OOP: what we forget with Sirus and James and Harry

[marinafrants]

No: HPFGUIDX 67259

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Koticzka" <koticzka at w...> 
wrote:
> ***Koticzka's comment:
> Running away from a family toward a friend's home where willing
parental
> figures are waiting to welcome you, and being rejected or abandoned
(as
> Snape seems to be) are two totally different things. Sirius made 
his
choice.
> Snape was not given one.

On what information are you basing this claim?  All we know of 
Snape's childhood upbringing is a single glimpse of a man yelling at 
a woman while a child cries in the background.  We don't know who 
*any* of these people are, though it's reasonable to assume they're 
Snape and his parents.  It's not a pleasant scene, but it tells us 
nothing about what other relatives or friends Snape had, or what 
choices he has been presented with.

Sirius ran away from home permanently at sixteen.  It's not the sort 
of decision one makes overnight.  He must've been in conflict with 
his family for some time before then.  Given that he was only a yer 
from his majority, and most of that year would've been spent at a 
boarding school anyway, conditions at home must've been really 
intolerable in order for him to run away rather than just stick it 
out till his next birthday. His own mother calls him an
abomination, a traitor, and shame of her flesh.  If that's not being 
an outsider within your own family, I don't know what is.

>Not that we know the story very well, but Sirius's
> grandfather cares what happened to his grandson.  Remember, a 
portrait is
> presumed to possess the person's
> personality, is it not?  Sirius's uncle helps him. Snape seems to 
be
> pretty neglected, not even taught how to take care of himself (due 
to
> lacking a mother? I wonder).

Phineas is not Sirius' grandfather; he's his great-great-
grandfather, or Sirius knows him only as a portrait, nor does he 
seem to like him much.  Whatever caring Phineas might've felt for 
Sirius, he apparently didn't choose to show it until after Sirius 
was dead.  Sirius' uncle did leave him money, and Sirius does seem 
fond of his cousin Andromeda and of Tonks.  But we have no idea what 
uncles, cousins, friends or great-great-grandparents Snape might've 
been endowed with.

> Then again, there is a slight difference between seeing a person 
as a
nice
> person and as a person who is justified in his actions. When one is
hurt and
> humiliated very, very deeply, do not expect that person to be kind 
and

> noble, especially in everyday living, or you risk being called 
NAIVE.
>

Well, I may have excpected a number of silly things in my life, but 
I've certainly never expected Snape to be kind or noble. Principled, 
loyal to Dumbledore, and occasionally heroic, yes.  But never kind 
or noble. 

> No, neither age nor sex matters, Marina. Sorry to say that, I wish 
the

> world was different myself.

Huh?  What does that have to with anything I said?  I'm not 
particularly concerned with eithr the age or the sex of any of the 
characters involved, except for a general understanding that people 
often behave like total jerks when they're fifteen, yet still grow 
up into decent human beings.

My point was we've only seen one small, carefully selected sample of 
James' behavior, in an instance when he obviously wasn't being his 
best.  We can't judge his entire character for the rest of his 
(admittedly short) life based on this one sample.  It would be like 
judging all of Snape's character based on a single instance when he 
was behaving in a particularly horrid manner.

Marina
rusalka at ix.