Student!Snape and bullying (WAS student!Snape keeping Lupin's ...)

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 181201

Carol earlier:
> > My point, and I think I agree with Alla here, is that we shouldn't
look at Severus as a poor little helpless victim. They attacked him
two (or four) on one because if they attacked him individually and
openly, he'd have given them a run for their money, or perhaps beaten
them. 
> 
zgirnius responded:
> My point is only, that I believe harassing him using the advantage
of numbers is precisely what they did, and not just the one time in
SWM. I'm having trouble understanding whether or not we agree on this
point.
> 
> Throughout your post, you choose, on a recurring basis, to preface
the word 'victim' by words such as poor, weak, helpless, and 
innocent. Severus may have hexed people for fun on a regular basis, 
and gone around insulting Muggleborns with bloodist slurs. He may 
have been amazing with a wand. While he was doubtless poor <g> he may
not have been perceived as worthy of sympathy. But if it was a 
recurring event that he (as an individual) was attacked/harrassed by 
Marauders (plural, and as a unit) then he was a victim. 
> 
> The way I am using this word, corresponds to the definition I find
in Merriam-Webster Online, namely, "one that is acted on and usually 
adversely affected by a force or agent". The extent to which such an 
individual is weak, or helpless, or poor, or innocent, may determine
how sympathetically, contemptuously, or gleefully others view him, but
it does not change whether or not they were acted on and adversely
affected by, agents. This is what I mean, when I say I believe Severus
was a victim of the Marauders. Whether or not he liked the word, I
think he realized he was acted on and adversely affected by those
individuals. 

Carol again:
Certainly, in the SWM incident, Severus is the victim of an unprovoked
attack. He also claims, perhaps exaggeratedly, that James only dared
to fight him "four on one" (in his fury, he's conveniently forgetting
those one-on-ones where he hexed James at every opportunity and gave
as good as he got). And he's certainly the victim of Sirius's trick in
the so-called Prank. How many other similar incidents there were we
don't know.

As for his hypothetical hexing of people for fun, where's the evidence
of that? We see no detentions for him, in contrast to many for James
and Sirius, and Lily accuses James of hexing people in the hallways
but says nothing of Severus doing anything similar. And they say
nothing about his "bloodist" views, either, or even his ostensible use
of Dark magic. They're only attacking him in this instance ("Look who
it is!") because he's alone, off-guard, and has recently tried to get
them in trouble by finding out what's happening in the Shrieking Shack
(at Sirius's instigation--he could not have done it had Sirius not
shown him how to get in). James's excuse for the unprovoked attack and
public humiliation is "because he exists." (The threatened pantsing is
for calling Lily a "Mud-Blood," but that term was not a provocation
for the unprovoked attack.)

So, yes, in this instance and possibly others, Severus is the victim
of the bullying Gryffindors in the sense that he's at a disadvantage,
outnumbered and caught off-guard, with no chance of winning a fight
that he didn't start. My concern, though, is with the connotations of
"victim." I've seen posts that imply that poor, skinny, nerdy little
Severus couldn't defend himself, so he was picked on by the magically
superior James and Sirius. I just want to make it clear that, IMO,
this view is a misconception. Sure, the Marauders looked down on him
from day one, tripping him and calling him Snivellus because he wanted
to be in Slytherin. Sure, they considered him a "greasy little
oddball" (who evidently had some sort of mentor/pridigy relationship
with the older Lucius Malfoy that they construed as his being Malfoy's
"lap dog"). But we're talking about a kid who came to school knowing
more hexes and jinxes than half the seventh years, who invented his
own clever spells (at least one of which became a fad), who had
demonstrably quick reflexes, and who had already mastered nonverbal
spells before they were taught (if the DADA curriculum was the same
then as in Harry's time). All I'm saying is that we should not
perceive Severus as some weakling who could not hold his own against
James or Sirius or anyone else in the school in a fair fight. And for
someone like that to be publicly humiliated, attacked two-on-one
off-guard in front of the entire fifth-year class (or most of them)
was infuriating. (Having a girl trying to rescue him pushed him past
the limits of reason and common sense.)

