Boggart Snape was Re: Snape in the Shrieking Shack (was re:time-turning)

[Nora Renka]

No: HPFGUIDX 113074

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

> I don't know if it's insecurity but if I were Snape I'd be a little
> miffed that Lupin was yanking my chain when:
> 
> 1.  I was making the Wolfsbane Potion that allowed Lupin to 
> transform safely and with a minimum of stress once a month;
> 
> 2.  I was unwillingly keeping the fact of Lupin's lycanthropy from 
> my students and my students' parents;
> 
> 3.  I had good reason (backed up by personal experience) to doubt
> that Lupin was mature enough to handle responsibility (i.e., the
> do-nothing prefect from the OOTP Pensieve scene).

I had this argument recently, elsewhere, and it didn't go anywhere, 
but...

At least as I see it, Snape has the right to be truly annoyed if'fn 
only if'fn Lupin deliberately set it up so that Snape was going to 
get mocked.  I went back and read through the scene, and the text 
seems to point to a sequence of events:

1.  Students and Lupin enter staffroom where boggart is, to see Snape 
sitting there.

2.  Snape starts to leave, with a disparaging comment made about 
Neville's abilities.

3.  (Here's my interpretation) Lupin, regardless of what else he 
might have been planning, then states that he intends to use Neville, 
and he expects Neville to do perfectly well.  This is, of course, a 
kind of 'screw you, leave my students alone' to Snape, being as it's 
really much more polite to disparage students to their other teachers 
in private.

4.  Lupin explains the theory behind boggarts.

5.  Lupin asks Neville what his worst fear is--and it turns out to be 
Snape.  I respectfully submit that there's no reason Lupin would 
already have known this; it's pretty early in the year, and it's not 
the sort of thing that Neville is going to talk about.

6.  Lupin now has the option of either standing up for a kid who 
needs some help and letting him take on something scary, or not 
giving him a chance (and really screwing with his head and confidence 
worse than it already has been), out of respect for the 
possible 'injury' done to Snape.

I know what I'd choose, as a teacher.  Sure, Lupin gets a chuckle out 
of it, as does everyone else, but I don't think he went into the 
situation intending to do that.  It's more like a fringe benefit--and 
the less touchy would shrug it off, anyways.  But I don't think even 
his strongest partisans have ever argued that Snape isn't touchy...

-Nora notes that badmouthing a colleague in front of your students is 
a big no-no, as McGonagall lets us all know as well