Harry/James, Crabbe or Goyle/Snape connection

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 101846

The sequence of this post as I found it was somewhat confused, so
forgive me if I haven't reconstructed it correctly.

Someone wrote:
according to Sirius, Snape was  sort of Lucius' stooge.

Yuiren responded: 
Wait!  I thought it had been found that Lucius graduated when Snape
and the marauders were all in second year!  Snape was friends with
Bellatrix  and many other Death Eaters, but he was not in the same
year or remotely close to Lucius.

-imamommy added the relevant quote:
> 
> "'Tell me, how is Lucius Malfoy these days?  I expect he's delighted
> his lapdog's working at Hogwarts, isn't he?'"
> (Sirius Black to Severus Snape in OoP, p 520, Scholastic edition)
> 
> It would appear, then, that ol' Snivelly did know Lucius, whether in
> school or after.

Carol responds to all:
I don't think that the thread indicates that Snape was ever Lucius
Malfoy's "stooge." The term "lap dog" means a little pet. Given the
difference in their ages (Malfoy is 41 at the end of GoF; JKR has told
us that Snape is 35 or 36 in that book), it's logical that they would
have known each other at school when Lucius was in his sixth and
seventh years and Severus in his first and second. Lucius, seeing the
potential of this little boy who already knows as many curses as he
does, may well have condescended to him, allowing him to join his gang
(surely he was the leader of the slytherins then?) as a very junior
member. (The others, for example Bellatrix, were also older than
Severus, though a little younger than Lucius, and probably would have
retained him in their gang, possibly with something of the same
condescending attitude.) Sirius is probably contemptuously remembering
the days when Severus was Malfoy's "little pet" and possibly implying
that a similar relationship (the rich Malfoy condescending to
associate with the younger Snape, who has to earn his living) still
exists. IMO, it's almost certain that they did know each other,
perhaps out of school as well as in, but there's no reason to
interpret that relationship as that of a "stooge" and his boss or master.

Also, it's important to remember that Sirius is the same age as
Severus and would have seen him with Malfoy only (or mostly) in the
short time when the three were in school together. It appears that
Sirius lost contact with Severus immediately after they left school.
He didn't know that Snape had become a Death Eater or that he was a
Hogwarts teacher, which would have happened either just before or
shortly after Sirius himself was sent to Azkaban. It's evident from
his ignorance of those two important elements in Snape's history that
Sirius was not keeping tabs on Snape (though perhaps as a member of
the Order he was watching Malfoy).

To reiterate, the only time that Sirius would have seen the two former
Slytherins together and formed the idea that Severus was Lucius
Malfoy's "lap dog" was those two years at school when Severus was a
child of eleven to about thirteen.

Carol