Draco and Intent: Re: Snape and Harry's Sadism (was: Lack of re-examination)

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 186837

Carol:
> I'm saying that Severus has no reason to befriend or even be grateful to James, who is still his enemy and follows up his "noble" rescue by publicly attacking and humiliating Severus one on one. 

Pippin:

Young Snape did not feel that he owed his life to James, or he could not have been indifferent to the prospect of James's murder. But whether this was still true in later life, we don't know. I tend to think that Snape's violent reaction to "kill me like you killed him" when he and Harry were talking of James, showed that it wasn't. After all, Snape had no reason to burn with guilt over Dumbledore. 

That doesn't mean he ever stopped hating James, but as Dumbledore pointed out, it's quite possible to hate someone and still feel that you are in their debt. 

What I was  thinking was not that young Snape could have acted like Hermione after her rescue from the troll, but that Hermione could have acted like Snape. It was no secret that Ron and Harry thought she was a nightmare. She could have thought that the boys locked her in with the troll on purpose and only saved her because they had second thoughts about it.  Ron and Harry were clearly afraid she would do just that. 

Instead, she showed them kindness, making them look like heroes who saved her from her own folly, and respect, thanking them for what they did. That, as much as facing the common danger, is what won them over. Of course Hermione meant to be kind and respectful to them all along. *She* thought she was being kind: instructive, helpful and informative, which Ron and Harry perceived as being bossy, interfering and a know-it-all. 

I don't think she did it because she liked them so much in spite of everything. Hermione was no doubt raised to look for the good in people, and to think that she should be kind and respectful to everyone. I'm pretty sure that Snape and Draco weren't, and in Draco's case, he was not only raised without those beliefs, but actively sheltered from them. As we know if we've read ToBtB, Lucius did not approve of books which depict Muggles and wizards on equal terms. 

But it isn't just Death Eaters  who believe that being a wizard means being entitled to take what you want from Muggles or anyone else who is weaker than you, though the DE's took that belief to extremes. It's wizard culture in general. Voldemort did not have to put the populace under the Imperius curse to convince them that Magic is Might. They took it for granted already. 

Hermione pointed to this strain of thought in young Dumbledore's letter, decades before Voldemort.  And though the Gryffindor ideal of chivalry is countercultural to this belief, that is not something that seems to trouble young Gryffindors  when they see something that seems ripe for the taking, unless they are as insightful as Lupin or Hermione.

It's a core belief, central to what being a wizard is all about for a lot of people, which is why it is so difficult to change, even when it seems that someone like Snape or Draco has been given every reason to change it. 

Harry, not being particularly insightful, does not often notice when his behavior falls short of the ideal. But at least he has chosen the ideal, and he has, too,  an instinctive feeling that people should not be treated like toerags unless they deserve it. But as Dumbledore keeps trying to tell him, it's rare for that instinct to be as strong as it is in Harry. What Harry had to learn is that many times the people who seem to deserve it were only trying to do what is best for the people they love. 

Pippin