James & Snape: Related? - or Snape & Sirius?

[kiricat2001]

No: HPFGUIDX 110141

 Magda Grantwich wrote:
> If Snape has to be related to anyone (something I'm not convinced
> about but for the sake of speculation...), then there are good (or 
at
> least not-bad) indications that he might be related to Sirius.  How
> about as an illegitimate half-brother?

<big snip>
> 
> There's no doubt that there's something very personal in the
> Snape-Sirius hatefest. Most assume it's because of the Prank but the
> Prank was the result of the hatred, not the cause of it. In the
> Pensieve Scene, it was James who initiated the confrontation and
> fought with Snape while Sirius was the back-up but there was
> something very creepy about the way that Sirius worked to disarm
> Snape and keep his temper roiling with his interventions.  James was
> being, as someone on another site put it, a teenage-alpha-male-jerk
> but it was pretty straightforward.  
> 
> Sirius's constant stream of put-downs are much more vicious (JKR's
> term) and he does display an interesting obsession with Snape's
> physical appearance - looks like his dad, perhaps?  Is Snape an
> acceptable substitute for Sirius' growing antipathy to his/their
> father?  It's easy for Sirius as a grown-man in his 30's to say that
> he hated his parents and everything they stood for but would a
> teenager still coming to grips with his heritage and personal
> identify really not have found his growing distance from his parents
> to be more troublesome?  Would he not focus a lot of that developing
> revulsion against an external target?  
> 
> And if Mr. Black told Sirius about Snape's existence before he went
> to Hogwarts (one of those man-to-man-father-son chats) and forbade
> him to fight with Snape, wouldn't it be perfect teen logic to think
> that as long as he was just backing James up, then it wasn't the 
same
> as fighting with Snape?

Marianne:

Yes, the antipathy between Snape and Sirius seems so much hotter and 
on a deeper gut-level than whatever we've been shown or told about 
the relationship between Snape and James.  Even though the 
implication, or at least what Harry has been led to believe, is that 
the greater enmity was between James and Severus, perhaps that is not 
really the case. 

I wonder, though, assuming your theory to be correct, if Sirius was 
told what the blood relationship was between them.  I could see this 
theory as playing out with neither of Sirius' parents telling him 
that Snape is his half-brother.  They might not have said anything 
because they'd assume that their son would be sorted, like all good 
Blacks, into Slytherin, and that Snape, as a half-Black would 
naturally be there, too.  And, thus, the boys would be, if not 
exactly allies, at least tolerant of each other as Housemates.

So, Sirius goes to Hogwarts and gets himself sorted into Gryffindor.  
He sees this Snape kid and wonders what the story is, especially if 
he notices a resemblence to dear, old Dad. At the same time, Snape 
knew full well what his own parentage was, and saw Sirius as 
embodying all that had been withheld from him. He had his own 
resentment because he felt he was as fully deserving of being 
recognized as a member of the Black family, which is exactly what 
Sirius threw away.

If Snape was sorted into Slytherin, would not Bellatrix and Narcissa  
also note the resemblence to their uncle?  Would they have encouraged 
Snape in his loathing of blood-traitor Sirius while they were still 
at school?  Could they have played on his resentment at how he'd been 
treated later on to show him the shining path to glory that awaited 
him if he pledged allegiance to Voldemort?

And, yes, I agree that the Willow incident was the culmination of the 
bad relationship.  My feeling is that something acted as the trigger 
to this incident.  And the fall-out from this included both Sirius 
leaving his family for good and implications for Snape's future which 
have yet to be revealed.

Marianne