The Prince interpreted

[M.Clifford]

No: HPFGUIDX 172850

Hi Carol,
I'm glad to see you getting straight into the business end of this one
:) before I go any further I must admit defeat, yes I did notice that
one of them Sirius, probably, seeing as though he was the mouthy one
of the two in the carriage, invented Snivellus out of basically
nowhere. I'm satisfied that Snape didn't earn the name owing to
snivelling behaviour at school. 

>From my read of the passage it's pretty clear to me Sirius not a happy
kid it's his first year at Hogwarts usually a great occasion for
wizardkids, but Sirius shows no joy. The one thing that seems to put a
smile on his face is James indirectly insulting his family and the
Slytherin house, it's clear that his hatred of the Black family's Dark
Arts obsession has already come into play with his ideologies and he
likes that James has initially agreed with him. The Hogwarts Express
scene seems to set the canvas for James and Sirius's friendship from
the off, thanks to Snape mentioning the dreaded Slytherin house in
front of them. There is obvious prejudice in James against Slytherin
House, but it can't be all bad that his bias leans towards a father
who has clearly cared so well for his son. 

I think it was Sirius who coined the Snivellus insult for a couple of
reasons. First out of he and James, it is he who has the quicker
tongue, it doesn't look to me like James would be the one to think of
something to taunting to say in that instance, and second, Sirius is
the one of the two who is angriest at Slytherin House, as we know, it
seems more fitting that he be the one who carries the emotion of the
discussion beyond Snape and Lily leaving the carriage, I doubt James,
who is a generally happier person overall, would have the emotional
investment to need too take it any further after they had left.  


> Carol:
> We see that he and Lily are really friends, that he's different from
> the boys he runs around with (and blind to their faults).

Hmmm. I Don't think he is any more blind than they are, he even argues
to Lily that using Dark Magic on other students is fun. He's just like
them in that way and a few others that Lily was not averse to
mentioning.  

> Oddly, as
> Valky also noticed, the worst memory comes *after* the so-called
> Prank, which means that James did not suddenly become noble and
> heroic. He's still willing to ambush Severus and publicly humiliate
> him. We're given no alternate version, so Severus's idea that James
> saved him because he got cold feet must be right, 

Cold feet? James didn't have anything to do with the Prank as far as
we know, it's a wild assumption you're running with there. James
rescued Snape from Lupin, he *was* probably protecting his friends as
well and why shouldn't he, why should Lupin have suffered the
consequence of knowing he had hurt or killed another student and how
would James allowing Sirius's stupidity to play out it's awful
consequences on both he and Severus be a more noble thing to do? It
matters least of all that Sirius was saved the enormity of what he had
done, Snape was just clinging to that as an excuse to continue seeing
James the way he wanted to see him, it's irrelevant. James couldn't
have acted more unselfishly. He risked himself to protect them all
from a terrible fate. 

Moreover it is Snape's canon character that he was prejudiced and
silly in his judgements from the off. Petunia, his best friends
sister, who she loved very much, *only* a muggle, and he was ready to
say that to her face.. making a deal with Voldemort to exchange Lily
for Harry? that's just just plain disgusting..  Harry was most pleased
with himself to be famous? Could that be any more ridiculous? We SAW
how timid and frightened Harry was in his first year and yet, there
Snape is telling Dumbledore what an arrogant full of himself kid he
sees in Harry. Snape doesn't see past his own nose and thats just all
there is to it. There's no way his judgement of James is a reliable
one, he was wrong, he was wrong because he was in the habit of being
wrong and caring only for what he wanted to believe.    


Carol:
> and the worst memory
> has to be, as the LOLLIPOPS people have always argued, because he
> slipped and called her a Mudblood and she refused to forgive him even
> when he slept outside the Gryffindor common room and abjectly begged
> her to do so. That, and not the worst memory, must have been the
> turning point. His despair caused him to join his "friends" because he
> felt he had not other choice.

