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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