Filling in the blanks: Snape, DD and Snuffles

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 190425


> > 
> Alla:
> 
> Oh I cannot keep quiet lol. Yep Sirius did that, that would be minutes after Snape so nicely suggested that he would give the man who just escaped after thirteen years of Dementors to those dementors  again. 

Pippin:

Even Harry thinks that the person who betrayed his parents deserved to be handed over to the dementors, and that is what Snape thought Sirius had done. We've been talking about this as if it was all about Snape being bullied at school. But of course it isn't. It's about Lily, first, last and "always". 

Snape passed up his chance to get vengeance on James in order to protect her, and then dedicated his life to keeping Harry alive in her memory. I agree that Snape is driven by his desire for revenge, but the person he wants revenge on most is Voldemort. Compared to that, getting even with the ex-Marauders and Harry for James's sake is just a hobby. Snape doesn't get all pale and glittery when he contemplates doing something nasty to Harry, he just smirks. 

He's got the same smirky tone when he's confronting Sirius in OOP. He's no longer crazy with anger the way he was in the Shrieking Shack, when he thought he was confronting one of Lily's murderers. 

But we can contrast Sirius's treatment of the helpless Snape, banging his head into the roof of the tunnel, with Snape's treatment of the helpless Sirius, whom he placed on a stretcher and brought to Dumbledore.

Of course he fully expected  Sirius to be passed to the dementors in due course. 

Nonetheless Snape recognized, however grudgingly, that it was not his decision to make. Sirius and Lupin, prompted by Harry, made a similar choice when they agreed to bring Peter to the castle for judgement instead of executing him on the spot. 

I don't think Snape could grow out of his animosity --  he was emotionally stunted by years of mistreatment, in which the Marauders played their part.  

The books ask us to recognize that people vary in their resilience. Harry, as Dumbledore says, is  unusual. He suffered far less emotional damage than Dumbledore had expected, not because he chose to, but because he was lucky. He rolled for emotional damage, you might say, and was fortunate enough to escape with a minor hit. Snape was not. His wounds, to quote Dumbledore again, were too deep for the healing. 

Pippin