Snape, Hagrid and Animals

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 143900

 
> > Pippin:
> > It's laid out in canon that Snape wasn't gunning for Harry from the 
> > beginning. He doesn't even try to convince Bella of that. He claims 
> > that wanted Harry expelled, but there isn't  much evidence even for
> > that in the first book. 
> > 
> > Snape dislikes Harry at first sight, based on past factors, but is 
> > that so unusual?

Nora:
> The strength and the persistence; yes, that's a little strange.  
> Particularly from an authority figure in a position of responsibility 
> to a clueless child.  

<snip>
> 
> I can't say that the arguments for how Snape's perception of Harry 
> has evolved have ever convinced me, really.  I seem to recall 
> attempts at L.O.O.N.y word patterning telling us nothing coherent; 
> wishing for something textually explicit has been a vanishing dream.

Pippin:
Yeah, let's talk about the clueless child thing. Snape says in Spinner's
End that he didn't at once see Harry as clueless but he does now. In
fact his description of Harry as a talentless clod who gets by on luck
and the help of others is oddly reminiscent of Harry's own in OOP.

But the text, as you say, shows a much more consistent picture, in
which Snape starts sneering at Harry's cluelessness  with his very first  
roll call and continues unabated through six volumes and hundreds of
pages right up to his grand exit, pursued by hippogriff. 

Except.

Except for all the times when Snape suspects Harry of doing something
no clueless child could do. Petrifying Mrs. Norris. Helping Sirius
escape. Confunding the Goblet of Fire. Stealing from Snape's office.
And most astonishing of all, escaping from Umbridge, transporting
himself and five others to London at tremendous speed, and invading
a top security area of the Ministry of Magic. How on earth do you
start from the premise of clueless, talentless Harry and deduce 
that?

Either Snape's thought processes aren't as logical as we've been led
to believe, or he has a rather higher opinion of Harry than he's let on.


Nora:
I'd be deeply ashamed of myself (and rightly 
> so) if I'd clung to the immediate impressions I formed of my 
> students, because they tended to confound them and grow in very 
> different directions.  

Pippin:
Ah, but you're not an essentialist, right? I don't think that
JKR and Dumbledore are either. "Severus Snape was indeed
a Death Eater. [...] He is now no more a Death Eater than I am" sounds
about as baldy and succinctly anti-essentialist as you can get, IMO.

But *Harry* is an essentialist, IMO.  He fears  that if he was a clueless
child when he got to Hogwarts, he'll be one when he leaves. *That's*
what riles him so about Snape's insults, and that's why simply shutting
them off at the source wouldn't satisfy me. Harry has to understand that
he's not doomed to be what he was. Harry doesn't get it about Snape,
he doesn't see how his father could have been an arrogant berk as 
a teenager and a hero later on, and he doesn't get it about his own self.

 That's what he needs DDM!Snape for, IMO. Not to teach
him nifty magic, not to be superspy, not to jump out of the woodwork 
and save the day, but to prove to Harry that change is possible. I don't
know how Harry can defeat Voldemort, but I think it will involve a choice,
a choice which Harry can only make rightly if he believes he is a loving, 
knowledgeable adult, not a fearful, ignorant child. 

Nora:
But Dumbledore tells us at the end of book one 
> that Snape's thing with Harry is pretty much about James--and have we 
> ever gotten that denied?  Don't we believe Dumbledore? :)

Pippin:
I believe him. But Dumbledore tells us that Harry's pure desire to use his
power for good is unusual. We believe that, don't we? :)

I think if Dumbledore wasn't able to forgive
those of his friends who occasionally abuse their power, he'd have
very few allies left. And even Harry doesn't complain about the
abuse of power when it favors him. When has he ever 
told anyone he didn't want the rules bent just for him?  

Nora:
> 
> I wouldn't disagree that there's a good deal of misevaluation going 
> on here; but I wonder if there hasn't also been some accurate picking 
> up on character, too.  I think of how she comments about how children 
> are very aware (and we're kidding ourselves if we don't think that 
> they are) of how people can abuse power.

Pippin:
Exactly. Children know perfectly well when Snape has crossed the
line in his classroom. They don't need a sermon about it, and they don't 
need to see fire and brimstone raining on his head.

I'm not saying Snape hasn't got humiliation and abuse in front of him.
What else could he expect from Voldemort? But I don't see that Harry
has to be the agent of it, or that it precludes Snape being on the side
of good. Yes, the innate moral sense is associated with Gryffindor. But
it is even more strongly associated with courage, and that is not an
exclusively Gryffindor trait. 

Pippin