Boggart Snape (was:Re: Snape Wars vs Ship Wars...)

[horridporrid03]

No: HPFGUIDX 144703

> >>Pippin: 
> > IMO, if Snape is a murderer, the boggart lesson in PoA loses    
> > both its humor and its point. Murderers are not funny, even if   
> > they are wearing silly clothes, and if a murderer is threatening 
> > you, imagining that he has silly clothes on is not going to      
> > help. On the other hand, if you are afraid of someone because    
> > they always make you look stupid, then imagining that they look 
> > stupid too is golden. 

> >>Nora:  
> <snip>
> I don't understand the need to make Snape all of a piece, here.    
> You seem to be arguing that DDM!Snape makes sense out of the      
> boggart, but OFH/ESE!Snape doesn't.  I'm wondering if we have to  
> connect everything together in a way that points absolutely to one 
> agenda or the other, with perfect ideological consistency.  Seems 
> a little strict for the story as it's gone.  YMMV.

Betsy Hp:
I've been thinking about this, and I think I understand what Pippin 
is driving at.  It's that what Neville is taught in the boggart 
scene is not only wrong, if Snape is ESE or OFH, it's down right 
dangerous.  Because while it's good to teach children to laugh at 
their relatively empty fears, or fears that can't really hurt them, 
you don't teach a child to laugh at something that *should* scare 
them.

When Harry confronted his boggart in the maze in GoF, he imagined 
the dementor tripping and that got rid of the boggart.  But that 
would not help him out with an actual dementor.  So Lupin taught him 
how to do a Patronus.  Something that doesn't deter a boggart, but 
does stop a dementor.

So if JKR means for Snape to be an actual danger, someone who'd hurt 
or kill a student, teaching Neville to *laugh* at him is 
irresponsible.  Like a parent telling their child to picture a  
kidnapper in a clown outfit, rather than, you know, run.

And that could be tying things together a bit too tightly, yes.  I 
suppose it depends on how much care JKR has given to Neville's 
story.  Because if Snape does turn out to be ESE or OFH, if it turns 
out he really *was* a danger to Neville, rather than a schoolboy 
fear, Neville didn't triumph in the boggart scene, he became 
dangerously and wrongly overconfident.

Betsy Hp