[HPforGrownups] Re: asking the question

[Carolina]

No: HPFGUIDX 84796


> > Silmariel (me) wrote:
> > ...the answer is not the Prank because I think it does
> > not justify that intensity of hate when your enemy has been
> > dead 14 years. To me, that's not a 'scar not to be healed', it
> > is a scar you can heal or not, but depending on the person, not
> > something so deep that it is Ever So Present after 14 years.

Carol answered:
> I think it's the humiliation of having been publicly hung
> upsidedown with his dingy underwear showing. It would be very
> hard to forgive or forget something like that, and the pain of
> having the son of the person responsible witness it in the
> Pensieve would be excruciating. Snape would think that Harry had
> deliberately chosen to pry into his most painful memories. I
> think that scar, in combination with one created by the Prank
> (and the resulting life debt), will only heal when Snape has
> saved Harry's life in some spectacular way that Harry openly and
> gratefully acknowledges, probably near the end of Book 7.

To wich I reply:

That's not enough and would make him an inmature person. If he is 
not able to control a hate based on those two things, after James 
is dead, Lupin is a social pariah, and Sirius and Peter had been 
imprisoned alive (each in his own way) more than ten years, he 
shouldn't be able to be alive after being a double agent for so 
long time. If he is to jump and lose control on that, I don't know 
how Dumbledore can trust him a delicate task as spying is.

Some scars are too deep to be healed, but public humiliation isn't 
that deep. It doesn't necessarily hurt after years and you don't 
need your enemy's son to heal that. If Snape isn't able to heal 
that, it's up to him, but it does not justify DDore excusing him, 
as he did with 'some scars run too deep to be healed'

Snape's hate for James is prior to the Harry-Snape pensieve fight, 
and I'm not delving into that scene, only to say that for me, 
Snape's worst memory is not the pensieve scene.

To me, Snape didn't lost control because of what Harry had seen, but 
because of what Harry was about to see if he kept looking. 

Would I lose control if a student discovered I was humilliated while 
young? No, I'm mature enough, I'd be angry but not to the point of 
trowing objects.

Would I lose control if that same student had nearly witnessed how 
my son died? Probably. Even after 15 years? Yes. 

So the question remains. What happened to Snape that he is unable to 
forget?

Silmariel