Snape again

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 146922

Alla wrote:
><snip>
> As to blame, well I know that you said downthread that this is not 
> about justification, but I agree with Allie - I think the analogy 
> may fall, IF Harry has enough reasons to blame Snape for everything 
> and IMO Harry certainly does.

Carol responds:
I'm not going to argue in depth here because the arguments for Harry's
using Snape as a scapegoat for Sirius Black's death have already been
presented, and I don't want to get involved in a ping pong thread
where neither side convinces the other. So I'll just briefly
reiterate. It's *canon* that Harry derives satisfaction in blaming
Snape for Black's death, canon that he regrets his own role in it,
canon that Harry knows Black is reckless, canon that Snape told Black
to stay at 12 GP to wait for Dumbledore. (ESE!Lupin to the contrary,
it's also canon that Bellatrix Lestrange killed "the Animagus Black."
And even if ESE!Lupin did it, Snape wasn't there.) All that being the
case, Harry is placing a disproportionate amount of blame on Snape.
Even if Snape's taunts were a factor in Black's presence at the MoM,
their contribution to the cumulated events leading to his death is
very small.

That aside, I really just wanted to ask a question (with a bit of
background first). In PoA, Harry violently hates Sirius Black, whom he
knows to have been his parents' friend and his own godfather and whom
he believes responsible to be for the death of his parents (and the
murder of twelve Muggles and another friend of his father's). He later
finds out that Peter Pettigrew is the "murderin' traitor," and he
regards PP with revulsion, but the violent hatred and the desire to
kill the traitor who betrayed his friends is gone. Even after Wormtail
murders Cedric on LV's orders, Harry hardly gives Wormtail a thought.
As far as he's concerned, Voldemort murdered Cedric. The fact that
Wormtail cast the Unforgiveable Curse that killed an innocent boy
never quite seems to sink into Harry's brain. Harry has no personal
vendetta against him, even though it was Wormtail who tied him to the
gravestone, Wormtail who cut Harry's arm with a dagger to get his
blood for the potion, Wormtail who resurrected Voldemort. And yet
Wormtail, like Black, was his father's trusted friend.

Later (in OoP), Harry finds out about the Prophecy and that someone
(the eavesdropper) revealed part of it to Voldemort. He has, IIRC,
almost no reaction to this information. He certainly doesn't react
with the anger he felt against Black earlier when he thought that
Black had betrayed his parents. The eavesdropper, as far as he's
concerned, is unimportant, just another detail related to the
Prophecy. But in HBP, he finds out that this seemingly unimportant
person was Snape, and immediately, the murderous rage is kindled
again. The actual betrayer, Wormtail, is forgotten, even though Harry
had been willing to kill Black for the same crime. Now it's the
*eavesdropper* who's "the reason the Potters are dead" (to quote movie
McGonagall). Why place *all* the blame on Snape, forgetting the
betrayer, Wormtail, and the actual murderer, Voldemort? Because he's
Snape (who's already responsible for Black's death in Harry's mind.
Why not his parents, too?).

Anyway, it seems strange to me that both Black and Snape somehow push
Harry's buttons, creating a huge emotional reaction in him that
Wormtail, friend of his father or no, doesn't create. Is Wormtail just
"vermin," unworthy of hatred, even though his crime is more directly
linked to the Potters' deaths than Snape's is, whether or not Snape's
remorse is genuine? Why don't his crimes, which are legion, affect
Harry in the way that Snape's transgressions, some of them as small as
taunting Sirius Black in OoP, do? Yes, I know that Snape is Harry's
teacher and that he's sometimes unfair and often sarcastic, but *he*
wasn't the Secret Keeper. The Potters weren't *his* friends. As far as
Harry knows, *he* hasn't murdered anybody. (DD at this point is still
alive.) How does being the eavesdropper somehow go from being nothing
at all to a worse crime than revealing the Potters whereabouts to
Voldemort? Why is Snape (like Black before him) worthy of hatred and
PP isn't? Is it because of Snape's close connection with Dumbledore,
which parallels Black's close connection with James Potter? Is it only
those points taken from Gryffindor that trigger this violent reaction?
If so, why isn't his hatred of Umbridge even more intense than that of
Snape, who never imposed such sick, sadistic punishments as Umbridge
does? Or is Voldemort somehow behind Harry's passionate hatred of Snape?

Does anyone besides me find this strange? It's as if Snape and Harry
are somehow linked emotionally, just as Black and Harry were when
Harry's hatred was focused on him. Maybe this misplaced hatred is a
clue that Snape (unlike Wormtail, who really *is* loathsome and
willing to commit any evil deed that saves his mangy skin), isn't the
person Harry thinks he is, especially after the events on the tower
seem to confirm his view? Not that I think Snape was really James
Potter's friend or that he was never a Death Eater or anything along
those lines, but I think I see a pattern here. And from where I stand
(erm, sit), it points to DDM!Snape, misperceived and mistakenly hated
by Harry.

Carol, who really needs to resist the compulsion to include every
detail and just get to the meat of the matter