Snape, Sirius, and 'moral codes'

[curly_of_oster]

No: HPFGUIDX 73877

Warning, this is probably going to get pretty long.

I have been following, with interest, the threads on Sirius (Much 
Ado about What? <g>), Dumbledore's use (or abuse?) of Sirius, etc., 
and I am kind of interested in the side topic, of sorts, that came 
up in these conversations regarding Snape, Sirius, and their 
respective 'moral codes.'  I have been reading tons of digests, and 
while I did go back and find some of the original quotes, I know I 
am paraphrasing and probably doing a bit of generalizing, so I 
apologize in advance to the original author(s) of these ideas if I 
leave something out or muck something up. <g>


The basic ideas seemed to be:

Snape: Although he can be (often/always is?) an unpleasant git, he 
is an equal opportunity unpleasant git, in that he treats everyone 
badly, and that he will save the life of even someone he hates (for 
the greater good?), primarily evidenced, I think, by his 
countercursing the jinx on Harry's broom in PS/SS.

Sirius: Although he would do anything, including give his life, for 
those he cares about, if he doesn't like you, you don't really 
count/don't even have rights, primarily evidenced, I think, by 
the 'prank' on Snape and his saying, in PoA, that Snape 'deserved 
it.'


While I agree that the conclusions drawn are not *inconsistent* with 
the evidence given, I would take issue with making such broad 
statements about either character, both because I think the evidence 
we have is simply insufficient to do so and also because I think the 
cases we do have to look at are likely to be particularly 
specialized, and therefore do not lend themselves to making such 
general conclusions.


Snape: I am not even going to deal with the idea that he treats 
everyone equally (it was even said that he grades fairly), as I 
think that has been discussed already.  I don't think he treats 
everyone equally at all, though whether that is a major factor in 
his 'moral code' is another issue.  

In any case, at the moment I'm more interested in the 'he'll save 
your life even if he hates you' argument.  As far as I know, the 
only evidence we have for this relates to Harry (primarily the PS/SS 
example with the broom; there have been discussions, I think, of 
other possible instances, but this one seems the most obvious and 
agreed upon).  Because the books are to a large degree from Harry's 
POV (not 1st person, true, but they follow *Harry's* part of the 
story), we are not privy to a lot of information, and we only get 
outside interpretations of what's in the head of characters who are 
not Harry.  We have been told that Harry's father saved Snape's 
life, and that Dumbledore believes that Snape worked so hard to save 
Harry during PS/SS because of his debt to James.  In PoA, Dumbledore 
tells Harry of the 'deep magic' of the debt created when one wizard 
saves another's life.  

If it is true that James saved Snape, and that Snape felt in his 
debt, and if this idea of a 'wizard's debt' really has the strong 
place in the Wizarding World that we've been led to believe, it 
seems to me that all we can genuinely conclude from Snape's behavior 
in trying to save Harry is that he believes in/honors the concept of 
a wizard's life-debt.  We don't have any evidence, at least not that 
I can think of off-hand, about how Snape would behave toward someone 
he hates but whom he does not feel obligated by a life-debt to 
protect.

We *do* have evidence that he is perhaps not so good at putting 
aside his hatred for the common good in non-life-threatening 
situations.  He continues to treat Harry with contempt and disdain 
in a private situation where the 'he's just playing a part' excuse 
won't wash (i.e. the Occlumency lessons), and while his anger at 
Harry for looking in the Pensieve is justifiable, he lets that anger 
and his hatred override the good of the Order when he stops teaching 
Harry.  He also taunts Sirius, apparently at every available 
opportunity, regarding their relative roles in the Order at the time 
of OOP.  To be fair, his hatred of Sirius seems justified, and if 
their positions were reversed, I don't know that Sirius would have 
done any better.  However, that doesn't change the fact that what 
Snape is doing goes against the 'common good.'

Again, to be fair, I don't think the fact that Snape allows his 
anger and/or hatred to sometimes get in the way of his doing what is 
best for the Order is evidence that in a more extreme situation this 
would still happen.  I think Snape is a good character, and an 
interesting one.  I don't really 'like' him, but part of me does 
believe that if it came down to it, and he had needed to save, say, 
Sirius, in order to help defeat Voldemort (assuming, of course, that 
he's not really working for the other side <g>), that he would 
have.  However, I recognize that this is just a 'gut feeling,' so to 
speak, because the evidence we have so far is insufficient to tell.  
As I said above, all I think we can truly conclude about Snape is 
that he'll save your life even if he hates you if he feels compelled 
by a 'wizard's debt.'


Whew.  On to Sirius:  As with Snape, I don't think we have 
sufficient information to draw a general conclusion, and I think the 
information we have comes from what seems to be a 'special case.'

Even many people who don't like Sirius seem to agree that he would 
go to great lengths and probably even lay down his life for you if 
he cares about you.  We can't say this for sure, but I think there 
is at least evidence to suggest it's true.  I don't think that 
switching the secret keeper job to Peter could reasonably be assumed 
to be something that would have made Sirius 'safer.'  We're told 
that Sirius was the obvious choice and that Voldemort would have 
come after him, and I think that's true.  He seems to have been more 
than willing to make himself a target of the 'Dark Lord' to protect 
James and his family.  Also, in GoF, Sirius comes back to England, 
risking his life/soul, to help Harry.

