James and Snape. Was. Re: Snape and Harry again.

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 113350

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "dumbledore11214" 
<dumbledore11214 at y...> wrote:

> Alla:
> 
> Pippin, you are starting to make me feel very insecure about 
my  English skills. :) Let me reiterate again. There is no 
justification  for what James did. None. But there are could be 
events, which we  don't know yet, which will help us to 
understand better why James  disliked Snape and from the eye 
of objective observer those events could make James' character 
more fleshed out.
> 
> And yes, if James family was injured by werewolves, I would 
> understand that he would be very afraid of them. :o)

Okay. I guess I was taking that for granted. I don't think any of 
Rowling's characters are evil just because. It is always because 
they want something they can't easily get by being good, and the 
thing that they want needn't be evil itself. Barty Crouch Jr only 
wanted his father to care about him, Wormtail only wanted to go 
on living, Kreacher only wanted Sirius to leave him in peace.
 
Alla:
> You honestly lost me with this argument.
 You are coming so hard on James because of ONE scene, but 
you are giving Snape a free pass for five years of emotional 
torture he  endured on Harry and Neville (Yes, in the process 
saving Harry's  life, but not stopping to torture him. James also 
saved Snape's life  once).<

Pippin:
I am not sure what I said to make you think I want Snape to have 
a free pass. McGonagall was not advising Harry to give 
Umbridge a pass when she told him to keep his head down, 
she was saying he had chosen an ineffective  way to defend 
himself. I think that Harry's defiance is not an effective way for 
him to defend himself against Snape's verbal abuse and so I 
suggest he abandon it. That doesn't mean I think verbal abuse is 
okay, or that Harry should buy into Snape's low opinion of him. 


I come down hard on James because I see very evil 
consequences coming from his actions, though I admit this is 
not proven and I realize that you see more evil coming from 
Snape's treatment of Harry than I do. 

JKR told us on her website about Theo Nott, who 
doesn't feel he needs to join a gang. Snape seems to be a 
similar kind of person. He doesn't seem to be a joiner, 
and yet Sirius tells us he was part of a gang of Slytherins who 
nearly all became Death Eaters. 

After the pensieve scene it no longer seems inconceivable to me  
that Snape honestly thought James and his friends might want 
him dead, and I can see him joining that Slytherin gang because 
he felt he needed protection from James and *his* gang,  and 
later joining the DE's because he felt he owed it to his friends. 
McGonagall keeps stressing that Gryffindors should never gang 
up on another person, and I can't  think that JKR isn't going to 
show us why. But I could be wrong;-)

Pippin