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deathtocapslockI promise I’ll be continuing my “Indestructible” series soon. I’m working on another long piece, but I got slightly distracted in the middle of it. ;) Plus there’s my dissertation calling.
In that series I’m focusing on moral questions in relation to Severus, and I found myself drawn out on a tangent to that issue while rereading some fanfic and meta. To be precise, I found myself considering more deeply the issue of Severus as moral teacher, particularly in regard to his most significant charge, one Harry James Potter, the Boy Who Lived (to Vex Him).
I was going to write a little comment answering the occasionally-leveled charge, which I disagree with, that Severus fundamentally neglected Harry’s moral education in favor of his physical protection. But it got a little…long. (Indeed, LJ is telling me it's too long for one post. It'll have to be in two parts.)
[Quotes are from e-text versions of the books, so I can't provide page numbers, but they are American editions. If someone wants me to dig up a chapter for a particular quote, I can do that.]
It was reading terri’s “(No) Difference” while writing up the next part of my series on Severus that got me going here, thinking more about Severus as moral teacher. Because, though Harry does get bits of advice or teaching here and there from other people, really the main figures guiding his moral development are, at first, the Dursleys and then, at Hogwarts, Albus – fount of moral platitudes and, er, wisdom of a kind who drops in to explain things to Harry and stroke his ego – and Severus – the teacher who acts as the most frequent and long-running check on Harry and exercises himself over the question of discipline most often with him.
Now, there’s no question that Harry’s moral understanding and arc in the books is, um, shall we say a little counter to what we typically expect for a coming-of-age story; he seems to regress rather more than he progresses. And for all his (admirable) willingness to sacrifice himself to end the war, the Harry Potter of DH has never really grasped some key fundamental moral principles in his dealings with other people, and he shows a regrettable tendency to backslide whenever he does show a glimmer of moral understanding that might make him re-evaluate his own actions or have to take responsibility for his choices and their consequences. (I have to say that Harry’s not the only contemporary protagonist I’ve noticed such a pattern in, but that’s going way out on a tangent.) Anything that might make him feel bad tends to get ignored or pushed onto other people.
Harry’s worldview, in general, in fact, seems to be based squarely on the notion that Harry’s feelings, his most immediate emotional reality and needs, take precedence over anything else and are the source of all that is good about him or matters. A worldview I think we can attribute in part to the way he was raised by the Dursleys, but even more to the influence of the man who took him as a special burden but most failed to teach him how to overcome that early lack and build a solid moral foundation for himself. A man who had early given himself over to his tendency not to care about other people except in the abstract, and never quite did recognize his failing there despite his outward turn away from everything that symbolized that failing to him.
Albus Dumbledore.
What, you thought I meant Severus? Quite the contrary.
I know it’s easy to criticize Severus’ tactics and approach to dealing the Boy Who Lived, among others, and Severus has moral issues of his own to grapple with, certainly. But he’s at least aware of that and active in attempting to correct them, and in his dealings with Harry we must keep in mind that he has always, since before the books opened, had to operate on the assumption that he will be returning to his spying. Regardless of his own desires or capacities on that front, he can’t afford to be open and direct with him, or act publicly as any sort of obvious moral authority of the sympathetic, explanatory, twinkling-mentor kind. Even if he could explain it away to Voldemort as mere play-acting and not sincerely meant, his mentoring the Boy Who Lived would open up a channel of potential influence that Voldemort would want to exploit. Playing bad cop to Albus’ good cop is about his best strategic bet there as far as minimizing difficulties with the Dark Lord down the line goes.
Plus, I suspect that his own experience with the results of too little firm guidance – both for others and himself – has produced in him a tendency, both emotional and rational, to lean rather hard in the other direction. And that is added to his northerner’s habit of focusing on things needing improvement, rather than praising for good performance, of course. I’m not sure the good cop role was ever really going to be a natural part of Severus’ repertoire.
In this whole context the apparent decision he and Albus reached that he should deliberately play the villain, both to Harry and in general with the students, and belatedly to the other staff (see “Shattering Trust”), makes a great deal of sense. Unfortunately that approach comes with certain costs. And I think Severus originally expected Albus to be a rather more reliable moral guide to Harry than he ended up being, leading him to discount for a time the real extent of some of those costs to Harry. His major focus initially would indeed to have been to physically safeguard the boy and simply rein him in where needed, trusting Albus to deal more directly with the positive-reinforcement aspects of his moral education and acting himself more as a check on misbehavior, including that physical recklessness we’ve all noted in ickle Harry.
This is, I think, where the perception that Severus ignored Harry’s moral development comes from. At first, before he realizes how little support in that department he’s going to get, he does focus his energy on preserving the boy’s physical safety and attempting to get him to comply with rules meant to protect him, as well as others. I think what the books actually show us on balance, however, is not that Severus overall is regrettably neglectful of Harry’s moral education in his sincere zeal to physically protect the boy, leaving it always to Dumbledore to guide him spiritually and never taking any of that work upon himself. It’s not that unfortunately Severus is a major gap in Harry’s course of moral teaching.
It’s that unfortunately Severus is Harry’s most reliable and dedicated moral teacher, while being least in the position to be so openly or effectively and having the fewest tools with which to guide him.
And that unfortunately Albus Dumbledore is quite effective in countering those lessons Severus does attempt to provide.
*
First let me briefly tackle the issue of other sources of moral guidance for Harry before moving on to the main event.
The Dursleys I think we can rule out as providing any serious reliable moral guidance to Harry in general. Whatever they may have thought they were instilling, their treatment of him versus Dudley effectively modeled for him a universe in which criticism of him and attempts at discipline are biased and only a sign of personal dislike, and therefore ignorable. Neither consistent rules applicable equally to everyone including Harry, nor any atmosphere of encouragement for careful moral reflection on anyone’s part, are effectively present for him in that house. (And I will note here that my reading of canon suggests that Severus honestly didn’t realize what Harry’s home life was like until those occlumency lessons in year five – his last known dealings with Petunia would not necessarily have suggested to him she’d become repulsed by or afraid of magic, given that letter.)
Meanwhile Harry has limited interaction with people outside the Dursleys while under their care. From what little we can tell his teachers at school are, apparently, influenced overmuch by the Dursley’s assessment of him, and he finds no source of firm but loving authority there. Mrs. Figg is too controlled by Dumbledore to go counter to the Dursleys’ pattern either – she tells us she was afraid to treat him too kindly on the occasions she babysat, and so for Harry her house was but an extension of the Dursleys moral world.
Then, Harry’s introduction to the wizarding world, the counter to the narrow confines of the Dursley universe, takes place under circumstances that set him up to fall to the opposite extreme rather than to understand the wizarding world as providing a more balanced and realistic moral framework.
As, I am far from the first to suspect, was intended all along by Albus Dumbledore, who stage-managed the whole thing.
After all, a morally-developed, self-reflective Boy Who Lived might eventually start to notice some of Albus’ little lapses, particularly in regard to himself, and to question him. And his benevolent omniscient leadership, and plans for the war.
Wouldn’t do to have that, you know.
And Albus really does hate to have anyone poking him on questions of his own moral conduct. Especially regarding children in his care.
Especially people who might get public attention beyond that stemming from his own patronage.
Like, say, the Boy Who Lived, vanquisher of the Dark Lord, hero of the wizarding world.
Better by far to set him up from the beginning to have a skewed, partial, and under-developed moral education centered on emphasizing the unquestionable wisdom and benevolence of one particular Headmaster of Hogwarts than any sort of reliable, stable and nuanced larger moral understanding, or any moral teacher more effective than Albus.
Thus Harry’s introduction to his new world comes in the form of a biased, thoughtless, impulsive, but guaranteed-to-be-friendly-to-Harry half-giant, who true to form terrifies and cows the hated Dursleys while praising the headmaster and passing on certain received views regarding Harry, Dumbledore, Hogwarts, and other key features of the wizarding world. Including the bizarre idea that one’s school dormitory is a reliable indicator of one’s moral rectitude, and that Harry himself is naturally bound to be good and worthy of the idealization of the wizarding world, the innocent hero who defeated the Dark Lord simply by virtue of being who he is:
“'Cause somethin' about you finished him, Harry. […] somethin' about you stumped him, all right."
Add to this the early experience of the adulation of witches and wizards on the street, and then his Sorting, at which Harry firmly thinks “Not Slytherin!” and finds himself, of course, in the “best” House per our first-met Muggleborn and Hagrid. And those early encounters with Dumbledore, which brighter minds than mine have already thoroughly deconstructed. The picture I think should be fairly clear.
Note, however, that from the very first Albus takes care to explain Severus’ actions – even his best ones – as being rooted, neither in any larger moral principles that Harry might respect the man for, nor of course in any well-meaning concern for Harry himself that might make Harry more sympathetic to Severus, but (we know speciously) purely in a selfish and seemingly juvenile grudge against a dead man, and thus indicating no moral understanding or worth to Severus or his decrees and requiring no respect for him and his attempts at discipline from Harry.
