Sirius and Prank again? Fools Rush in ...

[nrenka]

No: HPFGUIDX 129985

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, Irene Mikhlin 
<irene_mikhlin at b...> wrote:

<snip>

> The Marauders (and their fans) can't have it both ways: if James gets 
> the glory of life-saving, then Sirius must get the blame of putting 
> that life into the danger.  If there was no danger, there is no life-
> debt obligation to James.

Actually, that's something of a non sequitur as you have an 
unproved/able assumption about intentionality folded in.  I don't think 
anyone is generally arguing that Snape's life wasn't probably in 
danger.  But what is rather unclear is whether Sirius *intended* to 
explicitly 'put Snape's life in danger' or not.  Snape did get himself 
over there, after all, which means even from a strict causal 
perspective (which isn't my favorite POV for dealing with the 
Potterverse) he shares some of the causality.  I deeply subscribe to 
the belief that the intentions behind actions are very, very important 
in the fictional world of the Potterverse, which is why I think it's 
important to not just focus on results--as if that were clear either.

Potioncat's puzzle pieces analogy is really delightful for thinking 
about this incident.  My conclusion is that it really is a case of not 
enough information, and the complete unreliability of our own puzzle 
pieces that we've created to fill in the blanks.  Given the present 
information *and* the knowledge that we're missing things, this 
incident could end up as any of a number of mutually exclusive 
possibilities.  There's one answer that's right, but it probably hinges 
on things that we just don't know yet.

I can't make it make sense to myself.  Given the small snapshot of 
climate we have, I find Madga's idea that Snape thought Sirius wanted 
to be friends to be a little hard to reconcile with Snape's general 
character--although I don't know enough to be sure.  Nobody has made 
good sense of the basic objective mechanics of the thing--and we have a 
very deliberate authorial choice to muddy the waters of motivation.

Sneaky, she is.  I hope it ends up being something really unobvious.

-Nora gets back to getting back on track