Snape's Culpability in the Prank (WAS: James and Sirius as Bullies)

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 181275

Carol earlier:
> > I'm not saying that Sirius forced Severus to go down there. I'm 
> > saying that he offered him the means of endangering himself, which
> > he could not have done otherwise because he didn't know how to get
> > in, knowing that he would take the bait.
> > <snip>
> > I'm not saying that Severus was innocent. Of course, he broke
> > curfew, and of course proving his theory and perhaps wanting to
> > get MWPP into trouble was insufficient reason for going in there.
> 
> Mike:
> Carol, you assigned Snape approx. 20% responsibility for the Potters 
> death, based on him bringing the prophesy to Voldemort. Snape did 
> that knowingly, most likely suspecting his master would somehow act 
> on it. How Voldemort would use it, Snape had no real way of knowing. 
> But a logical man like Snape would think that Voldemort would most 
> likely do *something* to eliminate the prophetic challenger, however 
> likely that the prophesy was true. Else why did he bother to bring 
> it to him?
> 
> Sirius told Severus how to get past the Whomping Willow, to access 
> the tunnel that would take him to werewolf!Lupin's location. Sirius 
> had no real way of knowing how Severus would use that information, 
> though he *probably* thought that Severus would use it in some way 
> to try to get the Marauders in trouble. He *may* have taunted 
> Severus, we don't know, that's pure speculation.
> 
> So tell me, based one your assessment for the Snape-LV-prophesy
guilt owning equation, why would Sirius be any more than 20% at fault
for the Prank? Both of them gave information that lead to incidents, 
> information without which the incidents wouldn't happen (allegedly 
> in the case of Sirius' info). If anything, I would say giving 
> information to a psychopathic killer about a potential rival is more 
> damning than giving information on how to get past a mean tree to a 
> schoolboy rival that wants to break the same rules that you are 
> breaking.
>

Carol responds:
Simple. In Sirius's case, the information led directly to the
near-fatal action, with nothing else involved--no preemptive measures
or other complications. Sirius knew what was down there; knew that
Severus had no means of defending himself from death or worse; witheld
the key information about how he and his friends survived, in essence,
lying by omission; and as good as knew that Severus would take the
bait. The person who would have committed the actual murder, Remus
Lupin, cannot be held responsible unless he was in on the Prank (and
I'm pretty sure that he wasn't; I doubt that he'd be as unconcerned
about the possible consequences as Sirius was). 

If James and Peter were in on the Prank, they should be assigned some
share of the blame, but less than Sirius's share since he's the one
who actually provided the information that would injure/tempt Severus
*and* withheld the crucial information. Also, it appears to have been
his brilliant idea. If they weren't in on it, he would have been
solely responsible for initiating and carrying out the Prank (with
Severus getting perhaps 15% of the blame for any injuries to himself
being stupid enough to listen to an enemy). And Sirius not only makes
no attempt to atone for his, shall we say, grievous error in judgment,
but he doesn't even show remorse.

In contrast, we have Snape providing the information to Voldemort,
obviously not knowing that he was endangering the Potters at that
time, and later trying to undo the damage by going first to LV and
then to DD and promising to do "anything" to protect them.

So, yes, he initiated the action, and, yes, he evidently cared about
as much about the deaths of nameless, faceless persons as Dumbledore
did, but once he learned that he had endangered someone he loved, he
tried to undo the damage and spent the rest of his life trying to
atone for it. And note, BTW, that Harry has no thought for the
eavesdropper at all until he finds out that it was Snape, at which
point he tries to shift all the blame for his parents' deaths onto
him, just as he tried (with less cause) to blame him for Sirius
Black's death.

Next we have Wormtail. Had it not been for his betrayal, the Fidelius
Charm (suggested by DD because Snape begged him to protect the
Potters) would have worked. No Wormtail; no deaths. 

And, of course, there's Sirius's brilliant suggestion to switch SKs
and the Potters' acceptance of it (and their rejection of DD in the
first place), all of which falls under unintended consequences, but
nevertheless, plays some part in their deaths, as, perhaps, does DD's
borrowing the Invisibility Cloak and his not stopping Snape. (I'm not
convinced that he knew Snape was a DE at that time. Nobody else seems
to have known, certainly not Trelawney or Sirius Black.)

And Voldemort actually killed the Potters (surely he gets at least
half the "credit" here?