This may have been, as others have theorized, a deliberate strategy that Severus was in on as part of his bad cop role. But I doubt that Severus quite foresaw the truly impressive lengths to which Albus would fail to give Harry any reliable moral guidance, or the associated costs down the line of his carefully-created distance from his young charge, any more than he likely knew at that point how negatively skewed and unfair Harry’s upbringing had been.
As far as other sources of moral guidance for Harry: in those early years especially Harry associated outside of Hogwarts – quite likely very much as Albus intended – virtually only with Albus’ own devoted supporters or with people holding little status in the wizarding world outside Albus’ sphere of influence and views.
The other major figure of authority at school with whom he dealt, meanwhile, Minerva McGonagall, was at the least something of Dumbledore’s supporter at the beginning, and became quite devotedly so. And she herself is hardly an exemplar of impartial, nuanced moral guidance. For all that Harry perceived her as “strict but fair” because she bothered to levy punishments against her own House and occasionally did a thorough dressing-down of offenders, she was quite hands-off as a Head of House, and was by any close reading of canon as biased as they come for all her perceived strictness. And the example that she set for Harry in particular from the first was far from that of a moral authority who paid solid heed to impersonal rules or exemplified the need to put fairness and obedience to socially-approved standards above one’s own personal, petty desires.
For – beyond her general approach of giving her quidditch team special breaks from homework and the like – by putting Harry on the Gryffindor quidditch team and buying him that broom during his early days at Hogwarts, Minerva made it unarguably clear that when push comes to shove, she will place fulfilling her own desires and burnishing her own House’s image, over something so trivial as a school sport no less, over any consideration of fairness to others, recognition of established rules, or the long-term good of a child in her care. I mean, does anyone want to seriously argue that giving Harry one more type of special treatment, thrusting him even further into the spotlight from day one and expecting him to perform to a high standard, and putting him in the position to earn the disapprobation of everyone else in the school who might not be thrilled with her breaking of that ban on first-years playing, was ultimately good for Harry himself?
I didn’t think so.
So I think we can rule out Minerva, however well-meaning, as providing any serious, solid moral education or role model to Harry in counterweight to the special-treatment, pay-no-attention-to-rules model that Albus offered him.
*
Which takes us at last back to Severus.
It’s a little difficult to say anything for certain regarding the overall level of his concern for students other than Harry, and in HBP Draco, since we see so little of Severus disciplining them for things not involving Harry.
We do know, however, that at least his Slytherins – the group he has the greatest control over and greatest general responsibility for – get an education from him that merely toeing the line of official school rules (at least in his presence) is not enough. They take care to hide even non-officially-punishable rudeness from him. (Going by terri’s analysis of the real rules of Hogwarts here.) And as a general rule they have for at least the past seven years or so, as of PS/SS, learned to behave to a standard high enough to earn significant reward from other teachers – Severus (our supposed major source of pro-Slytherin bias at the school), recall, we never once see dole out points, yet they had that House Cup streak for the better part of a decade. Even supposing Dumbles rigged that a bit in order to set up Harry’s first year, it had to be believable to both staff and students that they had won by themselves, so most of it had to have been a real effort. And there’s no reason to suppose that all those points were only for displays of technical mastery of skills, rather than anything with a moral dimension.
Plus, it would make a certain amount of sense for Severus to attempt to shield his snakelings from potential recruitment by Voldemort by (subtly, of course, given his position) trying to instill some sort of solid moral understanding in their heads while they’re still young, among other tactics. Though this point is mere extrapolation, not explicitly attested to in canon.
However, Harry is our main focus in the books, and so will be our main focus here. And with Harry I think we can see a pattern across the books in which, whether or not Severus starts out with as great a concern for his moral development as his physical safety, he does from the beginning have some concern for it in conjunction with the issue of Harry’s safety, and at some point definitively does develop that concern for the moral issue into a question in its own right. Personally I would peg this development as occurring somewhere between POA and HBP – possibly during OotP – with the caveat that his understanding that his choice of tactics for this, out of those available to him in his position, may need adjustment is a little slower to develop.
Though, Severus is also having to fight against subtle and effective hostile rearguard action here as well, in the form of Dumbledore’s constant undermining of his authority and assessment of Harry’s character and situation. And Dumbles does like to manipulate him as well as Harry. So I can’t quite blame him for struggling with the issue.
*
In the early books most of the incidents in which Severus scolds, disciplines, or attempts to discipline Harry involve not only wrongdoing on Harry's part, but also risk to himself, which, given Severus' mission to protect him, renders us unable to judge for certain how much of his concern was for Harry's physical safety and how much for his moral development.
There are however a couple of general tendencies we can note about Severus' approach regarding Harry, and in general, here, beyond the use of empty threats of expulsion to get his attention. One is a tendency to rely upon explicit rules governing everyone as the source of authority in his judgments. For all that he demands the outward signs of respect for his position ("I believe I told you to call me 'sir,'" and so on), when it comes down to matters of correction and discipline, Severus doesn't tend to resort to "because I said so" - or even the (likely far more efficacious) "because the headmaster said so" - reasoning in his dealings with Harry, or other students that Harry sees. Instead he refers to an external, impersonal, social ground: rules. Laws. What society, not a singular personal authority, has determined to be wrong and before the expression of which everyone is (in theory) equal.
His eternal complaint about Harry to others, and repeated warning to Harry himself, even from the early books? Arrogance; he thinks he's above the rules and can do as he pleases regardless of the cost to others, accompanied sometimes by complaints about his perceived lack of honesty.
In COS:
"So," he said softly, "the train isn't good enough for the famous Harry
Potter and his faithful sidekick Weasley. Wanted to arrive with a bang,
did we, boys?" […]"You were seen," he hissed, showing them the headline: FLYING FORD ANGLIA MYSTIFIES MUGGLES. […]"I noticed, in my search of the park, that considerable damage seems to have been done to a very valuable Whomping Willow," Snape went on.
"That tree did more damage to us than we -" Ron blurted out.
"Silence!" snapped Snape again. "Most unfortunately, you are not in my House and the decision to expel you does not rest with me. I shall go and fetch the people who do have that happy power. You will wait here."
[…] Snape looked as though Christmas had been canceled. He cleared his
throat and said, "Professor Dumbledore, these boys have flouted the Decree for the Restriction of Underage Wizardry, caused serious damage to an old and valuable tree - surely acts of this nature -"
Later, when he thinks Harry may be lying about the attacks on Mrs. Norris and co.:
"I suggest, Headmaster, that Potter is not being entirely truthful," he
said. "It might be a good idea if he were deprived of certain privileges
until he is ready to tell us the whole story. I personally feel he should
be taken off the Gryffindor Quidditch team until he is ready to be
honest."
(On a slightly related note of interest: I hadn’t remembered until I reread COS just who taught Harry his ‘signature spell’, the one he ultimately defeats Voldemort with in place of any curse, that simple little disarming spell ‘Expelliarmus.’
It was Severus. As Harry himself notes to dear duplicitous Gilderoy in COS chapter twelve:
“"Expelliarmus!"
Lockhart was blasted backward, falling over his trunk; his wand flew high into the air; Ron caught it, and flung it out of the open window.
"Shouldn't have let Professor Snape teach us that one," said Harry furiously…”
You did apparently manage to teach the boy one thing at least, Sev. You should be proud.)
*
Moving on to POA:
Draco has reported seeing Harry in Hogsmeade illicitly, which we know to be true, but Harry is refusing to either explain this circumstance believably or confess (which would allow Severus to actually punish him):
"I've been up in Gryffindor Tower," said Harry. "Like you told -"
"Can anyone confirm that?"
Harry didn't say anything. Snape's thin mouth curled into a horrible smile. "So," he said, straightening up again. "Everyone from the Minister of Magic downward has been trying to keep famous Harry Potter safe from Sirius Black. But famous Harry Potter is a law unto himself. Let the ordinary people worry about his safety! Famous Harry Potter goes where he wants to, with no thought for the consequences." [...]
"How extraordinarily like your father you are, Potter," Snape said suddenly, his eyes glinting. "He too was exceedingly arrogant. A small amount of talent on the Quidditch field made him think he was a cut above the rest of us too. Strutting around the place with his friends and admirers...The resemblance between you is uncanny. [...] Your father didn't set much store by rules either," Snape went on, pressing his advantage, his thin face full of malice. "Rules were for lesser mortals, not Quidditch Cup-winners. His head was so swollen -" [chapter 14]
He does note briefly the issue of Harry’s safety here, but his focus extends beyond that to Harry’s apparent attitude that he is above rules and does not need to worry about consequences to other people. And, lacking the opportunity to levy any actual punishment for what he knows Harry to have done, he turns for the first time here to a new tactic: cutting down a potential bad role model and comparing Harry unfavorably to a figure who ought to get Harry’s attention. In James we get the first of Severus’ intended cautionary examples.
