OotP: That Hazing Scene

[Kat Macfarlane]

No: HPFGUIDX 135147

Ruminations of a nitpicker: With regard to the scene in the Pensieve in which James Potter humiliates Snape:

1. How come Snape is running around in nothing but his underwear under his robes? O.K., O.K., it's end of spring term,  the weather is warmish, I've been to a fair number of graduations where..., etc., etc., but it does seem as if the Hogwarts students usually wear normal kid clothes under their school robes (see, e.g., PS/SS, p. 110, hb U.S. edition), especially since the robes, as depicted in the illustrations, are rather casually worn and apparently sans zippers. (One wonders whether Hogwarts has any sort of dress code in effect.)

2. Why does Lily tell Snape to wash his pants (apart, of course, from the fact that they needed it)? Wouldn't laundry arrangements at Hogwarts be a trifle more...magical?

3. I wonder whether Snape lashes out so viciously at Lily because he has just been rescued by a girl (and a mudblood at that) from his two most hated enemies.

4. Finally, if Snape is such a hotshot at magic and runs with a tough Slitherin gang (GoF, p. 531, hb U.S. edition), how did he get into such a relationship with the Marauders in the first place? One can easily imagine him being unpopular, even antisocial, but the class victim??? I'd expect any confrontation with James and Co. to be more on the order of jock-versus-greaser battles that made life in my junior high school so interesting.

--Gatta (new to the list, but I did read the HBF, honest)

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