Chapter Discussion: Prisoner of Azkaban Ch 18: Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot and Pron

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 190506


> Carol responds:
>  it's quite another to be reckless with the lives and fortunes of others. Sirius *knew* that Severus would take the implied dare, expecting to *see* a werewolf. He also *knew* that, unlike himself and his friends, Severus was not an Animagus and had no protection. Severus, on the other hand, knew or suspected that Sirius et al. could safely enter the presence of the werewolf and reasoned that he could, too. He probably assumed that the werewolf was safely confined.
> 
> True, he didn't think it out. He should have realized that Sirius wouldn't just hand him an open invitation to get him and his friends in trouble and that there must have been some danger in it for himself. But he was sixteen, and he didn't think it through.

Pippin:
Of course he knew there was danger. He was going to be out of bed, in  a forbidden area, after hours, so that's three rules broken right there. Sirius could have been setting him up to get  expelled, or trapped, embarrassingly, on the wrong side of the Hogwarts Gates. The way I see it, Snape  expected there to be some trick, he thought he could guess what it was, and he was wrong. 

Sirius may have said something like, "You want to know where Lupin's going? Why don't you follow him and find out? Oh, that's right, you don't know how to get past the willow. 

Well, Snivellus, I don't mind telling you that. Getting in is the easy part. But you won't find it as easy to get out, I promise you." 

What boy could resist a dare like that?

I don't think  Snape would expect to see a werewolf, just a way that a werewolf could leave  the campus without being seen. 

Snape would know, having carefully read his FBAWTFT, that magical creatures considered too dangerous for the average wizard to cope with are confined in special habitats guarded by Muggle-repelling charms. In the case of creatures that prey on humans and therefore have developed the ability to cancel out charms and spells, the habitats are made unplottable   and carefully guarded by experts from the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. 

There's no way Snape would expect to find himself in such  a place just by prodding the Whomping Willow with a stick. That Dumbledore might have  bent the rules, or that Hogwarts itself was an unplottable area concealed from Muggles and staffed by, among others, experts on COMC, did not perhaps occur to him. 


Pippin