I am not denying that Sirius and especially James were bullies. (Even
Sirius confesses that they were "arrogant little berks," which is
putting it mildly.) The Bertram Aubrey incident and Lily's remark
about James hexing people who annoyed him in the hallways, along with
all those detentions, their behavior in SWM, and Black's remark to
Wormtail about seeking the protection of the biggest bully on the
playground makes that conclusion indisputable. Nor do I doubt their
animosity toward Severus (though its basis is pretty shaky). I think
that, just like the animosity between Harry and the adult Snape, it
began with mutual suspicion and dislike and escalated out of control,
with Severus out to prove himself the equal of MWPP, especially James
(which he was, IMO, in intelligence, talent, and courage) and James
and Sirius justifying their animosity and persistent attempts to hex
him on the fact that he exists. 

Until sixth or seventh year, after the so-called Prank, the SWM, and
the break with Lily, Severus seems to have "hexed James" (and only
James) "at every opportunity." Before that, the bullying Gryffindors
were probably the instigators. But I don't think that the SWM was a
typical incident, or people would not have been standing around to
watch with apprehension or amusement (depending on their House and
their own standards of behavior or their personal feelings toward
Severus and the boys who perceived themselves as "the height of cool"
when in fact they were just clever and arrogant, one handsome and the
other an athlete. I think it was Snape's worst memory not only because
of the consequences of his "Mud-Blood" remark but because he was
publicly humiliated with his own spell used against him. And I'm
pretty sure that Sectumsempra, labeled "for enemies," was invented
after that attack and as a result of it. (As I've argued before, that
little cutting hex couldn't possibly be Sectumsempra.)

At any rate, I can't imagine Severus burying his nose in his exam if
such off-guard attacks were a regular occurrence. He'd be sure to hang
out with his fellow Slytherins (including Avery and Mulciber, if they
were in his year) after the exam and wait to study his exam until he
was safely in the Gryffindor common room.

Carol earlier:
> > If they did make a habit of attacking him as a group, it could not
> > have been because he was the sort of weakling that bullies like to
> > pick on (cf. Mark Evans in OoP). 
> 
> zgirnius:
> Real-life bullies pick their victims for any number of reasons. The
huge heavyweight boxer type beating some skinny kid younger than 
> himself is certainly an instance, and probably the image that first 
> pops into the average brain upon hearing the word `bully', but it is 
> by no means the only situation. And I find that in HP, the issue is 
> dealt with in many of its various forms. <snip>

Carol:
They disliked Severus from the outset because he wanted to be in
Slytherin and thought that it was the House for "brains." And they
also regarded him, at least after the fact, as a "greasy little
oddball up to his eyes in the Dark Arts," the last charge being not
necessarily true given that Sectumsempra is the only Dark spell in the
HBP's notes, the others being school-boy hexes and a useful Charm.

I'm just saying that, skinny or not, nerdy or not, Severus was no
ninety-pound weakling when it came to using a wand. In a fair fight,
he was more than a match for James. So, even though he was victimized
in the sense of being ganged up on at least once and tricked into
entering the Shrieking Shack (yes, he suspected that a werewolf was in
there, but he thought that if WPP could face him unscathed, so could
he), but that doesn't mean that he was their favorite victim or that
they routinely ganged up on him, Snape's furious exaggeration to the
contrary. It just means that when they attacked him, probably not
publicly thanks to the Invisibility Cloak and Marauder's Map (thanks
to Montavilla, IIRC, for pointing that out), it was two, three, or
four on one--by no means a fair fight. I'm saying that, being bullies,
they would not have fought him unless they had at least a two-person
advantage. But the idea that he was routinely publicly humiliated is,
I think, not justifiable in canon.

I wonder, BTW, when he learned Occlumency and Legilimency and when he
developed the upright posture, inscrutable expression, intimidating
stares, and dramatic gestures such as sweeping out of a room. How much
of that was a desire to project a powerful presence that would deter
anyone from attacking him unprovoked or two on one? I think that. Like
hexing James at every opportunity, that new image was a response to
the SWM. Maybe he also thought that if he appeared more powerful and
intimidating, Lily would be more attracted to him. (What he didn't do,
of course, was lose his interest in books, as we see from "Spinner's
End" and his memorization of the Hogwarts textbooks, including his own
notations to the lost HBP Potions book.)

Carol, who doubts that anyone besides James and Sirius went around
harassing Severus Snape, especially if they'd seen what he could do
with a wand, and that few of the encounters between Severus and MWPP
were as public as SWM