OoP - Snape the racist; Snape the victim; Snape Snape Snape

[darrin_burnett]

No: HPFGUIDX 62019

There has been a question of whether these are Snape's views of the 
events or the events themselves, which allows Harry to hear 
conversations the younger Snape had no way of hearing.

I don't know when the Shrieking Shack prank took place, but if it 
took place after the Worst Memory Prank, then you have to go with the 
latter.

Lupin and the others talk about him being a werewolf. If Snape heard 
that, and this was before the Shrieking Shack prank, then that 
doesn't make sense. 

So, I submit that this is Snape's subconscious, and not his memory 
shading his views.


Now, onto Snape and the Marauders themselves.

I, too, wonder where the gang of Slytherins were. I don't buy that by 
the end of fifth year, Snape, who after all came to school knowing 
more curses than any seventh-year AND already had the "filthy 
mudblood" doctrine down pat, Snape has no Slyth friends.

And speaking of all those curses, Snape really didn't get many good 
shots in, did he? 

Remember Lily saying "you're as bad as he is" to James? She's 
essentially saying that a bully is as bad as a dark-arts loving 
little racist. I say that's what begins to deflate James' head a 
little bit. He has discovered what all men eventually discover about 
women.

What we think impresses women - macho behavior - doesn't impress them 
in the slightest.

Again, my feelings now on the Shrieking Shack prank and James' 
reaction is NOT, as I originally thought, that Lily asked James to 
save Snape, but that James saved Snape and Lily started seeing James 
differently because of it.

How did Snape feel about all this?

I don't want to try to match wits with the premier Snapeologist, but 
I'd like to suggest that Snape's feelings for Lily, if they existed --
 not convinced yet, Amanda -- are buried so deep that he can't begin 
to fathom them until long after she is dead. 

She stands up for him, and he calls her the worst epithet in the 
Wizard World, simply because of her bloodlines. I could see where 
this is an unrequited crush manifesting itself as hate, but again, 
those are very subterranean feelings. I wonder if Snape even grasped 
them, until it was too late.

About this "worst" memory business.

First, this "worst memory" thing seems to be a chapter title and is 
nowhere else in the canon.

We know only that this is something Snape didn't want Harry to see. 
Why this memory? Does it have something to do with what happened 
next? Or later that night? 

Or, perhaps this is simply the memory that rockets to the surface 
every time Snape has to deal with Harry -- because it has James, 
Lily, Black and Lupin all in it -- so it was the easiest one to pluck.

Snape could perhaps not be giving Harry enough credit. The last thing 
Snape might have expected is for Harry to feel pity for Snape and 
revulsion at his father and Sirius' actions. He might have expected 
Harry to be cheering at the bullying, and therefore didn't want Harry 
anywhere near it. 

I submit that if Snape had grasped Harry would be shaken so much by 
the memory, Snape would have left it in for Harry to find. Think 
about it, as humiliating as it was for Snape to have Harry see that, 
it accomplished more than any taunt about his father's arrogance ever 
did.

Are Snape and Harry heading for a reconciliation? No, not that, but 
some kind of understanding.

It is, as Amanda pointed out, too soon for Harry to let go of his 
anger toward Snape. He is mourning Sirius and he is reacting, in my 
view, as he thinks Sirius would have wanted him to, with hatred 
toward Snape.

But, I believe Harry is going to feel the urge, the need, to 
apologize on behalf of his father. He might have done so already, had 
Sirius not died and he had to deal with his own guilt and the 
knowledge that he is heading down a path of death, if the prophecy is 
true.

This is a long post, so I'll wait until later to post why I think it 
is possible Snape is STILL the bad guy.

Darrin
-- Still likes James. Still likes Sirius. Still likes Lupin. :)