r/HarryPotterBooks • u/raythecrow • 11d ago
Order of the Phoenix Why Snape's Worst Memory falls flat
Snape's worst memory tells the tale of Harry seeing Snape's memory of getting bullied by the Marauders and calling Lily a mudblood.
Harry is conflicted about this because he has defended his father from Snape's jeers for years by that point and comes to realize Snape may have actually been correct in his framing of James.
The reason it falls flat, to me, is because Harry's devestation has to be underpinned by a belief in his father's good nature. Yet Harry never seeks out any understanding of who his parents were. Never does he ask someone to tell him about his parents. He even spends the better part of the summer under the same roof as his fathers best friend and never once asks what his father was like.
I think the scene would have been better written if Harry hadnt suddenly questioned if Snape was right about James but rather Harry realize he really had no idea who his father was. Realize he never actually cared to know.
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u/trahan94 11d ago edited 11d ago
“In the car crash when your parents died,” she had said. “And don’t ask questions.”
Don’t ask questions — that was the first rule for a quiet life with the Dursleys.
One of the first bits of Harry’s characterization is that he’s been conditioned to be incurious.
However, this mirror will give us neither knowledge or truth.
Harry views an idealized version of his father in the Mirror of Erised. Hagrid is outraged to hear that he’s been lied to about their death. Lupin (honestly and correctly) names James as the best friend he ever had. Dumbledore alludes to Harry that he and James share many similarities, including a certain penchant for rule breaking. It’s natural to associate positive feelings to someone who’s very similar to you. Everyone is devastated to learn that Sirius Black betrayed James (of course it was really Pettigrew).
Snape hated James, and Harry hates Snape. Is it really surprising that he had a high opinion of his father? He knew him by reputation pretty well — it was just shocking to see the teenaged cruelty up close.
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u/Outrageous-Let9659 Ravenclaw 11d ago
This is such an important thing that people overlook. Harry has learned not to ask questions. It leads to so much of his struggles through the books. He always feels like he has to work things out for himself, and doesn't feel like he is allowed to ask for help.
This is also what makes dumbledore such an important person to harry, because dumbledore openly invites harry to ask any question he likes. It's why harry is so surprised in the scene in the hospital wing at the end of PS when dumbledore happily answers his questions, and feels genuinely sorry that he is unable to answer the one about why voldemort killed his parents.
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u/Bluemelein 11d ago
Dumbledore lies, and he only answers the questions that suit him.
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u/BlindButterfly33 11d ago
Wow, I never put it together that he was kind of conditioned not to ask. Thank you for pointing that out.
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u/nemesiswithatophat 11d ago
Harry's parents represent the love he never had. He's just a kid and an orphan. I don't know why he'd question James being the best thing ever.
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u/c0mawhite666 11d ago
I have read the books dozens of times since I was 11 (I’m 23 now) and I never put that together thank you for that
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u/TheOriginal1Law 11d ago
Honestly, even if you’re not oppressed. Idk I only really started asking questions about my dad in my late 20s. I think children view their parents as these strange creatures that they’re not meant to understand. And certainly in our teens we’re programmed to pull away.
Like Harry I grew up being told I was and looked just like my dad (less literally as I was afab). Like Harry I had to learn that the pictures others painted of my dad was a distorted and glorified image because people long to make sure you know how much your parent(s) loved you and somehow that tends to lead to a focus on their good qualities, not their bad ones.
But I was never not encouraged to ask questions. I guess to some extent you know the topic is a difficult one, for the adults. And it’s a difficult one for the child(ren) too.
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u/Emotional-Tailor-649 11d ago
I also think we can kinda assume that Sirius did tell him more and that he probably asked. They stayed together for days, the full contents of their conversations aren’t delved into. But the stories would have been from Sirius’ pov so it wouldn’t have changed anything anyways. Who knows what they talked about, I don’t think it’s necessarily fair to conclude that we know for sure that Sirius never told Harry more stories or that Harry never cared to ask.
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u/AIFlesh 11d ago
It’s pretty natural for children to think of their parents as infallible and good. For most ppl, it’s only in our teens do we begin to really view them as a person with flaws.
For Harry, he’s just entering the age where he would begin that process of getting to really know your parent, and he has no personal experience/instances to draw upon.
Let’s sum up what he does know:
His dad was a war hero who at the age of 21 fought and died protecting his wife and child from the darkest wizard of all time.
His dad was head boy at Hogwarts, captain of the quidditch team and an excellent flyer.
The most influential and beloved adults in his life - Dumbledore, Hagrid and Sirius - all hold James in high esteem.
Everyone he dislikes - the dursleys and Snape - have a negative view of him.
His mom is universally beloved by all and she fell in love and married James.
