Snape and Wormtail (Was: ACID POPS vs LOLLIPOPS )

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 139166

<huge snip>
Betsy Hp wrote:
> Maybe the vengence of treating Wormtail like utter crap and using 
> him to defeat the man Wormtail serves is sufficient.  Wormtail is 
> certainly miserable, thanks to Snape, and Snape certainly seems to 
> relish his misery. <snip>

Carol responds:
First, my apologies for the huge snips. Anyone interested in the POPS
debate should go back upthread and respond to the snipped portions.

I agree that Snape treats Wormtail with withering contempt as the
coward he is, but I don't think that Wormtail's newly acquired
hunchback (the clearest sign that Wormatail has indeed been abused) is
Snape's doing.  Snape can only have been with him for about two
months, and we have never seen him use Crucio or any form of physical
torture. He mocks Wormtail and refers to him as "vermin" to his face,
but he also gives him the choice of returning to Voldemort and offers
to request a more challenging assignment for him if he wants it.
Wormtail scurries off to get the wine as ordered, listens at the door
as Snape offers a toast to the Dark Lord (staged for his benefit?),
then scurries upstairs with a whimper as Snape puts some sort of spell
on the door (I'm guessing an Impervius like the one Mrs. Weasley put
on the kitchen door in OoP but with an extra "bang" as warning to
Wormtail.)

Anyway, I think it's Voldemort (who knows neither mercy nor
gratitude), who has reduced Wormtail to this condition and has placed
him with Snape knowing that Snape despises him and will treat him with
contempt and that Wormtail will retaliate by spying on Snape.

At any rate, it's interesting that Snape should treat Wormtail much as
he treated Sirius in OoP, as if they were both cowards. I'm sure that
he thought Sirius was a murderer until the end of PoA if not longer.
He *knows* that Wormtail is a murderer of twelve Muggles (though he
may not know about Cedric) and that he's responsible for restoring
Voldemort. There's also the matter of betraying the Potters, for which
Wormtail has shown no remorse, only grovelling. Snape, admittedly,
revealed the Prophecy to Voldemort, but it appears from PoA that he
tried to warn James afterwards that one of his friends had betrayed
him and certainly Snape went to Dumbledore with the information that
LV was trying to kill the Potters. 

So the difference between Snape (not yet ensnared by the Unbreakable
Vow) and Pettigrew appears to be that Snape holds Pettigrew in
contempt for his self-serving cowardice, multiple murders, and
unrepentant betrayal whereas Snape has not yet committed murder and
has no plan to do so (not realizing what's in store for him) and
regrets his role in the Potters' deaths. Wormtail, OTOH, fears Snape
and obeys him, apparently fearing that Snape will indeed turn him back
over to his master, who would abuse him physically and assign him some
less humiliating but more difficult and dangerous task.

IOW, Snape's contempt for Wormtail is real and deserved. Wormtail's
fear is also real, but less than his fear of Voldemort.

My point is that if there's no difference between Snape and Wormtail,
if both are murderers (or in Snape's case, planning to become a
murderer despite having "slithered out of action" on many previous
occasions) and both are traitors, why don't they share a common bond
as fellow DEs, loyal servants of Voldemort? In fact, shouldn't
Wormtail, whose sacrificed hand and potion/incantation restored
Voldemort to his quasi-human form, have the upper hand? (Pun
unavoidable.) Force of personality is clearly one factor, but can it
be that Snape's contempt for Wormtail, shared by the majority of
readers and by Harry, is a clue that Snape really is on the side of good?

I happen to think that Snape is already ensnared by the DADA curse at
this point but doesn't yet know it, and that he carefully engineers
most of the scene (Wormtail overhears the toast but nothing else,
Bellatrix's doubts are cleared away before Narcissa is allowed to make
her request, etc.). But despite the role he is playing as the Dark
Lord's favorite, the (apparent) bluff about knowing what the Dark Lord
 wants draco to do, and the identifiable lies he tells Bellatrix, his
contempt for Wormtail does not seem feigned. What can it mean other
than that Snape considers himself to be true to the cause (or
Dumbledore personally) and Wormtail to be a contemptible and cowardly
traitor?

Carol, who, like Dumbledore, is probably taking too much for granted
but doesn't see any other way to interpret the Snape/Wormtail relationship