If the Marauders weren't so mean to Snape would he have been nicer to Harry.

[nikkalmati]

No: HPFGUIDX 192499



--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "corey" <coverton1982 at ...> wrote:
>
> Hey group, just thought I would post a topic on the group cause the group's been kind of dull, not many messages. But does anyone think that if James, Sirius, Wormtail, and Lupin weren't mean to Snape do you think he would be nicer to Harry?
> 
> Corey
>
Nikkalmati

This is a question with many layers and it calls for some speculation.  First, I am strongly against bullying and I think we know that it can cause horrendous psychological damage  to  a young person, especially when it is ignored by authorities.  Snape came from an unhappy homelife and, unlike Harry, Hogwarts was not a refuge for him.  From the very beginning, he was persecuted by Harry's father and his friends.  We are not given any reason to believe he deserved this other than because he was poor and bright and without protection.  A classic bullying situation.  

Second, I doubt Snape would have been sorted into any house but Slytherin.  Wasn't his mother in Slytherin?  He certainly indicated on the train that he hoped to be placed there, so the encounter with the Mauraders probably made no difference.  If they had not picked on him relentlessly  in school I assume the worst memory would not have happened.  He would not have insulted Lily and presumably he would not have resented the failure of DD to expell Sirius after the Prank.  He and Lily could have remained friends until the end of school.  I cannot see them being romantically involved being in different houses at a time when war was brewing between those same factions, but they could have been friends. 

 (I am not sure what Pippin means that Snape kept quiet about Lupin's condition because he had to conceal that he himnself was consorting with Death Eaters. He was 16 years old.  Do you mean he was consorting with his house mates?  I always thought DD told him he would be expelled, if he revealed the secret.)

The question assums Harry was born, so Lily and James must have gotten married.  Would Snape still have joined Voldemort?  That assumes we know something of why he joined.  If he joined for protection, then of course the bullying of the Mauraders played a key role in that decision.  If you think he joined because he was a mean, nasty person from childhood, then it would not have made a difference.   

He graduated from school at a time when the WW was divided into warring camps.  He had no friends in one of those camps and its leaders had betrayed him.  I doubt that he felt he had much choice as to what group he belonged.  As long as we are discussing choices, the choice he made, the independent choice he made, was to leave LV and to dedicate his life to LV's destruction. 

Nikkalmati