bullies? twins, padfoot and prongs

[nrenka]

No: HPFGUIDX 118670


--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "justcarol67" 
<justcarol67 at y...> wrote:

> Carol responds:
> I don't see any evidence of fear, or of loathing of the Dark Arts, 
> in James at fifteen (echoes of an old TV series in my mind here). He
> seems to be in this poor excuse for a duel solely for its supposed
> entertainment value. Sirius is bored; James sees Severus, whom they
> both dislike, and decides to show off. 

I see fear as a covert motivator here, possibly.  That's what I was 
trying to get at with the Shklar quote, way down there.  There's 
often a subconscious fear of something motivating an aggressive 
attitude towards it.  Good people do bad things under the influence 
of fear, be it obvious or not.

<snip discussion of James' lack of personal experience with the Dark 
Arts, and postulation of changed!James>

No, there's no evidence that he has the personal experience with the 
Dark Arts that Sirius does.  That was, however, my entire point of 
bringing up (perhaps downthread?) the point that *everyone* has an 
ideology.  The Potters seem to have been something of a prominent, 
established family--JKR has told us James inherited the money, and 
didn't have to work.  He also clearly disapproves of Lily being 
called a Mudblood--that's what provokes the furtherance of the 
bullying.  This points to a James who was raised in a pureblood 
family that had no truck with the Dark Arts, and was probably never 
too associated with Slytherin House, either.

It doesn't have to be deeply personal to be something strongly 
ingrained in someone's ideology and personal beliefs.  James doesn't 
*have* to have his parents brutally murdered to still have been 
brought up to hate the Dark Arts and everything they stand for.  Now, 
the hypothesized death of the parents may well have been a great 
turning point in his life, but there's nothing to rule out there 
already being a strong anti-Dark Arts ideological foundation there.

I'm just trying to postulate some deeper undercurrents that might 
have been interacting with James' adolescent idiocy, because these 
things were most likely going on at that point in time.  Voldemort is 
a name that's being bandied around, and there are obviously currents 
of anti-Muggleborn sentiment, as well.

We are equally somewhat hung out to dry on the category of cold hard 
evidence, because you can't establish seriation and patterns that 
would make things more coherent from one incident, either.  And we're 
ruling out second-hand reports from other characters, if you're 
ruling out Sirius' claim that James *always* hated the Dark Arts.

-Nora notes that it's always fair game to try to flesh out 
motivations for all characters involved