The Wizarding World of Harry Potter (a thread for Potterheads)

According to JK, although it was never in any of the books, James was an only child to two elderly parents, who died when he was young. I think she specified that it happened while he was still at Hogwarts, which would put it between when he was 16 and brought Sirius home like a stray puppy, and when he left Hogwarts at 18.

 

Basically: personalities are not solely genetic. For everyone in a large family to be in a specific house, some of them have to have been put there for reasons other than the personality requirements. As we see with the traditionally-Gryffindor Weasleys, this doesn't just happen in the house with the secondary criteria of bloodline, either. Plus we see a number of people from ~traditional~ families who really don't act the part of their House- Percy Weasley, say, or Regulus Black (while a Good Guy Slytherin is perfectly possible, the way he acted is very much not a Slytherin way to do things).

So my theory is that the reason for those family House dynasties is that kids are being raised and told by their parents that this is where they will go. Slytherin is a racist cesspool not because ambition makes you evil, but because it's full of kids who've been told their entire lives that it's the pure, elite house that represents our family ideals, and they wanted to be there. Hell, in some cases it could be risking their lives not to- look at what happened to Sirius. So basically it turns into a bunch of racists self-isolating their kids so they mostly interact with other kids from similar backgrounds who hold the same views, and they reinforce each other in an echo chamber. And with all the house rivalry, it gives them an extra way to learn to think of it as them versus everyone else.

(Side note: my pet theory is that if it wasn't for this, Bellatrix would have been in Gryffindor. Because she thinks of herself as a warrior and a champion who will face any challenge for her cause and her lord.)

 

this very much makes sense.

 

....and now I'm determined to apply this theory to one of my OCs.

 

See, this is part of why I'm so bitter about the subject. Every time you bring up the awful behavior of the darlings, someone will turn it into a referendum on the victim. Being a bullying shitheel is no less being-a-bullying-shitheel if you do it to someone who's also kind of a teenage shitheel.

And I don't believe Remus, why should I? That is, I don't think he was lying or anything, but between the behavior under scrutiny belonging to his only childhood friends, one of whom is present and one of whom is dead, and his own passive role in events, there's kind of a nearly perfect storm of cognitive bias painting the Marauders in the rosiest possible light- and that still doesn't make things better than even, apparently.

 

I'm kinda with @OnnaStik on this--like, I know a real-life example of someone who was a teenage shithead and was bullied horrendously nonetheless. people claimed he gave as good as he got, he really didn't, and 99% of the time he was the victim. he ended up threatening to bomb our school. given what we know of Snape's story, I'm inclined to think he was in a similar situation, and that the bullying might actually be part of what pushed him towards being a Death Eater.

 

I would absolutely bet it did. "Everyone hates me except these people, who like me and are impressed by the stuff I can do! And they hate those douchebags who are making my life miserable!"

 

I have two Harry Potter OCs despite not being active in the fandom, and one of them is a guy who the Sorting Hat wanted to put in Slytherin because he was ambitious and he was like "heeell no" because he didn't want to be associated with the racist jackasses there. So he ended up in Hufflepuff instead. :::PPP

 

I have two Harry Potter OCs, one's a Ravenclaw, and the other's a Slytherin, who was pretty much put there because her whole family was Slytherins.

 

That part doesn't get talked about enough, IMO. I mean, it's not like IRL people don't join gangs and hate groups in part for the sense of belonging and protection against the big, bad world out there, right?

(I also feel like the slur-shouting gets too much read into it? Not in terms of its badness, that's fairly accurately read, but in terms of its broader meaning. It's his worst memory for a reason- not the unusual intensity of the bullying, which was probably not unusual, but because that's when he fucked up, shouted the worst thing he could think of, and then Lily never spoke to him again. If he didn't recognize that it was indeed a fuckup and the cause of that split, the worst memory would probably be of getting frozen out by her or something. Or, y'know, her being dead.)

 

yeah, IRL people definitely join gangs and hate groups for the sense of belonging and protection--we actually talked a lot about that in my criminology class. so Snape, seeking protection from the people viciously bullying him, and a sense of belonging in a world where he's basically always been an outcast, hangs out with the up-and-coming Death Eaters, and then later joins on with them, because they're as close to a real family or group of friends as he's got. maybe he doesn't solidly agree with them at all times, but that doesn't matter, because they're the only thing he's got. Lily was his only real friend, but one person can't provide a sense of belonging or protection. hell, even her interference with the bullying doesn't do that much. Snape's "friends" the up-and-coming Death Eaters? they probably gave back to James and Sirius exactly what they were giving to Snape, and that's about as good a protection as you can really get from that kind of thing. so of course Snape's going to hang out with them! and he definitely recognizes that the slur-shouting was a major fuck-up, it's his worst memory for a reason. he lost his only friend that day and it was his fault, of course he's going to recognize that that was a major fuck-up. and he couldn't fix it, and got left to the group of up-and-coming Death Eaters, who now are his only friends, so of course he's going to stick with them and follow in their footsteps and join the Death Eaters. like, if he hadn't shouted the slur and lost his friendship with Lily as a result, maybe Lily could've persuaded him not to join when they got out of Hogwarts, but that didn't happen and we'll never really know.

