Real child abuse/ Snape again

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 145768

Alla wrote:

> 
> Alla:
> 
> IMO, it is. Harry never trusted Snape because Snape made sure to 
> treat Harry as enemy. Harry had no clue who Snape was till Snape 
> showed him what "teacher" like him can do.


Carol responds:
Harry thought that Snape had caused his scar to burn and Percy has
said that Snape "knows an awful lot about the Dark Arts," which would
lead Harry to assume (correctly) an association between Snape and
Slytherin even before he knows that Snape is the Slytherin's HoH. His
odd dream in which Quirrell's turban acts the role of the Sorting Hat
and places him in Slytherin also links Draco to Snape and Snape (with
no cause whatever) to Voldemort--all this before Harry has taken a
class with Snape. In part, the dream, like the scar incident, acts as
a red herring to set Snape up as the apparent villain of the book, but
it also shows, IMO, that Harry at least subconsciously distrusts Snape
from the outset, before Snape has spoken a single word to Harry. The
little question-and-answer session in the first Potions class, in
which Snape demonstrates for whatever reason that "our new celebrity"
doesn't know a bezoar from wolfbane, reinforces Harry's preconceptions
about Snape. (No doubt it reinforces Snape's preconceptions about
Harry as well.)

At any rate, Snape is not treating Harry as an "enemy" in that class,
only as a "dunderhead," a boy who knows nothing about the WW and
clearly hasn't studied his textbooks very diligently. And, as I said
earlier, Harry's distrust of him predates that class. He *does* have a
clue who Snape is before that; he learns before the first class that
Snape is the head of Slytherin House. And Slytherin, thanks to Draco
and Hagrid, is equated in Harry's mind with evil before he even sits
down to be Sorted ("Not Slytherin! Not Slytherin!"). Then Snape eyes
him intently after he sits down at the Gryffindor table (a little
long-distance Legilimency?) and, by post hoc ergo propter hoc
reasoning, "causes" Harry's scar to burn. Harry decides at that point
that Snape dislikes him. By the end of the first class, he "knows"
that Snape hates him. (Snape has also called Neville an "idiot boy"
for melting *Seamus's* cauldron, but paid him no special attention
before that memorable moment. He certainly didn't *cause* Neville to
melt the cauldron.) But Harry's distrust of Snape begins before that
class, as shown by the dream. IMO, Harry's bias against Slytherin
predisposes him to distrust Snape and to attach more importance to
Snape's "unfairness" than it perhaps deserves. Snape's behavior
reinforces the bias, just as Harry's behavior reinforces Snape's bias
against him.

Had McGonagall questioned him in the same way (minus the sarcasm)
about Transfiguration (What is a Switching Spell, Potter?", he would
merely have thought her unreasonable, not evil. He certainly would not
have suspected her, a few chapters later, of trying to steal the
Sorceror's Stone, even if he'd overheard her talking with Quirrell and
questioning where his loyalties lie. But Snape = Slytherin and
Slytherin = evil in Harry's mind, even at this early point.

Carol, hoping that Snape's birthday shows up on JKR's website January 9