Snape again

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 146962

Just carol:

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? 

Magpie:

Well, I think a lot of it is human nature.  I mean, imo, you see the 
same type of thing going on in fandom all the time, where you have 
the person you want to be guilty because you hate them and you start 
subtly shading everything about them to be more satisfying 
emotionally.  Wormtail, for whatever reason, doesn't bother Harry so 
much in a superficial way so he doesn't focus as much on what he 
does, despite his being the biggest betrayer, most efficient DE and 
the character showing the least remorse.   

As you said, it's not just that Snape treats him badly, because so 
do other people.  But with Snape everything about him angers Harry, 
so in his mind I think it just makes sense to follow those 
feelings.  The eavesdropper wasn't important until it was Snape 
because it was JUST SO DAMNED SNAPE to be the eavesdropper.  
Suddenly it's got an emotional component to it.  He can imagine 
Snape being all Snapey--and probably imagines him doing it just to 
spite Harry even though Harry hadn't been born yet.  That Snape went 
to Dumbledore and tried to undo what he did means nothing--in fact, 
it would be great if that, too, could be cast in a sinister light.  
I mean, you see this sort of thing all the time when people discuss 
canon where either their language sort of editorializes the way 
events are presented or certain acts are exaggerated or diminished 
based on who it's satisfying to hate or give sympathy too.  (Or 
sometimes the facts are even changed.)  Sometimes when the accurate 
version is pointed out the response is: what difference does it make?

But it does make a difference.  Every little change adds up to 
distorting the picture and making you more likely to miss what's 
really going on.  Nobody can be totally objective but characters in 
canon are all too good at throwing themselves into their bias 
completely and suffering for it.  Snape is obviously a great example 
of this himself--he might have an Order of Merlin now if he'd 
listened to Harry and the others in the Shack, but I think Snape 
just found it so emotionally right that Sirius should be the traitor 
he didn't want it to be Peter.

As for Harry's hatred of Sirius, he doesn't yet know that Snape is a 
DE--perhaps if he had things would have been different.  I think 
first of all that Sirius is the first person Harry ever gets to 
focus on who's personally responsible for his father's death.  It 
gives him someone to focus on personally in a way he's not yet able 
to focus on Snape.  Later Sirius would seem to be replaced with 
Wormtail, but I think learning he was wrong about Sirius is such a 
blow that Harry isn't emotionally ready to just switch everything to 
Peter, especially since Peter is so different from Sirius.  Plus at 
the end of PoA Harry's emotions then also are divided between 
feelings of revenge and feelings of hope--he's just discovered a 
godfather who cares about him.  Snape wants to take that away.  

So I think a lot of it is, as funny as it sounds, personal 
preference.  It's very much the way it works with the audience.  We 
like or dislike characters based on a lot on instinct and then 
analyze them after that.  I think both Snape and Sirius just 
resonante with Harry more as people.  Before Harry knows Peter he 
connects him to Neville in his mind because he is a "Neville type."  
The Neville type just doesn't bother Harry, or inspire passionate 
feelings in him one way or the other.  It's all about Harry in the 
end.  Perhaps if he'd known the true story to begin with Harry might 
have focused his hatred on Peter the way he did with Sirius, but I 
don't know...he may have been more confused at how/why Peter could 
ever betray his father.  In the book "The Alienist" there's 
something title character I think calls "the fallacy."  It refers to 
sort of blind spots about human nature where we believe that certain 
things about our experiences are universal and so find it very hard 
to imagine them not being true.  I think Harry may have certain 
associations with the type of boy Peter was (and Neville is) that 
makes it hard for him to see him as evil. Snape is the opposite. 
Sirius' basic personality had no such issues.  

-m