[HPforGrownups] Prank and various responsibilities WAS: Re: Marietta

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 169725

Alla:
> As to nobody in canon ever suggested that situation - eh, of course 
> they did not, if it meant to be a surprise in book 7 IMO. And I do 
> not believe that it will take a lot of effort to change the picture 
> we have now with the missing information and all that. 

Pippin:
But JKR does not pull surprises like that with no preparation. There's
always something you can look back on and say "oooh, that was a hint."
I don't see any hints for this at all. We don't have any bona fide cases
of someone taking on a monster for kicks, though several people
have claimed that they or others did so. 

Alla (from a different post):
Oh, no, I do not think he is lying if this speculation is true. I 
just think that he is conveniently disregards his own sinister 
motives in that night, if this is what happens. After all, Sirius 
did trick him to go in there. And if he figured out who Remus is, 
maybe it happened, I don't know an hour before, several minutes 
before Snape decides to enter a Shack? You know?

So, who cares if Snape decided to try and finish Remus off with one 
of the spells which maybe he himself invented? Life of Dark creature 
is not worth much after all, now the previous life of Severus Snae, 
who idiot Sirius dared to risk on the other hand is another story.

Magpie:
So you mean that once James rescued him (Snape having walked into the Shack
and then realized he made a mistake) Snape re-imagined the story so that he
didn't know what he really did know, denying his intentions?
How it would come out, given that we're supposed to think that Snape's the
only one who knows it? Is it something that Snape himself had sort of
repressed but that would come out, like, in a fight with Lupin where he
said something like "I should have killed you that night like I wanted to?"
shocking both himself and Lupin?

What would that revelation add to the story? Because I do expect more
complications about the past and I could easily believe plenty of them will
make Snape look bad--along the way we've gotten pretty equal revelations
that make both sides look bad. (James is shown pantsing Snape in OotP--but
in HBP Snape was revealed to be the eavesdropper who therefore killed
James.)

However, Snape really wanting to kill Lupin and so undoing the Prank--while
that could certainly be something that happened--seems to tip the balance a
bit. It essentially just mostly absolves the Marauders and puts Harry back
to even less than square one. The first time we heard about the Prank,
though we didn't know it, was in PS where DD says that Snape and James
hated each other, "like [Harry] and Mr. Malfoy." That's an explanation in
itself. Then, in typical JKR style, DD adds a far more interesting wrinkle
because it works with the other in contradiction: James did something Snape
could never forgive; he saved his life.

PoA then adds another wrinkle that supports that same contradiction: Yes
James saved my life...but my life was in danger because of an action taken
against him by James' friends as part of that same rivalry.

This secret, if true, basically puts Harry back to his more comforting PS
thoughts: yes, it may have seemed like James' friends did something bad,
but that's undone because at the critical moment Snape turned the Prank
into a murder attempt. So when James saved Snape he was saving him from
intentionally risking his own life to kill Lupin. Snape's murderous
intentions also completely top Sirius' own reckless endangerment.

That could be a big deal for Snape himself as a character if he were the
protagonist. It would probably be the moment where Snape realized he had
caused his own predicament (which he of course has contributed to all along
already).

But for Harry it's the opposite kind of moment. For him (and us) so far
what makes the whole conflict so compelling is the way each side gets worse
in step with the other so that you really can't say that one side was "the"
victim. This solution seems to instead give Harry has the peace he's always
wanted, where Snape was the true bad guy in their conflict and the
Marauders made mistakes in their reaction to his badness, but ultimately
can't really compare to him. The revelation that Snape was actually trying
to kill Lupin would have been what Harry (and we) would have originally
expected. It doesn't tell us anything about MWPP since they didn't know
about it--their reaction would probably just be, "What do you know, Snape's
been complaining about this all along and it turns out it wasn't even
really true. We should have known." 

It's not like they--even Lupin--can be shocked that Snape would do such a
thing. More importantly none of them feel guilty in the first place, so it
doesn't change how they think about the incident. They can't say, "I've
felt badly all these years and it turns out you knew all along and were
lying!" or whatever. Snape's been yelling about the truth of this incident
when he's the one who should have wanted it swept under the rug. I could
imagine this happening to Snape, say in a fanfic that was about him, but it
doesn't seem to do anything for Harry's story or the overall story--at
least not to me so far. But I'm not JKR.:-)

-m