But DID James listen? (was LID!Snape rides again )

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 150198

Alla:
<snip>
>
> You probably know that I am fond of speculation that since
> Slytherin's gang all graduated by that time ( they are older than
> Snape, I think it is pretty much canon now when Lucius and Bella's
> ages are specified, no?), Snape was left all alone to deal with
> Marauders.

Carol responds:
I agree with you here. The DEs whose ages we know (except for Barty
Jr. and Regulus Black) are older than Snape, and it's logical that the
Lestrange brothers and other members of the gang would be closer in
age to Lucius Malfoy than to Severus Snape, who seems to have been the
youngest member of that gang. (There's no indication that Barty Jr. or
Regulus were part of it.) And the apparent absence of any sympathizers
or defenders of Severus (except Lily) in the "worst memory" scene
suggests that none of the gang members was in his year. I think the
gang must have disintegrated after Lucius Malfoy left. (Even though SB
doesn't name him as a member, Malfoy leads the DEs at the MoM and
would surely have performed a similar role as a boy,just as his son
Draco leads his own little gang in Harry's time at Hogwarts.)
>
Alla:
> <snip> And of course we have that "Malfoy's lapdog". I am dying to
know whether this refers to Snape school years and what did Sirius
mean. <snip>

Carol:
Considering that AFWK Black never saw Snape after their graduation (he
didn't know that Snape had been a DE, that he had spied for DD during
VW1, or that he was a teacher at Hogwarts), this snide little epithet
almost certainly refers to their school years. And since Malfoy is
canonically five or six years older than Snape, it refers to the
relationship between a little boy and a big one.

Almost certainly, sixth-year Lucius would have taken note of any
Slytherin first-year who came to school knowing as many hexes as he
did and taken the little boy under his wing, at least once Bellatrix
was out of the way. (JKR shows her as being born in 1953, which can't
be right. Canonically, she was a member of the Slytherin gang that
adopted Severus, so she's probably a year older than Malfoy.) Sirius,
hating Severus, would see Severus hanging around with much older kids,
particularly with Malfoy, and think the worst. Hence "lapdog": "A
dependent or servile follower" (but also, literally, a small pet).

It's quite likely, IMO, that little Severus at eleven or twelve
admired the suave pureblood teenager, who may have epitomized
Slytherin values for him. And knowing what we know of the adult Snape,
I think it's likely that little Severus appreciated having such a
paragon (his view,not mine!) appreciate his talents, and he would hang
around him as much as the older boy would tolerate. Black, as an
adult, looks back on what he remembers of this relationship as the
little boy servilely following the big one. I think it's more likely
that Lucius was amused by him and that there was a brotherly affection
between them, which would account for Snape's continuing bond with the
Malfoys and the affection that he, in turn, shows to Draco.

I agree with a snipped portion of your post that it was Lucius Malfoy
who recruited young Snape to join the DEs, but I see no reason to
think that he did so before Severus left school. Sirius Black had no
idea that Snape was a Death Eater even though he knew that most of the
Slytherin gang had done so. Surely if Severus had come to school with
a Dark Mark, behaving strangely and neglecting his studies like Draco
in HBP, the Marauders would have noticed?

Severus, unlike Draco, was a studious boy. I imagine that he put his
best efforts into his NEWTs as he seems to have done with his OWLs.
But he was already, I think, disappointed that he had not been made
Head Boy (the hated James got the position instead), and he may have
expected to be swamped with job offers based on his marks and his many
OWLs and NEWTs (I'm assuming here, based on what we know of his
talents, his apparently photographic memory, and his known interest in
books). If that didn't happen, he'd have been an easy mark for
recruitment. His dear and trusted friend Malfoy would have promised
him recognition and rewards and the opportunity to do research
involving the Dark Arts--not the sort of career that the MoM was
likely to offer.

Speculation here: If he wasn't sent out on missions to torture Muggles
and the like, instead being entrusted with special projects like
making potions to immunize the Dark Lord against the ravages of time
and other mortal ills, it may have been some time before he became
disillusioned. Only when he realized that the Dark Lord meant to
murder an infant who posed a dim future threat would his loyalty have
  begun to waver (helped, perhaps, by the murder before Severus's eyes
of Regulus Black). We have no evidence that he committed murder
himself before he killed DD, only the assumption that as a DE he must
have done so, contradicted IMO by the evidence of specialization among
the DEs. Karkaroff would have mentioned it had Snape done so. He was
desperate to free himself at his fellow DEs' expense.

To return to the main point of this post, the limited evidence we have
does not support the assumption that SS joined the DEs while he was
still in school. The Marauders would surely have suspected it had he
done so, and neither Black nor Lupin knew that Snape had been a DE
until he revealed his Dark Mark to Fudge in front of Black in GoF.

Carol, wondering if there's a connection between Malfoy ("bad faith")
and "warlock" (lit. "one that breaks faith" or "oathbreaker")