That is, he here attempts to make Harry reconsider his attitude and actions by critiquing the behavior of someone Harry looks up to and has decided to model himself after. Trying to convince him that teenaged James is not a good role model, because of his arrogant treatment of others. Someone Harry should strive to be different from. Which sentiment I think we here can all agree Severus is shown to be rather more right than wrong about, yes? Even Harry grasps that, for about five minutes anyway, in OotP.
Of course, Harry hasn’t become any more inclined to listen to Severus in this book than previously, as their little exchange in DADA makes clear after Harry rushes in late with an excuse on his lips:
"Sorry I'm late, Professor Lupin. I -"
But it wasn't Professor Lupin who looked up at him from the teacher's desk; it was Snape.
"This lesson began ten minutes ago, Potter, so I think we'll make it ten points from Gryffindor. Sit down."
But Harry didn't move.
"Where's Professor Lupin?" he said.
"He says he is feeling too ill to teach today," said Snape with a twisted smile. "I believe I told you to sit down?"
But Harry stayed where he was.
"What's wrong with him?"
Snape's black eyes glittered.
"Nothing life-threatening," he said, looking as though he wished it were. "Five more points from Gryffindor, and if I have to ask you to sit down again, it will be fifty."
Harry walked slowly to his seat and sat down.
Later, after he tells the Minister that the children had been bewitched by Black in the Shack and weren't responsible for their actions afterward (saving them from any Ministry punishment, expulsion being something Severus cannot allow to happen), Severus expresses concern that the headmaster has "allowed [Potter] an extraordinary amount of license," leading him to think himself capable of taking on Black, and questions if it is "good for him to be given so much special treatment? Personally, I try and treat him like any other student." (Er, right Sev. But the general point stands: his expressed concern to everyone is that letting his fame garner him special allowance is bad for Harry himself in addition to disruptive to others and unfair.) He explicitly connects this to Harry's treatment of his friends and consequences beyond danger to Harry himself: "And any other student would be suspended - at the very least - for leading his friends into such danger."
(I mean, it’s not as if Severus has any experience with people putting people they call their friends in danger they’re unprepared to really face. What werewolf used as a prank? What Dark Lord? What prophecy? But I’m off on a tangent again. Interesting patterns do come out, though, don’t they, when you pull on the threads...)
*
At the beginning of next year Severus is given reason to suspect Harry of cheating in an international contest - an accusation, note, that even Ron found credible at first:
"We were under the impression that your Age Line would keep out younger contestants, Dumbledore," said Karkaroff, his steely smile still in place, though his eyes were colder than ever. "Otherwise, we would, of course, have brought along a wider selection of candidates from our own schools."
"It's no one's fault but Potter's, Karkaroff," said Snape softly. His black eyes were alight with malice. "Don't go blaming Dumbledore for Potter's determination to break rules. He has been crossing lines ever since he arrived here -"
Echoed later in his response to Umbridge in OotP:
"'I have just found Potter using my fire to communicate with a person or persons unknown!'
'Really?' said Snape, showing his first, faint sign of interest as he looked round at Harry. 'Well, it doesn't surprise me. Potter has never shown much inclination to follow school rules.'"
In GOF he still resorts to his usual method of dealing with misbehavior worthy of detention, by Harry and others, by forcing them to complete unpleasant but harmless rote potions tasks, like (here) pickling rat brains, or (with Neville) disemboweling horned toads. It seems to be a standard technique of his with students in general: lots of time spent in boring, ick-inducing work during which one has the leisure to ruminate upon the unpleasantness and why one is there, though such reflection is not quite a built-in requirement here – deterrence does seem to be the primary focus.
After catching Harry with the magazine with Rita's article, which he reads aloud to Harry’s embarrassment, Severus uses the opportunity to once again return to his theme of not thinking oneself above others just because one is the Boy Who Lived to Be a Celebrity:
"All this press attention seems to have inflated your already over-large head, Potter," said Snape quietly [...] You might be laboring under the delusion that the entire wizarding world is impressed with you," Snape went on, so quietly that no one else could hear him (Harry continued to pound his scarab beetles, even though he had already reduced them to a very fine powder), "but I don't care how many times your picture appears in the papers. To me, Potter, you are nothing but a nasty little boy who considers rules to be beneath him."
He then accuses Harry of having previously broken into his office and stealing ingredients (half-correctly) and in response to Harry's denial hisses "Don't lie to me." This is when he flashes the bottle of Veritaserum, an act a few here have interpreted as being a covert warning to him meant to keep him on guard against anyone - say, Rita Skeeter - getting to him that way. Whatever the intent of that, however, the emphasis is on the question of Harry's honesty and on halting any further moves toward theft, not punishment for the past thefts.
Continued in Part II.
In that series I’m focusing on moral questions in relation to Severus, and I found myself drawn out on a tangent to that issue while rereading some fanfic and meta. To be precise, I found myself considering more deeply the issue of Severus as moral teacher, particularly in regard to his most significant charge, one Harry James Potter, the Boy Who Lived (to Vex Him).
I was going to write a little comment answering the occasionally-leveled charge, which I disagree with, that Severus fundamentally neglected Harry’s moral education in favor of his physical protection. But it got a little…long. (Indeed, LJ is telling me it's too long for one post. It'll have to be in two parts.)
[Quotes are from e-text versions of the books, so I can't provide page numbers, but they are American editions. If someone wants me to dig up a chapter for a particular quote, I can do that.]
It was reading terri’s “(No) Difference” while writing up the next part of my series on Severus that got me going here, thinking more about Severus as moral teacher. Because, though Harry does get bits of advice or teaching here and there from other people, really the main figures guiding his moral development are, at first, the Dursleys and then, at Hogwarts, Albus – fount of moral platitudes and, er, wisdom of a kind who drops in to explain things to Harry and stroke his ego – and Severus – the teacher who acts as the most frequent and long-running check on Harry and exercises himself over the question of discipline most often with him.
Now, there’s no question that Harry’s moral understanding and arc in the books is, um, shall we say a little counter to what we typically expect for a coming-of-age story; he seems to regress rather more than he progresses. And for all his (admirable) willingness to sacrifice himself to end the war, the Harry Potter of DH has never really grasped some key fundamental moral principles in his dealings with other people, and he shows a regrettable tendency to backslide whenever he does show a glimmer of moral understanding that might make him re-evaluate his own actions or have to take responsibility for his choices and their consequences. (I have to say that Harry’s not the only contemporary protagonist I’ve noticed such a pattern in, but that’s going way out on a tangent.) Anything that might make him feel bad tends to get ignored or pushed onto other people.
Harry’s worldview, in general, in fact, seems to be based squarely on the notion that Harry’s feelings, his most immediate emotional reality and needs, take precedence over anything else and are the source of all that is good about him or matters. A worldview I think we can attribute in part to the way he was raised by the Dursleys, but even more to the influence of the man who took him as a special burden but most failed to teach him how to overcome that early lack and build a solid moral foundation for himself. A man who had early given himself over to his tendency not to care about other people except in the abstract, and never quite did recognize his failing there despite his outward turn away from everything that symbolized that failing to him.
Albus Dumbledore.
What, you thought I meant Severus? Quite the contrary.
I know it’s easy to criticize Severus’ tactics and approach to dealing the Boy Who Lived, among others, and Severus has moral issues of his own to grapple with, certainly. But he’s at least aware of that and active in attempting to correct them, and in his dealings with Harry we must keep in mind that he has always, since before the books opened, had to operate on the assumption that he will be returning to his spying. Regardless of his own desires or capacities on that front, he can’t afford to be open and direct with him, or act publicly as any sort of obvious moral authority of the sympathetic, explanatory, twinkling-mentor kind. Even if he could explain it away to Voldemort as mere play-acting and not sincerely meant, his mentoring the Boy Who Lived would open up a channel of potential influence that Voldemort would want to exploit. Playing bad cop to Albus’ good cop is about his best strategic bet there as far as minimizing difficulties with the Dark Lord down the line goes.
Plus, I suspect that his own experience with the results of too little firm guidance – both for others and himself – has produced in him a tendency, both emotional and rational, to lean rather hard in the other direction. And that is added to his northerner’s habit of focusing on things needing improvement, rather than praising for good performance, of course. I’m not sure the good cop role was ever really going to be a natural part of Severus’ repertoire.
In this whole context the apparent decision he and Albus reached that he should deliberately play the villain, both to Harry and in general with the students, and belatedly to the other staff (see “Shattering Trust”), makes a great deal of sense. Unfortunately that approach comes with certain costs. And I think Severus originally expected Albus to be a rather more reliable moral guide to Harry than he ended up being, leading him to discount for a time the real extent of some of those costs to Harry. His major focus initially would indeed to have been to physically safeguard the boy and simply rein him in where needed, trusting Albus to deal more directly with the positive-reinforcement aspects of his moral education and acting himself more as a check on misbehavior, including that physical recklessness we’ve all noted in ickle Harry.