That's a bit too much credit you're giving him there. He was going
with Mulciber and Avery anyway, they *were* his friends. In his
argument with Lily in the corridor Snape said he wouldn't "let her..."
he wanted her to go with him where he was going, he wasn't interested
in the other path, he wasn't taking the DE path because he had no
choice, he didn't want in with her friends, he wanted her in with his.
I don't see any other fair way to read this passage. 

 


> Lily is prejudging him, assuming that
> because *they* have become Death Eaters, he has done so, too, but I
> think she's mistaken.


Well she doesn't think she is mistaken. And seriously, if Snape felt
any other way he had the best possible opportunity to say it, not to
mention more than enough reason. He was with his Best Friend who had
never done him wrong it seems, if he couldn't spill to her that he had
doubts about joining LV when she had opened the floor to it
unambiguously then he didn't have doubts. He couldn't wait to join.
Lily wanted him to deny it and he wanted more than anything in that
moment to please Lily, but even under those circumstances, not a peep
in his own defense. Lily knew she was right, she knew Snape so well
and cared for him so much, would she have turned her back if she
wasn't absolutely sure?




> Clearly, he's not like
> them, nor is there any evidence that he routinely uses the word
> "Mudblood" or she would not have been shocked by it. 

Where is the evidence that Lily lied when she said "You call everyone
of my birth Mudblood, Severus. Why should I be any different?"
Clearly she was shocked because she had been a loyal and caring friend
to him for so many years, she said herself that she suspected it was
only a matter of time, but maybe never really believed their
friendship would suffer it, it couldn't be more than that. 




> That scene is the
> turning point in his life, and the next time we see him, he's a 
> Death Eater begging Dumbledore, again abjectly, to find a way to 
> save Lily.
> Dumbledore, who of course knows him to be the eavesdropper, treats 
> him and his request with contempt, and Snape accepts the reprimand,

Dumbledore's contempt goes further than Snape being the eavesdropper.

".....Could you not ask mercy for the mother in exchange for the son?" 
"I have- I have asked him -"
"You disgust me" said Dumbledore and Harry had never heard so much
contempt in his voice. 




> begging him to keep "her--them--safe" and vowing to do "anything" in
> return, a vow he keeps for the rest of his life (678). His "tale of
> deepest remorse" is wild grief for Lily which is of course unfeigned.
> And he promises to protect Lily's son for Lily's sake, but makes DD
> promise never to tell. "Potter's son" must never know that he's being
> protected. Dumbledore reluctantly agrees, which explains why he never
> told Harry why he trusted Snape. 

I found this quite saddening, and I thought of the moment in HBP when
DD hesitated as if he wanted to tell Harry why he trusted Snape but
then didn't. I understood the irony Dumbledore was pointing out here,
of all the secrets Snape kept in his life, this was a travesty, that
noone should know that he truly cared and loved someone enough to do
something for them which gave him no reward and cut him so deeply.  


> When he learns that Harry has been protected as part of DD's
> plan and that he must die setting out to meet his own death, Snape is
> horrified. When DD asks how many men and women he has watched die, he
> says, "Lately, only those I could not save" (687). This is our glimpse
> of the true Snape, the brilliant but reluctant double agent who would
> much rather be saving lives. 


This doesn't ring true to me. If the 'true' Snape would rather be
saving lives he would never have tried to bargain with Voldemort for
Lily. He needed Dumbledore to point out to him the importance of James
and Harry's lives, he didn't place that importance on them himself.
The true Snape is both people. One does not negate the other and Snape
was never willing to choose the path of being good and self
sacrificing of his own accord, it was thrust upon him by fate and he
was reluctant to take it even then. 

There's no doubting, as time went by Snape grew into the brave man he
always could have been. And Dumbledore acknowledged this in saying
that maybe he was sorted too soon. He needed time to discover his
courage, with more time he may have chosen the best of himself earlier
and never become a Death Eater at all, but more than time he needed a
big push, something hat would force him to come to terms with the
feeling person inside him and it's possible that for that purpose
nothing could substitute the death of his dearest friend and love of
his life, Lily. 

Valky