[HPforGrownups] Re: OoP: What Snape is really doing out there...

[Irene Mikhlin]

No: HPFGUIDX 66237


pjuel13 at aol.com wrote:

>>And if it was McGonagall with message from Dumbledore, would Sirius take
>>his godfather duties as far?
>>Would he tell her "It's my house" if she offered Harry to sit down?
>>Sirius was looking for confrontation in this episode.
> 
> 
> Would McGonnagall have questioned Sirius' presence in the first place? 

Well, it's a question of chicken and egg, I'm afraid. :-)
She would not, but then Sirius would not request it.


It was
> Sirius' right and duty to be there as Harry's guardian. He had every reason 
> to believe that Harry's interests needed looking after from the moment he knew 
> Snape was going to be teaching the occlumency.  
> Did Snape "offer" Harry to sit down or did he order him to?

He said "Sit down, Potter". Does not get more neutral than that.

> It may be possible to constuct a senario where Snape's public attitude 
> towards Harry, his friends, and non-Slytherins in general is explained away by a 
> need to keep his unreformed death eater cover identity in place. But there's no 
> one in the kitchen but Harry, Sirius, and himself. What excuse is there for him 
> then? 

Excuse for what? He talks to Harry in a perfectly civil and professional 
way.
Sirius throws in his face the fact that it's his house, and from Snape's 
reaction there is something bigger behind it.
Then he casts doubts on Snape's ability to teach it, and delivers
the ultimate insult: you are an unreformed Death Eater.

> Black calls him on it and on Snape's propensity to go after Harry whenever 
> the opportunity presents itself and he's right to. Regardless of his actions in 
> the big picture battle against Voldemort, on a day to day level Snape has been 
> relentlessly harrying and hounding Harry for no appreciable reason other than 
> that he's James Potter's son. Why wouldn't Black be concerned about Snape 
> having even more access to Harry, more opportunity to keep doing what he's been 
> doing for 4 and a half years?
> Snape can't even keep himself from ordering Harry 
> around and sneering at him in the kitchen of the order's safehouse. A 
> guardian has the right and the duty to protect their charge from what they percieve 
> to be a danger. Black believed that Snape should be warned not to abuse his new 
> position as Harry's occulmency mentor. All the information he had, including 
> Snape's behaviour there in the kitchen told him that particular danger was 
> more than possible, that it was probable. And in the end Dumbledore conceeds that 
> Snape was unable to keep his feelings about James from coloring his treatment 
> of Harry during the lessons"
> "I thought Professor Snape could overcome his feelings about your father - I 
> was wrong." (US ed. pg 833)

This is what bugs me - how can Dumbledore blame Snape for Harry's 
failure? I wrote before that Snape was surprisingly civil and 
professional during the lessons. Cold, yes, but civil.
Harry made absolutely no effort to succeed in these lessons.

> 
> Snape was cool? I suppose that, depending on your personal feelings regarding 
> the two adults in the room, you could see Snape as the "cool" one

That's what I meant, yes. He stayed composed while Sirius lost his temper.

> (though 
> it's noteable that Snape is the one who indulges in insult after insult while 
> Black does nothing til Snape takes a shot at both Harry and James), but how cool 
> is sneering at and repeatedly belittling Harry? Is that cool too? 

No, but he did nothing of the sort towards Harry in this scene.

Irene