CHAPDISC: DH33, The Prince's Tale

littleleahstill leahstill at hotmail.com
Fri Nov 14 09:01:13 UTC 2008


No: HPFGUIDX 184866

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "jkoney65" <jkoney65 at ...> 
wrote:
> 
> jkoney
> If Snape is as intelligent as some people believe he had to know 
what 
> facing a werewolf was all about. They cover it in third year. His 
> theory is that Lupin is a werewolf and he's going to go out and 
> uncover it, even though it appears that the staff knows about this.
> 
> At this point it is no one's fault but Snape's if he decides to go 
> investigate the alleged werewolf. He knows what he believes but 
still 
> goes looking. He can't expect to find it chained up. Anyone with a 
> bit of common sense is going to assume that if you go looking for 
> something that you are sure is there, then it is going to be 
there. 
> If so, you have to take your own precautions (like having a 
teacher 
> come with you) otherwise you are going to face the consequences of 
> your actions(which he still wasn't able to do years later). He's 
just 
> lucky that James saved him.

Leah: You assume that Snape's focus is on Were!Lupin.
IMO what his focus is actually on is what 'Potter and his mates get 
up to'.  That's what he first refers to in his conversation with 
Lily and then moves on logically to Lupin.  My view is that if Lupin 
wasn't a Marauder, was in Ravenclaw for example, Snape would have 
had no interest in going to have a look at him.  He might have 
worked out he was a werewolf as Hermione works out Lupin, but I 
can't see him bothering to take the risk of getting actual proof.  
Why should he? - as a lot of people have pointed out, he knew the 
school knew, because he'd seen Lupin going to the Willow with Madam 
Pomfrey, and he could therefore assume Lupin was in a safe place.

However, Lupin is one of the Marauders. Snape knows that James 
fancies Lily. He is afraid that Lily is beginning to like James.  
Snape thinks the Marauders are dangerous and one of the reasons for 
this is he thinks they hang out with a transformed werewolf. He is 
absolutely right of course. He's tried to warn Lily, but she won't 
have it ("I know your theory"). So he needs proof.  It's risky, but 
as we see Snape spends at least four years of his adult life putting 
himself 'in mortal danger' for Lily, Teenage!Severus might have been 
willing to do the same.  The crux of the matter, though, as Carol 
has pointed out, is that Snape believes the Marauders interact with 
Were!Lupin. They can do so because they are animagi, a crucial fact 
that Snape is not told. If Snape believes that three teenage boys 
can hang out with a werewolf, logic dictates that the werewolf is 
restrained in some way, and that it wouldn't be *that* dangerous for 
a fourth teenage boy to go under the Willow.  

Thinking about the animagi gives an insight into Sirius' remark that 
the Prank served Snape right because Snape was sneaking about trying 
to get the Marauders expelled.  As I state above, while I don't 
imagine Snape would have been distressed had the Marauders been 
expelled, I don't think that was what he was up to.  However, the 
Marauders are doing something for which they could probably be 
expelled-they are unregistered animagi.  Rita Skeeter, a very 
worldly adult, was so afraid of being unmasked as an animagus that 
she let a fifteen year old girl blackmail her.  Further, they are 
betraying Dumbledore's initiative in letting Lupin into school by 
taking him outside the grounds and having a number of 'near 
misses'.  The more Snape prods around, the more likely he is to 
discover these facts.  So did Sirius set up the Prank just to get 
Snape off their backs, to give him a good scare, to put him in 
James' debt, or to actually turn or kill him?  Snape certainly 
believes the latter and that's why he doesn't let go of the Prank.
And putting yourself at some risk does not excuse murder. For 
example,if a prostitute is killed by a man whose car she has climbed 
into while provactively dressed, that man is still (quite rightly) 
guilty of murder.

Leah (who tried to post some of this before and hopes it doesn't 
duplicate)





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