Maraurders/he exists

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 168295

Neri wrote:
<snip> Then tell me, how do you explain that neither James, nor Lily,
nor Sirius ever mention in one word the blood on James's face and
robes. As if it doesn't exist. As if Severus didn't cause it to happen
right in front of their eyes. Is this reasonable?
> 
> This is something you can't blame on ESE!Lupin, you can only blame
it on Ever-So-Sneaky!JKR. She was obviously downplaying the part of
this curse until she could spring it on us again. <snip>

Carol responds:

Apparently Yahoo has eaten the response I wrote to this post last
night (unfortunately for me since I spent a lot of time researching
the canon!).

However, I'll try again. I agree, Neri, that we can't blame this one
on ESE!Lupin. <wink> But I don't think we can blame the unreliable
narrator, either. Since the Pensieve is, according to JKR, an
objective record of events, the only bias would be from the narrator
reflecting Harry's pov. Frankly, the narrator makes only a few
Harrycentric comments (e.g. "Snape was clearly unpopular"). Most of
the rest is objectively narrated, with the focus on James's words and
actions (reflecting Harry's own focus on James). 

Let me say at the outset that I don't believe that this scene reflects
a typical Severus/MWPP interaction. I think it's his worst memory,
assuming that the title is accurate, because it occurred in front of
the entire fifth-year class, he did not, in this instance, have an
opportunity to defend himself; and a Gryffindor girl with a crush on
James added to his humiliation by trying to rescue him. JMO.

As for the de-emphasis on the cut that James received, I think it's
because the cut is not important. The narrator notes it once in
passing--a gash appears on James's cheek and his robes are spattered
with blood. James reacts to it only by casting Levicorpus. He does not
so much as cry out in pain or raise a hand to his cheek. Harry thinks
no more about it; none of the characters in SWM remarks on it, nor do
Lupin and Black bring it up when Harry, seeing his father as a bully
and Snape as his victim, brings up the incident. They're too busy
remembering James playing with the Snitch and ruffling his hair to
give much thought to Severus. It's clear, however, that they're
vaguely ashamed of their own behavior in that scene:

"Did I ever tell you to lay off Snape?" asks Lupin. "Did I ever tell
you I thought you were out of order?"

To which Black replies, "Yeah, well, you made us feel ashamed of
ourselves sometimes" (671).

Clearly, Severus was not going around attacking them with Dark magic.
They, themselves, acknowledge their behavior (and, by implication,
James's) to be unjustified. 

Let's look at the scene itself. Sirius and James catch Severus
off-guard. (Note that Sirius becomes very still, "like a dog that has
scented a rabbit.")  James addresses "Snivellus," who reaches for his
wand (Harry notices his quick reflexes, perhaps developed as the
result of previous attacks), but evidently their wands are already
out. James casts Expelliarmus. Sirius attacks their disarmed opponent
with Impedimenta. They insult Severus as he struggles against the
jinx. When he reacts by swearing and threatening, James hits him with
a Scourgify, "making him gag, choking him," again attacking a downed
and disarmed opponent who has as yet done nothing to them (in this
scene), at least). Lily yells at them to leave him alone. We get the
exchange in which Lily asks what Severus has done to James and James
makes his "he exists" excuse. Severus finds his wand and strikes back
with the cutting hex, causing a gash on James's face and a spatter of
blood. James, annoyed but evidently in no great pain, retaliates with
Levicorpus (Severus's own nonverbal hex, which James for mysterious
reasons know and perhaps deliberately uses against him). Rather than
turning on Severus for using this "Dark" curse (whose effects none of
them consider serious enough to remark on). Lily orderd James to let
Severus down, which he does, but Sirius promptly hits him with
Locomotor Mortis. Lily shouts, "LEAVE HIM ALONE!" and James, unfazed
by Severus's hex but evidently unwilling to give up his fun, says,
"Ah, Evans, don't make me hex you." She repeats her order to take the
curse (note the word "curse" for "jinx" here) off him. James obeys and
tells "Snivellus" that he's lucky Evans was there. Humiliated by this
suggestion, Severus makes his infamous "Mudblood" retort, to which
Lily, evidently not understanding why her help was not appreciated,
replies to his generic insult with a personal one. James roars at him
to apologize. Lily says that Lily doesn't want *him* to make Severus
apologize. She gives her reasons why James is as bad as Severus and
stalks off. James calls out after her but she doesn't return and asks
rhetorically, "What's up with her?" Sirius responds that she
apparently thinks James is "a bit conceited," at which James rounds on
Severus, turns him upside down again, and threatens to take off his
pants OoP Am. ed. 649).

