First lesson WAS: Re: Marietta, was Slytherin's Reputation

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 185678

> Zara:
> While it is not deniable that Harry has some physical resemblance 
to 
> James, this is not where the resemblance ends. Your insistence that 
> this important conflict of the series comes down to this one 
> superficial factor, again, does not convince. Snape, on assorted 
> occaeions, when expressing his own disapproval of Harry, brings up 
> many other things, things which I could certainly see being 
> irritating to a teacher responsible for Harry's safety, to a person 
> of a studious disposition, or to someone who found James Potter not 
> to his taste long before Lily and Amor entered the picture.

Magpie:
I tend to think that if we were in Snape's pov Harry would be doing 
things that prove he's like James, yes. But then, that's often how it 
works. I think he absolutely started out with a bias against Harry, 
and antagonized Harry, and then saw what he expected to see. With 
Snape antagonizing him, Harry got angry back and showed him as little 
respect as James did (though James had power over him Harry did not). 
Not surprising on Harry's part, of course. He didn't start off with 
any bias against Snape or not. Snape in many ways shot himself in the 
foot by poking at Harry because Harry, with years of practice, 
responded with the kind of cheek that made James seem charming too. 
It reads to me like a classic case of Snape unable to help himself 
from trying to needle Harry and then when Harry zings him on some 
level it feels like all those times James zings him and he gets angry 
as if Harry just zinged him to show he was superior the way James 
would have done. Though Snape himself might have thought of it as 
testing Harry to see if he was a jerk like his father and look, he 
was.

Regarding the questions, for instance, it's true that many teachers 
ask questions the first day. They might even set up a situation like 
this where they make a student or students look foolish to establish 
that they are there to be taught by him and he knows everything, and 
to grab power right off. I would not be surprised if it was indeed 
routine for Snape to start off by doing something like this the first 
day to throw the kids off kilter.

But I think when he did it to Harry it was clearly beyond that and 
all the kids could sense he was bullying this one boy because he 
disliked him. Harry was perfectly correct in having that impression 
that day, that the class was an ambush. Snape doing it in a less 
personal way would come across differently--as it does when he calls 
the whole class dunderheads. Or if he'd asked 3 different kids 
questions and insulted them all when they got them wrong (or right) 
it would have come across more like a teacher establishing that this 
was his personality. That, I think, is the Snape most people see, but 
that's not what he's doing to Harry.

 
> > Trekkie:
> > Snape's a fullblood bigot. He's a halfblood wizard but a 
fullblood 
> > bigot, just like Voldie. He WANTS to be something he's not. 
> 
> Zara:
> This, of course, is why his private name for himself, with which he 
> adorned what was probably his most prized possession, was "The 
*Half-
> Blood* Prince". Wait, no, that makes no sense to me at all.
> 
> I do agree he probably wanted to be a pureblood/wished he had been 
> born one, but I don't think it was out of any belief in racial 
> superiority. He probably cherished some idea this would have given 
> him a father who actually liked something rather than not much of 
> anything. Maybe even, a father who liked him and his mother. Not to 
> mention the possibility of growing up around other kids like 
himself, 
> where his dress would not mark him as odd, and he could make 
> connections with friends and relatives which he would not need to 
> leave behind upon entering school and adult life.

Magpie:
Does it really matter what exactly he thought made Purebloods 
superior? He joined a bigoted group that was blatantly Pureblood-
superiority, used slurs and ultimately thought the society needed to 
be "cleansed" of Mudbloods. (I think he was raised on the philosophy 
as well based on his hesitation about Lily being in Slytherin--and 
that he did indeed know that blood counted for being Slytherin.) I'm 
sure lots of DEs had different ways that they arrived at this 
philosophy being okay. One could probably explain away every one of 
them--including Voldemort--as not really having a belief in racial 
superiority based on the fact that racial superiority isn't really 
rational so why would anyone really believe it? For a time Snape 
openly supported the elevation of Purebloods as superior, whatever 
that meant to him. I also think he believed it in some way. He may 
never have completely gotten over the belief, frankly, no matter how 
ashamed he was over how he treated Lily. Loving a Muggleborn or 
wanting to be friends with one does not mean he couldn't also be a 
Pureblood supremist.

Carol:
Shelley sees them as right and
justified; I see them as bullies taunting a child they don't know
without provocation much as James taunted Severus for wanting to be in
Slytherin twenty years earlier.

Magpie:
Even if they have some reason to dislike him, he's an 11 year old and 
they're how old at this point? What could he have done that 
necessitated that kind of public humiliation his first day? I read it 
as Fred and George simply hissing when someone was Sorted into 
Slytherin the same way they'd clap if he was Sorted into Gryffindor. 
If challenged about it I imagine they would say it was just a 
friendly rivalry and a joke and of course the kid would understand 
that.

-m