Snape - a werewolf bigot?? Was: Say it isn't so Lupin!!!

[Dana]

No: HPFGUIDX 170224

zgirnius:
> It is in my opinion debatable, but there is definitely evidence 
> favoring the idea that James Potter saved Snape's life in that 
> incident, and that Snape had a consequent life debt to James. None 
> of this could have happened if Snape's life were not threatened in 
> that incident.
<snip>

Dana:
No, it isn't debatable because the definite outcome is not debatable. 
Snape did not die and he did not survive a werewolf attack to truly 
have *experience* with the danger a werewolf could posse. It just 
could have died that is it but it was prevented by James. All the 
danger was taken away when James intervened and therefore James saved 
Snape from ever having to encounter a werewolf. Snape only glimpsed 
werewolf Lupin and did not experience a fight with werewolf Lupin and 
did not have a struggle for his life with werewolf Lupin and survived 
it. 

It is the difference between being in a plane that crashed and 
surviving and missing a flight and then the airplane you should have 
been on crashed. The former *experienced* the crash but survived and 
but could have died and the later, could have died if he had made it 
to the plane in time but did not *experience* the crash in itself. 

Snape's still holding a grudge because he could have died, is 
brooding on the "what if" but it never happened. So Snape is not 
looking at the end result but the imagined intention of all the 
marauders. They wanted to kill him, in his mind and therefore he 
hates them and wants to take his revenge. He is not looking equally 
at James risking his life to prevent Snape from walking into Lupin, 
no he is still of the opinion that James only did it because he got 
cold feet. 

His reference to Lupin as the werewolf and using it in a very 
degrading way is not because he is scared out of experience of having 
to have faced a werewolf but because he still is of the opinion that 
Lupin was in on the prank. Snape never faced the werewolf and 
therefore does not know what it would be like. His actions also do 
not indicate that he is using these terms because he is scared of 
werewolves as he would have thought twice about running after him 
into the same tunnel that could have led to his death almost 20 years 
ago. What he does with his referral to Lupin in such away is placing 
Lupin underneath him making him unworthy of being referred to as a 
human because he was one time tricked into doing something that 
*could* have gotten him killed. 

The danger Snape was in, after James intervened, is largely overrated 
because Lupin never came within striking range and he just glimpsed 
him at the end of the tunnel. It is not the struggle for his life 
that still hunts Snape but being tricked by the marauders what still 
hunts him and he believes that only the worst punishment is fitting 
for them. 



zgirnius:
<snip>
> Surely at the point at which Snape saw the werewolf, he could just 
> turn around and walk back out, if Lupin were indeed far away and no 
> threat?

Dana:
Yes, he indeed could have just walked back before he ever got the 
change to encounter Lupin and safed his own life but James safed him 
because Snape did not have the intention of walking back. James could 
never have pulled Snape out in human form if Lupin had been within 
striking range. The threat as Lupin states in PoA was only if Snape 
had made it as far to the Shack and only then would he have faced a 
fully fletched werewolf. James and Snape probably had an argument 
that made Lupin come into the tunnel and why Snape was able to glimps 
him at the end of it. 

But I never stated that if James had not intervened that Snape 
*could* not have died as a result but his grudge (and responds) is 
overrated because he did not die and the threat was taken away 
because James intervened. I was responding to the claim that Snape's 
own *experience* of dealing with a werewolf was enough to grant his 
bigotry against werewolves. Snape never dealt with the werewolf 
because either he would have been one himself or he would have been 
dead. 

It is still the "what if" and the "what could" that is pulled in by 
many, many people as an excuse for Snape to talk in such a degrading 
fashion towards Lupin on the mere basis of his own believe that Lupin 
must have been in on the prank. And it certainly wasn't the stress of 
the situation that directed Snape's actions because he had been 
opposing Lupin's hiring as a teacher before term started and he does 
mock Lupin taking his potion in front of a student by saying he 
should drink it right away and that he has a cauldron full if he 
needs any more. He even degrades James's saving his butt to nothing 
more then an act of someone that chickened out in front of his own 
son. While everybody should take the possiblity that he could have 
died seriously and make the marauders into dangerous people with only 
murder on their mind even 20 years after the fact and while it was 
also a marauder that prevented any harm coming to him.  