Nowhere do we have any indication that we're not seeing the whole
episode here, that somehow exculpatory evidence can be introduced to
make James and Sirius look like anything other than arrogant bullies.
Harry's reaction to the scene is horror at his father's behavior and
sympathy for Snape (650).

To return to the cutting hex, to which no one pays attention in this
scene. Sectumsempra means "cut forever." There's no indication that
James is cut forever. Not only is there no further mention of blood
but no one mentions a visit to Madam Pomfrey for dittany to prevent
scarring. No one utters the countercurse (which, in any case, only
Severus would know--it's not written in the margins of his Potions
book like the countercurse to Levicorpus).

My impression is that this little cutting hex, which does minimal
damage and is not considered important enough to be mentioned by
anyone, is not the admittedly Dark Sectumsempra, which is marked "for
enemies" and requires a complex countercurse to reverse. Most likely,
this incident and the somewhat later "Prank," which endangered
Severus's life (yes, he could have been killed rather than transformed
into a werewolf in the confinement of the Shrieking Shack with no help
at hand) and which he regarded as a murder attempt, spurred him to
modify the cutting hex into something deadlier, either as a defense
against further attacks or as retaliation. It's clear, however, that
he never used it on them or he'd have been expelled (as Harry would
have been had Draco died). It seems likely, and this is just my
opinion, that Snape invented (or researched) the elaborate
counterspell later, probably after he'd "returned to our side." At any
rate, I don't think that either the curse or its countercurse had been
invented at the time of the SWM. Surely, we'd have heard about it if
Severus had been forced to sing or chant the countercurse to
Sectumsempra to heal James's cheek.

Neri seems to think that HBP turns the SWM scene on its head, showing
Teen!Snape as the inventor of Dark spells. IMO, it does no such thing.
It shows Harry empathizing with the HBP, not knowing that he's Severus
Snape, regarding him as a clever friend who helps him in Potions
class, teaches him useful spells like Muffliato, and amuses him with
mischievous hexes like Langlock and the toenail hex (not to mention
reminding him of Snape's lesson on Bezoars, which ultimately saves
Ron's life). It's only Hermione who sees the HBP's sense of humor as
at all sinister, and she (with some justification) resents Harry's use
of the book to get high marks from Slughorn that he doesn't deserve. 

Yes, Sectumsempra is Dark, but the countercurse is not, and it's a
good thing for both Harry and Draco that Snape and only Snape
discovered Draco lying in a pool of his own blood and knew instantly
how to save his life. Nor are the other spells the HBP invented any
darker than the spells the kids routinely use on each other:
Densuageo, for example, or even Petrificus Totalus, which Hermione
uses on the innocent Neville in SS/PS. And the potions hints are not
at all dark; instead, they are very real improvements on a
fifty-year-old textbook (thirty years old when Severus uses it). And
without that snarky Bezoar joke stirring the memory of Harry's first
Potions class with the adult Snape saved Ron's life.

So I don't think that JKR is downplaying the cutting hex only to show
it again in HBP (the effects are too different for them to be the same
spell), nor do I think that anything we learn about the Half-Blood
Prince casts a new light on SWM (James and Sirius are still bullies,
Remus still a moral coward, Peter still a fawning worshipper of the
biggest bully on the playground, Severus still a studious boy attacked
without provocation and publicly humiliated). It does, however,
provide us with a glimpse of the Half-Blood Prince, a boy that Harry
might have liked were it not for the traditional rivalry between
Gryffindor and Slytherin and the difference in their ages, a boy who
starts out clever and imaginative and very suddenly, with one single
spell, shows a surprising new side. As the narrator, reflecting
Harry's pov, says, "It was as though a beloved pet had turned suddenly
savage" (HBP Am. ed. 525). *Suddenly* *turned* savage, out of the
blue. Something happened to cause that change, something to do with
"enemies." Almost certainly, that something was either this
humiliating incident, or, more likely, the "murder" plot that really
could have led to Severus's death (or to his becoming a werewolf).

Carol, noting with happy surprise that she agrees with Neri regarding
Fenrir Greyback but unable to agree in this instance