Snape and Harry again.

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 113223

Alla:
> Was his look in the Pensieve enough justification for Snape to 
do  that :
> 
> "Amusing  man, your father, wasn't he?" said Snape, shaking 
Harry so  hard that his glasses slipped down his nose.
> 
> "I - didn't ---"
> Snape threw Hary from him with all his might. Harry fell hard 
onto  the dungeon floor." - OOP, p.640. paperback,
> 
> 
> Does physical attack at the student qualifies as "evil act" in 
your  book, Pippin?<

Are you saying Snape wasn't uncontrollably angry, didn't feel 
violated, and was just using Harry's transgression as an excuse 
to satisfy his sadistic urges? I doubt that.  After all, he could
have used an authorized punishment, like whipping <veg>. I 
think Snape was so angry he didn't know what he was doing, 
otherwise he wouldn't have passed up the chance. 

The thing is, we don't know why that memory was so traumatic 
for Snape. We may never know. I suggest it's the sexual 
connotations, and others tell me they don't exist, though we know 
very little of the sexual mores of the wizarding world. It's been 
suggested that Snape was ashamed of wearing underpants 
because they're so Muggle. Who knows? But Snape clearly felt 
violated, and to have Harry invade his memories must have 
made him feel violated again.


We also don't know why Harry is so resilient. And it seems that 
whether you think you've been the victim of mild horseplay or 
severe brutality has a lot to do with your expectations. Harry 
shrugs off far worse than what Snape gives him when it's 
coming from the Dursleys, but in the Wizarding World, where 
everyone is supposed to treat him like a hero, it's a big deal.


Having read Nora's 113106, I agree with it all. I'd only add that  I  
think  there's something, um, wrong, with being so indifferent to 
the harm you're doing with your persistent humiliation that you 
keep it up to the point of lasting damage. That applies to James 
and Sirius in  their treatment of Snape, as it does to Sirius in his 
treatment  of Kreacher. But Snape and Kreacher are just racist, 
dark arts loving toerags, so why should we care   about their 
feelings?

But isn't it their feelings, not their philosophies, that's behind 
their actions? You can know an awful lot about Dark Arts and not 
use them. You can be a racist and deplore violence--I don't think 
Regulus quit the Death Eaters because he started feeling that 
Muggles and Mudbloods were his equals. 

I stand by what I said about James. Harry says to himself that he 
knows what it's like to be humiliated in a circle of onlookers. The 
use of the word circle is deliberate--it's the Death Eaters who 
stood in a circle to humiliate him, no one else.

Pippin