
gone--after all, it was Snape's fault for being there, right?

And I suspect that one of the reasons that DD cuts Snape a lot of slack is
because he's aware how badly he screwed up by letting the Golden Gryffs off
the hook for so long, even after the Prank. (He probably learned a lot more
than he wanted to when teaching Snape Occlumency--I think that's an
excellent hypothesis.)

Of course Snape should grow up and deal with it. But at this time he's
spying on Voldemort (though his insistence on using the phrase "Dark Lord"
was likely carefully taught to him, likely under Crucio, when he was a DE
earlier), and given his childhood, the situation is likely straining his
emotional resources to the limit already. We don't know what he's going
through as a spy, though it would be nice if JKR would tell us. Don't
forget, he's still carrying a full class load on top of his other duties--he
gets more dumped on him than any of the other Hogwarts staff except DD.
Think of what courage it must have taken in PoA, for instance, to go out and
get the students (and he remembers to get stretchers for them, too, instead
of that Mobilicorpus routine, which I suspect is contraindicated for head
wounds, like anyone actually cares about anything that happens to Snape)
_despite_ the fact he knows there's a werewolf out there who 'forgot' to
take his potion (not to mention dementors, which he probably knows lots more
about than he likes).  Then DD waves that Order of Merlin under his nose (at
last! Some recognition!) only to have it taken it away.

But of course, we can't give Snape any credit. That would be wrong.

Jean Lamb, tlambs1138 at charter.net
"Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for you are crunchy and good with
lemon drops."