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Chapter 1106: What Kind of Person?
🕑 Added 2024-05-07 14:00:07 +0000 UTCHarry looked at Sirius, Evan, and Hermione with a complicated gaze and told what he saw. He did not talk about what happened after being caught by Snape, and he did not say that he could no longer go to Snape for Occlumency lessons. He only talked about the memories he saw in the Pensieve.
This was the main reason for his recent bad mood, and also why he argued with Ron because he didn't participate in the D.A.
He couldn't believe that his father was actually such a person.
After that day, Harry had been feeling so unhappy and horrified, not because Snape yelled at him or threw jars at him, but because he knew how it felt to be humiliated in the middle of a circle of onlookers.
He knew exactly how Snape had felt as his father had taunted him, and that judging from what he had just seen in the Pensieve, his father had been every bit as arrogant as Snape had always told him.
The more he thought about it, the sadder he felt. He felt as though the memory from the Pensieve was eating him from inside.
He had been so sure that his parents had been wonderful people that he never had the slightest difficulty in disbelieving Snape’s aspersions on his father’s character.
He thought Snape was lying. Hadn’t people like Hagrid and Sirius told Harry how wonderful his father had been?
But look what Sirius was like himself. He was disdainful of rules, impulsive, arrogant, and reckless.
Harry should have known a long time ago. Since his father could become best friends with Sirius, it was obvious what kind of person James was. He had once overheard Professor McGonagall saying that his father and Sirius had been troublemakers at school, but she had described them as forerunners of the Weasley twins.
But Harry could not imagine Fred and George dangling someone upside down for the fun of it ... not unless they really loathed them … Perhaps Malfoy, or somebody who really deserved it ….
Harry tried to make a case for Snape having deserved what he had suffered at James’s hands — but hadn’t Lily asked, “What’s he done to you?” And hadn’t James replied, “It’s more the fact that he exists, if you know what I mean?”
Hadn’t James started it all simply because Sirius said he was bored?
When Ron and Hermione became prefects, Harry remembered Lupin saying back in Grimmauld Place that Dumbledore had made him prefect in the hope that he would be able to exercise some control over James and Sirius... But in the Pensieve, he had sat there and let it all happen...
Harry reminded himself that Lily had intervened; his mother had been decent, yet the memory of the look on her face as she had shouted at James disturbed him quite as much as anything else.
She had clearly loathed James and Harry simply could not understand how they could have ended up married.
At that moment, he even wondered whether James had forced her into it, using magic or other despicable means...
For nearly five years the thought of his father had been a source of comfort, of inspiration. Whenever someone had told him he was like James he had glowed with pride inside. And now … now he felt cold and miserable at the thought of him.
That was why Harry urgently needed to talk to Sirius, otherwise he felt like he was going to be driven crazy.
Listening to Harry talking about this memory, Evan was also thinking.
It seemed that Harry's parents didn't have a very good relationship until the end of fifth grade.
At least, that was how it seemed on the surface. James wanted to go out on a date with Lily, but it had never worked out.
They were more like enemies than lovers, James was more like a worse version of Malfoy, and then he took a fancy to a pretty, smart Muggle girl in school, similar to Hermione, and used this childish method to attract her attention.
This metaphor was quite frightening to think about.
As for Snape, this guy was extremely pitiful when he was a student.
He must have become a Death Eater by then, but that didn't help him learn how to interact with girls.
In Evan's opinion, Snape was really out of his mind when he called Lily a ‘filthy little Mudblood’ when he was angry.
Before that, Lily obviously still had feelings for him, but because of that sentence, the two proud and arrogant people went on completely different paths in life.
Snape must have regretted it a lot; that was why he hid this memory away.
Of course, what James and Sirius did also made him feel humiliated, being stripped of his underwear in front of everyone...
Regardless of who it was, they would have psychological shadows.
It was a miracle that Snape hadn’t killed everyone present.
After so many years, he could still look at the child of his enemy so calmly, the child of his enemy and his most beloved woman...
Evan had no way of understanding this complex and twisted feeling. Just thinking about it made him very tangled.
Like Harry, Hermione was also shocked, covering her mouth in disbelief.
Sirius said nothing and listened to Harry silently, with a look of nostalgia on his face.
Then he noticed Harry looking at him excitedly.
"Look, Harry, I wouldn’t like you to judge your father on what you saw from Snape," he said in a soothing tone. "You know, this kind of judgment is very one-sided and incomplete. It’s not fair.”
"What does complete look like? You won't tell me anything about my parents," said Harry sadly.
"This is my fault. As your godfather, I should tell you these things completely. I have this responsibility. I promise, Harry, I’ll tell you everything completely during this summer vacation," said Sirius in a sad tone. "I hope you won't think too much now. You need to know that James was only fifteen at the time…"
"I’m fifteen!"
"Yes, but you have to understand this," said Sirius patiently, "James and Snape hated each other from the moment they set eyes on each other, it was just one of those things, you can understand that, can’t you? I think James was everything Snape wanted to be — he was popular; he was good at Quidditch, good at pretty much everything. And Snape was just this little oddball who was up to his eyes in the Dark Arts and James — whatever else he may have appeared to you, Harry — always hated the Dark Arts."
"Yeah, he hated the Dark Arts and wouldn't use it," said Harry. "But this does not mean he was a good person, just like Mr. Barty Crouch, he also hated the Dark Arts, but he did so many terrible things..."
