Snape&Lucius (was Re: Room for Debate)

[cdayr]

No: HPFGUIDX 164745


> --Ronin's comments--
> 
> This is a very valid point. I was going under the assumption that 
they were about the same age. If Lucious is in fact older, it would 
make even more sense that Snape's role in the friendship would be 
more subservient. Also, Lucious being older may have been sitting 
his NEWTS or already out of school.
> It still makes me curious though, that no other Slytherins were 
around Snape during these scenes. Surely, there were other 
Slytherins in Snapes class. Even if they weren't hanging out 
together, I would think they would at least acknowledge each other. 
But Snape walked alone and remained alone at the lake and nobody but 
Lily even seemed mildly interested that he was being humiliated for 
no reason other than he exists.

<snip>
> 
> It just seems that even among his DE friends, nobody seems to 
trust or like Snape. Of course, with the exception of the Malfoys.  
Bellatrix LeStrange certainly didn't trust or like him much. But 
Narcissa seemed to trust only Snape. I wonder if Narcissa was in 
Snape's class.
> 
> Cheers,
> Ronin
> 

It seems possible that Narcissa was a friend of Snape's, without the 
potential romantic overtones that I know many posters think might be 
there. Certainly all of the friend groups we have in our current 
student population include important boy/girl friendships- the most 
prominent being HRH of course, but even Draco and Pansy, although it 
may be romance as well, certainly seem to be friends.

I just think that friendships amongst a group of people who have 
been selected to be together based on their inherent ambition and 
cunning will be fundamentally different than friendships between 
people placed together for their courage or their loyalty or their 
intelligence. In many ways, the Slytherins are set up in their house 
to develop very unequal friendships simply because of the fact that 
they are all (in theory) looking for ways to get ahead of each 
other. This means that what Severus (or Lucius, or Draco, or any 
Slytherin) experiences as friendship may look very different that 
the friendships we see in the other houses. It is, IMO, one of the 
basic flaws in the house system, that the kids are all placed in a 
situation where there friends are people very much like them, and 
their rivals are "different" from them. Very risky, in terms of 
promoting positive social growth for these kids.

My point being, I think it is possible that Narcissa or Lucius or 
Regulus may have been a "friend" of Severus during school, but that 
might not mean they would be willing to stick their neck out for him 
in a situation like the post-OWLS humiliation. And if we know one 
thing for sure about our dear Severus, it is that he knows how to 
shut of his emotions from connecting to anyone else and is very 
protective of himself (occlumency *and* legilimancy, after all), so 
his version of "friendship" may be very limited. 

Just thinking out loud, thanks for the very thought-provoking topic,
Celia