Parenting Harry (was: Re: I don't like him much)

[eloise_herisson]

No: HPFGUIDX 120066


> > Eloise:
> > Although I hear Annemehr's objections to this (not quoted), it 
> > struck a chord in my mind.
> > 
> > huge snip.
> > 
> > Snape, in his own, unsympathetic way, has been trying to do 
> > right by Harry for some time. 
>  
> > Alla:
> > Honestly, I would probably heard you before OOP. Not after 
> > Occlumency failure, sorry!
> 
> 
> Toto: 
> I totally agree with Alla here. When has Snape cared if Harry lived 
in 
> a satisfying way? 

Eloise:
Err, I don't believe I ever claimed  that Snape "cared if Harry
lived in  a satisfying way." 

Toto: 
In ps, I could see Snape trying to save Harry as a 
> point, just saying *I am better than you* to James, or maybe just 
> because you do not stand back when someone is in danger. 

Eloise:
Better than James is hard to achieve, given that James gave his life 
to save Harry. If you want to suggest a self interested motive for 
saving Harry's life, then I'd be more inclined to go along
with the frequently suggested idea that Snape was trying to repay the 
life debt which many believe was incurred when James saved *his* 
life. 

Nevertheless, many people *do* stand back when others are in danger. 
Walking by on the other side is much easier than intervening. Yet 
Snape intervenes to save a boy he can't stand and ostensibly wants 
nothing more than to see expelled.

Toto: 
Trying to 
> save someone else do not mean you are good, nor does it mean you 
> aren't bad. 

Eloise:
And I made no comment on whether Snape was good or bad. It's 
irrelevant.


Toto:
>It just mean you are an active person. I think. In Cos, 
> would sacking Harry would have been any good to him? 


Eloise:
To Snape or to Harry?
Harry would have been safe at the Dursleys, a lot safer than he ended 
up being at Hogwarts. Snape suggesting that Harry is expelled is a 
constantly recurring theme in the books. Snape must know that it will 
never happen (aside from anything else I'm sure he realises Harry's
significance). It doesn't mean he has to like him, though, and 
doesn't mean that he can't express his feelings. He either genuinely 
detests Harry or else gives a very convincing act of doing so. 

Toto:
>In Poa, couldn't he have listened to Sirius? 

Eloise:
I'm not sure what that has to do with the argument, except to
point out that he was (like, I might add, the rest of the WW, 
including Harry, until minutes before) convinced that Sirius was the 
one who had betrayed the Potters and (like Dumbledore and the MOM) 
believed that he had escaped precisely in order to kill Harry. As far 
as Snape was concerned, whatever personal motives he might have had 
for seeking out Sirius (and I believe, as I've argued before, that he 
did have personal motives, which was why he didn't involve anyone 
else in his rescue mission) he had saved Harry's life again. And note 
that when he awakens, one of the first things he does is to conjure 
stretchers and make sure the children are taken to safety.

Toto:
>In my opinion, Snape is a very, very unstable man, with a very big 
ego. Not really an interesting >person  at all, but a dangerous one. 
For allies, that is.

Eloise:
And in mine he is a very damaged man with a very fragile ego that 
constantly needs bolstering. Not that it matters for the purposes of 
this argument. 

I don't think I made that argument very well, because 
the point seems to have been missed. It is not that Snape cares for 
Harry in the sense of having warm feelings for him, but that IMO, he 
feels a duty of care towards him which particularly involves making 
sure that he is not over-indulged or allowed to get away with things 
because of any special status, that he  isn't allowed to develop
the kind of egocentricity that Kneasy was identifying. The point was 
that parenting involves discipline as well as warmth and fuzzy 
feelings, that it involves the setting of limits as well as the 
freedom to depart from them from time to time. The point was that 
Harry is receiving fractured parenting in the WW and like him or not, 
whether his methods are acceptable or not, whatever the motivation, 
Snape is the only one who is consistently  concerned with 
disciplining Harry, setting limits and consciously trying to ensure 
that he does not become a spoilt, celebrity brat. That is what I 
think he sees as doing right by him, that and maintaining his 
physical safety. 

As I said in my previous post, that particular aspect of parenting 
seems to fall to Snape. Yes, as Annemehr pointed out, Lupin's
methods of control are different and arguably better than Snape's, but
Lupin is present at school with Harry for only one year out of five 
and at the end of it what does he do? *He gives him back the map*, 
the map which he was "astounded" Harry hadn't handed in. Just
because he was no longer a teacher he felt no obligation to keep it 
from him,but by that act tacitly colluded with Harry's rule-breaking 
and possibly putting himself into danger again in the future. 
McGonagall could fulfil the role, but for some reason seems less 
involved, strange since she's Harry's head of house.

Snape often disagrees with Dumbledore and I see his treatment of 
Harry as in part a conscious counterbalance to what he sees as the 
headmaster's over-indulgence. In fact, he almost says as much to 
Fudge in PoA.

As for the Occlumency failure, well that's really another thread 
(which I haven`t followed, so apologies if I duplicate).  My
concern about that is less what it says about Snape's relationship 
with Harry than the risk he was posing for the rest of the WW.  But 
to repeat myself, what I am arguing is that Snape has taken on one 
particular role within the role of parenting Harry. He can't stand 
the boy and he is human (all too human) and capable of being 
hurt/humiliated. What Harry did was a gross invasion of his privacy, 
after which he had every right to be livid. The incident certainly 
doesn't say anything about his duty to guard Harry or discipline him.

Incidentally, isn't it rather interesting that the memory in the 
Pensieve is one that is not just humiliating for Snape, but shows 
James et al in a very bad light? He didn't put his memories of
his miserable childhood, or humiliation on the broomstick into it , 
but let Harry have access to those. The memory he chose to hide from 
Harry was one that would be at least as hurtful to Harry as to 
himself and in fact the effect of seeing it was not for Harry to 
think the worse of Snape, but of his father. 

Now I know someone's going to argue that he did it deliberately, 
intending Harry's curiosity to get the better of him, but a face 
value reading suggests instead that he was protecting Harry. If he 
intended Harry to see it, then he shouldn't have been genuinely angry 
with him, but rather pleased that he had achieved his aim. Surely he 
would have carried on teaching him, but used every opportunity to 
remind him of the memory. Arguably he genuinely intended him not to 
see that particular memory, but Harry's prying tipped the balance too 
far and Snape' forbearance over the edge. 

~Eloise