[HPforGrownups] Re: Reason Dumbledore trusted Snape

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 171751

Pippin:

If Snape could have said, "Oh, haha James, very funny" instead of
roaring ineffectual curses, he wouldn't have been so much fun to tease.
I understand why he didn't; it would have felt crushing. But that's my
point. If he had real self-confidence, he wouldn't have cared.

va32h:

But is the ability to be goaded equivalent to feeling inferior? Harry 
and Ron frequently allow themselves to be goaded into action by Malfoy 
et al - but I never imagined that either of them felt inferior. Quite 
the opposite, actually. 

Magpie:
Actually--and I think this is kind of a side issue and not a general point
about Harry or Ron, but yes I would say they feel inferior. Because
explicitly, when Harry especially feels confident about something, Draco
can't get a rise out of him. It's only when he says something that hits one
of Harry's buttons (which is often) that Harry is goaded into
responding--sometimes he doesn't even have to be trying to goad him. Ron,
too, responds to Draco on things that make him feel insecure.

I will say about Snape that while he obviously didn't feel inferior to MWPP
in all ways, I do think they were able to make him feel weak and inferior
in some ways, and that was when he hated the most. In the Pensieve I've
always felt that the reason that memory was so important to him (though
I've since begun to think there's a Lily-factor there too) was that he
hated himself in it--he's helpless. Also I think MWPP, like Draco, figures
out where the weak spots are. I remember in PoA thinking that the voices in
the map went for something very specific about Snape that he didn't like.
They didn't say he was a jerk or evil because he was into the DA, which
might have made him feel a bit tough. Iirc, they went after him for being
ugly and greasy--things that made him very obviously socially inferior to
handsome, charismatic, athletic, popular James and Sirius.

-m