Nice vs. Good, honesty, and Snape: Was Snape, Apologies, and Redemption

[houyhnhnm102]

No: HPFGUIDX 153211

Lanval:

> A set-up? Lupin had a cunning plan? He lay awake 
> at night, maliciously scheming how to humiliate his 
> old enemy? 
> 
> That would involve:
> 
> 1.) prior knowledge of Neville's worst fear
> 
> 2.) prior knowledge that Snape would be present, 
> which is against the odds. Lupin says this: p.133 
> Scholastic HB Ed.: "This one (boggart) moved in 
> yesterday afternoon, and I asked the headmaster 
> if the staff would leave it to give my third years 
> some practice." Seems the staff, having left the 
> boggart alone, also politely vacated the room since 
> DD informed them that Lupin would be holding class there. 

houyhnhnm:

Are you interpreting "leave *it*" as meaning leave the room?  I read
it as leave the boggart--don't get rid of it; Lupin wants to use it
for his class.  So there's no indication here for  me that  staff
politely vacated the room or even that Dumbledore  told them Lupin was
going to hold his class there.

If Lupin lay awake thinking at all that night, I'm sure he was
planning his boggart lesson. But I think he knew holding the class in
the staff room, forcing Snape either to leave or to stay and
see-how-much-better-I-am-than-you-at-DADA was going to get under
Snape's skin.  And that may have been a little extra inducement for
Lupin.  Why do I think Lupin knew that holding class in the staffroom
would produce the serendipitous bonus of getting under Snape's skin? 
Because it did.  And these two have a history.

Does Snape ever rise to the bait!  Teasing little Snivellus must have
been like shooting fish in a barrel.  Snape not only overreacted, he
handed Lupin a weapon by making the churlish remark about Neville.  I
think Lupin had a pretty good idea at that moment what form Neville's
boggart might take.

But this is where it should have stopped if Lupin really is the better
man. Instead he escalated the conflict, by at least an order of
magnitude.  

Lupin had the whole year to work on raising Neville's self-esteem  if
he really cared that much about the kid. He stopped Harry from
confronting the boggart; he could have stopped Neville, too. He should
have, if he really thought that turning Snape into an old woman was
the *least* humiliating way Neville could have defeated his boggart.
He used a student to get back at a colleague and make him a figure of
ridicule in front of students.  It's wrong.  I don't care what his
reason was.  There's no good reason.

Then Snape escalated the conflict still further when he took Lupin's
class.  I condemn the way he criticized the Lupin's instruction while
taking his class as strongly  as I condemn what Lupin did.

At each level, each one feels justified to up the ante by what the
other has already done.  The conflict between Snape and Lupin in PoA
is interesting  because it gives a glimpse of the pattern of
escalation that may have prevailed between Snape and the three
Gryffindors (I don't include the poodle in a rat suit)  when they were
teenagers.  It is supplemental information to the Pensieve scene.  It
may prefigure what we learn in book 7 about what really happened back
in the 70s at Hogwarts (if we do).