This is, I think, where the perception that Severus ignored Harry’s moral development comes from. At first, before he realizes how little support in that department he’s going to get, he does focus his energy on preserving the boy’s physical safety and attempting to get him to comply with rules meant to protect him, as well as others. I think what the books actually show us on balance, however, is not that Severus overall is regrettably neglectful of Harry’s moral education in his sincere zeal to physically protect the boy, leaving it always to Dumbledore to guide him spiritually and never taking any of that work upon himself. It’s not that unfortunately Severus is a major gap in Harry’s course of moral teaching.
It’s that unfortunately Severus is Harry’s most reliable and dedicated moral teacher, while being least in the position to be so openly or effectively and having the fewest tools with which to guide him.
And that unfortunately Albus Dumbledore is quite effective in countering those lessons Severus does attempt to provide.
*
First let me briefly tackle the issue of other sources of moral guidance for Harry before moving on to the main event.
The Dursleys I think we can rule out as providing any serious reliable moral guidance to Harry in general. Whatever they may have thought they were instilling, their treatment of him versus Dudley effectively modeled for him a universe in which criticism of him and attempts at discipline are biased and only a sign of personal dislike, and therefore ignorable. Neither consistent rules applicable equally to everyone including Harry, nor any atmosphere of encouragement for careful moral reflection on anyone’s part, are effectively present for him in that house. (And I will note here that my reading of canon suggests that Severus honestly didn’t realize what Harry’s home life was like until those occlumency lessons in year five – his last known dealings with Petunia would not necessarily have suggested to him she’d become repulsed by or afraid of magic, given that letter.)
Meanwhile Harry has limited interaction with people outside the Dursleys while under their care. From what little we can tell his teachers at school are, apparently, influenced overmuch by the Dursley’s assessment of him, and he finds no source of firm but loving authority there. Mrs. Figg is too controlled by Dumbledore to go counter to the Dursleys’ pattern either – she tells us she was afraid to treat him too kindly on the occasions she babysat, and so for Harry her house was but an extension of the Dursleys moral world.
Then, Harry’s introduction to the wizarding world, the counter to the narrow confines of the Dursley universe, takes place under circumstances that set him up to fall to the opposite extreme rather than to understand the wizarding world as providing a more balanced and realistic moral framework.
As, I am far from the first to suspect, was intended all along by Albus Dumbledore, who stage-managed the whole thing.
After all, a morally-developed, self-reflective Boy Who Lived might eventually start to notice some of Albus’ little lapses, particularly in regard to himself, and to question him. And his benevolent omniscient leadership, and plans for the war.
Wouldn’t do to have that, you know.
And Albus really does hate to have anyone poking him on questions of his own moral conduct. Especially regarding children in his care.
Especially people who might get public attention beyond that stemming from his own patronage.
Like, say, the Boy Who Lived, vanquisher of the Dark Lord, hero of the wizarding world.
Better by far to set him up from the beginning to have a skewed, partial, and under-developed moral education centered on emphasizing the unquestionable wisdom and benevolence of one particular Headmaster of Hogwarts than any sort of reliable, stable and nuanced larger moral understanding, or any moral teacher more effective than Albus.
Thus Harry’s introduction to his new world comes in the form of a biased, thoughtless, impulsive, but guaranteed-to-be-friendly-to-Harry half-giant, who true to form terrifies and cows the hated Dursleys while praising the headmaster and passing on certain received views regarding Harry, Dumbledore, Hogwarts, and other key features of the wizarding world. Including the bizarre idea that one’s school dormitory is a reliable indicator of one’s moral rectitude, and that Harry himself is naturally bound to be good and worthy of the idealization of the wizarding world, the innocent hero who defeated the Dark Lord simply by virtue of being who he is:
“'Cause somethin' about you finished him, Harry. […] somethin' about you stumped him, all right."
Add to this the early experience of the adulation of witches and wizards on the street, and then his Sorting, at which Harry firmly thinks “Not Slytherin!” and finds himself, of course, in the “best” House per our first-met Muggleborn and Hagrid. And those early encounters with Dumbledore, which brighter minds than mine have already thoroughly deconstructed. The picture I think should be fairly clear.
Note, however, that from the very first Albus takes care to explain Severus’ actions – even his best ones – as being rooted, neither in any larger moral principles that Harry might respect the man for, nor of course in any well-meaning concern for Harry himself that might make Harry more sympathetic to Severus, but (we know speciously) purely in a selfish and seemingly juvenile grudge against a dead man, and thus indicating no moral understanding or worth to Severus or his decrees and requiring no respect for him and his attempts at discipline from Harry.
This may have been, as others have theorized, a deliberate strategy that Severus was in on as part of his bad cop role. But I doubt that Severus quite foresaw the truly impressive lengths to which Albus would fail to give Harry any reliable moral guidance, or the associated costs down the line of his carefully-created distance from his young charge, any more than he likely knew at that point how negatively skewed and unfair Harry’s upbringing had been.
As far as other sources of moral guidance for Harry: in those early years especially Harry associated outside of Hogwarts – quite likely very much as Albus intended – virtually only with Albus’ own devoted supporters or with people holding little status in the wizarding world outside Albus’ sphere of influence and views.
The other major figure of authority at school with whom he dealt, meanwhile, Minerva McGonagall, was at the least something of Dumbledore’s supporter at the beginning, and became quite devotedly so. And she herself is hardly an exemplar of impartial, nuanced moral guidance. For all that Harry perceived her as “strict but fair” because she bothered to levy punishments against her own House and occasionally did a thorough dressing-down of offenders, she was quite hands-off as a Head of House, and was by any close reading of canon as biased as they come for all her perceived strictness. And the example that she set for Harry in particular from the first was far from that of a moral authority who paid solid heed to impersonal rules or exemplified the need to put fairness and obedience to socially-approved standards above one’s own personal, petty desires.
For – beyond her general approach of giving her quidditch team special breaks from homework and the like – by putting Harry on the Gryffindor quidditch team and buying him that broom during his early days at Hogwarts, Minerva made it unarguably clear that when push comes to shove, she will place fulfilling her own desires and burnishing her own House’s image, over something so trivial as a school sport no less, over any consideration of fairness to others, recognition of established rules, or the long-term good of a child in her care. I mean, does anyone want to seriously argue that giving Harry one more type of special treatment, thrusting him even further into the spotlight from day one and expecting him to perform to a high standard, and putting him in the position to earn the disapprobation of everyone else in the school who might not be thrilled with her breaking of that ban on first-years playing, was ultimately good for Harry himself?
I didn’t think so.
So I think we can rule out Minerva, however well-meaning, as providing any serious, solid moral education or role model to Harry in counterweight to the special-treatment, pay-no-attention-to-rules model that Albus offered him.
*
Which takes us at last back to Severus.
It’s a little difficult to say anything for certain regarding the overall level of his concern for students other than Harry, and in HBP Draco, since we see so little of Severus disciplining them for things not involving Harry.
We do know, however, that at least his Slytherins – the group he has the greatest control over and greatest general responsibility for – get an education from him that merely toeing the line of official school rules (at least in his presence) is not enough. They take care to hide even non-officially-punishable rudeness from him. (Going by terri’s analysis of the real rules of Hogwarts here.) And as a general rule they have for at least the past seven years or so, as of PS/SS, learned to behave to a standard high enough to earn significant reward from other teachers – Severus (our supposed major source of pro-Slytherin bias at the school), recall, we never once see dole out points, yet they had that House Cup streak for the better part of a decade. Even supposing Dumbles rigged that a bit in order to set up Harry’s first year, it had to be believable to both staff and students that they had won by themselves, so most of it had to have been a real effort. And there’s no reason to suppose that all those points were only for displays of technical mastery of skills, rather than anything with a moral dimension.
Plus, it would make a certain amount of sense for Severus to attempt to shield his snakelings from potential recruitment by Voldemort by (subtly, of course, given his position) trying to instill some sort of solid moral understanding in their heads while they’re still young, among other tactics. Though this point is mere extrapolation, not explicitly attested to in canon.
However, Harry is our main focus in the books, and so will be our main focus here. And with Harry I think we can see a pattern across the books in which, whether or not Severus starts out with as great a concern for his moral development as his physical safety, he does from the beginning have some concern for it in conjunction with the issue of Harry’s safety, and at some point definitively does develop that concern for the moral issue into a question in its own right. Personally I would peg this development as occurring somewhere between POA and HBP – possibly during OotP – with the caveat that his understanding that his choice of tactics for this, out of those available to him in his position, may need adjustment is a little slower to develop.
