[HPforGrownups] Re: Lupin as a teacher/Snape as teacher

[Laura Lynn Walsh]

No: HPFGUIDX 138668

>houyhnhnm:
>
>That was my take on the scene, too, the first time I read it.  Lupin's
>behavior struck me as much less innocent on a second read.  Certainly
>the suggestion to dress the Snape boggart as an old woman came from
>Lupin.

But, given that Neville's boggart will be Professor Snape
and given that, in order to master the boggart, you have to
somehow make it so that you can laugh at it, what are the
choices of what he could have had Neville do?  How can
he make Professor Snape amusing to the students?  You
certainly don't want to follow James' method and dangle
him upside down and threaten to take off his pants.   You
don't want to give him the characteristics of a disgusting
animal, say a slug or a pig.  I think making the boggart into
an old woman is relatively mild - at least it is human and
not degrading.  Neville's grandmother is obviously from
a very well respected family - there is no implication that
Snape as Neville's grandmother is debasing himself.  It
is just funny - a bit embarrassing from the cross-dressing
point of view, but people have gotten laughs from that for
years.

How else WOULD you have made Snape into something
funny?  Snape is not a funny person.  And making him
forget how to make a potion is both too complicated to do
in boggart circumstances and also not obvious enough to
make it funny.  Stuttering?  Doesn't work for me.

Laura Walsh   lwalsh at acsalaska.net