Prank timing and Snape's worst memory (was Lupin)

[davewitley]

Eloise wrote:

> Except insofar as we know that the Worst Memory incident happened in 
> the middle of OWLs and the "Prank" happened when Sirius was sixteen, 
> presumably in the following school year. 

I just popped over to the Lexicon
 (http://www.hp-lexicon.org/about/sources/jkr.com/jkr-com.html )

to check, and it seems we don't know Sirius' birthday.

His sixteenth birthday presumably fell at some point in his fifth 
year, and so the prank could be any time from early in his fifth year 
until late in his sixth.

IIRC, the prank doesn't depend on their having learnt the animagus 
charm, so the fact that that took place in their fifth year is not 
relevant.

I'll recapitulate why I understand the scene Harry sees in the 
Pensieve is Snape's worst memory.  It's nothing to do with underpants 
or protecting Harry.

As I see it, the crucial moment is when Snape rejected Lily's offer of 
help.  She appears in the scene as a neutral person, and he pushes her 
away from his 'side' in the affair.

I see this as the point at which he solidifies his prejudice (he does 
not want help from a mudblood) and thus both (in his imagination at 
least) puts Lily on a path of favouring James and himself towards 
Death Eaterdom.

This does not mean he was in love with Lily, just that this incident 
was a missed opportunity - *the* missed opportunity - to set his life 
on a different path.  On Dumbledore's philosophy of choices, this was 
the one that defined Snape for the rest of his life (yes, I know he 
left the DEs, but in his relationship with the Order, and his own 
emotional state, permanent damage was done), and he can well look back 
on it as his worst moment and memory, and wonder what would have 
happened if he had chosen differently.

David