Snape's gang/ DE recruitment (was: snape the lapdog/Neville the lackey)

[oh have faith]

No: HPFGUIDX 71721

Mim said:

> I do suspect other Slytherins would not want much to do with Snape 
>had he been that pathetic in all fights he'd ever been in. However, 
>the fact that the moment James and Sirius see him they know they 
can >have some fun and they don't seem to worry at all about what he 
may >do to them, really makes me wonder. And we have Remus (or was 
that >Sirius?) telling Harry that Snape was always *trying* to curse 
>James. *Trying*? Doesn't look too good to me.

I say: 

Mmmm, actually you've convinced me.  If Snape really could stick
up 
for himself and manage to give James and Sirius what-for on a few 
occasions, they'd probably have stopped bugging him pretty
quickly.  
Bullies pick on the weak. If there was a possibility James would 
have ended up being humiliated in front of his crowd of admirers, I 
doubt he would have done it.  (Though he made damn sure it
couldn't 
happen anyway – two against one, taking Snape by surprise and 
getting rid off his wand pretty damn quick).  They targeted him 
because he was weird and friendless and vulnerable, and because they 
could.  It's not that he did anything, "It's more that he
exists, 
you know".  Even years later, when Harry asks Sirius and Lupin
about 
it, Sirius is still defending their actions by implying that Snape 
was asking for it simply by existing - "He was just some little 
oddball".  If Snape had ever really got a good curse in against 
James, Sirius might have mentioned that as a defence – and
what's 
more, Snape might be more able to let go of the past if thinking 
about James Potter didn't always make him feel like a helpless, 
humiliated victim.  

To go off slightly on a tangent for a second, one of the most moving 
parts of OOP for me was Harry's meeting with Luna at the end
– he 
finds out people hide her stuff because they think she's a little 
strange.  I love that he feels a great swell of compassion for her, 
and he says that's no reason for them to do that to her.  However 
subconsciously, I think that's a lesson he learned from watching 
Snape in the pensieve – he may not know it himself because he has 
trouble equating vulnerable young Snape with nasty, sadistic grown-
up Snape, but still.  That was the first sign for me in five books 
that Harry has actually learned something worth knowing for himself 
without Dumbledore or Hermione having to beat him over the head with 
it first.  

Mim again:

>So perhaps Snape did join afterwards. Had to prove himself to get 
>in. Or he was already wanted (what gang wouldn't want a Slyth who 
>knows more curses in first year than the seventh years?) but he had 
>been resisting so far (perhaps well hidden morals?) or he simply 
>didn't buy into that whole mob mentality. However, since it is a 
>fact that he once belonged to a gang of Slytherins and I doubt that 
>it was in his fourth year and they were all seven years who had 
>graduated at the time of the incident, after the attack Snape did 
>join, one thing led to another and here's yet another thing for 
>which to hate James Potter, Sirius Black and their cronies.

Me again:

Yeah, he seemed not to have any particular friends at the time in 
the pensieve; they'd just finished an exam, and your first
instinct 
after an exam would always be to huddle with your friends and 
compare notes – but he seeks out no one, and no one seeks him
out, 
and he doesn't expect them to, either.  Presumably, the rest of
the 
Slytherins in his year were also in the exam hall, and yet no one so 
much as spoke to him as they finished.  He's just buries his nose
in 
his school work and walks away, poor lad.  I've always been a
Snape-
sympathiser, but thinking about it, his home life can't have been 
much fun, and Potter and Black made his school life hell, the poor 
boy had a miserable existence – no wonder if Death Eater
recruiters 
spotted him as a potential and started whispering sweet dark 
nothings in his ear, he'd turn to them.  Snape's exactly the
type 
that these radical cults pray on – I bet the DEs gave him 
appreciation and respect for his talents and a sense of belonging 
for the first time in his miserable life.  He needn't even have 
previously brought into their philosophy about purity to fall hook, 
line and sinker for their promises.  The fact that he exists is fine 
to the DEs – he's a pure-blood, after all (we assume).  

So, I conclude Voldemort had his Dark Lord Youth at Hogwarts in 
Snape's final few years, and they were looking for potential 
recruits.  Snape, being up to the eyes in the Dark Arts and lonely 
and bitter as hell, was a perfect target, and they sucked him in
– 
in the space of his final few years at school.  After all, by my 
maths, he'd only be 20/21 and so two or three years out of school
(please feel free to dispute this, I'm not at all sure) when 
Voldemort fell the first time – he'd already been wooed by
the DEs, 
gotten involved, gotten disillusioned, wanted out, got involved with 
Dumbledore, and spied for a while by this time, so it would make 
sense if the process began before he left Hogwarts.  

This makes why he wanted out an even more intriguing mystery –
but 
his change of heart makes more sense if he brought in for a bit of 
respect and appreciation rather than any real deep convictions about 
the purity of blood.  

Oh, how can you not find this guy fascinating?!  Five years of books 
and we still have *no* idea what goes on in his head!  I love it!  

^_^

Faith's Girl