[HPforGrownups] Re: If the Marauders weren't so mean to Snape would he have been nicer to Harry.

[Shelley]

No: HPFGUIDX 192495

On 8/4/2013 6:13 PM, Bart Lidofsky wrote:
> ncfan:
>> Erm, I'm not so sure myself. If the Marauders were nicer to Snape, but
>> Lily still ended up with James, I feel like Snape still would have
>> been pretty nasty to Harry. Not as nasty, perhaps, but still nasty;
>> Snape's really not a nice person, after all.
> Bart:
>       His personality was shaped by his peers, though, and particularly
> his being tormented in a jocks vs. nerd fashion, by the Marauders. There
> are many indications that he is an extraordinarily skilled wizard, on
> the same order as DD and Morty, but because he was tormented so much, he
> was manipulated into joining the DE's, seeing their enemies as the
> bullies who tormented him, and only when Lily became the target did he
> realize what he had gotten himself into. He had something of an
> inferiority complex; this is why he believed that those who could not
> live up to his own personal standards to be lazy, stupid, or both.
>
>       Bart
Shelley now:
Ncfan says Snape's not really a nice person, Bart is indicating that his 
personality was shaped by his peers. I think I am leaning much more with 
Ncfan. How you take teasing (surely, Hogwarts wasn't his first school 
setting? Surely, he had been teased before???) has pretty much been 
established by the age 11, before his first train ride. It is my opinion 
that kids who are badly teased put off an air that people read as weak 
and unable to stand up for themselves. We see that insecurity in 
Voldemort (Tom Riddle pre-Hogwarts), who makes himself a bully so that 
he won't be teased or thought of as weak. He preemptively makes the 
other kids fear him so they don't dare make fun of him. Snape strikes me 
as that same bent, and if Hogwarts wasn't reigning him in, he'd be 
tormenting the other kids much like the very young Tom Riddle did. Even 
as a teacher, he can't resist being nasty to Hermione, either, so it's 
not something he ever grew out of. His personality seems to have 
remained the same, to me. Aunt Petunia's reading of the young Snape was 
that he was a nasty boy, and she's not in the crowd that assaulted him 
at Hogwarts- her reading of him was pre-Hogwarts. She seems to have 
given him a fair chance, and he ruined it all on his own.

Some people know who they are, and even when they are teased, their 
faith in themselves is not shaken. But Snape appears to have entered 
Hogwarts handicapped by emotional trauma of his family, and maybe 
further embarrassed by poverty, and even with Petunia, even handicapped 
by his own failures at ruining friendships of people who could have been 
his friends had he not been mean to them.   Even if he found a group of 
kids loving and accepting, somehow I think the young Snape would still 
be doubting himself, hiding parts of his past and not wanting kids to 
know where he came from, because it wasn't pretty. Even if the other 
kids had been loving and accepting to him, people who have a mean streak 
somehow can't manage leaking it out. Sooner or later, they hurt the 
people around them.  I don't think the Death Eaters were anything but an 
attempt at a power grab for Snape, much the way that young Tom Riddle 
got some sick pleasure in using magic to harm someone, I think this was 
Snape's inner need to control people whom I'm sure he just all lumped 
together as "getting back at the ones who were mean to me". There were 
innocent people in the crowd, but I am sure Snape used transference of 
all the wrongs done to him to justify why this next innocent person 
should be bullied. I am quite sure the rumor of being a Death Eater made 
some kids in Hogwarts steer way clear of him, and he liked it that way 
(versus the potential of being teased). There is a measure of control 
when people fear you.

Talent in magic is a whole separate thing from personality; both weak 
and skilled wizards are Death Eaters, both weak and strong personalities 
are Death Eaters. They each have their own reasons for joining, but I 
think Snape's only reason is to justify his inner bully and need to 
control other people.  I think there is a hint of regret in Snape, but 
often it's too little and too late, and he pays the price for being what 
Petunia (I think correctly) labeled as "that nasty boy". He just never 
seems to move on to take responsibility for being right where he is 
because of the actions he has chosen. Even as a teacher, he's not a 
better person for what he went through, and that was solely his choice. 
You can't say "I'm nasty because I was bullied", instead, a person who 
matures past that learns that if you want people to like you, you have 
to first be likeable, and that means fixing the parts of you that are 
offensive to other people.

So no, I think NOT what the Marauders did to Snape has anything to do 
with how Snape treats Harry. He was mean to Petunia, when he was young. 
He was mean to Lilly, someone who had been his friend for a long time. 
He was mean to people as a Death Eater. He was mean to Hermione even 
when he was an adult and should have been beyond such childish 
pleasures.  It's a consistent part of his life and personality. I think 
jealousy of Harry's father kept Harry fresh in Snape's mind, but so did 
Dumbledore's insisting that Snape owed Harry some protection from 
Voldemort as an attonement of Snape's past sins. It's that needing to 
work off past sins that, in part, would have kept grinding at Snape- 
that struggle between "this is all my fault" and "if other people hadn't 
done this or that, they wouldn't have made me choose the path I chose". 
We see so many others that Snape isn't kind to- Neville, Hermione, 
Harry, and so many that he disproportionally favor (Malfoy), that it 
seems he's still in grade school picking sides to be on. I think he's 
still playing out his dysfunctional home he grew up in, one that he 
never really left.

Shelley