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

[Nora Renka]

No: HPFGUIDX 113373

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "pippin_999" <foxmoth at q...> 
wrote:

<snip>

> 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;-)

The gang comment is one of the most confusing for me, and it's 
because we've got *such* little chronological evidence to hang 
anything on.  Here's the stumbling block for this one, for me:

Bellatrix Lestrange (nee Black) was one of the 'gang of Slytherins'.  
However, Sirius says to Harry, when they are looking at the 
tapestry, "I haven't seen her since I was your age".  This would, 
then, put Bella as older than Sirius--she, being older, leaves school 
while Sirius is still there, and he doesn't see her after that.

Now, this could, of course be an "Oh dear, maths" situation.  There's 
also the 'lapdog' comment, when we have an age on Lucius Malfoy (41), 
and we know that Snape is 35-36 at the time of GoF (in a reading that 
can be slightly disputed--I know it's not clear)...so we also here 
have a case of an age differential.

Perhaps, and this is pure speculation, a young!Snape was close to 
this 'gang of Slytherins' (I keep wanting to type Gang of Four, for 
some reason), amongst whom we have at least one person that a young!
Black would have known and probably disliked/feared even back then.  
(I don't think we're going to get much or anything sympathetic on 
Bellatrix.  She's a full-blown sadist, and deeply invested in both 
personal loyalty to Voldemort *and* the blood ideology.  I can't see 
her exactly being a sweetheart in school.)  Then, just maybe, we have 
a situation where the fifth-year scene we got was one in a series of 
some kind of revenge attempts, now that the older protectors are 
gone?  I have absolutely no idea.  Just throwing out ideas to try to 
figure out some motivations.

-Nora starts to have a distressing number of white hairs