The Huge overreactions from a five minute time span.

[Ceridwen]

No: HPFGUIDX 150111

Joe:
> Snape's worst memory has to be the single most hysteria-inducing 
piece of Harry Potter. 

Ceridwen:
I disagree.  I think the most hysteria-inducing piece of Harry Potter 
was the joint GoF/OotP which gave rise in fanfic to Doomed!Outed!
Snape and Puking!CAPSLOCK!Harry.

> It gives rise to a lot of clap trap including:

Ceridwen:
I like the word 'claptrap'.  I don't necessarily agree with your use 
of it here.

Joe:
>   1. Snape would be a teddybear if only the mean old James Potter 
hadn't tortured him in school.

Ceridwen:
Aside from fan fiction, I haven't heard or read anyone suggesting 
that Snape would have been all Goodness and Light if only, if only.  
I have seen people speculate that perhaps Snape would not have been 
so quick to join the Death Eaters, but that is speculation, and a far 
cry from 'teddybear'.

Joe:
>   2. James and the other Marauders were really nasty people and 
Dumbledore let them get away with everything.

Ceridwen:
This is more fanfic fodder.  There are indications that Snape may not 
have been pleased with Dumbledore's handling of the Prank.  Since it 
could have gotten him killed or turned into a werewolf, I think he 
has reason to be upset.  Whether his reason is valid or not is a 
matter that hasn't been addressed in canon to my knowledge.  If I'm 
wrong, someone will provide relevant canon.

We have been given one scene so far of the Marauders.  This is a 
scene where they do not come out looking too good.  They do come 
across as arrogant teenaged brats.  Some of their actions in this one 
and only scene can be read much darker than that.

Joe:
>   3. Now we have James and Sirius sexually harrassing Snape.

Ceridwen:
Some people do see it that way.  They exposed his underwear to the 
ridicule of other students.  It appears that they were ready to 
remove the underwear and expose his genitals.  Back in the 1970s, 
this would have qualified as bullying, not sexual harassment.  Today, 
that defnintion has been stretched to include things that were not 
formerly associated with sexual harassment.

Joe:
>   Can we just put these things to bed now?

Ceridwen:
No.  This list would dry up and blow away if everyone was expected to 
accept one and only one interpretation of canon.

Joe:
> James Potter was a great guy. How do we know? We know because a 
great many highly intelligent and very nice people thought the world 
of him. Lily Potter was no ones fool and if she loved him enough to 
marry him and have his child then that should speak volumes. Nothing 
speaks of a man as much as his associates. 

Ceridwen:
James Potter died a great guy.  When he was a teenager, Lily Evans 
called him a 'toerag', said he was no better than Snape, and that she 
would prefer a date with the Giant Squid to a date with James.

As a teenager, James Potter decided to harass and bully another 
student because his best friend Sirius was bored.  When he was called 
on his behavior, he gave the reason that Snape deserved it for just 
existing.  He was an arrogant only child of older parents, spoiled, 
rich, and talented at Quidditch.  At the time we see him with his 
friends and enemies in the Pensieve scene, he believes himself smart 
enough and well-studied enough not to be worrying about his O.W.L.s.  
He does not come across as a 'great guy' in the Pensieve scene.  He 
comes across as your typical arrogant, self-satisfied jock of a teen 
with brains he probably doesn't use to their fullest extent.

Joe: 
>   Let's not forget that Snape hated James because he was cocky. 
Lots of teenagers can be branded with that label. James hated Snape 
because he was, to quote Remus Lupin "Up to his neck in the Dark 
Arts." Now this wasn't teenage Remus Lupin who said this it was adult 
Remus Lupin who is one of the few people JKR sets up and paragons of 
wisdom and forgiveness. It was interesting to note that Snape was 
like that when he arrived at Hogwarts.

Ceridwen:
Snape and James didn't hit it off from day dot, judging by what 
Dumbledore told Harry.  He likened the relationship to Harry's with 
Draco.  And, lest we forget, by Remus's words, then, this is an 
eleven year old child setting himself up as judge and jury and 
executioner to all of his schoolmates based on one thing.  Because 
Remus said that James and Snape never did get along because of 
Snape's interest in the Dark Arts.  Which would mean at the most 
restrictive, that they met at eleven when they started Hogwarts, and 
James immediately didn't like Snape for what he knew of him, without 
getting to know him first. Great guy.

