Conspiracies and re-assessments

[M.Clifford]

No: HPFGUIDX 112554

Alex wrote:
> Valky (yes it was me!) wrote, among other
insightful things, -- James saw a Dark man in Snape, and 
he was *not* all that wrong.--
>
> I have to say, I'm not sure where you get this. 
I think if we were "supposed" (there's that word again....) to read
James as acting out of conviction that Snape is a Bad Man and has 
it coming to him for those reasons, we'd have heard him say 
*something* that's open to that interpretation. Perhaps when Lily 
asks him "What's he ever done to you?", if not before. 
Maybe he'd say "Hey, there's that evil git.......
>instead of "Excellent. Snivellus." His remarks are a bit of puerile 
wordplay with Snape's name, not a condemnation of
> his existence on moral grounds.

Hannah:
> I think the name 'Snivellus' is significant in the whole
marauders/Snape feud. The name implies 'snivelling' - crying,
whining, being weak. It's the sort of name a bully might give a
pathetic, greasy haired kid with a rather dodgy background, who
cries when he gets teased by the handsome, popular bully (not naming
any names, but you get the picture...) during his first years. It's
> not the sort of name that you give someone you suspect to be evil.

> The way they use the name is also interesting. They emphasise it,
using it as a deliberate taunt - maybe harking back to some time
they made Snape cry (snivel). Taunting someone with a name, IMO, is
the behaviour of a bully picking on a weaker victim, not a brave
> Gryffindor challenging a suspected Junior Dark Wizard.

Valky now:
You are both right indeed that the name Snivellus is a puerile
inference of their superiority that hearkens an actual instance when 
Young Snape actually *did* cry. 
There is almost no doubt of this. 
However, I do not see the shallow pool of the bully rhetoric Hannah 
suggests reflecting fifteen year old James at all.  Nor Sirius for 
that matter. 

Let's investigate their sense of superiority in Sirius own words.
In POA we are told that James and Sirius befriend a WW outcast 
discovering his inner greatness and redeeming a wrongly 
condemned child from his tragic existence into the arms of 
unselfish, bigotry free brotherhood. 
The defense for Snape in the pensieve is that he was minding his own 
business. Hmm... was he also minding his own business while others 
disdained First Year Remus arriving from his transformations 
deprived of sleep and looking haggard and unkempt? 
Indeed I think he was.  Was it Snape who made to give lonesome 
tragic Remus a kindness he had never known and was unfairly denied.
No it was James and Sirius. 

In GOF Sirius relates to us that the world was dark and awful when 
LV was terrorising the neighbourhood. It was well known that he had 
turned the Dark Arts on the community. Killed people they knew and 
their dearly beloved, created enmity and discord among the 
wizardkind turning brother against brother (I am sure Sirius and 
Regulus weren't the first.) ,crushed innocence in his furious pinch, 
bereaved good people before their time. 
He was a monster *Obsessed with the Dark Arts* and EVERYONE had 
suffered some loss to his cause and by his practice of Dark Arts.  

In hindsight, look at two boys living in the age of WWII. 
If one of those boys believed that the Third Reich was a bunch of 
crock and made fun of the other boy, who read it at school...... 
does it matter if the Reich boy practiced any anti Judaism?
If the first boy thought in his own mind he was somewhat superior to 
the boy reading the Third Reich. 
You would probably say he was right, yes? 

And even if this first boy was a bully and a fool so as to taunt the 
second one endlessly through his days in school..... 
openly deride the principles of the Third Reich in public to 
him...... 
and behave like an absolute prat. 
You would yet see now, knowing the atrocities that the Reich 
incited, that it is the first boy who is the one of the two who was 
fighting the *good* cause. Would you not?

In GOF and OOtP we are furnished that Snape was a young boy who 
liked,  probably practiced (fly killer),and was reputed to be knee 
deep in Dark Arts. This is as much as saying Snape is that boy, 
wether or not he supported Voldemort/Hitler, he was entrenched in 
the Warlords fundamental principles. 
And hence my analogy sticks like a crazy glue.

So James and Sirius thought they were superior to Snape, they even 
made him cry.  
Is that *really* such a bad thing given the context of the story? 
I am still not saying that their actions were right. But are they 
entitled to their delusion of superiority, after all?

Valky