Are there no depths to which Siriophiles wont sink?

[LadySawall at aol.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 99314

In a message dated 05/24/2004 10:34:47 AM Eastern Daylight Time, Sylvia 
writes:
I simply can't believe some of the excuses the Sirius-lovers are 
coming up with to defend their darling.  So Snape may have possibly 
recruited Regulus into the DE (evidence??). This makes Sirius cross 
and it is understandable (though not, of course, justifiable)that he 
should want to feed Severus to his werewolf friend. Oh, he did it 
just to scare him did he?  How exactly was he going to prevent Snape 
being torn limb from limb? If he really didn't anticipate the 
consequences of what he was doing, then he WAS an idiot.  If he did, 
he was prepared to let Snape die.  
Something I read in TIME a couple of weeks ago, which may be relevant--and I 
hasten to assure any teenagers reading this that it is not intended as a slam:

Apparently, although the human brain reaches its full mass very early on, it 
matures in stages through one's early 20's, and the last part to mature is the 
prefrontal cortex--the area which governs "sober second thought."  According 
to the article,

"The parts of the brain responsible for things like sensation seeking are 
getting turned on in big ways around the time of puberty...But the parts for 
exercising judgment are still maturing throughout the course of adolescence.  So 
you've got this time gap between when things impel kids toward taking risks 
early in adolescence, and when things that allow people to think before they act 
come online."

Now I am not a Sirius apologist, though I don't discount the possibility that 
Snape did something truly awful that provoked him.  But I do think that his 
youth (as well as the other Marauders', Snape's, and Lily's) should be given a 
certain amount of weight when judging his/their actions around that time.  
(Same for Harry and his friends, for that matter.)

That said, there *is* a rather large difference between taking risks with 
one's own life and risks with someone else's.  I don't think Sirius was a 
heartless bastard or a cold-blooded killer, but I do think there's a lot of Black in 
him, and he probably spent his entire life struggling against it.

What I personally find most disturbing about the Prank, however, is the sheer 
number of Things That Could Have Gone Wrong:

1.  The most obvious consequence, and the one that seems to get the most 
attention: Snape could have been killed.  (Or mangled.  Or maimed.)

2.  Snape could have been turned into a werewolf, and I am frankly astonished 
that Sirius didn't give *that* one a second thought.  Not so much because of 
the problems it would cause Snape, but because of the problems it would cause 
the Marauders!  They all knew quite well how problematical even a friendly 
werewolf could be--imagine having one after you who hates your guts and blames 
you for his condition!

3.  Remus could have been hurt.  Now I am certain (as I may have said before) 
that if Snape and Lupin had tangled that night, Snape would have lost, 
probably quite spectacularly.  It's unlikely he had any silver on him.  But do we 
know for a fact that he couldn't have found *any* way to hurt the werewolf?  
(Any experts on JKR werewolf physiology?  Are they immune to magic?)  And if he 
managed to get out of the Shrieking Shack alive with Remus after him, whoever 
he ran to for help might have put down the wolf without a second thought.

4.  Remus could have been expelled.

5.  Remus could have been imprisoned.

6.  Remus could, conceivably, have been executed.

7.  Sirius could have been expelled.

8.  Sirius could have gone to jail.

9.  Dumbledore could have gotten in all kinds of trouble, possibly removed as 
Headmaster.

And *that's* only if the whole thing remained more or less secret.  If word 
got leaked about the specifics...

10.  Slytherin could have gone on the warpath in a serious way against 
Gryffindor.

11.  No great loss, but god only knows how the pureblood community would 
react to the news that a Black had arranged the 
injury/death/dismemberment/lycanthropization of a fellow Pureblood.

12.  Hogwarts would likely have been gone over with a fine-toothed comb.  How 
many other peoples' secrets would have been blown?

I reiterate that I don't think Sirius actually intended for any of these 
things to happen, and that he was probably acting on impulse, for which I neither 
entirely condemn nor entirely excuse him.

But I also wonder whether Sirius, having spent all those nights keeping Moony 
company as Padfoot, simply found it impossible to believe that his friend 
could really be as dangerous to humans as everyone said.

Jo Ann

...who isn't quite sure which side she's arguing for here, though she tends 
to have a Snape bias, and wonders if JKR set Sirius and Snape up this way to 
intentionally muddy the waters for us.


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