Snape and Harry again.

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 113299

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "dumbledore11214" 
<dumbledore11214 at y...> wrote:
> 
>      I hope I am being clear that I am only exploring possibilities 
and it is also possible that Snape was a constant victim of 
 Marauders throughout the school and eventually Marauders' 
bullying  drove him to become a DE. <

> 
> No, sorry. When I wrote it, the second part of the sentence 
made me  cringe. Even if we discover that Snape never fought 
back and  Sirius' "Snape never missed a chance to curse 
James" was a lie, I will still dispute that anybody except Snape 
was responsible for him  becoming DE. Unless of course, 
somebody literally kidnapped Snape and forced him to take the 
mark. <

Pippin:

Snape's involvement in the dark arts, whatever it consisted of in 
his Hogwarts days, seems to be the reason James didn't like 
him, but there's a big difference between not liking someone and 
picking on them. 

There's something a little too uncomfortably like religious 
persecution in picking on somebody because you think their 
beliefs are satanic. I really hope James wasn't like that.

In any case, James *changed*, and I am frankly more interested 
in what made that happen than in learning more about what a 
wart Snape was at school. Whatever he was at school, he 
became worse when he joined the Death Eaters (surely you 
don't think Voldemort would be a positive influence?) 

 Snape was responsible for his own choices, but does that 
mean that he must have been someone who would choose to 
be a Death Eater before the marauders got to him?  Snape could 
have chosen to deal with his pain in another way, but IMO that 
does not make  James and his friends  in any way less 
responsible for the pain they caused. 

If this is a story about good and evil, what does that mean? Is it 
only about rewarding the good and punishing the wicked? 
Or does it mean that every act  that's done for the sake of 
the power behind the door brings more goodness in its wake, 
and every act that is done in despite of it brings more evil? 

 We know what Dumbledore thinks, that Snape acts the way he 
does because his wounds have not healed, and that returning 
good for evil is a noble thing, something that James, whom 
Dumbledore knew  "at Hogwarts *and later*" (emphasis mine) 
would have done. 



Pippin