Headmaster for a day (was Prank WAS :Re: CHAPDISC: DH33, The Prince's Tale

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 184892


> Montavilla47 
> > I think one of the reasons this always becomes such a "tennis match"
> > for readers is that a lot of us fly to the edges of the argument, 
> > assuming bad intentions from either Sirius or Snape--which somehow
> > makes the one with the bad intentions wrong.  But that doesn't
> > make the other one right.
> 
> Potioncat:
> Absolutely! And sort of what I was getting at with this game. I 
> started my own version and found out it wasn't so easy or very 
> revealing. And, afterall, my bias did come out. still working on it,
 not sure if I'll post.
> >

Pippin:
Yes. The first thing that became obvious to me was that reporting a
prank, even a vicious one, is Not Done, but attempted murder is
another matter. That doesn't mean Snape couldn't seriously believe
that MPP had conspired to kill him, but he had to claim that if he was
going to say anything against them at all, so he had a built-in bias
towards believing the worst.

Snape's account is in PoA, ch 14:
"your saintly father and his friends played a highly amusing joke on
me that would have resulted in my death if your father hadn't got cold
feet at the last moment. There was nothing brave about what he did. He
was saving his own skin as much as mine. Had their joke succeeded, he
would have been expelled from Hogwarts."

I think it stands that Snape would  have been killed if James hadn't
saved him. Werewolves just want to bite, but if the victim can't get
away, they don't stop biting, judging by Lupin's own account of biting
and scratching himself, and the condition of the furnishings in the
Shrieking Shack. Dumbledore also confirms that James saved Snape's life. 

I also think it's true that  Sirius would have been expelled if the
joke had succeeded. But it's probably not true that James was deeply
worried about that.

Snape doesn't mention that he himself  was breaking school rules or
that he was hoping to get the Marauders in trouble. OTOH, he wouldn't
have been able to get into the willow if Sirius hadn't helped him. And
there is no canon at all that he  wanted to fight the werewolf or kill
it. What he wanted  to know, according to Lupin's account in PoA ch
18, was where Lupin went every month. I don't think that is changed by
the info in DH, where we learn that he suspected why it was that Lupin
had to go somewhere, and that he wanted to find out not only because
he wanted to get something on the Marauders but because he was
concerned about Lily.

One problem I have as hypothetical headmistress is that nobody is
going to tell me anything. The other is that I don't have a lot of
leverage to use against spoiled, wealthy James and independently
wealthy Sirius -- they're probably no more worried about being
expelled than Fred and George were. 

Pippin