Potter VS Snape

[Kitty279]

I really want to believe that Alice was his Godmother and DD let the attack on Neville's parents happen because he wanted to get rid of her.

Me too! Plus, Neville was the other child of prophecy. A bit too much coincidence, no?

Ah yes, evil DD. What about him using compulsions to get James to hand the cloak over? *whistles innocently*

I'm pretty sure Sirius was appointed Godfather before James got together with Lily

*snicker* Very likely!

So you think the possibility to turn Draco away from Voldemort would justify getting innocent bystanders killed? As long as only DD's own life was on the line, I can accept your point, but not after what happened with Katie and Ron. But I admit, that leads to all the many other occasions where he endangered the students. How someone like that ever got Headmaster and kept the job so long is a mystery to me. I mean, didn't the students talk about all that at home?? Where's the uproar among the purebloods about their precious heirs being endangered?

Yeah, DD had so much power, but he couldn't enforce a trial for Sirius ... the more I think about it, the more I believe he didn't *want* him to be cleared, because he would become Harry's guardian then. But from what I remember, DD wasn't headmaster when Hagrid was expelled, but Dippet.

Which makes it worse. They hold themselves as morally superior because they don't use "Dark Magic" as Snape does, but this is clearly a lie. All this bullshit about bullying Snape for being Dark is a lie, since seemingly using Dark Magic is okay for Gryffindors, but not for Slytherins.

That's what you said and which I understood as if you consider the Levicorpus so dark, as I don't remember any specific other things mentioned save that one incident.

Personally, I believe that James and the others bullied mostly Slytherins that were Death Eaters in the making, because we all know they would get away with everything where the Professors were concerned.

You really think that someone as skilled as Snape would not have found a way if he truly wanted to kill any of the Marauders?

The Werewolf incident is exactly how he could have gotten away with killing at least one of them.

Where in the books was it mentioned that Levicorpus was banned by the Ministry?? I don't believe that. Plus, you complain about Snape being so humilated by it, but from what canon said (see RandomPasserby's post), the spell was used all over the school, and Snape doubtlessly used it on others quite a bit.

If the author gives James too much leewway concerning Snape, then she gives Snape even more leeway when it comes to Harry. Again, Snape had to do with some peers, Harry and the others were bullied by a teacher - which was ignored and abetted by other teachers, from the looks of it.

Oh, btw, we actually had some people who defended Snape, but they all left by now.

First the Marauders never grew up. Sirius later never regretted his bullying in his school days and even said that Snivellus deserved his murder attempt. Remus was constantly bullying Snape. In more subtle ways, so you might have missed it. Neville's Boggart for example and always condescendingly telling Snape to get over a little bit of school rivalry that almost resulted in his death, while never reprimanding Sirius for doing the same. Sirius and Remus only showed a little shame in themselves when confronted with Harry's disappointment. And James in fact never stopped bullying Snape even after he got the girl. So, great he stopped bullying everyone but Snape. How mature of him.

Well, we don't see Snape regretting what he did to the Marauders, either, he only regretted that he got Lily killed - and that wasn't even anything to do with the Marauders in the first place, he was so eager to run to his Master with the prophecy, and if he hadn't realised that he endangered his childhood friend, he would have been all happy if he got some poor family killed. And he would have been a Death Eater only, with no connections to the light side.

Sorry, but the Boggart example doesn't convince me in the least. Remus couldn't even know what Neville's boggart was going to be, after all, and he only could work with what turned up. Making your worst fear funny isn't easy, and putting him into the costume of Augusta was rather harmless, considering what he could have done. Besides, the simple fact that a student is that terrified of a teacher speaks for itself - and Snape insulted and belittled Neville publicly before the lesson even started. So don't tell me Remus bullied Snape with trying to help Neville. Frankly, if it had been me, I'd probably have given the dungeon bat a kick up his backside for what he said. The man simply shouldn't be around children, period.

Obviously I see no need to criticize Snape any further as you and the others already got this covered. Instead poking some holes into your Saint Potter and your beloved Bully Quartet is much more fun

Oh, I never thought the Marauders were saints, but they were still better than Snape ever was

[RandomPasserby]

That scene, his nick name Wormtail which is an insult just as Muggle, Peter being made Secret Keeper because he's so pathetic nobody would even think it possible they could trust him with the Secret on the basis that he couldn't possibly be the traitor because he's too pathetic.

Firstly, despite the fanfiction characterising 'Muggle' as derogatory we have no canon evidence that it actually is. However, unlike the term Muggle which we can reasonably assume no non-wizard had any input in, Wormtail likely had input into his nickname. It's not particularly flattering, admittedly, but this is the 70's so frankly I'd give it a pass just on that.

I don't think anybody ever said Peter was pathetic and therefore the person to trust with the secret. All anyone ever said was that Sirius was the most likely candidate to be the Potters Secret Keeper so they used Pettigrew instead.

That is not canon. Also we see from the state of Remus' robes that he is not well off. So much for that. James may have supported the Order while he was alive.