Let's then move on to 'if he doesn't like you, you don't count/don't 
have rights."  I think the fact that Sirius told Snape how to get 
past the Whomping Willow is beyond dispute.  It is also true that 
when Lupin tells the kids in the Shack that Sirius played a 'trick' 
on Snape that Sirius says, "It served him right."  I agree that this 
is not a particularly mature response, and neither does it speak 
particularly well of Sirius.  

I still think, however, that we have to consider the context of the 
situation in which this conversation occurs, as well as the fact 
that, as with Snape, the information we have is hugely incomplete.  
Lupin says that Sirius played a trick on Snape, and Sirius says that 
he deserved it.  Is he genuinely saying that Snape deserved to 
*die*, or merely that Snape deserved to be scared enough that he 
would stop nosing around in Remus' business (and in the Marauders' 
business)?  I agree that now, as an adult, Sirius should be able to 
see that the Prank was wrong, and far too dangerous, regardless of 
why it happened (my jury is still out, though, on to what extent the 
Prank may/may not have been at least 'understandable,' until we 
learn more about it, assuming we ever do).  However, I would also 
posit that the Sirius we see in PoA is not the most rational of 
people, and justifiably so, given where he's been for the last 12 
years.  

Why is it that Sirius' snarling response about the Prank, at a 
time when he is not entirely rational, and in a stressful situation, 
is taken as gospel, while his ability to speak rationally about 
Snape in GoF is largely ignored, and his assertion in OOP that he's 
not proud of his behavior as a 15-year-old is assumed to be a 
throwaway statement, something that he just says for Harry's sake?  
In OOP, when Harry talks to Lupin and Sirius, Lupin tries to gloss 
things over as James and Sirius getting 'carried away,' but Sirius 
owns up and admits that they were 'arrogant little berks.'  There is 
nothing in the description of the 'I'm not proud of it" line that 
indicates one way or another whether Sirius is truly remorseful (he 
delivers the line 'quickly,' which could mean any number of things), 
but it seems to me that during the whole conversation it's not 
himself whom he is primarily trying to defend, but James.

I also have to wonder about the scene between Snape and Dumbledore 
in PoA, when Snape reminds Dumbledore, "Sirius Black showed he was 
capable of murder at the age of sixteen.  You haven't forgotten 
that, Headmaster?  You haven't forgotten that he tried to kill 
*me*?"  Dumbledore quietly replies, "My memory is as good as it ever 
was, Severus."  I don't know what this was all about.  Was 
Dumbledore just thinking about giving second chances, and Snape's 
own past? Is there more to the whole 'Prank' than meets the eye??

Okay.  So the short version of my first point is that we don't even 
really have enough information about the Prank or about Sirius' 
thoughts on it, to say for sure that he doesn't think Snape in 
particular has any rights.  I'm perfectly willing to concede that it 
is arguable that thoughtless, arrogant, 16-year-old Sirius sent 
Snape to the Shack without considering the consequences to either 
Snape or Remus, and that at the time, and even to this day, he 
doesn't feel at all guilty about it.  I'm just saying that I don't 
think we have enough evidence to know for sure.

Finally (is anyone even still reading this?), as with the case of 
Snape and Harry, I'm not entirely sure that one can generalize from 
Sirius' treatment of Snape to a statement of Sirius' 'moral code.'  
We know a fair bit about why Snape hates Sirius.  Why Sirius hates 
Snape with such passion is, in my opinion, still an unwritten story 
(and one about which I'm quite curious, but that's another issue).  
Regardless of why, though, the level of antagonism between the two 
men is extreme.  *Neither one of them* seems to be able to get past 
it, as evidenced by the mutual loathing with which they regard each 
other at the end of GoF (and their barely civil handshake), Snape's 
taunting of Sirius in OOP, Sirius' use of the old nickname Snivellus 
in OOP, etc.  Given this, I would be hesitant to draw general 
conclusions about *either* Snape or Sirius based on their 
interactions with each other.  

Just as we have no real evidence of whether Snape would save the 
life of someone he hates other than Harry (a special case), we have 
very little evidence that I can think of that speaks to Sirius' 
general attitude towards people he dislikes who aren't Snape.  At 
this point, someone will probably say, "What about Kreacher?"  To 
which I would probably reply, "What *about* Kreacher???"  Kreacher 
hated Sirius.  Whatever Dumbledore says, I think Sirius, if he 
didn't 'hate' Kreacher, disliked him strongly back.  Sirius wasn't 
very nice to Kreacher, but he wasn't cruel to him either.  And 
Kreacher's status as a house elf throws a huge wrench in the works 
if the argument is going to be about whether the disliked 'person' 
has rights, doesn't it?  I would further respond that in GoF, Sirius 
seems to indicate that he thinks even suspected Death Eaters have 
rights (see the conversation about giving Aurors the power to kill 
and to use Unforgiveables).  To be fair, he has personal reasons to 
feel this way, and his attitude toward rights in general may not be 
generalizable to his attitude toward the rights of people he doesn't 
like.  I just think that his attitude toward Snape is no *more* 
generalizable, and that it is rather a large leap from a barely 
functioning Sirius snarling 'It served him right' about Snape (with 
whom he seems to be engaged in an irrationally extreme mutual hatred 
society) in the Shrieking Shack to "if he doesn't like you, he 
doesn't seem to think you have any rights at all," as one person put 
it.  

I would also say that, as I do with Snape, I believe that if it came 
down to it, and Sirius had needed to save Snape's life for the 
Order/to defeat Voldemort, that he would have.  And, as with Snape, 
I recognize that this is a gut feeling.

Lisa