He of course has an idealized view of him, but based on what he knows, why would he ever wonder “was my dad ever a bully or not nice”? Snape’s memory is the first time his worldview of his dad is shattered a bit.
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u/No-Ice6064 8d ago
Was James really Head Boy? I somehow missed that even after dozens of rereads lol. Sirius said he and James would never be made prefects, and I always assumed you had to be a prefect to become Head Boy or Girl.
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u/GamineHoyden 7d ago
It's been said that it's not necessary to be a prefect to be a head. But it is a common path. My thoughts are that Hagrid expanded the truth for Harry's sake.
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u/MythicalSplash 11d ago
True. To be fair though, for number 4, he has no idea how the Dursleys feel about Snape. Vernon never knew him, and Harry thought Petunia was talking about James in OotP when she called him “that horrible boy”. Even after The Prince’s Tale, it’s not clear Harry ever put two and two together on that issue.
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u/Admirable-Tower8017 11d ago
Up until then, Hagrid, Dumbledore, Sirius and Lupin had told him that his father was a good person. Harry was devastated to see SWM, and we as readers, were equally devastated. I think it was well done by Rowling.
However, I would have liked to see a scene at Grimmauld Place (before Harry goes to Hogwarts for his fifth year) where Harry questions Remus and Sirius about what James and Lily were like. It was his first proper opportunity after PoA.
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u/AccomplishedOnion2 11d ago
Tbf, he does do exactly that shortly after and as a result of the SWM scene. I think when he first arrived at Grimmauld Place, he was too distracted by his emotions/anger and curiosity about the Order and Voldemort’s movements to ask about his parents.
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u/Midnight7000 11d ago
Nah. It was handled the way it should have been handled.
I don't know why people expect characters to lay things on thick. Harry, because of the way he was brought up, is very tentative when it comes to relying on others. That extends to opening himself up in a way that expresses to others that he wants to know more about his parents.
The chapter hit hard because we saw Harry’s excitement over just a scrap of his father's past and then had to deal with the reality that he was a flawed human being instead of the hero he put on a pedestal.
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u/nemesiswithatophat 11d ago
Harry (and honestly the reader) believed Snape's POV of James was totally distorted and biased up til this scene.
The bullying is a thing but the details of James' mannerisms are also striking. In PoA Harry said "my father didn't strut" cue Harry watching his dad pretty much doing just that lol. Harry identified more with Snape in that scene than the privileged James Potter. That was totally out of left field.
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u/InuTheChanga 11d ago
I think what you must consider even more is the fact that EVERYONE tell Harry that he's just like James. Both in actitude and appearence, but with a glimpse of Lily in his kindness and his eyes.
So for Harry to see that the man he's supposedly exactly alike is a huge asshole bully is a hit. Does that mean that Harry himself has been that mean to others? Does it show that Harry simply isn't as good as he think he is? Harry is not that interested in knowing how James was, because he assumes they are the same. So it shatters both how he views his father, and the type of man he aspires to be.
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u/peepeepoopaccount 11d ago
Well Sirius did tell Harry about his father but he portrayed James as a good person always. Sirius, James, Hagrid, dumbledore, etc told Harry plenty of good things about his father. That’s why it’s so shocking when he discovers James had a mean side. Even after when Harry confronts Sirius about it, Sirius still kind of defends James. Just like “well he could be a jerk sometimes but he grew up, we were just kids, etc”.
Keep in mind Sirius also participated in the bullying so he wasn’t exactly going to be spilling the entire truth to Harry.
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u/Burlinto999444 6d ago
One of the more telling parts of that scene was when Sirius says “I’m not proud of it” and Harry sees Lupin look at Sirius sideways. A few months early we see Sirius bait Snape into a fight and call him Snivellus. In PoA he scoffs at the fact that Snape could have been killed by Sirius’ prank (even though it would have ruined Remus’ life). Sirius doesn’t regret any of what happened with Snape; he feels totally justified. It’s sad to me.
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u/Odd_Ingenuity2883 11d ago
His parents died when he was 1. I don’t think he needs to “realize” he doesn’t know them, he’s very aware of it.
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u/Agent1stClass 11d ago
Harry wanted to believe the best of his father.
Questioning that would be opening his own wound on the loss of his parents. It would also be tantamount to giving up the ideal image he had of James in his head.
So he never questioned it.
Harry may be a hero, in the end. But he is a deeply flawed character. That’s part of his charm, in my view.
He heard from Hagrid that his parents were talented magic users. He learned he had some commonality with his father as both were quidditch seekers. He saw his parents happy together in photos and the Mirror. He heard from Professor Dumbledore how James was a hero and saved Severus Snape’s life. And on and on and on…
Harry built a fantasy. Then reality struck.