Yeah he's not well off twelve years later. We have no idea what happened to Remus during those twelve years so we can't compare how wealthy he was between the two points. We don't know if he was taking Wolfsbane before he got to Hogwarts or how much he had to pay for that. We don't know where he was living or how much that cost. How much he was working. What toll losing all of his friends in the span of three days took on him.

Speaking personally, both serious mental health issues or spending several weeks very drunk cost a lot of money and you can burn through savings very fast. Both of which are understandable responses.

Also at some point during the interim, both his parents died. That's also expensive.

Yes, James only supported the Order while he was alive. Jesus fucking Christ, the guy was twenty one. Having been twenty one, even a reasonably responsible twenty one, I certainly wasn't thinking about what would happen to my friends twelve years into the future if I died, my other wealthy friend was chucked in prison and my other best friend faked his death. James might have thought about his death, which is why I believe there was a will even if all it was was 'I leave everything to my son', but I doubt he considered everything that happened after it and may have assumed that Sirius or Peter would help Remus out.

Sirius said that they believed Remus to be the spy. That includes Lily and James. And your argument that they didn't tell him for security reasons doesn't hold, since they could have obliviated Sirius and planted a wrong memory about him truly being the Secret Keeper if they were so concerned about their safety.

'Not if he thought I was the spy, Peter' - 273 PoA. No mention of James and Lily. Remus also admits that he thought Sirius was the spy. Again, no mention of James and Lily.

We don't know where Remus was, what he was doing or how long he'd been doing it for during October 1981. We don't know when the Fidelius was cast, although we know they were hiding before it was. We don't know if Remus had a reliable safe method of communication.

Except only the true Secret Keeper can reveal the secret at all so that would have fallen apart the second Sirius tried out writing down the address. Also the point of Sirius as the decoy Secret Keeper was to keep Voldemort's eye fixed on him, so if Sirius believed he was the real Secret Keeper he could have gone into hiding himself, thus neatly defeating the point of a decoy and ensuring that if captured Sirius' mind would come back broken. You can't force a real Secret Keeper to divulge a secret unwillingly, but you can break memory charms and in the process do a whole lot of damage.

But to Severus being called Snivellus by his best friend in front of his tormentors is just as horrible and much more personal. Both are grievous insults and calling Snivellus a nickname doesn't do it justice.

I'm presuming you're the same anon who made the post I quoted but you're backtracking. You said that he called her a 'bad word'. Snivellus is not a bad word because it is not applicable to anyone who is not Severus Snape. Fuck is a bad word. Mudblood is a racist word.

How many people are affected by the word Snivellus? One
How many people are affected by the word Mudblood? Using Harry's year as an exemplar, roughly 1/5th of the school. Not counting halfbloods with muggleborn parents who are unlikely to be happy about it.

And that's excluding the cultural context of a genocidal hate group waging a guerilla war against the country who want to kill everyone considered a mudblood. How many mudbloods do you think Lily knew who just...didn't come back from their summer holidays? How many times was the Great Hall decked in black while proto-Death Eaters sniggered about another mudblood getting what was coming to them? How many kids got a letter saying their parents were dead because one or both of them was a mudblood?

We're seeing the events through Snapes eyes via Snapes memory, of course it's going to be about what he feels. I bet if we saw the same thing through Lily's eyes via Lily's memory, we'd probably see the personal side of being called a mudblood by the guy you've been trying to tell your friends is 'actually really nice most of the time'.

They hold themselves as morally superior because they don't use "Dark Magic" as Snape does, but this is clearly a lie. All this bullshit about bullying Snape for being Dark is a lie, since seemingly using Dark Magic is okay for Gryffindors, but not for Slytherins.

Where exactly did anybody say Levicorpus was Dark Magic? Sectumsempra, yeah, but Levicorpus? I mean it's not exactly pleasant but I doubt Wingardium Leviosa or Arresto Momentum are either.

How is it worse to see that your opponent is using a spell that you didn't know, which doesn't seem to do anything worse than embarassment and a headrush, and using it against them in return?

I don't remember Snape ever calling someone Mudblood in the entire books outside of Lily once. Also Lily equals Snape associating with wannabe Death Eaters with him wanting to become a Death Eater and the sins of his fellow Slytherins as his sins. It is not a stretch to think she is faulting him for the wrongdoings of his Slytherin friends again.

And we get all of less that one chapter of out-of-context memories from Snape which cover his, Lily's and the Marauder's time at Hogwarts. We have no clue what happened most of the time. Our perception of what happed at Hogwarts from 71-78 is told entirely through tiny snippets of polarised views. Either Snape, who wants to malign everything James Potter ever did, or occasionally from Sirius and Remus, who want Harry to continue having this idealised view of James Potter.

Adults like to forget the petty cruelties they tossed out as children, while having an elephant's memory for the cruelties tossed at them.

