The Prank: An Utterly Reluctant Reconsideration

[terri-testing.livejournal.com]

I really, really hate to be fair-minded. But sometimes I just can’t help it.


Regarding the Prank, I’ve always dismissed Lupin’s claim that James had risked his own life to save Snape’s as a feel-good lie to make James look good to his orphaned son, on the same level as “Severus loathed James because James was talented at Quidditch, not because (heavens, no!) James was a nasty entitled little jerk who was talented at making life a misery for everyone not as rich and Pureblooded as himself.”


And really (going back to the Prank), James would always have had the option of transforming into a stag had Moony actually caught up with the two of them, right? Fierce debates on Snapedom years ago over the Prank, over whether a stag (with or without antlers) could have run or even stood up in that tunnel aside, we ended up agreeing that transformed-James could at least have lain down in it.


And he knew that when transformed, Moony wouldn’t bother him.


I mean, didn't he?


We know that the Prank happened before SWM, which happened at the end of Snape and the Marauders’ fifth year. And we know that sometime during that school year, the Marauders all learned to become Animagi and started letting Moony out to frolic, themselves immune to the danger they were exposing others to.


But someone (I don’t remember who, at this remove) once suggested that Sirius might have sent Snape down that tunnel as a prophylactic measure—to get rid of the sneak BEFORE he could inform on the Marauders’ seriously criminal behavior.


Perhaps, before they had even started engaging in the seriously criminal behavior of letting loose a class XXXXX dangerous creature in an inhabited area?


Perhaps… before they were actually capable of such behavior?


We don’t know for sure when exactly in fifth year James learned to transform, or when he verified that his stag-form wasn’t viewed as prey by the werewolf.


If Sirius sent Snape down that tunnel before James could reliably transform, or before James knew for sure that the werewolf would leave the stag alone, then James WAS risking his life in going after Severus.


Even though he still would have been motivated more by CYA (or C. Your Friends’ A.) rather than by any concern for Snape’s well-being, which to my mind would rather let Severus off the hook for a “life debt.”


Still, maybe I’ve been failing to give James his due for taking real risks to save his friends, at least.

Comments

[oryx_leucoryx]

According to what Severus tells Lily, by the time of the prank the Marauders had been visiting Remus as a matter of habit - at least, that's what I get from 'they sneak out at night' in juxtaposition to there being something strange about Remus. And I don't think they would have been visiting Remus in the Shack before they could transform.

[condwiramurs.livejournal.com]

For all that I genuinely applaud your attempt to be objective and fair-minded, I have to agree with oryx that it's doubtful they would have been going to the Shack before they could transform. Perhaps it isn't made 100% unarguably certain that the 'Prank' occurred after those involved could transform, but everything we have evidence-wise leans that way. Even the explanation Sirius gives (at a moment when he's unrepentant and even proud of the deed) for the 'Prank' supports this reading rather than yours: he claims it was at least partly retaliation for Severus' *previous* attempts to follow them when they were sneaking out at night, not purely a security measure. This itself doesn't prove that those events were all connected to the transformation project, but taken together with the other evidence it's more than reasonable to conclude that at least some of them were.

At a minimum, neither the narrative voice nor either of the living Marauders themselves attempts to persuade us that Sirius was acting purely to head off later trouble, before James (or he himself) could transform, when it would not only be easy do to, but when that would serve it *heighten* the heroism of James at a moment when Sirius, Remus, and the narrative voice are attempting to paint him in the best light possible, for Harry's sake. The natural follow-up, if available, to the claim that James saved Severus at risk to his own life is to point out that James didn't even have the protection of his animal form, as he later would. Nobody makes anything approaching such a comment, however, then or later. Suggesting that they *can't.* Because James did have the option of transforming (with whatever caveats about tunnel height, etc. are reasonable).

And, unfortunately, the lying-Remus scenario fits and supports his personality rather well, too.