Is Snape good or evil? (longer)

[potioncat]

No: HPFGUIDX 148963

Gerry wrote: 
> To me this makes clear that he does not understand Harry at all. I'm
> sure Snape could never imagine that Harry would -not- find the scene
> at the lake amusing. After all, Harry is just like his father. So 
what
> he does here is make sure Harry sees James did this to lots of 
people,
> in the hope that will make Harry see that James was a rotten bully.

Potioncat:
Snape does rub it in that Sirius and James are in this batch. But he 
isn't punishing Harry for being in the pensieve, he's punishing Harry 
for using a Dark Curse on Draco. Harry has done something very 
similar to what the teenagers James and Sirius did...he cursed 
someone. He also used a curse that he didn't understand. We don't 
know what Harry learned, if anything, from the punishments he copied.

 We didn't get much of a look at the cards to see what he should have 
learned. (Was I the only one who laughed at the punishment, 
a "double" detention for a hex that made someone's head swell 
to "twice" the normal size?) Another question came up once 
before, "Wasn't Snape in this batch? or did he never get caught?" 

I wonder if any other of the Half-Blood Prince's spells were used in 
the past and Harry might have seen a description of it in the cards?

I suspect, that  whether the act of reading and copying the misdeeds 
had any intent on Snape's part, his real goal was to keep Harry under 
his eye for a good period of time. It was a way of protecting Draco 
and possibly a way to attempt to learn more about how Harry learned 
the curse in the first place.
> 

> Gerry:
> Yes, that would be very disappointing. But it should not be about 
DD,
> but about Snape. Apparently we have a bunch of people who did not
> bother enough about their collegue and order member to form their 
own
> opinion about him. He has his past, so they wondered and DD's trust
> made them stop wondering. 

Potioncat:
The fact is, Snape was seen killing DD and there's little doubt about 
it. So now they are following human nature and looking for a reason. 
None of them know about the UV. The fact that Snape did have a past 
played a big part in how they reacted. 

But think about it. If it had been Lupin who killed DD, the same 
people would be saying, "Well, we wondered a bit about trusting a 
werewolf, but DD said he was safe." (Of course, Snape would have been 
saying, "I told him so.")

Or, if it had been Sirius who killed DD, the same people would be 
saying, "Well, we wondered about him, after all those years in 
Azkaban, but DD said he was stable." (Except Snape would have been 
saying, "I told him so.")

Or if it had been Hermione, the same people would have said somethig 
kind like, "Poor girl, she put herself under too much pressure and 
snapped." (Except Snape would have said, "Sirius and Lupin confunded 
her.")

At any rate, I didn't get the idea that his collegues hadn't trusted 
Snape, or had so much blindly trusted DD, as it was that they didn't 
fully know what he had done to initially convince DD.