Though, Severus is also having to fight against subtle and effective hostile rearguard action here as well, in the form of Dumbledore’s constant undermining of his authority and assessment of Harry’s character and situation. And Dumbles does like to manipulate him as well as Harry. So I can’t quite blame him for struggling with the issue.
*
In the early books most of the incidents in which Severus scolds, disciplines, or attempts to discipline Harry involve not only wrongdoing on Harry's part, but also risk to himself, which, given Severus' mission to protect him, renders us unable to judge for certain how much of his concern was for Harry's physical safety and how much for his moral development.
There are however a couple of general tendencies we can note about Severus' approach regarding Harry, and in general, here, beyond the use of empty threats of expulsion to get his attention. One is a tendency to rely upon explicit rules governing everyone as the source of authority in his judgments. For all that he demands the outward signs of respect for his position ("I believe I told you to call me 'sir,'" and so on), when it comes down to matters of correction and discipline, Severus doesn't tend to resort to "because I said so" - or even the (likely far more efficacious) "because the headmaster said so" - reasoning in his dealings with Harry, or other students that Harry sees. Instead he refers to an external, impersonal, social ground: rules. Laws. What society, not a singular personal authority, has determined to be wrong and before the expression of which everyone is (in theory) equal.
His eternal complaint about Harry to others, and repeated warning to Harry himself, even from the early books? Arrogance; he thinks he's above the rules and can do as he pleases regardless of the cost to others, accompanied sometimes by complaints about his perceived lack of honesty.
In COS:
"So," he said softly, "the train isn't good enough for the famous Harry
Potter and his faithful sidekick Weasley. Wanted to arrive with a bang,
did we, boys?" […]"You were seen," he hissed, showing them the headline: FLYING FORD ANGLIA MYSTIFIES MUGGLES. […]"I noticed, in my search of the park, that considerable damage seems to have been done to a very valuable Whomping Willow," Snape went on.
"That tree did more damage to us than we -" Ron blurted out.
"Silence!" snapped Snape again. "Most unfortunately, you are not in my House and the decision to expel you does not rest with me. I shall go and fetch the people who do have that happy power. You will wait here."
[…] Snape looked as though Christmas had been canceled. He cleared his
throat and said, "Professor Dumbledore, these boys have flouted the Decree for the Restriction of Underage Wizardry, caused serious damage to an old and valuable tree - surely acts of this nature -"
Later, when he thinks Harry may be lying about the attacks on Mrs. Norris and co.:
"I suggest, Headmaster, that Potter is not being entirely truthful," he
said. "It might be a good idea if he were deprived of certain privileges
until he is ready to tell us the whole story. I personally feel he should
be taken off the Gryffindor Quidditch team until he is ready to be
honest."
(On a slightly related note of interest: I hadn’t remembered until I reread COS just who taught Harry his ‘signature spell’, the one he ultimately defeats Voldemort with in place of any curse, that simple little disarming spell ‘Expelliarmus.’
It was Severus. As Harry himself notes to dear duplicitous Gilderoy in COS chapter twelve:
“"Expelliarmus!"
Lockhart was blasted backward, falling over his trunk; his wand flew high into the air; Ron caught it, and flung it out of the open window.
"Shouldn't have let Professor Snape teach us that one," said Harry furiously…”
You did apparently manage to teach the boy one thing at least, Sev. You should be proud.)
*
Moving on to POA:
Draco has reported seeing Harry in Hogsmeade illicitly, which we know to be true, but Harry is refusing to either explain this circumstance believably or confess (which would allow Severus to actually punish him):
"I've been up in Gryffindor Tower," said Harry. "Like you told -"
"Can anyone confirm that?"
Harry didn't say anything. Snape's thin mouth curled into a horrible smile. "So," he said, straightening up again. "Everyone from the Minister of Magic downward has been trying to keep famous Harry Potter safe from Sirius Black. But famous Harry Potter is a law unto himself. Let the ordinary people worry about his safety! Famous Harry Potter goes where he wants to, with no thought for the consequences." [...]
"How extraordinarily like your father you are, Potter," Snape said suddenly, his eyes glinting. "He too was exceedingly arrogant. A small amount of talent on the Quidditch field made him think he was a cut above the rest of us too. Strutting around the place with his friends and admirers...The resemblance between you is uncanny. [...] Your father didn't set much store by rules either," Snape went on, pressing his advantage, his thin face full of malice. "Rules were for lesser mortals, not Quidditch Cup-winners. His head was so swollen -" [chapter 14]
He does note briefly the issue of Harry’s safety here, but his focus extends beyond that to Harry’s apparent attitude that he is above rules and does not need to worry about consequences to other people. And, lacking the opportunity to levy any actual punishment for what he knows Harry to have done, he turns for the first time here to a new tactic: cutting down a potential bad role model and comparing Harry unfavorably to a figure who ought to get Harry’s attention. In James we get the first of Severus’ intended cautionary examples.
That is, he here attempts to make Harry reconsider his attitude and actions by critiquing the behavior of someone Harry looks up to and has decided to model himself after. Trying to convince him that teenaged James is not a good role model, because of his arrogant treatment of others. Someone Harry should strive to be different from. Which sentiment I think we here can all agree Severus is shown to be rather more right than wrong about, yes? Even Harry grasps that, for about five minutes anyway, in OotP.
Of course, Harry hasn’t become any more inclined to listen to Severus in this book than previously, as their little exchange in DADA makes clear after Harry rushes in late with an excuse on his lips:
"Sorry I'm late, Professor Lupin. I -"
But it wasn't Professor Lupin who looked up at him from the teacher's desk; it was Snape.
"This lesson began ten minutes ago, Potter, so I think we'll make it ten points from Gryffindor. Sit down."
But Harry didn't move.
"Where's Professor Lupin?" he said.
"He says he is feeling too ill to teach today," said Snape with a twisted smile. "I believe I told you to sit down?"
But Harry stayed where he was.
"What's wrong with him?"
Snape's black eyes glittered.
"Nothing life-threatening," he said, looking as though he wished it were. "Five more points from Gryffindor, and if I have to ask you to sit down again, it will be fifty."
Harry walked slowly to his seat and sat down.
Later, after he tells the Minister that the children had been bewitched by Black in the Shack and weren't responsible for their actions afterward (saving them from any Ministry punishment, expulsion being something Severus cannot allow to happen), Severus expresses concern that the headmaster has "allowed [Potter] an extraordinary amount of license," leading him to think himself capable of taking on Black, and questions if it is "good for him to be given so much special treatment? Personally, I try and treat him like any other student." (Er, right Sev. But the general point stands: his expressed concern to everyone is that letting his fame garner him special allowance is bad for Harry himself in addition to disruptive to others and unfair.) He explicitly connects this to Harry's treatment of his friends and consequences beyond danger to Harry himself: "And any other student would be suspended - at the very least - for leading his friends into such danger."
(I mean, it’s not as if Severus has any experience with people putting people they call their friends in danger they’re unprepared to really face. What werewolf used as a prank? What Dark Lord? What prophecy? But I’m off on a tangent again. Interesting patterns do come out, though, don’t they, when you pull on the threads...)
*
At the beginning of next year Severus is given reason to suspect Harry of cheating in an international contest - an accusation, note, that even Ron found credible at first:
"We were under the impression that your Age Line would keep out younger contestants, Dumbledore," said Karkaroff, his steely smile still in place, though his eyes were colder than ever. "Otherwise, we would, of course, have brought along a wider selection of candidates from our own schools."
"It's no one's fault but Potter's, Karkaroff," said Snape softly. His black eyes were alight with malice. "Don't go blaming Dumbledore for Potter's determination to break rules. He has been crossing lines ever since he arrived here -"
Echoed later in his response to Umbridge in OotP:
"'I have just found Potter using my fire to communicate with a person or persons unknown!'
'Really?' said Snape, showing his first, faint sign of interest as he looked round at Harry. 'Well, it doesn't surprise me. Potter has never shown much inclination to follow school rules.'"
In GOF he still resorts to his usual method of dealing with misbehavior worthy of detention, by Harry and others, by forcing them to complete unpleasant but harmless rote potions tasks, like (here) pickling rat brains, or (with Neville) disemboweling horned toads. It seems to be a standard technique of his with students in general: lots of time spent in boring, ick-inducing work during which one has the leisure to ruminate upon the unpleasantness and why one is there, though such reflection is not quite a built-in requirement here – deterrence does seem to be the primary focus.
After catching Harry with the magazine with Rita's article, which he reads aloud to Harry’s embarrassment, Severus uses the opportunity to once again return to his theme of not thinking oneself above others just because one is the Boy Who Lived to Be a Celebrity:
"All this press attention seems to have inflated your already over-large head, Potter," said Snape quietly [...] You might be laboring under the delusion that the entire wizarding world is impressed with you," Snape went on, so quietly that no one else could hear him (Harry continued to pound his scarab beetles, even though he had already reduced them to a very fine powder), "but I don't care how many times your picture appears in the papers. To me, Potter, you are nothing but a nasty little boy who considers rules to be beneath him."
