Severus as friend / the story card / The Good Hufflepuff

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)]

No: HPFGUIDX 183326

Potioncat wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/183282>:

<< Several have posted that they would have wanted Severus as a
friend, but he might not choose them. I don't think so. Young Severus
was desperate for friends. I think he would have responded to gestures
of friendship, particularly where the interests were similar. >>

Do you mean before he went to Hogwarts, or at Hogwarts? I believe that
before he went to Hogwarts, he was indeed desperate for friends, and I
suppose he would have sought the friendship of the first child he saw
using magic no matter how ugly or whatever that child was, but would
he have accepted overtures of friendships from a Muggle? He already
despised Muggles. He sought the friendship of super-duper Lily and
tried to take her away from Petunia rather than trying to be friendly
with both. To me it seems he would have rebuffed Petunia and continued
trying to drive her away from Lily even if Petunia had tried to be
friendly with him. Once he was friends with Lily, would he have
deigned to accept overtures of friendship from another wizarding child
who was less beautiful and intelligent and magically powerful than Lily?

Once at Hogwarts, it seems to me that he had all the friends he
needed: a couple of the more intelligent (altho' not more moral)
Slytherin House mates and super-duper Lily. 

Montavilla47 wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/183286>:

<<So, let's discuss it. What did people think about the story? >>

Okay, here's what I wrote on OT: My impression while I read it was
that the [guys on broomsticks were] DEs [who ]were after some witch
or wizard who lived up that alley, and the cocky teens were there to
ambush the DEs and save the person whom they were after. They should
have captured the DEs and brought them to be arrested instead of just
leaving them.

Of course, my impression may have been biased by the experience that I
wrote a fanfic some years ago in which all four boys plus Lily
ambushed the DEs who were coming to kill a wizarding family. In MY
fic, they captured all the bad guys (except Lucius Malfoy got away
with singed hair) and they noticed that one of the bad guys was really
a good guy under Imperius, so they lifted the spell off him and sent
him to Hogwarts to get private lessons in DADA from Sukey Longbottom
(Augusta's daughter, but at the time I didn't know her name was Augusta).

In both cases, they were sent to intercept the planned attack because
one of Dumbledore's spies had warned Dumbledore of the plan.

[I]t never occurred to me that [Wilberforce, Bathsheba, and Elvendork]
were supposed to be the names of the people they were chasing. I
immediately assumed, and still believe, that they were just random
annoying names that James spouted off to sass the 'please-man'. Look
at the way he volunteered that 'Elvendork' is a name that can be used
for a boy or a girl. He wouldn't have said that if he was thinking
'those blokes' instead of thinking 'silly names'. And he repeated at
the end that Elvendork is a unisex name. That shows that he was
impressed with his (juvenile) wit at making up such a name.

Pippin wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/183313>:

<< Nobody thinks JKR let us down by not showing us a Good Ravenclaw or
a Good Hufflepuff, right? >>

Because she did. Ernie Macmillan, who seems rather pompous, but
apologizes to Harry when appropriate, shakes hands with Harry, asserts
his trust in Harry, is her archetypal Good Hufflepuff. I would have
preferred her to make Justin Finch-Fletchley and Susan Bones the Good
Hufflepuffs because I took a liking to them.

Luna Lovegood is her Good Ravenclaw, which is not too nice to
Ravenclaw House, considering how mean the rest of the House it to her.