Snape's minor memories (Was: Snape and Dumbledore on the Tower)

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 165395

> Carol responds:
> Harry's acidental Protego just deflected the Legilimens spell that
> Snape was using onto Snape because Harry didn't want Snape to see
> anything related to Cho--which, as you say, was not a humiliating
> memory, just one he didn't want Snape to see. That in itself is proof
> that Snape wasn't casting a spell to extract humiliating memories. The
> same is true for Harry's memory of Petrified!Hermione--not a happy
> memory, but not humiliating.
> 

Pippin:
I think you're confusing two episodes here. Harry's memory of
Cho wasn't shielded by protego, it was shielded by an involuntary
stinging hex. The protego comes later, when Snape has just
been extracting memories of Harry's humilations in primary school.

But surely legilimens is specific, how else could Snape pull out
just the memory of that book which Harry was so desperate to hide?
You can't tell me *that* was random.

I am not saying that Snape was practicing killing flies in order
to  teach himself to kill  people, or that it's wrong to kill pests. 
It's probably not even wrong to kill them with Avada Kedavra, 
which is banned only against humans. 

But I think Snape was using the flies for target practice,
whatever the spell, and that he now feels that wasting life  in 
such a fashion  was wrong and a prelude to greater wrongs.

Pippin