He then accuses Harry of having previously broken into his office and stealing ingredients (half-correctly) and in response to Harry's denial hisses "Don't lie to me." This is when he flashes the bottle of Veritaserum, an act a few here have interpreted as being a covert warning to him meant to keep him on guard against anyone - say, Rita Skeeter - getting to him that way. Whatever the intent of that, however, the emphasis is on the question of Harry's honesty and on halting any further moves toward theft, not punishment for the past thefts.
Continued in Part II.
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This is great! Harry's education that he was above the rules...
Date: 2015-08-16 04:31 pm (UTC)In book 2, at the end Albus says, "I seem to remember telling you both that I would have to expel you if you broke any more school rules... Which goes to show that the best of us must sometimes eat our words... You will both receive Special Awards for Services to the School... and two hundred points apiece for Gryffindor."
In book 3, at the beginning Harry is surprised when Fudge makes light of his inflating Aunt Marge. Aren't you going to punish me? he asks, but instead is rewarded by being allowed to live at the Leaky and stuff himself with ice cream every hour.
That's I think the last time Harry actually expected legitimate punishment for breaking rules. And then of course at the end of that book Dumbledore delibately ordered he and Hermione (Hermione!) on a rule-breaking excursion, with an "innocent" man's life at stake. Getting Hermione to be the instigator was an inspired touch on Dumbledore's part, since the boys regard her as the rule-enforcer....
Definitely by HBP Harry had completely internalized the idea that even when he'd done something he himself thought was wrong, it was ENTIRELY unjustified for someone to actually punish him for it. Mean ol' Snape giving him detention for merely almost murdering Draco with Dark Magic--the nerve of that Harry-hater!
Beginning of PoA is the last time I remember Harry expecting punishment for misbehavior and expecting that the punishment would be legit. I don't remember any time in GoF where Harry expected punishment for overt rule-breaking,but the fact that he was ostracized by Ron & others for entering the tournament, which he hadn't done.... Well, it reinforced for him that negative consequences were independent of his actual actions.
And then the Ministry and Umbridge, punishing him for telling the truth and then making up rules aimed specifically at Harry and his cohort.... By the end of that year, Harry damn near regarded rule-breaking as a positive virtue.
Re: This is great! Harry's education that he was above the rules...
Date: 2015-08-16 05:08 pm (UTC)Yes, Dumbledore might ultimately stage-manage everything, but Minerva's the first to explicitly reward rather than punish him for breaking the rules. Before she ever attempts to punish him for anything, she's ALREADY shown herself to be biased in his favor. And even that first punishment was...er, quite appealing to a Gryff, yes? So of course she's "strict but fair" rather than a Harry-hater.
Good catch on that end-of-year talk - I missed that! Making it very explicit, and building on the pattern...
Getting Hermione to be the instigator was an inspired touch on Dumbledore's part, since the boys regard her as the rule-enforcer....
Oh, yes. Because it's not just Harry in question here, but his cohorts as well, yes. Lock them all into a pattern where they can reinforce to each other the overall direction for Harry... And then, yes, Ron in GOF, pushing Harry away, and coming back to apologize and admit his wrong. Echoed later in his return in DH, though at that point he really was right about everything.
Definitely by HBP Harry had completely internalized the idea that even when he'd done something he himself thought was wrong, it was ENTIRELY unjustified for someone to actually punish him for it. ... it reinforced for him that negative consequences were independent of his actual actions.
PRECISELY. Word. And how is Harry supposed to build any coherent moral framework for himself internally if his actions and external consequences fundamentally have nothing to do with one another? Poor Sev at least attempted to be consistent with him, but all he ended up doing under the circumstances was confirm Harry's distorted view of things. Sev could only wield influence in his little corner of Harry's universe, while everyone else undermined that.
And then the Ministry and Umbridge, punishing him for telling the truth and then making up rules aimed specifically at Harry and his cohort....
Oh yes. And at the end of that year we get the fiasco at the DOM and Sirius' death, and then Harry has MASSIVE internal emotional pressure to deal with that gives him plenty of motivation to 1) avoid any honest self-reflection whatsoever, and 2) shrug as much of the blame off on someone else - someone emotionally safe to blame - as he possibly can. And that lovely little speech of Dumbles' gives him all the implicit license he needs to go full-throttle in the direction he's already tending, and offload everything onto Severus.
The man he already hates and resists, who he's already wronged but would like to avoid having to acknowledge that fact about, and the man who subconsciously presents the greatest threat to his internal model here - because Severus of course had been the one pointing out the danger Harry fell into and the likely result and had demanded he work to avoid it. Severus is here most clearly the figure of rightful authority, the one with the greatest standing to criticize Harry, the one whose rules he failed to obey and thereby lost Sirius. Severus is going to be the figure Harry most strongly and instinctively resists, and Dumbledore says 'go for it! That's my boy!'
And after THAT Harry starts openly doubting and critiquing Severus in relation to anything and anyone, not just himself - until HBP we've never seen him, for example, argue with the choice of Severus vs. Poppy when Hermione or someone was hurt.
And then, of course, at the end of HBP we have Severus apparently revealed as the true source of all misery in Harry's life, from his parents' deaths to Dumbledore's to (via the book) his own attack on Draco...
This is I think why so many of us felt let down by the Prince's Tale. Instead of the honest, face-to-face conversation and onscreen resolution of the tension between Harry and Severus that had been building for seven books - which we NEEDED to deal with all that emotional charge - we got palmed off with a handful of memories and an emotionally-dead Harry who just marches off to suicide on Albus' say-so.
But then, the Harry of DH had never learned any of the moral lessons he would have needed to be able to have that conversation like an adult. JKR had to avoid that confrontation because she'd utterly failed to properly prepare her hero for it.
More on Minerva--another inspired touch
Date: 2015-08-17 04:42 am (UTC)Harry didn't like or respect Lockhart, so Gildy's singling him out for special treatment made him uncomfortable. Ditto with Fudge, and Rita.
But his Head of House was strict and fair, and so if SHE thought he should be rewarded instead of punished for directly disobeying the rules another teacher had established for her students' safety, she must be RIGHT.
Same with the flying Ford Anglia, book 2--Snape said the boys should be expelled for their gross violation of Secrecy, and at first they AGREED. They knew that expulsion was, in fact, a reasonable punishment for such a severe breach of Secrecy. But then Dumbles said they wouldn't be expelled (and reneged on his threat to do so if they misbehaved subsequently), and Minerva, left to settle their punishment instead, agreed with Harry that Gryffindor shouldn't lose house points.
Wouldn't want to lose the chance to take that Cup again! Even if having their peers angry at a points loss instead of admiring a pointless (and points-lost-less) act of extravagent recklessness might teach both the boys and their housemates a valuable lesson...
So she gave the boys a detention. Which did, indeed, serve to teach them a long-lasting lesson (the more profound because they still thought of her as strict and fair):
This is what we deserved.
Even though we KNOW that others who did the same might be expelled.
That, on reflection, is the truly terrible thing--it wasn't really the Dursleys who corrupted Harry at all. It was Albus and Minerva.
Harry entered Hogwarts thinking that the Dursleys' treatment of him and Dudley was UNFAIR. He had a sense of justice, and the Dursleys' gross partiality towards their son violated it. He was ready, at the beginning of canon, to accept a notion of justice that included equal treatment for equal accomplishments and offenses. He expected, that if he got caught doing something wrong he would be punished--and he accepted that idea, in the hope that ALSO if someone else got caught committing the same offense, THEY would be punished the same. That's the way he hoped the world would work, if it was working rightly.
And Albus and Minerva between them instead trained him that, no, if the world is working rightly, Harry should expect the whole universe to treat him like Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia treat Dudders. Literally blind to his most obvious flaws, excusing his every misdemeanor, fawning over his lightest accomplishment, adulating him....
(Okay, Albus is clearly a Vernon, but Minerva's not quite so blind as Petunia.--though of course we don't know if Petunia ever, very privately, and certainly out of earshot of Harry, whispered, "Diddiekins, you really could afford to lose a pound or two, you know. Plus, your teacher who suspended you for beating up a lower form really wasn't overreacting that much....")
Blaming Severus for Sirius's death
Date: 2015-08-17 05:20 am (UTC)Good catch--and especially noting that Albus did encourage/enable/validate Harry in blaming Severus for his own refusal to learn Occlumency. Yeah, being ruled by emotions and refusing to make ANY attempt to calm yourself and think past them is your greatest STRENGTH, Harry, but your lessons failed because SNAPE "couldn't overcome his feelings about your father."
Oh, god, I never saw this before. Obviously if Harry's feelings are his strength and Snape's his failing, it must be because Harry's feelings are meritorious and justified and noble while Snape's were ... not. And one of the things Harry had been struggling with (and wanting to discard) was his glimpse of seeing the Marauders as Snape had.
