[HPforGrownups] Re: OFH SNAPE was: Script from JKR's reading/ About Snape and Dumbledore

[Marion Ros]

No: HPFGUIDX 156934

Betsy Hp: <thoroughly snipped>
> Yeeaahh... I tend to agree with you. Only... It does make Snape out 
> to be petty and childish doesn't it? "Meh, he made me lose my 
> precious reward so I'll snitch on him and make him lose his job. 
> Nyah." I see a bit of the classic passive-aggressive stuff Lupin is 
> so very, very good at going on here. (Calling Snape "Severus" is 
> another example.) <snip>

Carol responds:
>>>I've snipped most of your post (which, in general, I agree with) to
ask a question. I can see why you would regard the Order of Merlin
"explanation" as passive aggressive, but why regard his calling snape
"Severus" in that way? I always read it as an attempt at civility
(More civil than thou, maybe) until HBP, when I realized that Lupin
refers to Snape as Severus in third as well as second person. Now it
seems to me as if he sees Snape as an equal, an exact contemporary,
and he's calling him by his first name just as he did Sirius Black and
James Potter. Maybe in part it's genuine gratitude for the Wolfsbane
Potion, which saved him nine (should have been ten) months of
excessive suffering.

Carol, wondering if she's the only person on the list who believes
Lupin when he says "I neither like nor dislike Severus"<<<


Marion:
Ah, but Lupin will call Snape 'Severus' with tenacity when Snape insists on calling Lupin 'Lupin'. He's pushing familiarity where it is clearly not wanted. It's like when somebody stands just too close, invading your personal space. You inch away, signalling that you want a bit of distance between you to feel comfortable, but the annoying man *will* follow you, standing too close and smiling all the while in your face.
It's very insidious. You can't really attack the man for being too close, too familiar when familiarity isn't wanted, because isn't Lupin *nice*, isn't he 'just trying to be *friends*, "oh stop being so *sensitive* Severus".

The snot gets away with it too.

And of course there is the fact that Lupin calls Snape 'Severus' in front of the pupils. I'm not sure I'm right about this, but I believe that none of the teachers ever call eachother by their first names in front of the students. Snape certainly doesn't. He might call McGonegal 'Minerva' in private, but he wouldn't do so in front of the students. It's professional courtesy in part, just like, and part of, the fact that the teachers will form a unity in front of the students. By denying that professional courtesy, by denying him his title of 'professor', Lupin is *very* passive-agressive.

And then there is the Wolfsbane. Is it just me, or do others on this list also want to *kick* the werewolf for being so incredible cruel to Snape with that potion? Snape once, as a boy, nearly died because of an werewolf attack. An attack by Lupin, in fact. The only way he and the children in his care are safe from Lupin is by brewing a difficult potion. So he brings it and wants to see Lupin drink it. It's only after Lupin drinks the stuff that he can feel safe. And Lupin *knows* this. And then Lupin plays his little 'oh, just put it over there, I'll drink it later' games.
An outsider who knows nothing about Lupin being a werewolf or that Snape once was attacked by him would look at the interaction between Snape and Lupin with contempt. Here is this nice, friendly, smiling teacher and he's getting a potion from the ugly, always dour potions teacher (probably for the sniffles or something innocent like that, but we don't trust the ugly one, so maybe he wants to *poison* the kind one, better keep an eye on him) and the kind teacher puts it down to drink later, but the nasty, ugly, greasy git insists that he drinks it *now*. What a stinker. What a bully. Where does *he* get off, telling the nice one what to do?!
And all the while Lupin sits there, smiling, knowing full well that Snape won't sleep, won't feel *safe* if he doesn't know for sure that Lupin drank that blasted potion.

There's a weird, whacky but wonderful essay on Lupin's behaviour in HBP by swythyv over here: http://community.livejournal.com/hp_essays/164477.html  where she ponders wether Lupin in HBP is actually Peter Pettigrew in disguise, because Lupin's suggestions to Harry are so insidious and suggestive that she cannot imagine that kind Lupin made them.
I can imagine that all too well.


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