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

[nikkalmati]

No: HPFGUIDX 192518



--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "pippin_999" <foxmoth at ...> wrote:
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> > Nikkalmati
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> >  (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.)
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> Pippin:
> That may be. But Snape also suspected the Marauders of sneaking out of school at night, and he wasn't told to keep quiet about that.  He could have kept trying to prove that the Marauders were rule breaking. Instead, according to Lupin, James's issue was that Snape was hexing James every chance he got.

Nikkalmati

We are speculating here because the author does not give us a lot of information to work with.  If Snape was told to keep quiet about the Prank to keep secret Lupin's condition, any attempt to prove the Marauders were sneaking out would be covered too.  If DD talked to him, Snape must have voiced his suspicions to DD without success. What good would it be to follow them when the authorities were not willing to listen?  It was always possible that James enforced silence on Snape as payment for a life debt,  also.  Note that when Lily refered to James' having saved Snape, he does not give her his side of the story, so he must have been restrained in some way.  DD also is perfectly aware of what Snape means when Snape accuses Sirius in POA of being "capable of murder at 16."   Where does Lupin say Snape was hexing James after the Prank?  I thought Lupin said the opposite - that James never stopped hexing Snape (thought Lily thought he did).

Nikkalmati


> Pippin
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 Voldemort also always tried to collect the scions of rich and influential pure blood families, and there were people like that in Snape's circle, some of whom had older relatives who'd been collected already.
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> None of this proves that Snape was knowingly associating with Death Eaters at the time. But his world was at war; he would not have found it easy to sit on the sidelines hoping the right side would win, and he would not have had any doubts about which side was the right one -- it would be the one his friends and their families supported.
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> The question is, what made Snape choose those people as friends? Lily couldn't understand it, and yet she knew  the unpleasant side of Snape's personality well enough.
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> I don't think it was coincidence that Snape's gang of Slytherins nearly all became Death Eaters. I think it likely that Lucius and others were keeping an eye out for the sort of student Slughorn would have no time for. Snape was visibly one of those.
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> We know that Snape was secretly inventing some nasty curses -- if that had become known, Lily wouldn't have been the only one to guess that he was planning to join the Death Eaters. And even a guess was enough to get people  in trouble. But it didn't become known, so my guess is Snape was keeping his head down, and avoiding anything that might bring him to  the attention of the school authorities, such as complaining to them about James. 
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Nikkalmati

I certainly agree that many of the Slytherins at that time were from DE families and many supported LV in school and joined later.  Snape had very little choice but to hang out with these people, especially after he broke up with Lily. Even in Harry's time the students associated primarily with members of their own house.  However, that doesn't mean SS would not complain about Sirius and the Prank to the Headmaster and we see that DD knew about Snape's complaints years later.  I doubt Snape would keep quiet so that his associations with members of his own house would not be known.  Everybody knew who he hung out with. I also doubt his potions book would have been confiscated and read if he complained.  He did not complain about James' bullying for the same reasons victims never complain.  First, the authorities won't do anything about it anyway, and second, it would violate that unwritten code that teenagers still follow and brand him as some kind of a "wuss."

BTW I have always wondered, if SS was suspected to be a junior DE (and rightfully so), why did DD let him go when his brother caught SS in the Hog's Head listening to the Prophecy?   

Nikkalmati

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