So Harry's volte-face from feeling sorry for Snape and being truly upset that his dad (and also his godfa') really HAD been as arrogant and bullying as ever Snape had said, to emulating James's worst bullying with the aid of the Prince's cute hexes, was authorized by Twinkles.
Albus told Harry outright, in effect, that Snape was wrong to resent such treatment.
(And, indeed,that resenting such misbehavior--which included, of course, Sirius's egregious misbehavior--is what really caused Sirius's death.)
So obviously the behavior that Snape (and Harry, originally) hated must really have been okay.
And so it's obviously wrong to feel otherwise.
Congrats, Albus, on doing what Sirius and Remus working together couldn't manage: get Harry to accept James's worst, most sadistic misbehavior, as something, not to abhor, but to accept as a trivial peccadillo.
In fact, ultimately, to emulate enthusiastically.
Not even Sirius ever dared aim for that with Harry!
Now THAT's moral guidance.
In, er, some direction.
Severus and the Slytherins
Date: 2015-08-17 06:13 am (UTC)"Okay, his hands were as (or more) tied in dealing with them as with the BWL. I mean, some of them were reporting immediately to living Death Eater relatives!
"But still, it's canon that all the Slytherins are all cheating scum. Start to finish. Can't find, in canon, a one of the Slytherin students under Snape's tutelage worth spitting on if they were on fire. (Er--unless one entertains some of, say, MY wilder speculations about Draco.)
"So, either Snape wasn't paying attention to their moral development, or he failed miserably in his efforts to influence them. Or, of course, like Albus with the Gryffs, he influenced them, yes indeedy, but in entirely the wrong direction.
"Choose one."
Only then I thought, "Except--I'd already speculated that Severus had been using House Points, and the competition for the House Cup, to try to influence the students in his charge. Before the opening of canon. Which is why they'd had that six-year winning streak. Only, that tactic was fatally undermined by Albus at the end of book one. And then reiterated at the end of book two. Slytherins who'd worked like hell all year for that Cup had it arbitrarily taken from them at the end by the headmaster and given to Potter.
"By book three, Slyths who still wasted any of their ambition on school achievements wouldn't be bothering to work for the house cup; just to hold on to the Quidditch Cup.
"And then if they lost that too, they'd give up on school-sanctioned ambitions altogether. And lose respect for the head of house who'd either cheated them deliberately or been stupid enough to have them put such effort into winning an unwinnable prize, in a game that was rigged from the start."
So. If something like THAT was going on, there should be evidence visible even to Harry. A change after first, second,or third years, in how Slytherin students are demonstrably behaving.
Of course, Harry doesn't usually notice other students. He notices his main rival Draco (and sometimes Draco's followers), and he notices Quidditch.
So. Draco. In Harry's first year, Draco hatches two schemes against Harry: he challenges him to a fake duel, and then sets Filch to look for him. And then later when he realizes the Trio are accomplices to Hagrid's highly-illegal dragon-hatching, he tries to catch them in the act.
Please note that in both cases, what Draco was trying to do, was to arrange for legitimate authority to catch Harry in a real act of wrongdoing. The first time, he set Harry up for that act (by a betrayal of schoolyard codes--having set the dare, he should have come out to duel Harry). But the second time, Draco was absolutely in the right: Harry and his friends were involved in, and covering up for, a crime. In fact a serious crime, and one that had already injured a student (Ron) badly enough to send him to hospital.
So Draco's initial reaction to Potter was to try to catch him in legitimate wrong-doing, and let the authorities handle him appropriately.
Well. Poor sap. He learns.
Re: Severus and the Slytherins: Quidditch
Date: 2015-08-17 07:22 am (UTC)And it's in Quidditch games that we have it confirmed that (all) Slytherins (always) behave badly. Right?
It's not just Gryffindor-biased commentators like Lee Jordan and Luna (and Ron and Jo) who remark upon Slytherin's amazingly unsportsmanlike behavior.
We see Madam Hooch repeatedly absolutely livid with rage at Slytherins' gross misbehavior.
For example, when a Slytherin hit a Bludger at the opposing Seeker AFTER the game had been won. That enraged her.
Now, slugging a player (including the Seeker) with a Bludger is perfectly acceptable and commendable tactics BEFORE the Seeker snatches the Snitch, but it is the very epitome of sore losing if the Beater knew that he would be a moment too late. Or, at least, if the refs and crowd all thought the Beater should have realized he'd be a moment too late for a gallant save by creaming the Seeker....
Or consider Hooch's rage in that Quidditch Cup Final in which a victory-at-all-costs! Slytherin team repeatedly fouled the Gryffs. It was terrible!
And worse, not even terribly effective: the Slyth's five fouls didn't even beat the Gryff's two!
Except... neither of those happened in first year. Or second, even.
The Slytherin-Gryffindor game was COMPLETELY clean in Harry's second year. On the Slytherins' parts, at least, and they were not to blame for Dobby. In fact, if I recall correctly, Dobby was trying to stymie the Slytherin Seeker's parent.
And first year--well, in the first two Quidditch games we saw, the refs called exactly three fouls. All of them, apparently, of equal weight according to the formal rules, since in all three cases the penalty was exactly the same: one free shot at the goal by the other team.
Mind you, in one of the three cases Hagrid thought the rules governing all Quidditch should be CHANGED to impose a harsher penalty in this instance. Blocking HARRY from pursuing the Snitch by physically interposing one's body and broom, in Hagrid's opinion (and that of many of the Gryffs) must be a MUCH more heinous offense than blocking another Seeker.
Hooch, however, imposed the standard penalty for that foul: one free shot. Nor was she even excited about it.
Apparently, in her experience, if a Quidditch player saw a perfect chance to keep the opposing Seeker from catching the Snitch by interposing hir own body, of course the player would take it. Technically, it's a foul: but the chance of giving the other side ten points if the free shot is successful, versus that of Ending the Game (probably in the opponents' favor)...
Well. Let's just say that "blocking" is called a foul by the refs, but that most Quidditch captains would have words to say to a player who hesitated to perform it for that reason. And those word wouldn't be, "Oh, well done! We lost the game thanks to you, but you refused to commit a foul!"
And, like I said, Hooch wasn't at all upset by that ONE Slytherin foul. And in the next game, George Weasley and one of his teammates managed to make TWO fouls in nearly as many minutes, which wasn't felt by anyone to detract at all from the swift Gryffindor victory.
So. Harry's first year, his second year, Slytherins played mostly a clean game. Cleaner, in fact, than the Gryffs did.
Only in third year, when they had given up the House Cup but were still fighting over Quidditch, did the Slytherins resort to a dirty game.
Eventually, of course, they surrendered all the other artificial standards subscribed to by their peers...
Finally, Severus clinging to rules
Date: 2015-08-17 02:37 pm (UTC)Because it's not, it's never been, just James that Harry (at his worst) reminds Severus of.
Though I imagine Severus, like Harry, prefers to externalize some of his own flaws and errors, projecting them on an Other that he already hates.
Draco is not, after all, the only boy who started Hogwarts thinking he could get the rules enforced against his rivals. Nor Harry the only one who snuck around spying on his enemies, sure that if he could just get proof of egregious enough wrongdoing the Headmaster would HAVE to expel them (he almost killed Katie, look!).
Nor either of them the first to decide when they discover their enemies to be Teflon, well bugger that for a game of soldiers. If my tormentors are above considering the law, then so will I be.
Re: More on Minerva--another inspired touch
Date: 2015-08-17 03:34 pm (UTC)Oh yes, good catch. You're right. Harry, that boy we all liked on the train when he sympathized with Ron, DOES come in with a basic understanding of justice and willingness to work with it if rules are actually going to be enforced fairly. But Minerva and Albus between them set him up to move away from that understanding.
How much do you think Minerva was knowingly playing a part for Albus and how much do you think it was just her biases intersecting (un)fortunately with Albus' set-up? Though I'm sure Albus at the least knew his deputy's, er, priorities and was counting on them showing themselves somehow. A brief word or two offhand before the start of term regarding the upcoming arrival of Mr. Potter and his hopes for the boy might have been all that was needed?
Re: Blaming Severus for Sirius's death
Date: 2015-08-17 03:40 pm (UTC)Albus told Harry outright, in effect, that Snape was wrong to resent such treatment. [...]
Congrats, Albus, on doing what Sirius and Remus working together couldn't manage: get Harry to accept James's worst, most sadistic misbehavior, as something, not to abhor, but to accept as a trivial peccadillo.
In fact, ultimately, to emulate enthusiastically.
Oh god. Ouch. Yes. And in HBP, sure enough, we get a full-fledged bully Harry hexing people in the corridors for fun, indeed. And the shift is so stark that even one of Harry's closest friends - a girl who herself is already a thief, blackmailer, and mutilator of a fellow student (for the greater good!) - is taken aback by his behavior.