 

(edit: so yet again the conversation has progressed while I was busy writing a big fuck-off post about stuff... I want to take into account the last few posts, but will have to do so in a separate post to this)

Spoiler

That's the thing - we don't know that he didn't. All my favourite MWPP fics covering this time period have featured James offering an olive branch at some point.

In the books, we never actually see the change in James's behaviour, we just hear that it happened, and that does make it hard to really get. I do not think that Lily was pressured or misled into her relationship with him; to me, the fact that she did end up liking him suggests that there would have to be a very profound 'offscreen' change in him. I'm still not a big fan of James, but my own history kind of offers some insight into the story here: I grew up being abused by a prepsychopathic child, and in my late teens I watched him recover from it and become a really great person who I love a lot. We get on great now. It's really hard for other people to hear what happened and get how - and why - I've forgiven him, and I understand that, because if I hadn't gone through it personally I wouldn't get it either.

In terms of talking about MWPP versus Snape, I don't think it should be taken as "did Snape deserve to be bullied?". No one deserves to be bullied. If the question is "should we have compassion for Snape as a child?", I think the answer is yes. Maybe part of the problem here is that we're perceiving his entire lifespan from a single point in time - we didn't watch him grow up over a decade like we did with Harry and his cohorts; we saw him as an adult and then received his entire childhood and adolescence in a single chapter. So if we condemn him as a heartless bastard as an adult, it seems like we're retroactively denying him any compassion as a child, which I don't think is the case.

I don't like James, but he was a dick because he was incredibly immature (literally - his behaviour was consistent with a much earlier developmental phase in the area of interpersonal understanding, as is the behaviour of many teenage dickheads), not because he supported genocide. And yes, he was definitely prejudiced (with the whole frat culture aspect of Houses that everyone has been discussing), and that isn't okay either. That doesn't mean I'd want to be his friend, but it still shows progression and remorse.

I have a lot of other Snape thoughts that are raised by this, but before I add them, I want to make it clear that I'm not trying to say "Snape was worse than the Marauders therefore let's not judge the Marauders at all". Let's definitely judge the Marauders a lot. But I am and shall remain a Snape hate blog,

Spoiler: and here are a few reasons why.

As others have said, going through trauma doesn't excuse going on to abuse children and aid in genocide. (As a side note, I find it highly unlikely that Sirius was not traumatised even before he solidified his anti-purist views, so if we're talking about childhood trauma explaining asshole behaviour in teenagers there is that. As for James, we have no idea.) Snape never actually changed his horrible views; it's made quite clear that he's a hypocrite, granting an exception to Lily and Lily alone because he wants her, not because he actually feels deep down that the blood purity shit is wrong. I don't think his feelings for Lily can really be called love, at least not in the way we usually understand it.

When Harry watches his first meeting with Lily and Petunia, Snape's expression is described as one of "undisguised greed". That's quite a powerful word choice, "greed". Not a synonym for excitement or interest or admiration. It's possessive. As time goes, from the way he treats Lily, it's clear that he doesn't genuinely care for her feelings; he wants to lie to her so she likes him, rather than actually understanding why she doesn't. In the subsequent scene on the train, he doesn't know or care why Lily would be upset about her relationship with her sister. He stops himself from finishing the sentence "She's only a Muggle", but it's only because Lily's already angry at him for his part in Petunia's rejection. He doesn't show any interest in respecting her emotions; he just wants to change them,"fix" them so that he can continue experiencing her presence the way he wants to.

Note here that Lily asks him specifically whether he wants to join Voldemort. Given how readily he's defended himself in the past against accusations that he perceives as untrue ("you're unfair to my sister", "you associate with terrible people", etc), I think it's quite telling that he doesn't immediately leap to deny it the way he did in prior arguments. She's very right about him: his feelings for her are not an indication that deep down he's not really a bigot. His feelings for her lead him to overt hypocrisy, as he indicates pretty strongly that he does believe in Voldemort's cause, and has no rebuttal when she points out that his view of her is totally inconsistent with his beliefs.

[/quote]“You do not care, then, about the deaths of her husband and child? They can die, as long as you have what you want?”
Snape said nothing, but merely looked up at Dumbledore. “Hide them all, then,” he croaked. “Keep her—them—safe. Please.”
“And what will you give me in return, Severus?”
“In—in return?” Snape gaped at Dumbledore, and Harry expected him to protest, but after a long moment he said, “Anything.”[/quote]

His dedication to the Order later on still doesn't show any kind of change of heart. When asked directly whether Snape would still have protected Harry if he weren't Lily's son, JKR said he definitely wouldn't. So basically, if Neville had ended up as the Chosen One, Snape would've stayed a regular old Death Eater, aiding the genocide of the "impure" without any apparent moral qualms. He had no actual interest in helping Dumbledore's cause; it was an oath he took specifically due to his feelings for Lily.