So you have my percentages, which I already gave you, with the
unrepentant Wormtail betraying his friends being more to blame than
the repentant Snape, especially because he knew exactly what he was
doing and whose deaths he would be causing. Note that when Harry
thinks that Sirius is the traitor, he screams, "You killed my
parents!" and Sirius actually accepts the blame ("I as good as killed
them"). The Prophecy--the reason for killing them and trying to kill
Harry--isn't even brought into the equation. All that matters is that,
for whatever reason, Voldemort is trying to kill the Potters (as he or
the DEs would have tried to do, anyway, seeing that the Order members
were being picked off one by one), they were supposed to be protected
by the Fidelius Charm, and the SK betrayed them. Again, only when
Harry learns that Snape was the eavesdropper does he assign the
eavesdropping any significance. He wrongly thinks (despite DD's having
told him otherwise) that Snape knew that the Prophecy referred to the
Potters and that he told LV about it because he hated James.

Prophecy or no Prophecy, eavesdropping or no eavesdropping, the
Potters would have been protected by the Fidelius Charm had their
trusted friend Pettigrew not betrayed them. Pettigrew, more than
Snape, made the murder of the Potters possible. 

Back to Sirius and the so-called Prank. I can't assign percentages
there because we don't know to what extent James, Remus, and Peter
were involved, but the lion's share goes to Sirius either way, IMO.

 It's not really comparable, however, because Snape was not tempting
James Potter to do something deadly. He was providing a piece of
information to Voldemort, having no idea to whom it referred or how LV
would interpret it or when he would act on it, if at all. Possibly,
Snape, being logical, assumed that Voldemort would wait until the "one
with the power" revealed himself twenty years or so down the road. He
could not possibly have known that LV would attempt a preemptive
strike, and when he found out that LV intended to attack the Potters,
he took preemptive measures of his own. (That they failed is
Pettigrew's fault, not Snape's.)

I doubt that, with all my words, I've made it clear, so I'll say that
in the so-called Prank, the informer is the only culprit, or at least
the primary culprit, because we can't blame the werewolf, and the
intended victim, though partially responsible, was duped into
believing that he could safely enter the tunnel. In the case of the
eavesdropping, the informant is not the primary culprit; the murderer
is. And the murderer's accomplice made the murder possible. Moreover,
the informant showed remorse and attempted to prevent the murder. The
other two, between them, made it possible and carried it out.

> 
> > Carol responds:
> > He suspected that he'd see a werewolf and come out unscathed,
> > just as the Marauders did.
> 
> Mike:
> Why should he think that? And where is the canon that he did? It's 
> speculation, yours and mine, but it shows a certain level of 
> stupidity that you are not willing to asign to Severus on *any* 
> other point of discussion.

Carol responds:
We're talking about teenage boys here, not adults. Teenage boys, and I
include MWPP along with Severus, think themselves invulnerable. And
even the most intelligent boys are not always rational beings. It
seems clear to me that Severus thought he would survive or he wouldn't
have gone in. If the Marauders could do it, he could, right? (We
*know* that he didn't know their secret, that they were Animagi, until
PoA.) So if I'm assuming here, it's a pretty safe assumption. And
there's a difference between stupidity and foolishness, just as
there's a difference between their opposites, intelligence and wisdom.
It's quite possible to be simultaneously intelligent and foolish, as
DD was with Grindelwald--and Severus was with the so-called Prank. 
>
> > Carol:
> > Of the two, the one who provided information that would tempt the
> > other was more at fault, <snip>
> 
> Mike:
> Then Snape is more at fault for the Potters death than Voldemort is.
Fair is fair, Snape tempted LV with the prophesy information.
> 
Carol:
No, because Snape didn't offer Voldemort information to tempt him, nor
was Voldemort (or anyone else) Snape's intended victim. He was merely
a spy providing information to his employer, bearing some
responsibility for what that employer did with that information but by
no means the share that you're trying to give him by leaving the
murderer and the traitor out of the equation. The situations are not
comparable.

Do you really think that Sirius would not have been expelled, at the
very least, had his little plan succeeded? In the WW, which is not
known for its fairness, I'm afraid that Remus would have been the one
imprisoned or put to death, but it's just possible that Sirius would
have been sent Azkaban at sixteen instead of twenty-two.

And even if you let him off the hook completely with regard to Severus
(which, IMO, is letting him get away with dangerous and irresponsible
behavior), what about the potential consequences for his friend Remus?
Shouldn't he have thought about that? But, no. I suppose that's no
more important than the potential consequences of running around
Hogsmeade on full-moon nights. All in good fun, right, and an act of
kindness to poor Remus.

<snip>
> Mike:
> Well, I never said harmless. 

Carol responds:
Well, thank God for that.

Mike:
But yep, all Severus' fault. <snip>

Carol responds:
It can't be *all* Severus's fault that he took the bait because he
didn't offer himself the bait, did he? He could not have endangered
himself had Sirius not offered him the means to do so. Nor could he
have known his full danger because Sirius withheld crucial information.

Carol, who can possibly see splitting the blame 5/50 but "all
Severus's fault" is simply incomprehensible to me