Eileen & Tobias was (What is poetic justice? WAS: Re:

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 143616

Potioncat quoted canon: 
<snip> "--a Hook-nosed man was shouting at a cowering woman, while a 
> small dark-haired boy cried in a corner..." <snip>
> "He was sure he had just broken into Snape's memories, that he had 
just seen scenes from Snape's childhood, and it was unnerving to 
think that the crying little boy who had watched his parents shouting>
was actually standing in front of him with such loathing in his ey[e]s..."
<snip commentary>
 
> Lyra responded: 
<snip> I never disputed Harry's interpretation that it was the Snape
family -- mother, father, son (though the fact that he didn't notice
muggle clothes does bother me a bit). He sees two adults shouting and
a preschooler!Snape crying. <snip>
> 
As Potioncat points out, the couple are both shouting in 
> Harry's recollection, it's apprently not a one-sided exchange. 
<snip>
> I wonder if this scene is tied in with the "fathering" issues JKR 
> mentions. In her Time magazine interview, JKR said "As I look back 
> over the five published books, I realize that it's a kind of litany 
> of bad fathers. That's where evil seems to flourish, in places where 
> people don't get good fathering." <snip>
> 
> If you accept that "fathering" is a sort of theme in the 
> stories, it seems likely the shouting man would be the father of 
> Snape, a major character, rather than the father of his mother, a 
> minor prescence at best.

Carol notes:
While I can certainly understand this perspective, a grandfather could
be as incapable of good fathering as a father. More important,
however, Harry's perception (provided via the narrator) doesn't match
the actual memory. Since the memories are Snape's, I'm sure he's right
that the child in all the memories is Severus. But he's *assuming*,
perhaps based on physical resemblance, that the man in the earliest
memory is Severus's father (and the woman is his mother). But note
that his *interpretation* shows the "parents shouting" at each other,
whereas the actual memory shows the *man* shouting and the woman
"cowering." The interpretation does not match the memory, which Harry
has seen only moments before.

We know from experience how often Harry's interpretations have been
wrong. Someone in another thread mentioned Cedric, whom Harry liked
and respected until he sees him with Cho, at which point he suddenly
"realize[s]" that Cedric is just "a useless pretty boy who didn't have
enough brains to fill an eggcup" (GoF Am. ed. 398). This "realization"
 conflicts with the solid evidence available to the reader that Cedric
is an intelligent and thoughtful boy who believes in fair play. (There
are many other examples of Harry's misinterpretations, perhaps better
ones than I've cited here, but my point is simply that just because
Harry thinks something is true doesn't make it true.)

I do appreciate Harry's sudden (and brief) flash of empathy for Snape
(too bad the Occlumency lessons didn't end with a better mutual
understanding based on the common bond of bad childhoods), but his
swiftly drawn conclusion that the man and woman are Severus's parents,
though natural, is not necessarily accurate, and his view of the woman
as shouting blatantly contradicts the evidence.

Maybe JKR forgot what she had just written, which is certainly
possible. She does sometimes forget things (like the fact that Bill's
arms are full of floorplans when he flicks his wand to vanish them in
OoP). Or maybe Harry's attribution of shouting to a woman who is
actually cowering is a clue that his interpretation is wrong, as is so
often the case (not wrong in the essential respect that little Severus
came from an unhappy home, but wrong that the man and woman were his
parents).

Carol, still sure for reasons previously stated that the man in the
memory is not Muggle!Tobias but Grandpa Prince and not at all
convinced that Spinner's End was Severus's childhood home