Something has just occurred to me: basically every MWPP fic I've ever read depicts James's home life as really lovely, his parents as cheerful and caring and their relationship as very positive. Everyone just seems to make that assumption automatically. Why? Do we actually know that it was like that at all?

 

It's suddenly occuring to me that the frat/clan/House type culture in the wizarding world (well, in Britain anyway) is disturbingly similar to something I've noticed in A Song of Ice and Fire: people are not treated as individuals. They are assigned membership to a larger group, and those larger groups are seen as one big conglomerated entity. Any member of the group can be judged for the behaviour of the group as a whole, regardless of their individual choices, and even if their membership to that group is involuntarily ascribed to them.

Westerosi society is also strongly totemistic, to the extent that the word for a group's totem becomes much more strongly associated with the group than with its original meaning - for example, "wolves" is rarely given a modifier to specify that it means the Starks and their relatives, whereas the actual animal is often specified to be "wolves with four legs". This is far less apparent in Wizarding Britain, but it definitely happens to some degree with snakes.

 

@Elph I think the reason people assume James' parents are lovely are because they took Sirius in as a teenager. Possibly also partly because goddamnit cant the boy have ONE year of happy normal family life after his shitty racist family and the drama after that.

Also I agree with pretty much everything you've said about Snape. Just ugh.

 

I would like to say that I don't like to think Snape necessarily agreed with the up-and-coming Death Eaters at first. he probably didn't start out supporting genocide, but between his parents, the bullying, and being a Slytherin who viewed the up-and-coming Death Eaters as his protection and a place where he belonged, he ended up going along with their ideals and then starting to believe them himself, because that's generally how things go in these kinds of situations. I think to say he always supported genocide is being uncharitable--and as for the 'greed' part, when he first sees Lily and Petunia, I think it's with their family? he probably sees a happy family and thinks 'this is what my family should be like' and he wants it so badly that his expression is one of greed. I think from there he did, initially, really try to be friends with her, but then between the bullying and trying to find a place where he belonged and was protected, he fell in with the up-and-coming Death Eaters and started to actually believe in their cause, and became more sympathetic to it over time. I mean, does that justify what he did? no. but to say that there were no reasons behind it...I'd have to disagree.
overall, though, here's what I think: I think JK did some sloppy writing with Snape. I think that to say he was always evil, to have him look at Lily with greed from the get-go, never have regard for her feelings, overall paint him as a bad guy who did everything wrong from the start, say he wouldn't have saved anyone if it hadn't been for Lily, and not even imply that it was because of the bullying and parents the like that he fell in with a certain crowd and ended up believing their ideals as a result, not even give him a reason for what happened, and just say he was evil from the get-go, is sloppy writing. I think to not give your villain actual motivation is sloppy writing, and to say that circumstances had nothing to do with how he turned out, is sloppy writing, and I think having him be this greedy, bullying, irredeemable character from the start is sloppy writing.

 

I think it's pretty clear from the "Albus Severus" thing and some other stuff that she didn't want us to think of Snape as all evil. The amount of hate he gets is very much the fandom drawing conclusions from what's there that disagrees with how the author seems to view the character. Which really just makes it sloppier writing, honestly.

 

yeahhhhhhhh. writing him to be pretty all-out evil and then trying to redeem him like she did is kinda....just worse.

 

For the record, the way I picture Snape's attitude toward Lily is a lot like a really unhealthy friendship I was in for a while a couple years ago. This guy absolutely latched onto me, and at first it was like hey, similar interests! But over time it got more and more one-sided and got more and more clear that he was putting me on a pedestal, but also not really paying attention to anything I said to him- I was the only person in his life giving him validation, who didn't belittle his feelings or the things he liked and thought were cool and didn't think his mental illness made him a crazy monster, so he started dumping everything on me. He was basically expecting me to be his moirail. He'd call me up and spend literal hours talking about how ~conflicted~ he felt about his ~feelings for me~ while I kept trying to change the subject and talk about absolutely anything else, and I'd get tons of "I'M SO SORRY I'M TERRIBLE YOU MUST HATE ME" guilt-trippy messages if I ever ended a conversation hard. Eventually it got to the point where talking to him about even innocuous topics was exhausting emotional labor for me, and I just cut him off. (Not helping- he super-projected on Karkat and I had a Terezi avatar at the time. I changed avatars after he explicitly made the connection in a conversation. Or that he came by my house once and didn't even call ahead and scared the crap out of me.)

I see Snape doing something kinda similar with Lily, where she stops being a person in his head and becomes his ~angel~ who ~REALLY UNDERSTANDS HIM~. Except more <3 and less <>.

 

uh, so it seems like everyone here ships remus/sirius, which, sure okay.
but anyone have feels on james/sirius? cause I kinda have feels.

 

I can definitely picture Snape viewing Lily like that, yeah.