It is not about Snape being scared of anything but about the 
marauders being able to pull the wool over Snape's eyes and him being 
so stupid to fall for anything anyone of them stated. No more as he 
will not listen to anything they have to say now and everything that 
comes to them they deserve and DD too for believing that there is 
such a thing as a tame werewolf. Old Snivellus will proof them all 
wrong now, he is now the one with the power. As Sirius said the joke 
is on you again as Snape underestimated the three people still 
holding wands. 

zgirnius:
> Why not? First, he did not mock Lupin about the problem that I can 
> recall prior to the Shack scene. In my opinion, his evident desire 
> to see Lupin drink his potion in the scene Harry sees could be 
> attributed to fear/worry about Lupin transforming without the 
> potion. Seeing him take it would certainly be reassuring.

Dana:
Interesting because he loses that fear/ worry immediately when he 
sees his chance to catch Lupin red handed in helping his old friend 
Black and he even forgets that it is possible for Lupin to transform 
that night when he suggests he will drag the werewolf. 

zgirnius:
> As to the second claim - it is surely not the only potentially 
> frightening thing Snape has done. We see the same pallor that is 
> described at his appearance in the Shack scene again in GoF, before 
> he returns to Voldemort.
<snip>

Dana:
Yes, and LV is far more freighting then Lupin ever was to Snape and 
yet he still refers to him as the Dark Lord like all the other DEs 
and tells Harry not to use Voldemort's name because he was not worthy 
enough like DD to refer to LV is such a way. It is eerie similar to 
the way Bella stated to Harry to not speak the Dark Lords name with 
that filthy half-blood mouth of his. 

We do not see the same pallor in his description of Snape in the 
shack as in the GoF. Snape's face his full of suppressed triumph (pg 
263 POA UKed). Snape's eyes were glittering but in GoF it is 
mentioned that his eyes glittered strangely and that he looked 
slightly pale (pg 619 GoF Uked). Snape eyes browse are described as 
gleaming frantically in PoA and when he faces Sirius it is hard to 
say which face showed more hatred. His demeanor in PoA is nothing 
like that in GoF were Snape truly must have had some anxiety about if 
LV was going to buy his story and not kill him on the spot for living 
in DD's pocket and leaving him forever. 

Snape had no anxiety what so ever but his blood was boiling again for 
hearing Lupin telling the trio about the trick pulled on him. 

zgirnius:
> Snape lived among people who used terms like that all the time for 
> at least part of his schooldays, among his Slytherin housemates. I 
> don't see why it would not occur to him as an insult to use. 
<snip>

Dana:
Precisely Snape uses the insult because it implies that that 
mudbloods are inferior while he himself is a half-blood with one 
muggle parent and if it was then known that he was a half-blood 
either James, Sirius or even Lily herself would have made a notion of 
his own background but they don't because they do not know. James 
specifically states that he would never use the word even though he 
is a pure-blood himself making the contrast that blood-status does 
not mean anything to him (well obviously or else he would not have a 
crush on Lily)  

Snape uses an insult that only hurts the people it's referring to and 
did Lily do anything that granted such an insult. And also it must be 
him hanging out with the Slytherin's that made him become a DE or no 
that was dictated to him being bullied right. Snape is the one using 
that word and it doesn't matter were he got it from he still would 
know the impact of the use of such a word even at age 16 (as he was 
born in January so he was 16 during his OWL's). Just as Sirius knows 
that it is an insult to refer to Snape's large nose and his greasy 
hair and James knows that it is an insult to just bully Snape because 
he exists. Snape specifically uses this insult to refer to Lily and 
he does not merely state I do not need help from a mudblood but 
a "filthy" mudblood like her while stating that he doesn't need help 
from a girl would have been enough. 

It is very much implying to me that Snape did not go around telling 
everyone that wanted to hear that he has a muggle father himself and 
him joining up with the DEs that are against anything that fouls the 
blood would certainly not have welcomed him into their midst, is an 
indication that he either believed in this himself or that it was 
enough to disgrade for his own gain. Bella referring to the 
neighborhood as not up to their standards but then not throwing in 
Snape's blood-status to make her sister see he cannot be trusted is 
more proof that she did not know then that she did. 

JMHO

Dana