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

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 144751


> Alla:
> 
> 
> Do you doubt that JKR intends Voldemort to be really dangerous then?
> 
> "Why are you worrying about
> 
> you-know-who?
> 
> You should be worrying about 
> 
> u-no-poo
> 
> The constipation sensation that gripping the nation!" - HBP, p.116

Pippin:
The twins get to throw snowballs at Quirrell's turban too. But the
U-no-poo joke is about worry and fear of the name, it's not about
what to do if you're actually confronting Voldemort or the DE's. The
twins have a roomfull of actual DADA items for that.

Even fear of Voldemort can be exaggerated. Fear of the name, as
Dumbledore tells us, increases fear of the thing itself. So if Neville's
fear of Snape is exaggerated, then yes, the boggart lesson still works.

But I thought your point was that Neville's fear of Snape was not
exaggerated and that Snape is a cold-blooded murderer just as Neville
feared.

 If that is the case, then the boggart lesson becomes pathetic,
like the twins chucking snowballs at the turban. But the twins are
presented as characters who do go too far and get carried away
with their jokes, while the boggart lesson is presented as something
we should all understand about fear.

If it becomes pathetic, with Lupin innocently teaching Neville to laugh 
at his fear of Snape when in fact Snape is a cold-blooded murderer,
then the lesson becomes  that there  is no point in learning to 
laugh at your fears or accepting reassurance from others. 


Whether Snape actually ever tries to kill Neville or Lupin is beside the point.
If he is ESE! or OFH, he is a killer, and Neville should prepare himself to
run or  fight if he encounters Snape. Neither of those is accomplished
by laughing, IMO. Lupin could surely control the panic that would have
ensued if Harry's boggart had been Voldemort -- but he didn't want to
teach the class to take Voldemort lightly, did he?

The books are meant to be read more than once, first as a mysteries,
where the reader knows less than the characters, and subsequently 
as thrillers, where the reader knows more. With each new volume,
some mystery elements in the earlier books are revealed, and we can
go back and wonder whether the awful boy was really James, for example,
or whether Lupin's "odd, closed expression" is a clue to occlumency.

Presumably this process ends with the final book, all the mysteries will 
be solved, and the books will be re-read as thrillers from then on. But
to alter the message of Books One and Two that you can't reliably judge
people by type, and of Book Three that our worst fears are sometimes 
exaggerated, well, I can't see that happening.

Unless the mummy is proof that Parvati was abused by mummies and
the banshee is proof that Seamus was abused by banshees, I don't see
how we can say that Neville's fear of Snape is proof that he was abused
by him. Harry has encountered a dementor only once when he finally
gets to face his boggart--it might be considered guilty of assault, 
maybe, but unless you define every attack on a child
as child abuse, I think we have proof that your boggart is not your
abuser. Otherwise surely Harry's boggart would be Voldemort or
the Dursleys.

Pippin