Parallels betweeen James and Dudley WAS: Re: Snape's Worst Memory

[verosomm]

No: HPFGUIDX 174308

Julie:
> > <snip>
> > In the end James turned out to be much better for Lily than
> > Snape likely would have ever been, but the "because he
> > exists" excuse doesn't hold water for me now, as there
> > was no differece between Snape and the other Slytherins
> > his age (who were apparently all soon to be fitted for Death
> > Eater masks) other than Snape's connection to Gryffindor's
> > most popular girl.
> >
> > Julie, who's actually glad there was some motive for the
> > Marauders continued harassment of Snape other than merely
> > that he existed.


Lisa:
> Oh, I still think it was completely arbitrary on James' part --
> Lily wasn't the most popular girl at Hogwarts when James made his
> decision that he didn't like Snape.  They all met on the Hogwarts
> Express in the first year.
>
> Snape mentioned Slytherin, James mentioned Gryffindor, they both
> got a bad impression of each other, and James tried to trip Snape
> as he and Lily left the compartment at Lily's urging.  At that
> point, either James or Sirius shouted "See ya, Snivellus!"  And
> that was the start of it all.  No reason for the dislike, other
> than pre-House-rivalry, that continued and got worse.


Veronica:

When I read Book 7, my thought on "because he exists" was that, day
one at Hogwarts, Sept. 1, 1971 on the train, James sees a very pretty
girl in his compartment and she (SHOCK!) doesn't favor him over the
other boys in the compartment, in fact, she likes the poor, ugly,
badly dressed one better!  For an only child who's been coddled by
his parents his entire life, and probably told how wonderful he is
(similar to Dudley and his parents, anyone?) he doesn't understand
this.  So the fact that someone "better" than him, in this pretty
girl's eyes, at least, is why he doesn't like Snape's existence.  And
Dudley doesn't understand at the beginning of Book 1 why everyone's
paying attention to Harry rather than him (negative attention though
it may be).

Now factor in that James and Dudley are STILL bullies at the age of
15 (5th year) but by 7th year, have matured somewhat and realize
their own past idiocies (I know we don't know that James has changed
a ton, but he's become Head Boy and Lily deems him okay enough to
date, so even though he's still carrying animosity towards Severus,
he has stopped hexing him for kicks at least).  In one of the recent
JKR interviews, she said that Dudley saw himself with all his flaws
when he was demented... it took him awhile to get to there, but he
really's ok by the beginning of Book 7.

I think a lot of us were hoping for huge redemption and forgiveness
scenes for Snape and Draco with Harry... instead we got Snape's death
in the Shrieking Shack and the Malfoys in the Great Hall for
redemption and the epilogue, which, in my opinion, was even better
because of the subtleties (not a sappy, drawn out, "let's all be
friends now.")  Instead, I think we actually saw the redemptions in
majorly flawed characters through Dudley and James:

James redemption partially back in 5, (with Lupin and Sirius's
discussion) and resolved in 7 (willing to do something without a
wand, even, for his family's safety rings nothing compared to the
spoiled brat of 10 years prior or even the berk of 6 years prior) and
Dudley's redemption in pieces (though we didn't undertand them all)
in 5, being demented, in 6, hearing someone who he was scared of give
an exact representation of the fears he'd had for the year prior
(when DD tells the Dursleys about the damage they've caused him) and
obviously spelled out in 7.

Veronica