Really, that conversation after the DOM makes me want to strangle Albus with his own beard. He did quite a lot of damage very, very neatly, didn't he? When Harry was, of course, exceptionally vulnerable. But Tom's the only one he has to guard against, oho. Right.
Re: Severus and the Slytherins: Quidditch
Date: 2015-08-17 04:11 pm (UTC)They must have respected him before, in order to put enough effort into following his lead for that seven-year streak to be believable. When the Slytherins went down to that leaving feast, thinking they'd won, there was not a single student in Severus' House who knew what it felt like to lose the Cup. They'd gone a full rotation through the House, winning every year. Earning points from OTHER teachers. They damn well knew they'd worked hard, as a House, to earn that streak. To put that Cup on their Head's mantle and keep it there.
And then suddenly all the rules are upended, for one mediocre first-year Gryff who Severus himself can't even control. All of their hard work in vain. And then it happens AGAIN. And again. And their Head of House either can't or won't do anything effective on their behalf - either way they're going to lose respect for him, and possibly trust that he actually gives a shit about them. And it goes steadily downhill. In GOF still they're avoiding direct misbehavior in his line of sight, but they're rather more open about it than we see previously... And by the time HBP opens they're viciously attacking Potter before he even gets to school.
Consider the example of Draco. Given the canon suggestion that there's some friendship or standing cordial relationship between Severus and Lucius (and especially if any of the fan theories about Sev as Draco's summer tutor are in the right ballpark), Draco in particular ought to be inclined to look up to Severus and follow his direction.
And what do we see? In the first two books we get Draco sucking up to Sev, his father's old friend - 'father says you're the best teacher here, father would put in a word if you wanted the Headmastership,' etc., and Severus praising Draco for examples of his careful hard work, to Draco's satisfaction. From the little we see Draco seems to at least respect Severus genuinely, and possibly actually like him.
But by book six we have him telling the man to literally go fuck off and die, he doesn't want or need his help, thank you very much. When Draco is desperate and lost and frightened and crying to Myrtle, of all people, for support. Yes, some of it is upset that Severus seems to have taken Lucius' position of favor, but even jealousy and the like isn't going to stand long against utter terror. If he has any remaining genuine respect for Severus and belief in his ability and willingness to help, he ought to - resentfully, maybe, swallowing his pride - at the least accept his offer of support. Try listening to him even once. For the sake of his and his parents'lives.
Instead he tells the man to go eat an Unbreakable Vow, and carries on alone.
Which, I think, says rather a lot about just how far Severus' status has fallen in his charges' eyes. And, well, we see how effective he was able to be that year with Draco, don't we? And not for lack of trying.
Re: Finally, Severus clinging to rules
Date: 2015-08-17 04:38 pm (UTC)I've long suspected that one of those fears lurking beneath Sev's increasingly desperate attempts to haul the BWL around was indeed that he might be watching his most important charge heading down a path he himself knows all too well, and thus might be failing him on that level despite all his frantic efforts to make the boy wake up and change course. But nothing he does seems to have any effect other than making things worse, the headmaster is undermining him at every step of the way, he's losing the Slytherins too, the Dark Lord keeps attempting to return, every ghost (or werewolf) from his past is suddenly being resurrected and shoved in his face... And then the Dark Lord really does come back and it's all-out war again.
And then the boy, the stupid stupid boy, starts letting the Dark Lord in, starts falling right into his traps even though he's been warned about it. Lets the Dark Lord's attentions make him feel special perhaps, feel important...
And the boy, heedless, closes his eyes and ears to the danger and lets himself get led up the garden path. And gets someone he cares about killed. Despite everything Severus did to try to avert it, from behind the scenes.
But this time the headmaster isn't taking the opportunity to hammer home a lesson about where the boy's gone wrong, showing him a new course. Letting him learn the virtues of repentance. Wake up, boy.
This time, this boy, gets it all excused, every bit of it. Praised for it. Go back to sleep, boy. And all of the blame, every bit of it, goes back to Severus.
I have to wonder if Severus' steady disenchantment with Albus doesn't, ah, go back a little earlier than those absurd, devastating orders he got from him the next year.
Re: Finally, Severus clinging to rules
Date: 2015-08-17 05:09 pm (UTC)Well. I find myself returning to a certain play, again.
"The villainy you teach me I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction."
*
In high school one year, for theater class, we put on a selection of scenes from Merchant. I was thrilled when, for the first time in that class, I finally got to play a big role: I was cast as Portia for the trial scene. The performance went off wonderfully, we all had a fantastic time with the Bard. And for some years after that when I looked back at that performance, I would of course think first on Portia's grand speech, my crowning moment on the stage that year, discoursing on the quality of mercy. That was what stuck in my mind what everyone who I mentioned the role to immediately brought up. Because everyone loves Portia and Portia's speech. Don't they?
And then I went back and re-read the play properly. And one of those subtle shifts happened without my even quite noticing it at first. I found myself quoting Portia less and less, and quoting Shylock more and more. And once you get inside Shylock's head, it's hard not to sympathize. Even if one doesn't - can't - quite approve of taking a literal pound of flesh.
But oh, people forget how cruel Portia was too, in the end. What was that about the quality of mercy again? Remind me.
Re: More on Minerva--another inspired touch
Date: 2015-08-18 10:05 am (UTC)Re: More on Minerva--another inspired touch
Date: 2015-08-19 04:11 am (UTC)Collateral damage or secondary target?
Date: 2015-08-19 04:26 am (UTC)Well, he killed it.
Utterly.
After his shining example, no Slytherin in canon, EVER, ever admits publicly to any ambition that isn't completely self-referential.
War, again; all I can do is quote you
Date: 2015-08-19 04:36 am (UTC)And then the boy, the stupid stupid boy, starts letting the Dark Lord in, starts falling right into his traps even though he's been warned about it. Lets the Dark Lord's attentions make him feel special perhaps, feel important...
And the boy, heedless, closes his eyes and ears to the danger and lets himself get led up the garden path. And gets someone he cares about killed. Despite everything Severus did to try to avert it, from behind the scenes.
Oh, poor Severus!
Re: Severus and the Slytherins
Date: 2015-08-19 07:31 am (UTC)There are very few Slytherin students whose actions and allegiances we know in any sort of detail. How many do we see cheating? I mean really cheating, not just playing a rough game of Quidditch? And really, how many are Voldemort supporters?
Draco is Marked and has been given a task; Crabbe and Goyle are strong supporters as well, though we don’t know that they’re Marked. Pansy is a fellow traveller; nothing indicates that she or her family are actual Death Eaters. No one else is identified as a Voldemort supporter.
A few more of them are seen to join Umbridge’s Inquisitorial Squad, but Umbridge, vile as she is, is not a follower of Voldemort; her loyalty is to the Ministry. The Slytherins seem to see the Inquisitorial Squad mainly as a convenient (and temporary) way to get back at their private enemies and at the same time earn points with someone who has Ministry connections. Not admirable, but nothing that Dumbledore’s Army (which excluded all Slytherins) wouldn’t do for the sake of their titular leader.
JKR certainly means us to see all Slytherin students, without exception, as cheaters, bullies, and incipient Death Eaters, but she shows us only a few.
Re: More on Minerva--another inspired touch
Date: 2015-08-19 03:01 pm (UTC)Nah, that's more Albus' line, isn't it?
Lemon sherbert? *twinkle*
If I can hijack the Bard again, a certain line keeps popping into my mind:
"O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain!"
(I'm eager to see what you do with her in UA now!)
Re: Collateral damage or secondary target?
Date: 2015-08-19 03:07 pm (UTC)Plus, this has the (subconscious, I'm sure) benefit of leaving them prey to Voldemort and thus continuing the threat that he uses to claim power for himself. And it nicely puts a certain restive minion back in his place and keeps him manipulable.
And very very conveniently gives Harry plenty of proof to support those biases Hagrid fed him at his introduction to the ww, confirming the Headmaster's view of things as correct.
Damn it.
Re: Severus and the Slytherins
Date: 2015-08-19 03:11 pm (UTC)Yeah, there are several Slytherins we really know almost nothing about. Including their allegiances and attitude toward Harry. And none of the "good guys" ever makes room for them or invites any of them to the table to see if they can be won over - they're immediately identified as enemies on the basis of House and shunned.
That's...not really going to give even the best of them any motivation whatsoever to do more than, at best, ignore Harry and co.
Which, we do see them do.
Re: War, again; all I can do is quote you
Date: 2015-08-19 03:17 pm (UTC)No wonder Sev was on the verge of losing it so often that year. Protecting his charge had just lined itself up with what I can only imagine must be a deeply-felt impossible wish to be able to go back in time and shove some sense into another boy's thick skull while there's still time.
But teenage boys just never want to listen.
(And it's even in part Sirius Black's unwitting fault. And he snared himself again too, didn't he?)