Snape and Harry again. WasRe: Snape in the Shrieking Shack (was re:time-turning)

[Nora Renka]

No: HPFGUIDX 113033

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "potioncat" <willsonkmom at m...> 
wrote:
> Pippin  wrote: 
> > I have thought of a defense for Snape's "I see no difference" 
> > remark, by the way. We see in OOP that he has a habit of 
> > ignoring Slytherin hexes unless they're life-threatening. I think
> > it's Angelina's eyebrows that are hexed in that book and he 
> > insists she must have done it herself despite the testimony of 
> > eyewitnesses. 
> > 
> > All of which is to say that Snape needn't have meant it as a 
> > personal remark about Hermione's teeth. He'd have said the 
> > same thing if it were her eyebrows -- or her earlobes.
> 
> Potioncat:
> Have we seen any life-threatening hexes?  Or are you saying he 
> ignores the hexes we've seen because they aren't serious?  
> 
> Snape certainly hasn't noticed his own teeth, so it's likely he 
> never knew Hermione's teeth were large or that she was bothered by 
> them. I never thought of that.

I can almost buy this line of thought--that it's not a deliberate 
attack on Hermione in the sense that 'I know she hates her teeth, and 
therefore I'm going to be nasty particularly about that'.  But, then 
again...it's such a deliberate statement, "I see no difference", and 
it does imply "Well, I see that your teeth are horribly large now, 
but they really were before too, now, weren't they?"  The phrasing 
makes it a little different--not quite the same as asserting that she 
did it to herself.

It's a nasty statement whether it's meant as a personal remark or 
not, because it *is* meant as some sort of mocking comment.  (As a 
statement, if you want to abstract it out, it sums up much of the 
worst of Severus Snape in one little capsule, too.)  Now, we may well 
factor in that Snape continually ignores *all* injuries done by his 
Slytherins, but then that simply elevates the remark from a personal 
attack on Hermione to a case of Snape being enough of a git that 
he'll ignore any damage done to a certain group of people.

Whichever one is worse depends on the ethical system you're playing 
in. :)

[And, I've always wondered, if Snape does that out of some perverse 
sense of 'equalizing the playing field', or 'defending his poor 
Slytherins who the rest of the school and teachers hate', does he not 
see how it can, ummm, backfire?]

Let me piggyback a question onto this.  Trolling around the fandom, I 
do often see the assertions: 'Dumbledore has written off all the 
Slytherins; everyone at school hates them, including their teachers; 
the world is set against them'.  Is there any solid support for this, 
canonically, or is it a mixture of some possiblity and a lot of 
projection?

-Nora ponders trying to hide out in a dark corner of the stacks