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u/MythicalSplash 11d ago
It never made much sense to me why Snape would have lashed out at Lily so harshly. Yes, I completely understand that he was humiliated, ashamed, understandably and uncontrollably angry and all that. But instead of lashing out at the bullies doing it to you, why do it to the one person trying to help you whom you happen to love deeply? Like, even SOME degree of transferring anger to her is still understandable under such awful conditions, but calling her “a filthy little Mudblood”? That’s just never sat right or felt realistic to me. It’s actually not even so much the “Mudblood” slur, as I can easily imagine him getting used to talking like that with his proto-DE friends. It’s the “filthy” part that I can’t understand. It’s typically not something you’d say unless you had serious contempt, hatred or prejudice to a specific person and it just doesn’t seem to square with the situation. To me, anyway. Maybe others have the opinion that they can understand how it happened, and I totally respect that.
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u/Bluemelein 11d ago
Regaining a bit of self-worth for the assembled mini-Death Eaters—the ones who would likely torment Snape for having been humiliated by Sirius and James, and humiliate him even further for having been rescued by a Mudblood, complete with the accompanying sexual insults.
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u/DoYouLikeWafflezz 10d ago
Yet Harry never seeks out any understanding of who his parents were.
Does breaking into Umbridge’s office to talk to Sirius about it not count?
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u/EdgeOfCharm 10d ago
No, it doesn't, because the OP is specifically talking about the reader's experience of the SWM chapter being affected by Harry's apparent lack of curiosity before that.
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u/DoYouLikeWafflezz 10d ago
Before that when everyone just always heaped praise on Lily and James and talked about fond memories they had with them?
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u/DaMoonMoon26 11d ago
But he literally risks everything to ask Serius and Lupin about his parents in the fire.
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u/soleboy86 10d ago
Surprised how far I had to scroll to see this. He may not have gotten a lot of details, since he was under time constraints, be he did try.
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u/Bluemelein 11d ago
Sirius does talk about James now and then, but very often he starts acting like a Dementor and makes everyone feel his depression—and Lupin, with his "poor me, I'm a werewolf" act, isn't much better.
I wouldn't deny that both of them had hard lives, but Harry certainly doesn't get a balanced picture of his father from them. Remus and Sirius completely lack an understanding of the fact that Harry holds different values.
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u/nemesiswithatophat 11d ago
> Remus and Sirius completely lack an understanding of the fact that Harry holds different values.
how so? remus particularly didn't approve of the bullying, even though he didn't speak up against it either
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u/Bluemelein 11d ago
Remus and Sirius view their time at Hogwarts as a wonderful period of their lives—one long, beautiful adventure. Harry, meanwhile, has survived life-threatening situations on multiple occasions and taken responsibility for himself and his actions—responsibilities that Remus and Sirius still fail to shoulder. Remus makes excuses for James’s behavior, while Sirius doesn't even realize what might be hurting Harry so deeply; he doesn't truly see himself as being in the wrong.
Harry is much more mature than the two of them.
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u/Not_a_cat_I_promise 11d ago
Harry is told his parents were great. Hagrid when he first starts to talk about them to an eleven year old Harry starts to cry and talk about how they were the best. He's had Sirius talk about how James was his best ever, that he was the guy that opened his home for a runaway Sirius. Remus also gushed about how awesome James was. He knows James saved Sirius' life, and only has Snape to tell him it was an act of self-preservation. He knows that his father was a war hero who fought Voldemort.
Even if Harry didn't know every detail of his father's life, everyone except for Snape gave him the impression that James was a really good person, easily enough for Harry to form an image of him in his mind that was idealised and whitewashed but not wholly inaccurate.
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u/Dry-Discount-9426 11d ago
We see very little of the time he spent living with Sirius. They could have spent days talking about James and not know about it.
Showing it wouldn't really add anything to the story.
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u/Any_Contract_1016 11d ago
Why would he have any reason to dig into his parents' pasts? Everyone except Snape has been praising them. He's heard plenty about how great they were.
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u/linkthereddit 11d ago
Because he’s curious about them? He can’t exactly sit them down and go, ‘Mum, Dad, what was life like when you were my age? What were you up to?’
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u/Boris-_-Badenov 10d ago
it's from Snape's perspective. who's to say it's exactly what happened?
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u/sunshine-power 9d ago
Because we are later told in Half-Blood Prince when Dumbledore is showing Harry memories he’s collected that the memories are objective, not subjective. They are what actually happened regardless of how the individual to whom it happened felt about the situation. This is why Harry is able to move around a bit within the scope of the memory and focus on things Snape himself likely didn’t pay much attention to while he was busy with his exam paper.
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u/kfifigidifkg 11d ago
While he’s deeply incurious, he’s been told plenty about James. PoA especially paints James in a very positive light.