Lupin in the Shrieking Shack was Re: On the perfection of moral virtues.

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 169115

Betsy Hp wrote:
> > Actually, Snape is the head of a house.  So he's got greater 
> > responsibility and therefore greater authority in some issues.  
> > Plus, there's the seniority thing. <g>
> 
Mike:
> OK, Head of House means you get to tie up and gag all those flunky,
non-Head of House Professors. <eg> Got it. Sounds like he's Head of
*Animal* House and the other Profs are pledges <big snip>.
> 
Carol responds:
Oh, Mike. You've already admitted that Snape is protecting Harry from
SS/PS forward. In this instance, he finds Harry's Invisibility Cloak
outside the entrance to the tunnel and knows him to be in the company
of a werewolf about to transform, one he suspects of being in league
with the would-be murderer who slashed up the painting of the Fat Lady
and Ron's bedcurtains, and whom he knows can get into the Shrieking
Shack, and he lacks the "moral authority" to enter the tunnel and
protect Harry from one or both of these dangerous people? Don't forget
that Snape and Dumbledore and everyone else believes that Harry is
Black's intended victim and that Black was Voldemort's righthand man,
the spy who betrayed the Potters and the murderer of thirteen people.

I'd say that he's using the same "moral authority" that he used when
he alone tried to counter Quirrell's broom hex. He's protecting the
students, and, in particular, the Prophecy Boy. For the second time,
he's attempting to prevent Harry's murder.

It has nothing to do with the Head of a House having authority over
other teachers. That's more like Umbridge's position as High
Inquisitor. Nor does it have anything to do with a schoolboy grudge
beyond his belief that both Black and Lupin are capable of murder and
have been since their schoolboy days. It has everything to do with the
very real danger presented by a werewolf he himself has seen in its
transformed state and the presumed danger presented by the man he
knows to be Lupin's former friend and has every reason to suspect is
out to kill Harry.

As others have mentioned, he also thinks that Lupin has given Harry a
way to get into Hogsmeade (into the hands of Sirius Black) and that
Lupin is letting Black into the castle. (He doesn't know when he
rushes out that Black is an Animagus, and he never does learn, AFAIK,
that Black's real accomplice is Crookshanks the Cat.) He hears Lupin
talk about concealing critical information about his "murderer"
accomplice and hears him say "Snape was right about me." Well, what
would that mean to Snape? What has Snape been suspecting all year
about Lupin? If "Snape is right about [Lupin]," wouldn't Snape take
that to mean that Lupin--whom he knows has not taken his potion--is
untrustworthy and dangerous and that he is the murderer's accomplice?

As zgirnius pointed out, this discussion isn't about Lupin. It's about
Snape, and what Snape would think, based on the available information
about both Black and Lupin, was going on. (He is, of course, partly
right and partly wrong. Lupin *is* about to transform into a terrible
monster and Black *is* intending to murder someone. He just thinks, as
HRH also did and to some degree still do, that the intended victim is
Harry. Note that Harry, who has heard more of the story than Snape
has, is still not persuaded at that point. The only reason that he and
the others disarm Snape--not intending to knock him out, which is not
the usual result of that spell--is to hear the rest of the story.)
Snape says--and believes--that he has just saved their lives. And he
does later save them by conjuring the stretchers. He could have just
left the little wretches and the criminal for the werewolf and any
returning Dementors to find. Instead, he overcomes his anger and
resentment and presumably a splitting headache (he was knocked
unconscious by a blow to the head and his head has also been allowed
by Sirius Black to bump against the ceiling to the tunnel repeatedly)
and takes the kids to safety and the "criminal" to the Minister of
Magic. What good citizen, under the same circumstances and with the
same information, wouldn't do the same?

Carol, wondering why Mike would concede that Snape repeatedly tries to
protect Harry but make an exception in this case