Snape's Worst Memory

[junediamanti]

No: HPFGUIDX 80890

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "yairadubin" 
<two4menone4you88 at a...> wrote:
> I've noticed a lot of people posting about how could the scene with 
> MWPP be Snape's worst memory? They were saying how he probably has 
a 
> lot of other horrible memories from his time as a death eater.  I 
> just wanted to add another variable to the mix.  As I was rereading 
> OOP I noticed that Harry doesn't finish reliving Snape's memory, 
> Snape interrupts him in the middle.  Maybe the part of that memory 
> that's so horrible to Snape to be called his worst memory was at 
the 
> end and we didn't see it because Harry didn't get that far.  Just a 
> thought.  Any comments?
>                              LUV,
>                                *Yaira*

I have always firmly believed that the "Snape's Worst Memory" tag is 
merely the appelation that Harry places on it.  

Harry is fifteen at the time of seeing it.  Snape was probably about 
16.  Never having been a boy of sixteen I can't be sure, but I would 
suspect that humiliation looms large in your list of what you don't 
want to happen.  so to Harry (as to teenage Snape) getting exposed is 
about as bad as it could get.

>From the POV of a man of 36 - the worst memory could be radically 
different - hearing that despite your best efforts, the woman you 
loved is dead could possibly overtake the underpants issue (I knew I 
could get the subject back on that if I really tried!) or perhaps the 
time he put his first move on Lily and got politely but firmly 
brushed off, or when he was about to ask her to dance at the Yule 
Ball and James got there ahead of him....

We don't know what else he put in the Pensieve, do we?  Also we don't 
know what Snape would describe as his worst ever memory - and his 
psychiatrist isn't talking either.

June

"Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way"

Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon

(and my quote of the week for Snape)