McGonagall and Lupin's reaction to Harry's story (Was: It's over, Snape is evil

[ceridwennight]

No: HPFGUIDX 138513

> Carol responds:
> Sorry for the ruthless snipping, Alla, but I also noticed the very
> swift turning against Snape--suspiciously fast, in fact, almost as 
if
> it were planned and they were in on some secret that they were 
keeping
> from Harry, as if they were acting. Slughorn (not an Order member) 
was
> the only one to have anything like a natural reaction. ("I taught 
him.
> I thought I knew him.") 
> 
> The rest, even Lupin, who has always attempted to be reasonable and
> fair about Snape ("I neither like nor dislike Severus but he made 
the
> wolfbane potion and he made it perfectly") suddenly acts as if he's
> known or suspected all along that Snape was never loyal to 
Dumbledore.
> McGonagall does the same thing, essentially, "Well, what do you
> expect, with his background?" And yet she taught young Severus Snape
> for seven years, worked with him as a fellow teacher and fellow Head
> of House for fifteen years, worked with him to help expose Barty
> Crouch, followed his lead in exposing Lockhart, on and on. All of
> their conversations in the books have been civil, almost friendly. 
> 
> And yet, in marked contrast to Hagrid, who protests that Harry is
> mistaken about Snape until he actually sees Dumbledore's body, she
> immediately starts making excuses for why she trusted Snape
> (Dumbledore always said he had an ironclad reason for trusting 
Snape).
*(snip)*
> Was anyone else bothered by this scene? Did anyone else feel that
> McGonagall and Lupin, at least, were acting out of character?
> 
> Carol, hoping that Lupin will somehow learn about the Unbreakable 
Vow
> and realize what would have happened to Dumbledore, Draco, and
> possibly Harry if Snape had died

Ceridwen:
Yes, I did notice the sudden turning.  No one other than Hagrid 
protested, until the scene with the Heads of House meeting in the 
office when Slughorn is trying to get a handle on what happened.

Maybe some people would behave that way, especially when they've 
primed themselves to have suspicions of someone.  But to some, at 
least, this would attack their own core, that they went along with 
the act, and they would question the information first.

I panic.  I would probably have kept going back to 'He's dead?  I 
can't believe it!' interspersed with 'Severus?  But...  After all 
this time?' and several variations.  I know this, when a friend told 
me her SO was dead suddenly, I made the poor thing repeat it three 
times before it even started to sink in.  And I had no vested 
interest in him.  I guess I would have reacted more like Slughorn, 
only without the certainty.

Yes, I do think the reactions were planted on purpose.  After reading 
through some of the JKR interviews, though, I'm not sure what to make 
of it.  This is book 6 in a series of seven, and things have to be 
resolved quickly.  This could be an authorial set-up to show that 
yes, he really was evil after all; it could be a set-up to wipe their 
faces in crow come next book; it could just be a set-up partially as 
Alla suggested, even if he's ESG! it's useless, he becomes Cassandra 
and no one believes his information.  It could be to show that even 
the 'white hats' make amazingly stupid mistakes (the UV), and that 
the smarter a character is, the correspondingly more spectacular the 
mistake...

Which gets me thinking.  Dumbledore was, at least IMO, 
uncharacteristically patting himself on the back for being such a 
smart person during portions of the book.  Could he have been 
paralelling (sp?) Snape's predicament?  A smart guy who got himself 
into a correspondingly more horrible situation due to, perhaps, 
thinking he could slick out of it, before the third stipulation hit?  
Somehow, Dumbledore never quite struck me as a man who would play his 
own horn to such an extent.

Ceridwen.