Young Snape's cutting curse (Was: LID!Snape rides again)

[M.Clifford]

No: HPFGUIDX 150333

 Carol wrote:
> I agree with this paragraph but I want to make one quick note. Yes, 
> it was Sirius Black, not Remus Lupin, who said these words. (For 
> some reason, the quote keeps getting misattributed, maybe because 
> posters think, rightly, that Lupin is a more objective witness than
> Black.)


Valky responds:
Hi Carol, just for the record since this thread is in alignment with
the other I posted to yesterday, the quote I used in my previous post
was most definitely a Lupin Quote and not misattributed. The comment
by Sirius about Snape in first year and Lupin's statement that Snape
was "this little oddball up to his neck in Dark Arts" are not one and
the same as far as I am concerned, for the benefit of anyone listening
in who may have gotten confused by that.

On the point of Lupin being a more objective witness, I agree that you
say rightly so, Carol. Sirius, we know, has a bundle of dark emotions
influencing his every interaction with Snape, and it seems to go way
back, I don't think he's entirely objective, but I do think he's very
honest, and my opinion there is well qualified by the fact the
statements by Lupin (our objective witness) never contradict what
Sirius says about Snape. 


Carol:
> But Black does not say that eleven-year-old Severus came to school
> knowing more *Dark* curses than half (and, yes, it is half) the
> seventh years. He only says that he knew more "curses" than half the
> seventh years. JKR is a bit inconsistent in distinguishing curses 
> from hexes and jinxes (and hexes and jinxes from each other; IMO,
> throughout OoP she uses "jinxes" for "hexes," but that's another 
> post. I agree that these so-called curses were schoolyard variety 
> hexes and jinxes, some of them perhaps of his own invention (like 
> the toenail jinx he later invented).

Valky:
I have given this some pondering myself since we last spoke about it,
Carol, and I think I have a good theory about the difference between
curses and hexes/jinxes. Just going on the Bat Bogey Hex and the Eat
Slugs examples, it seems that Hexes and Jinxes are temporary in
nature, once cast they will eventually wear off after some discomfort
so they are in esscence basically innocuous, inconvenient and
uncofortable rather than dangerous.  Curses, OTOH, it seems to me
always need to be professionally countered by some expert in healing
arts, they seem more permanent and by extension of that hence rather
more a danger than hexes or jinxes. 

Thats my rough estimate at the moment from what I have been looking
through, I haven't really put it under any rigour yet, but I am sure
you guys will ;)

Valky