Professor Snape's role

[potioncat]

No: HPFGUIDX 99925

Maddy wrote:
> 
> At any point Snape could have seen that Harry does not like the 
fame
> and attention that surrounds him. 
>snip> 
> It appears as though Snape has a lot of evidence in front of him 
that
> points to the fact that Harry isn't an arrogant bully, like James 
was.
> But he seems pretty happy to ignore those facts. 

Potioncat:
Sorry, I've snipped a lot here, to get to one point.  Very good 
post, BTW.

I've been wondering if Snape really does have a lot of evidence 
about Harry?  I can't defend this at the moment, but the next time I 
read any of these I'm going to take a look at just what Snape's 
point of view might reasonably be if we had only seen it from his 
eyes.

My point is, he expects Harry to be an arrogant rule breaker.  And 
he has seen Harry break rules!  I've always thought he knew Malfoy 
was starting the fights, but I'm beginning to wonder if that is the 
case.  Now, I'm not going to defend this view yet, because, as I 
say, I would need to reveiw certain portions of the book first.  It 
has just crossed my mind lately that just as Harry has often been 
mistaken about events, Snape might have been as well.

The first one that comes to my mind, IIRC, (and this doesn't even 
involve Snape) is when McGonagall thinks the Trio tricked Draco into 
thinking they had a dragon.  We of course, know the truth, but she 
believes them to be guilty of taunting Malfoy.

But because the original point of this thread had to do with the 
penseive and Occlumency, I have to say, one my favorite theories 
from this site, is that it may have been Snape who tipped the Order 
off about how badly the Dursleys treat Harry.

Potioncat