'Faulting him for the wrongdoing of his Slytherin friends'. I'd agree with you on this point except for one thing. His reaction to whatever happened to Mary Macdonald is not 'yeah actually, that was messed up' but 'it was a laugh'. Generally speaking, when someone tries to pass something harmful off as a joke or a laugh or banter or whatever that's a sign that they think that sort of thing is funny or at least acceptable

This is in their fifth year. How long do you think have those fifteen year-olds aspired to become Death Eaters what do you think? And how many years has she been making excuses for him? Being a Slytherin is a terrible sin in the eyes of self-righteous Gryffindors.

Draco Malfoy espoused genocide at age twelve and was a Death Eater by 16. Regulus Black had time to join the Death Eaters, rethink and die a hero all before graduating Hogwarts. Barty Crouch Junior was a year out of Hogwarts when he tortured the Longbottoms to insanity.

I'd guess she's been making excuses for him since he starting thinking that the sort of thing that Mulciber did was funny.

And that she would feel the need to make excuses, for what? Snape has done nothing that would deserve such disgust outside of slipping once and calling her Mudblood. And seemingly she has been making excuses for associating with him for years. Meanwhile Snape has befriended a Muggleborn and didn't feel the need to make any excuses for that. I'm very sure those Death Eater friends of him gave him more stunk than Lily got from her friends. And then she proceeds to make wild accusations and basically tells him that she thinks for him their friendship is worthless (because wanting to join the Death Eaters would be a betrayal of their friendship. Now keep in mind Snape is in fact not a Death Eater at that point and it might have turned out either way. Lily was not right in her accusations. If he had wanted to be a Death Eater he would have dumped her Mudblood ass long time ago. Half-blood and Mudblood lover too boot? They would have never accepted him. I'm very sure that it was Lily breaking their friendship which sent him to the arms of his 'Death Eater friends'. He didn't deny it is not a confession of his guilt.

I'm going to repeat what I've said in one word sentences.

We. Have. No. Idea. What. Happened. During. The. Marauders. Years. At. Hogwarts.

We have a handful of memories centered around Lily but other than that we have no fucking clue what Snape did or did not do.

Where is your evidence that Snape never made excuses for her? Where is your evidence that Snape did nothing that required an excuse being made?

James was saving his own ass and by association Sirius, Remus and Peters. I'm glad he saved Snape,as it makes him less of an awful person, but for the author to imply that Snape owes James for covering his own ass is just wrong.

Was he though?

We don't know what the restrictions on werewolves were at that point in time, but given that they couldn't openly attain education while being a werewolf I'm going to go with not good. Now imagine that a seemingly upstanding student was outed as a werewolf after killing another student. Do you really think they would have given him a fair trial or that Remus would have tossed James, Sirius and Peter into shit to try and save himself? More likely, there would have been a show trial at which Remus would barely have been allowed to speak (think Harry's trial in OOtP if Dumbledore hadn't shown up) and then he'd have been taken out back somewhere and put down.

With Snape dead, the only person who knew James, Sirius and Peter were illegal animagi (which, in and of itself, carries an Azkaban sentence) is Remus. And with his guilt complex, knowing he was likely going to die, would he have betrayed his friends?

And that's if it became known, Dumbledore has the sole Potter heir, a light-sided Black heir and an in with the werewolves vs one dead halfblood who, at that point, had been worthless to him. He covers up one more death, makes it out to be a young ambitious Potions student brewing clandestinely who reached to high too fast and blew himself up, and suddenly has two rich young purebloods and a werewolf who can be useful in the war effort so deep in his debt that they'd be digging through the earth's crust. 

Snape living however means that there's one person, who now has a reason to hate them if he didn't before, who knows that James at least is an illegal animagus and has really good reason to report them to the Ministry or out Remus as a werewolf. Which, at very least, would get him removed from Hogwarts and probably destabilise Dumbledore.

James saved him before he knew that Snape wouldn't do that, before Dumbledore convinced Snape not to.

I disagree. When Snape was Headmaster he was protecting the students from the other Death Eaters as best as he could.

And that's him playing both sides. Harry wins, Snape as headmaster protected some students from Death Eater excesses. Harry loses, Snape was going along with Voldemort's orders all the time.

I like Snape better than James since I have zero tolerance for bullies and especially self-righteous wannabe heroes (which James is both)

And the guy appears as a memory or a ghost, has significantly less presence than Snape and his defining characteristic is 'Harry's father'.

While I'm not debating the fact that James had it better than Snape did in the parental department, that actually kind of explains why he was how he was. How many spoilt rich kids have gone off the rails because nobody bothered to teach them that other people have feelings, that they can't always do what they want to do and that actions have consequences.

Sirius later never regretted his bullying in his school days and even said that Snivellus deserved his murder attempt.

Which one of these two found out his best friend had died, was framed for murder and got stuck in hell with his worst memories for twelve years? The only thing that kept Sirius sane was the fact he was innocent of murdering people but there's a whole spectrum between 'actually mentally healthy' and 'vegetable'. Sirius might not be Bellatrix Lestrange levels of disturbed, but he is not a picture of mental health and while that isn't an excuse for bad behaviour, it explains a lot about him.