And Remus Lupin is not set up as some paragon.  He is shown as a 
fifth-year prefect ignoring an altercation going on in front of him, 
involving two of his friends and one other student.  He does not 
intervene on either side's behalf.  As an adult, he withholds 
information about Sirius's Animagus status even though he does 
suspect or wholeheartedly believe that Sirius was the one who 
betrayed the Potters to Voldemort.  And he withholds this information 
in the face of Sirius's infiltration of Hogwarts, slashing the Fat 
Lady's painting, standing over Ron holding a knife (at this point, no 
one knows about the secret identity of Scabbers), and the fact that 
Sirius had escaped from Azkaban and was rumored to be out to kill 
Harry Potter.

He was ready to kill Peter Pettigrew without trial.  This is 
vigilantism, and is abhorrent to most societies today.  He only 
refrained from killing PP because Harry stepped in the way.

These are not the behaviors of a paragon.  They are the actions, or 
more accurately 'inactions', of a very human character.  I like 
Remus.  But he is no 'paragon of wisdom and forgiveness'.

Joe:
>   One teenager is cocky and one is using illegal Dark Magic. Hmm 
James doesn't sound too bad now, does he?

Ceridwen:
This isn't a teenaged game of 'if you could only choose one, which 
would it be?'  I can hate or love both characters despite their 
differences and the way they are set up to be antagonists to each 
other.  So, despite Snape's interest in the Dark Arts, I can still 
dislike James's behavior.

And, Dark Magic isn't illegal.  There is no place in canon that says 
so.  There are three Unforgivable Curses which will earn you an 
immediate trip to Azkaban.  But that's all.

Joe:
>   We also have the whole James and Sirius always attacked Snape two 
to one idea. Honestly we have no reason to think that aside from one 
five minute memory. Yes James and Sirius had friends to help them and 
it is easy to see Snape not having friends. Yet we know that many of 
Snape's classmates ended up as Death Eaters. They obviously thought 
enough and knew enough about him to bring him to Voldemort's 
attention.

Ceridwen:
We have no reason not to think that based on the ages of the 
supposed 'gang of Slytherins', which put at least Lucuis Malfoy and 
Bellatrix Black out of Hogwarts by the time of the Pensieve memory, 
along with Sirius (or was it Remus?) attesting that James at least 
continued to hex Snape after this, only being careful not to let Lily 
Evans know.

Your sudden switch to friends or lack thereof is a straw man that has 
nothing to do with your paragraph's original idea.  In fact, Snape's 
lack of social skills coupled with the Pensieve memory would argue 
for, not against, James and Sirius ganging up on Snape two to one, 
since James and Sirius had each other for friends, while Snape had no 
one, yet we do know that their rivalry continued all through school.

And what Snape's classmates may or may not have done in calling LV's 
attentions to him (or did Snape just join on his own?  Canon?) has 
nothing to do with what James and Sirius did.

Joe:
>   The truth is probably that the Gryffindors and the Slytherins 
constantly jinxed and hexed each other on many occations sheerly out 
of house rivalry. A war that was for the most part between their 
houses was on the horizon as well. It was probably this that forged 
the Snape-Potter feud as much as anything.

Ceridwen:
If this was your only point, I would agree with you completely.  We 
have all experienced school rivalries, team rivalries, religious 
rivalries, and so on.

Joe:
>   Yeah James and Sirius were a bit much and could have been nicer. 
But James Potter stood his ground and faced off against Voldemort... 
stood by his friend... became an Auror and worked to help people
>    
>   Snape willingly joined a group of racists bent on torture, murder 
and the ethnic cleansing of the Muggleborn and the best thing we can 
say is that he was sorry when someone who he knew was murdered by 
them.

Ceridwen:
Canon for Auror!James?  I was under the impression that he was rich, 
the only son of an older couple in fact, and did not have to work.  
Also, people liked James, much as they like Harry, but where does it 
say that he 'worked to help people'?  Nice people don't always work 
to help others.  Sometimes, they're just likeable.

Snape regretted telling the prophecy at least two months before the 
Potters' deaths, if not sooner.  In his statement at the Pensieve 
hearing in GoF, Dumbledore says that Snape 'returned' to the good 
side and spied on Voldemort 'at great personal risk'.  There is no 
way he could have done that until the end of GoF if he 'returned' 
only after the Potters had died and LV was 'torn from his body' and 
given to an existence 'worse than the meanest ghost', because there 
was essentially no Voldemort to spy on until he was resurrected in 
the graveyard at the end of Harry's fourth year.

Joe:
>   There really isn't much else to say.

Ceridwen:
The fact that you have gotten responses to this post makes me have to 
disagree with you again.  ;)

Ceridwen.