[HPforGrownups] Re: Harry's detention - James saved Snape's life incident

[P. Alexis Nguyen]

No: HPFGUIDX 135960

colebiancardi:

> I am not saying that the deeds that *adult* Snape did weren't worse
> than Sirius's *prank* (and I am sure they were much worse), but
> *teenage* Snape, even with all of his hexes & curses (hey, Ginny does
> her infamous bogey-bat curse all the time, it seems), does not seem to
> deserve this type of treatment, based on what we have seen.  Sure,
> Snape hates MMPPW, but it seems that he was ganged up on by them quite
> a bit.  and 4 to 1 odds don't look good for MMPPW, as that makes them
> out to be bullies.



That's the problem, isn't it?  We know much more about MPPW than we
know about Snape, at least as far as their schooling days are
concerned.  We know very little about what Snape was like back then. 
It seems to me that it is unfair to pass judgment that MPPW were
horrible bullies and Snape was their victim when we know so less about
one party than the other.  On the one hand, it does *seem* like MPPW
were bullies to Snape.  On the other hand, Snape came up with
sectumsempra during his school days, which is on an entirely
differently level than Ginny's bat-bogey hex, so he's not entirely
innocent.

It strikes as odd that adult Snape could be *that* different from
teenage Snape.  It also strikes me that we don't know what the
interaction of MPPW and the rest of the student body was.  Were those
four really bullies?  Or did Snape & MPPW have a very grating
relationship?

While I don't condone what Sirius did, I find it odd that people could
pass such final judgment on *the* situation when we don't know much of
the details surrounding it, and frankly, I don't really count Lupin's
account as altogether *that* accurate either since he probably wasn't
in the best of mind during that period.

Let's put it this way.  If I said that Person A shot Person B, and
Person C stepped between Person B and the bullet, then it's easy to
pass judgment on Person A.  But what if I tell you that Person A was
defending himself against Persons B & C, who were breaking into Person
A's house or that Persons A & B were both burglars with Person C being
incredibly unfortunate to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. 
What I'm trying to say is that there's too many spins you can put on a
story when you only know the bare facts, and the bare facts are just
what we know.

~Ali