James and Sirius as Bullies (WAS: student!Snape keeping Lupin's ...)

[Zara]

No: HPFGUIDX 181182

> Mike:
> He 
> hangs with Slyths that use what Lily calls Dark Magic and I find it 
> hard to believe that Sev stands to the side and watches all the 
> action, not if he was the mosy accomplished first year at hexes.

zgirnius:
I am inclined to believe he does stand by as others use hexes, for 
the most part, in the first five years at school. Those hexes might 
be his, that I would consider reasonably likely both because he is 
known to have invented some in that time frame, and because it would 
form an alternative basis for Sirius's claims of his precocious Dark 
Arts knowledge. My reasoning is based on the conversation with Lily 
in "The Prince's Tale". When Snape brings up James' supposedly 
unsavory behavior, Lily counters with Mulciber's. I find this a very 
weak rejoinder, if we're speaking of someone else who (to paraphrase 
Lily on James) goes around hexing people in the halls just because he 
can.

> Mike:
> Some point to the detention file of Sirius and James as proof of 
> their bulllying. First, Harry gets plenty of detentions and none of 
> them were for bullying. 

zgirnius:
That would be me, but I listed a specific detention, served by James 
and Sirius together for the same specific victim and offense. I will 
reiterate it. They used an illegal hex on another boy, who was not 
written up in the same detention. So that boy was not fighting, which 
makes what they did,  bullying by my definition. 

Additional evidence for the proporsition that James, at least, 
randomly hexed people as an exercise of his power, is Lily's 
statement to him just before she leaves in the SWM scene (paraphrased 
above).

> Mike:
> Second, Snape picked the Sirius and James 
> files and we see none of the others from that era. Maybe there were 
> many more detention-worthy encounters in those years, we don't 
know. 

zgirnius:
I don't see the relevance of this response. Whether Snape did things, 
or others did things, does not alter what was actually done, by James 
and Sirius together, to Bertram Aubrey. Unless you are proposing 
Snape forged the record to which I refer?

> Mike:
> But it seemed like the times fostered more open encounters by 
budding 
> DEs that would lead to escalating the number of detentions. 

zgirnius:
Aubrey is not the surname of any Death Eater we have met. 

> Mike:
> Lastly, 
> Sirius allowed as how Snape is a slippery character, smart enough 
to 
> keep himself off the radar (hell, even Bella says this). Again, not 
> something Sirius would make up, admitting Snape was smarter about 
> staying out of trouble.

zgirnius:
Again, I fail to see the relevance. If Snape hexed people too, it 
does not change what James and Sirius were, to him and to others. Or 
are you trying to simultaneously build a case against Snape? For the 
reasons I have explained above, I don't think he was active in the 
way the two Marauders were, except after his breakup with Lily. I 
don't doubt he had some sort of social involvement with unpleasant 
characters in Slytherin who did actively engage in bullying, and  
enabled this behavior by helping to improve their repertoire.

> Mike:
> As much as I like them, and as much as I admire their magical 
> abilities and propensity for mischief, I must admit that they 
> included some bullying in their repertoire. But like Snape's 
teaching 
> style in the WW seems perfectlyt acceptable, so do the type of 
pranks 
> the Marauders pull. They get detentions, not indictments. 

zgirnius:
All I am arguing is that James and Sirius were schoolyard bullies, 
and Severus was one of their targets. Detentions and/or other school-
centered disciplinary actions would be the expected response to this 
behavior; that does not mean it was considered acceptable. If it were 
acceptable, it would not have resulted in detentions.

The Prank is one possible exception - however, resort to the Ministry 
(and the ensuing publicity) in this case would have ended Lupin's 
Hogwarts career, so I'd say how seriously that was viewed by the 
school authorities is hard for us to determine.

Snape's teaching style has never resulted in so much as a reprimand, 
so far as we know. This would be the basis of an argument that it was 
perfectly acceptable in the WW, along with comparisons to other 
teachers whose teaching likewise seemed to raise no eyebrows.