Bullying WAS: Re: Prodigal Sons

[zgirnius]

No: HPFGUIDX 140779


> vmonte:
> No, I don't think that they would have mentioned that Snape was a 
> bully to Harry. JKR has a way of never letting her characters ask 
> questions when she doesn't want her readers to have the information 
> yet. But based on the bully that Snape is now, and the fact that he 
> belonged to a club of bullys while he was a DE, I'm sure that he 
was 
> one as a teenager too. 

zgirnius:
Well, in this case she did let Harry ask the question. But I suppose 
she might have prevented Lupin or Sirius from giving an optimal 
answer...

I have trouble determining Snape was a bully as a teenager based on 
his decision to join the Death Eaters, because I can see other 
reasons besides a desire to bully others that might inspire one to 
join. Snape seems to have had an intellectual interest in the Dark 
Arts from childhood, which might in itself tempt him to join a 
powerful Dark wizard. I also don't think he had close ties to 
students in his year (since noone but Lily seems to have been doing 
anything but enjoying the show in that Pensieve scene) and he also 
probably had a problematic family life (the Pensieve memory of the 
man yelling at the "cowering" woman). So he might also have joined 
any group that gave him a feeling of importance and belonging. 
Finally, depending on how he was raised, he might have been 
indoctrinated into the anti-Muggle-born ideology as a child. 
(Particularly if he had a bad relationship with his Muggle father and 
more sympathetic maternal relatives with anti-Muggle views.) Since we 
don't know why he joined them, it seems a stretch to then 
retroactivelty decide he must have always been a bully because he was 
once a DE.

I also have some difficulty with the whole business of Snape having 
fit nicely into a Slytherin gang of nascent Death Eaters at Hogwarts. 
That he was involved with them in some way is canon, yes, but in what 
way? As a leader? A valued member? Or a mere hanger-on about the 
fringes, tolerated only for his knowledge of unusual and original 
hexes? The other gang members we know about (Malfoy, Bella, etc.) 
would mostly have been older, and also purebloods. I would think they 
*knew* Snape was not, since he has his father's (Muggle) last name. 


vmonte: 
> I'm starting to think that Snape had something to do with 
recruiting 
> Regulus into that nasty group of kids that later turned out to 
become 
> DEs. If true, I wouldn't blame Sirius for loathing Snape forever. 
Even 
> if ultimately it was Regulus's fault for joining in the first place.
> 
> Vivian

zgirnius:
Anything is possible, of course, since we know very little about how 
Regulus became a Death Eater. Sirius attributes it to the fact that 
his brother always shared the traditional Black family values. But 
then Slytherin House around that time also included both Bella and 
Cissy Black, Regulus' cousins. Since (according to Sirius) Regulus 
was always his parents' favorite and shared their views, he was 
likely quite close to these very "acceptable" cousins and their 
friends. This seems a more likely a route for Regulus' recruitment.

Even if Snape did befriend and recruit the young Regulus, though, it 
seems to me that you are putting the cart before the horse. Sirius 
and Lupin tell Harry that James and Snape were enemies from day one. 
So Sirius would *already* have been an "enemy" of Snape before 
Regulus came ont he scene at all. Also, Sirius does not in talking to 
Harry express much regret about his brother's fate. It would seem 
that from an early age he rejected his family's pureblood ideology 
and ties to Dark magic, and despised Regulus for not doing likewise.