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

[Nora Renka]

No: HPFGUIDX 113376

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

> Pippin:
> 
> Sirius might not have meant that 'when I was your age' so 
> literally--he could have meant that he last saw Bella when he 
> was a sixth year--which would make sense since he was sixteen 
> when  he ran away from home. 

I can buy that.
 
> Suppose Bella is one year ahead of Sirius at school. Snape, 
> who knew all those curses to start with,  was able to hold off  
> James (I nearly wrote Draco) and his gang  up until fifth year, 
> but then they caught up to him in knowledge, and their advantage in 
> numbers started to pay off. Not only that, they're all capable of 
> serious magic now and it's not just shooting sparks at each 
> other any more.
> 
>  Snape is outnumbered four to one. He needs protection, and 
> Bella the seventh year is willing to provide it, quid pro quo. Of 
> course Sirius would loathe Snape for taking up with his 
> despised relatives.  That's the situation in sixth year, which 
> probably culminates with the prank.
> 
> In seventh year, James is made Head Boy, gets his head 
> deflated, and doesn't feel the need to flout rules or show off  by 
> picking on Snape in front of an audience. Still,  he carries on 
their 
> hexing contest in private one on one. Snape, who thinks that 
> James would've killed him if he hadn't lost his nerve, never 
> misses a chance to throw a hex at him, and James really can't 
> take that lying down.
> 
> Bella has left, but  Snape doesn't need her protection 
> anymore, since James is fighting fair.   He drifts apart from the 
> remnants of the gang, but he finds his connection with Bella 
> useful--she's Lucius Malfoy's sister-in-law.  She gets Lucius to 
> find him a job when he leaves Hogwarts. So when she asks 
> Snape to join her new gang, he feels doubly obligated.

Very interesting--I do like the ideas.  But...hmmm.  How do we fit 
the lapdog comment in?  We have a Lucius Malfoy who is 5-6 years 
older.  We have this comment made, admittedly in OotP when Black 
*does* know that Snape was a DE, but which seems to be referring to 
something that was going on back then that Black would have seen 
himself.  That is to say, referring to schooldays stuff, not 
afterwards, as Black doesn't seem to really know or make too many 
references that imply any post-Hogwarts deep awareness of what was 
going on there.  I'm expressing this absolutely horribly, but I think 
the hints may point to an earlier, rather than a later (your 
scenario) connection with the gang of Slytherins and other related 
persons.

We have the rest of the gang, not just Bella, to keep track of, too.  
This seems to have possibly been a cross-year grouping of students, 
but I'm not sure about that, and I really do hope this is something 
where JKR has all the years and times drawn out.  It's not hard to 
envision an almost 'gang war' in Hogwarts, though--MWPP as one group, 
and the group of Slytherins as another.  If you want to make a Draco 
connection, shades of Inquisitorial Squad?  The past Slytherins as 
self-appointed guardians of proper wizarding attitudes at Hogwarts?  
Who knows?

-Nora stops the slide down the slippery slope of speculation