bullies? twins, padfoot and prongs

[nrenka]

No: HPFGUIDX 118617


--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, Magda Grantwich 
<mgrantwich at y...> wrote:

Magda:

> Interesting that she says "he will have SEEN things that..." 
> not "he will have DONE things that..." 
> Assistant-to-Voldemort's-Potion-Master!Snape sounds quite likely.

True.  But that means *minimum* of aiding-and-abetting.  It also 
makes it likely that he actually got to go along for the ride, 
unless you want to restrict his participation to standing around and 
smirking while people are killed in front of Voldie back in the Evil 
Overlord Lair.

I find it hard to reconcile a Snape who didn't actually have to do 
anything but make potions with the example (admittedly spotty) of 
Regulus Black, who panicked at the demands and got killed.  I still 
think there's nothing to suggest that Snape got exempted from the 
generic dirty work of the DEs.  He was probably a talented kid, but 
I still don't quite see 19-year-old Snape as the type strong and 
powerful enough to get exemptions for his talents.  Voldemort also 
seems to *like* reminding his minions that they all have to do the 
grunt work, hence Lucius Malfoy on the MoM raid.  [Should I be 
wrong, I bow gracefully to filled-in information.]

To dovetail in another response: I think the Dark Arts probably 
*are* illegal.  Question is: were they then, or is it that they are 
now?  Not sure.  But you can get your house raided for artifacts, 
and the sellers thereof reside in the shady part of town.  That's 
not even to get into the question of moral and ethical rot involved 
with them.  Our evidence so far suggests that Snape was enough into 
them that Dumbledore worried about what they were/had/would do to 
Snape.

Perhaps because I tend to take them seriously, I can envision an 
(idiotically going about it, in part because of deep fears) 
Vigilante!James, in school.  The Dark Arts seem to be what divides 
pureblood families like the Potters, who don't seem to have the 
blood ideas held up high, from families like the Malfoys and Blacks, 
who do.  Given our scanty evidence, there's still a fairly strong 
association between the Dark Arts, pureblood ideology, and becoming 
a DE.  I can see James' behavior towards a young Severus he suspects 
of being into the Dark Arts as a boneheaded vigilante response, 
because I think those currents were probably strong back then, the 
conflicts between those who were supporters of ideology Voldemort 
promulgated and those who weren't--the time just before everything 
really exploded into the open.  Unless it was already exploding and 
we just don't quite know about that either.

Mind you, that's no excuse for such nasty behavior on James' part.  
But fear does unpleasant things to human beings, and I think there 
is fear involved: "Those people into the Dark Arts, look what 
they're doing/going to do to the rest of us--teach them a lesson 
now!".  "Fear is the matrix of vice", says one of my favorite 
authors.  It's worth thinking about it as a motivation.
 
> We like Snape because he's multi-dimensional.  She should be proud 
> of that.  Also there was a considerable pause before she went into 
> her continuation.  She was doing what she always does when she 
> doesn't want to give away anything: she was talking out the 
> question, giving advice to Rickman!fans about "bad boys".

True; but I don't see any reason not to take at least somewhat 
seriously her history of comments about Snape.  He may well turn out 
to be heroic, but I don't think we're going to get the massive 
character inversion that some (NOT all) fans are looking for.  "I 
love writing (though would not necessarily want to meet) Snape", 
after all.  I think she understands the appreciation of the 
character, but probably not the all-out love, as she knows him 
better than we do.

His complexity is massively overestimated because of lack of 
information, anyways.  Harry is honestly an objectively more 
complicated character than Snape, just from the sheer amount of page 
time and information and being inside his though processes.  It's 
his Bildungsroman. :)

-Nora rambles; if only writing papers were this easy...