good and bad Slytherins/Disappointment and Responsibility/Sirius' choice

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 175202

Alla wrote:
><snip>
> 
> NO, I doubt that Sirius wanted to go to Gryffindor based on 
principle at that point as well. <snip>

Carol responds:

Good. That was my main point. I'm glad we agree that principle played
no part in that childish conversation.

Alla: 
> Sirius may have chose Gryffindor if his family hated this house 
specifically OR he may have just hoping to go into any house but 
Slytherin IMO.
<snip>
> 
> OR he absolutely could have made a final determination based on him
liking James, except this still in my head would be secondary one, 
since I think that NOT Slytherin was in his mind already.
> 
Carol:
Can you cite some canon to support this view of Sirius at age eleven
(not as a teenager whose bedroom is decorated to emphasize his
differences with his family)? I don't see anything except his surprise
at James's antipathy to the House that his family has always been
Sorted into, his curiosity regarding the House James would prefer, his
desire for James to think he's "all right," and his joining with James
to ridicule Severus  (who admittedly treats them with equal disdain).
It's James who trips Severus, but my impression (not provable, I
realize) is that it's Sirius who coins the nasty and undeserved
nickname "Snivellus," which he persists in using into his thirties.
And why would he do that, except to get into James's good graces?

Carol earlier:
> > As I said in an earlier post, contempt for Muggles and contempt
for Muggleborns are two different things. All we need to do to see the
distinction, us vs. them, Magic vs. Muggles, is to look at the young
*Dumbledore's* plans to rule Muggles for "the greater good."
> <  BIG SNIP>
> 
Alla:
> 
> Yes, and I believe that Snape had plenty of both. Him stopping 
himself when he answers Lily's question to me is an evidence of his
comtempt for Muggleborns, just not for Lily. My view obviously.
> 
Carol:

Yes. Your view. Your opinion. What I'm looking for is canon to support
that view. Canon shows Severus and Petunia as children not exactly
hitting it off as friends, his view of her as a mere Muggle, and his
determination to tell Lily that she, obviously a Muggleborn, is a
witch. He's her introduction to the WW, talking about everything from
Hogwarts to the Dementors at Azkaban. Yes, he hesitates when she asks
whether being a Muggle-born makes a difference, but it's clear that
her being a Muggle-born makes no difference to *him.* 

He wants to be in slytherin, right? And he wants her to be in
Slytherin, too, right? So he can't possibly think know that
Muggle-borns aren't Sorted into slytherin, or that the new friends
he'll find in Slytherin will look down on him for associating with a
"Mudblood." Canon does not actually show him using the word except
during the SWM. It seems at least as likely that he learned it from
his Slytherin Housemates as that he learned it from his mother, who,
after all, married a Muggle.

It also seems likely to me, and I'm quite aware that I'm speculating,
that Severus, who lived in a Muggle neighborhood with no nearby
witches or wizards that we know of except Lily, had very little
contact with the WW except through his mother before Hogwarts. The
"pure-blood Princes" almost certainly rejected both him and their
Muggle-marrying daughter or he would not live in poverty in a Muggle
slum. He may have learned from them that Half-Bloods like himself were
looked down on by some pure-bloods, and if that were the case,
Muggle-borns would be equally subject to prejudice.

But there is no evidence that nine-year-old Severus in the first
memory or eleven-year-old Severus, riding on the train with a
Muggle-born, shared that prejudice. If he did and yet wanted to be
Sorted into Slytherin, wouldn't he have avoided her company rather
than seeking it out?

As I said in my previous post, prejudice is learned, usually from the
example of the parents but also through peer pressure in a boarding
school that serves as a home away from home. Severus, isolated from
the WW except for his mother before coming to Hogwarts, would have
suddenly been immersed in the Slytherin value system on entering
Hogwarts, just as Harry is immersed in Gryffindor's. But, obviously,
Severus did not hold such views as a child or he would never have
associated with Lily, especially not sitting with her on the Hogwarts
Express in full view of older students already in Slytherin. Sirius,
having been taught the pure-blood superiority ethic at home, would
have had to unlearn it. James, for all his flaws, must have taught him
that. Draco, having been brought up with it and had it reinforced all
his life, may have unlearned it much more painfully through his
disillusionment with the life of a Death Eater.
> 
Carol earlier: 
> > I doubt that Severus's mother, who married a Muggle, went around
using the term "Mudblood" for Muggleborns. Nor do we ever see it
"rolling off [Severus's] tongue" at that age or any other. He uses it
once in all of canon, under great duress. We have Lily's word that he
uses it for others than herself but we don't actually hear him use it. 
> <HUGE SNIP>
> 
> Alla:
> 
> Lily's word is good enough for me to be convinced that he used it
many times.
> 
Carol:
I'm not questioning Lily's veracity, but she's talking about the evil
influence of Severus's Slytherin friends as of their fifth year at
Hogwarts. I think he learned the word and the concept in Slytherin,
not at home. If his mother thought that Muggle*borns* were inferior,
doesn't it strike you as odd that she married a *Muggle*? (I do
suspect that the Prince family rejected her for doing so, much as the
Blacks rejected Andromeda, but I have only the young Severus's
isolation in a "Muggle dunghill" to support this view.)

However, there's no evidence except for a slight hesitation in
response to Lily's question that the pre-Hogwarts child Severus
thought that Muggle-borns might be regarded as lesser beings by other
wizards. His answer that there's no difference seems to me to reflect
his own view, the hesitation to reflect a Dumbledorelike view that
perhaps Lily isn't ready for the full truth, that some wizards (not
Severus himself, based on his actions) do see a difference. Nor do I
think, for reasons already stated, that Severus himself was fully
aware of the extent of anti-Muggle-born prejudice in the WW,
especially in Slytherin House. If you can produce any evidence to
contradict the eleven-year-old Severus's naive belief that Mubble-born
Lily could be sorted into "brainy" Slytherin, please provide it.

Snape's lifelong prejudice against *Muggles*, shared by many people in
the WW and not just by Slytherins, is another matter (unrelated to the
Hogwarts Express scene with James and Sirius). His concern with
Harry's and Ron's breach of the Statute of Secrecy suggests that he
never got over the idea of Muggles as inferior beings. As a child, he
could see for himself that the few Muggles he knew were "inferior"
(nonmagical) and "nasty." That childish observation, perhaps
paralleling Harry's judgments of Snape and Snape's of him, does not
excuse or justify his view, but it explains how a child whose view of
Muggles was based on Tobias Snape and Petunia Evans would tend to see
them. (The whole Dumbledore family must have had a similar view based
on what happened to Ariana, with Albus going to the extreme of
thinking that wizards ought to rule Muggles "for the greater good."
For all we know, a similar view may have played a part in young
Snape's joining the Death Eaters.)

Carol, who thinks that the difference between Severus's feelings about
Lily and Petunia illustrates his pre-Slytherin conception of
Muggle-borns as witches or wizards like himself and of Muggles as
nonmagical inferior beings (whose perceived unworthiness is "proven"
by Tobias and Petunia)