CHAPDISC: DH33, The Prince's Tale

[lealess]

No: HPFGUIDX 184875

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "littleleahstill"
<leahstill at ...> wrote:
>
> --- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "dumbledore11214" 
> <dumbledore11214@> wrote:
> > Alla:
> > 
> > Huh? I do not understand how this analogy applies at all. Is Snape 
> > prostitute dressed provocatively or Lupin? No matter which one I do 
> > not get it.
> 
> Leah: Snape. There have been a few posts that suggest because Snape 
> took the risk of going to the Willow, all blame for anything that 
> happened there, including a possible murder attempt by Sirius, falls 
> onto Snape.  I am just pointing out that is not how the (Muggle)law 
> works.  If someone puts themselves into a position of risk (ie 
> getting into a car with an unknown man or someone intervening in a 
> fight, or someone confronting an armed robber , if you want other 
> examples, 
> and as a result of that, they are killed deliberately, that is still 
> murder. Their recklessness does not get the murderer off the 
> hook.       
> 

I'm going to attempt an analogy for the Prank.

Severus is a teenager who is addicted to computer games and is very
good at them.  He receives praise for his skill.  Another group
continually disrupt his games, however.  Moreover, this group seems to
have the blessing of the administrators of the games for their abuse.
They sneak around and break rules, and gang up on the player 4-to-1.
Games are his life, though.

He notices that once a month, the group disappears into an online
forbidden realm, and he wonders about it. He even suspects that,
beyond getting into mischief, one of the gang, the one with the
username "harmlessme," might be a dangerous child predator.  He's heard
rumours about near-misses in local chatrooms.

To make matters worse, his best friend not only shares space
with the predator, but believes he is harmless.  So, because our nerdy
kid is addicted to gaming knowledge, because he's worried about his
friend, because he's tired of being jeered off online forums or worse,
sabotaged, because he thinks the administrators are incompetent, the
gamer investigates the group's activities on his own.  If he can find
evidence of misuse of the system to protect and even set loose a child
predator, he can go to a higher authority, convince his friend that
harmlessme is dangerous, get the bullies off his back, and maybe pick
up a few tips on gaming strategies and how to deal with predators. 
So, when one of the gang tells where the portal to the forbidden realm
is and how to get into it, how can he resist?  Why should he resist?

He sees the gang members as just some other gamers, like him, kids
playing games.  He sees they've somehow managed to resist the allure
of an online predator, if he's even right about that -- he's not sure.
He figures he can face a predator, too.  How hard can it be?  He
doesn't know that the group has devised special, and illegal, animal
personas that allow them to enter the forbidden realm and be something
a child predator would not be interested in.  (Even the administrator
doesn't know this.)  So our gamer suspects that he might find a
predator, but he thinks it is something he can handle.  Maybe
predators are not as dangerous as adults have told him.

Our hero ;-) enters the game room following the brief instructions he
received on how to get in.  What he finds is a monster predator
unleashed in the room, infected with virulent code, bearing down on
him, making all the gaming strategies our hero has learned
meaningless.  Fortunately, another member of the gang comes to his
rescue, even foregoing his protective animal character to do so, thus
potentially exposing himself to abuse or the virulent code at worst,
or to exposure as an illegal game player at best.

But no! The rescuer gets to be almost an administrator of the games
because of his action.  He continues to bully the gamer in online
forums.  He even gets the admiration of the gamer's best friend.  Our
hero, meanwhile, gets told if he talks about being enticed into a
dangerous situation or about the school's protection of a child
predator, he's out of the games.  Our hero is left with the impression
that the gang set him up to face a monster and, moreover, the
administrators approved of their action.  All the games of which they
are a part are corrupt, and the basis of those games, a lie.

So, Sirius is someone who gave another low-impulse-control teen
information on how to get into a game room knowing that an extremely
dangerous child predator was there, without telling him how to protect
himself.  If the predator had harmed or infected the teen, wouldn't
Sirius be greatly to blame?  If someone sent your kid into a chat
room, or a church choir or locker room, knowing a predator was there,
without telling him how to protect himself, how would you feel about it?

lealess