[HPforGrownups] My own take on the Prank/Snape Abuse

[Magpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 152620

Sticking my own toe into the waters here, I think the main thing about all 
the issues about Snape is that they're really impossible to find a simple 
answer to because it's all a mess, often a mess that comes from peoples' 
(and so characters') tendencies to a) exaggerate the foresight and evil 
intentions of the people who do them wrong b) see their own justifications 
clearly and c) have a hard time being objective or separating their feelings 
from the facts.

With Snape and Harry, for instance, I don't consider what Snape does to 
Harry or Neville child abuse. (I don't think either boy does either.)  What 
Snape can be said to sometimes abuse is his power as a teacher.  Alla made a 
good call in pointing out Harry noting Snape's "gift" for keeping the class 
in control.  That's a function of presence and JKR I think characterizes 
that clearly in canon by focusing on Snape's physical presence.  He and 
McGonagall naturally control students just by entering a room.  When Harry 
first enters the classroom he is in good faith ready to enter into a normal 
teacher/student relationship where regardless of what he thought about Snape 
personally he'd respect him as a teacher.

Snape throws this away when he starts picking on Harry, imo.  It's one of 
the ironies of Snape.  He has more power over Harry before he starts abusing 
his position.  Then he reveals himself to be a bad leader not worthy of 
respect; Harry "sees through him" to the teenager he was (I think this is a 
big issue with Hagrid too).  He shows weakness in his need to take jabs at 
Harry.  When he destroys Harry's potion, for instance, he just looks someone 
trying to get at Harry and Harry naturally responds to him not as a teacher 
but as a bully trying to get to him--not surprisingly that jab at Harry is 
in response to the Pensieve scene.  Snape probably literally feels again 
like a teenager and he acts like one.  It goes over the line a little even 
for Snape. Harry picks up on this and acts in kind, sometimes finding it 
impossible to treat Snape like a teacher when he acts like a child.  When 
Harry calls Snape "Snape" and others correct him that it's "Professor Snape" 
I don't think Harry is always intentionally being rude.  He just really 
thinks of him as Snape for good psychological reasons.  Actually, it's a 
great little character hook for Snape that he's constantly trying to get 
people to call him and so see him as the thing he has created himself to be; 
they continue to see him as something less impressive that they see.  Harry 
calls him Snape; Lupin calls him Severus.

Of course it's also canon that Harry has other reasons that he hates Snape 
that Snape has not earned.  Harry can't stand the idea of Snape having 
helped him, he likes thinking Snape is the one most responsible for things 
like Sirius' death etc.  Snape started all of this but at this point it's a 
mess that Harry contributes to himself--not by doing stuff to Snape, 
usually, but just by feeding his own hatred of the man.  I think Snape in 
some ways continues to not only see the Harry he wants to see but create the 
Harry he sees.

I was going to say Harry came out a little better than Snape in terms of his 
ability to sometimes be objective, but now I think about it I think both of 
them maybe see the other as the less objective.  When Harry runs into Barty 
Crouch in the woods and runs for help it must seem to him insane that Snape 
is still picking on him when there's something more important at stake.  But 
really that's probably because Snape honestly has no way of knowing Harry 
could be bringing real serious information to the castle that night.  He 
assumes it's just nothing.  Similarly Snape may find times when he can't 
believe Harry is still concentrating on the petty things when there's 
something more serious at stake, not realizing that Harry has no way of 
knowing that this is one of those times Snape's going to have his priorities 
straight.

In terms of the Prank, we really don't know all the details yet.  I've 
always definitely been of the opinon that it's wrong to call it attempted 
murder because I really don't think Sirius would ever plan something like 
that and I think canon indicates he wasn't planning anything more than a 
vague "teach him a lesson" situation.  Probably he just wanted to see him 
running scared.  If he were going to plan a murder it would be in response 
to a situation like Peter--he's driven by different things.  Had Snape been 
killed it probably would have been something like manslaughter.  Sirius 
would still be responsible and guilty, but I truly think that what makes the 
Prank so messy is that it's not anything so clear cut as Sirius attempting 
murder.  That may actually be all the more painful for Snape, that he wasn't 
even worthy of attempted murder; he would have died through a joke gone 
wrong.  For someone like Snape who craves respect that's got to be awful 
(not to mention he'd have contributed to his own death when his own attempts 
at snooping and petty fighting with MWPP helped get him killed).

We are apparently going to learn more about the Prank but I suspect what we 
learn may come out of left field and throw light on things in a totally 
different way that we expected.  It may make things more complicated, not 
less.  That just seems to often be the way things work.  I don't think what 
we'll learn will be who's fault it really was, because it's really more just 
the natural collision of a lot of stuff that was already going on.

-m