Secrets (Long) OLD POST REPOST

[montavilla47]

No: HPFGUIDX 186436

> > Montavilla47:
> > 
> > May I offer an alternative interpretation?  We have only Dumbledore's and 
> > Lupin's word that Snape carried a grudge against James "all those years" 
> > because of  their school days/the Prank. In Dumbedore's case, we know he 
> > was lying, and in Lupin's case, he could easily be mistaken.
> 
> jkoney:
> Actually we have Snape's actions to show us that he held a grudge against a dead man. It starts with the celebrity comment the first day of class and ends with the filthy father comment at the end of HBP.

> If he wasn't still holding a grudge why would he start on Harry the first day of class? Why would he bring up his father while they were fighting?
> 

Montavilla47:

Since we've already debated the "celebrity" line to death, I'll limit myself
here to noting that Harry is a celebrity in his own right and his celebrity
is only linked to James in that Harry survived Voldemort's attack and
James did not.  

As far as the "filthy father" line at the end of HBP, I would argue that
this is more based on Harry's actions at the moment,  and less about 
Snape worrying about James using them twenty years earlier. 

But even if Snape is angry because Harry reminds him of James in both
instances, there's nothing to show that Snape was crippled by that 
grudge in the ten years between James's death and Harry's arrival
at Hogwarts.  If anything, he was probably more upset about being
turned down for the D.A.D.A. job each year.


> 
> 
> > Montavilla47
> > So, I don't hold that Snape wastes his life by holding grudges
> > against dead people (who are dead and thus couldn't care less
> > what he's doing).  If his life is wasted, it's wasted because he's
> > keeping to a promise he made when he was suicidally depressed.
> > Or, alternately, that he inadvertently set a murderer on the 
> > woman he loved, after losing her friendship due to his racist
> > views.
> > 
> > But it wasn't about James at all.  Compared to his relationship
> > with Lily and his mission towards Voldemort, the Marauders were
> > very small potatoes.
> > 

> jkoney:
> He didn't totally waste his life, but he also didn't do much with it until he was needed as a spy.
> 
> He was never able to reach out to his students and actually teach them, unless they were highly motivated. He had a decade before Harry arrived and it doesn't seem like he did much in that time period.
> 

Montavilla47:

I agree to disagree with you here.  In the first day of class, Snape informs his 
students that he expects them to work to a high standard like *all his
previous classes*.  Later, Umbridge notes that his students perform well
above average.  In HBP, we see (assuming that the class of '97 contains
40 students) that a quarter of his students achieved Outstanding marks
on their O.W.L.s.  This indicates to me that, although Harry hates Snape
with a burning passion, that a fair number of Snape's students thrive 
under his tutelage.

If Snape was wasting the ten years between Voldemort's fall and Harry's
arrival at Hogwarts, then so was Professors McGonagall, Flitwick, and Sprout,
since they were doing pretty much the same things he was.


> jkoney:
> The grudge against the Marauders may have been small potato's but that doesn't mean it still didn't exist and influence his actions.

Montavilla47:

Right.  But it was still small potatoes.  

The thing is, I think we are meant, after the Prince's Tale, to re-intrepret 
the scenes where Snape's motivation appears to be based on that 
"school boy grudge."  Mind you, a lot of us jumped the gun on that,
theorizing years before DH came out that Snape's anger in the Shrieking
Shack came from his belief that Sirius had betrayed Lily.  

But my point is, it makes sense to re-examine Snape's motivations,
just like it does to do so in GoF after we discover that Moody is actually
an evil impostor, or in PoA, after we discover that Sirius is innocent of 
betraying the Potters to Voldemort.