Snape, Sirius, and 'moral codes'

[frumenta]

No: HPFGUIDX 74226

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "curly_of_oster" 
<lkadlec at p...> wrote:
<snippy snippy>
> Random:
> You've completely skipped that the Prank also puts Lupin in danger
> 
> Me:
> Of course I have, as it has nothing to do with the subject I'm 
> addressing. <g>  Someone else took Sirius' line in PoA, "It served 
> him right" (re: Snape and the prank) and concluded that for 
Sirius, 
> if he doesn't like you, you don't have any rights at all.  The 
point 
> of my response was that 1) even given what we see with Snape and 
> Sirius, I'm not sure that one can conclude that Sirius thinks this 
> about Snape, and 2) even if he *does* think this about Snape, the 
> relationship between Sirius and Snape is a pretty special case, 
and 
> I wouldn't want to generalize about either one of them based on 
it.  


So, we judge Snape from everything we've seen about him in the books 
(which is a lot) but with Sirius it's all about how he treats his 
enemies? Or those he doesn't like?

How about those he does like? He was petty enough to hold a grudge 
against Harry and push him to the point where Harry was worrying 
about his welfare on top of everything else! He was frankly creepy 
in the way he confused Harry with James and when it comes to Harry 
knowing the real James... isn't it interesting that Harry had to go 
as far as plunging right in Snape's Pensieve to find a little more 
about his Dad? Couldn't Sirius fill the time in Grimmault with some 
nice James stories? I don't even know whether I can call this a 
character failing, perhaps Sirius couldn't think of anything to say 
about James that would be fitting for Harry to hear or he was simply 
missing his friend too badly. Or it's a great gaping plot hole from 
JKR, wouldn't be the first.

As for the Prank, why only view it in terms of what it meant for 
Snape and Sirius? Since we are discussing Sirius' moral character 
here, there is no canon information that we can simply dismiss as 
irrelevant. What the prank meant for Remus is very much relevant 
imho. We're judging Sirius here on how he treated his enemies 
(bullying Snape at 15, attempting to kill him at 16 and saying he 
deserved it at 35) how about how he treated his friends?

Revealing Remus' secret to Snape can only mean that Sirius didn't 
expect Snape to survive the encounter. Which means that he was 
perfectly fine with the thought of his friend eating a classmate and 
quite possibly being put to death. Did the Sirius/Remus friendship 
survive unscathed? It's interesting that Sirius believed Remus to be 
the spy and did not inform him of the change in Secret Keeper (as he 
did not inform Dumbledore, another brilliant move there) while 
Peter, the sycophant, had his blind trust. It's also interesting 
that to our knowledge Remus did not attend James' wedding.

And did Remus, or Dumbledore or anyone who could have been willing 
to listen to Sirius' side of things bother to visit him in Azkaban 
and find out? Doesn't look like it.

They knew Sirius and thought the worst of him. How can we think any 
differently?

And with Sirius back, Dumbledore had absolutely no use for him. 
Sirius failed miserably in everything. He failed to save James. He 
was no use to Harry when he was growing up. He played godfather for 
about a year or so and then screwed that up quite spectacularly and 
he had the worst death scene ever! What is this? And JKR is supposed 
to hate *Snape*? Yeah, right...

Sorry, I sort of went on a tangent there... 

Mim