regarding OotP, an aside

[petronia]

I have this thing I want to write, about how I don't think the behaviour of James and Sirius was really as blatantly horrible as everyone says. Or perhaps it is, but that the emotions involved aren't black-and-white, they're Complicated, and they exist for a reason other than we're-being-testosterone-poisoned-fifteen-year-old-jocks-looking-for-someone-to-push-around. This is because schooldays!Snape - now that I've gotten a better look at him - reminds me very strongly of a girl who was in my year. I still feel uncomfortable when I think of her, because by the time I was through my junior cycle I loathed her with an intensity I've never experienced before or since. When I say never I mean it: never, and when all is told she did very little to me that was objectionable. I started seventh grade going out of my way to make friends with her.

There's no way to be friends with some people. Whether or not it's their fault is a moot point.

I'm sorry that her life in school was hell, because though I never really took my feelings out on her others did, and she was ostracised. I was sorry then, too, actually, but it made no impact on the dislike I felt and still feel. That kind of emotion can be reasoned away about as well as love can.

This is not to say that Snape deserved the high school experience he got, only that it does take a good five years of history at least to build up the kind of prejudice where the walls can't come down in adulthood on either side. I like Snape as he is in the present of the books, though I have no illusions about him being a nice person, or even the possibility of him becoming more personable, should he manage to make some peace with himself and those around him. I don't like him as he was in his fifth year at Hogwarts. The overlapping images from memory are too vivid. There's sympathy and recoil at once, and I picture myself like Remus, frowning but tuning them out instead of trying to stop what's happening, because I don't really want to help the victim; I just wish my friends would stop engaging in distasteful behaviour.

And when Lily does intervene, he gives her the middle finger basically. That's most familiar of all.

I can't put this across properly in an essay; I've probably insulted Snape fans, Lupin fans, and godaloneknows. What I should do is write it out in fic, but that would actually be too personal, close to painful. How do you rationalise that kind of unreasonable like or dislike, when it makes you do things you know on some level is wrong? Is hatred any easier to explain than love? ...And I'm an introspective wanker by nature at that. Mixed feelings like these would probably just irritate a person like Sirius to the point of outburst, and I'm not surprised anymore that he and Snape couldn't be adults around each other.