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[personal profile] starfishstar
Hello out there Harry Potter friends! I've been trying to figure something out, and thought I'd put the question to your collective wisdom:

Does canon ever tell us exactly when "The Prank" (Sirius telling Snape how to get past the Whomping Willow and thus nearly getting him killed by a transformed Remus) took place? I think I've seen some fic writers place it in the Marauders' 6th year, but is there evidence for that? I went back and checked in the book (PoA chapter 18) where Remus describes the incident, and he doesn't say anything specific about when it was. (In fact, he doesn't even say whether it was before or after the other Marauders became Animagi in their fifth year, so theoretically it could have been much earlier, in their third year or something!) Remus' bio on Pottermore doesn't say either.

This is for a story I'm writing about Remus and Sirius reconnecting and revisiting some of the demons from their past just after GoF/just before OotP (yeah, the whole thing of stepping back from one-shots for a while so that I can focus both on my long fic, and on original writing, isn't quite working... though I'm also working on the long fic, and on original writing... no wonder I feel so discombobulated lately!)

It's not essential to know this – I could just mention "when Sirius played the prank on Snape," as opposed to "when Sirius played the prank on Snape in their Xth year" – but it's something that's always niggled at me, and I thought maybe someone out there might know!

Date: 2014-03-29 12:06 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] author-by-night.livejournal.com
It's a bit confusing. PoA mentions Sirius having been sixteen, which I think made everyone think it was his sixth year, but the DH flashback with Lily and Snape implies it took place before their OWLs, as Snape's telling Lily he thought he saw Remus transformed, and Lily's reaction is basically "okay, now you're just coming up with conspiracy theories." However, I kind of have issues with the idea of the Marauders having bullied Snape after almost getting him killed, unless they had heard he'd told Lily and were doing it as some sort of warning? (Which would actually make a lot of sense - not that that was the best way to approach it.) I've still set the prank after the Pensieve Scene, but canonically speaking I think it was supposed to be before.

Date: 2014-04-01 12:10 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] stereolightning.livejournal.com
Then again, I suppose we don't know what happened in the intervening time between the prank and the worst memory – maybe the bad feelings over the prank only served to make all of them behave even more terribly to each other, to the point that tension was running really high by the end of fifth year...?

Ahhhh I want to write or read a fic about this so BADLY now!

Date: 2014-03-29 04:55 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] stereolightning.livejournal.com
Ooh! Good question. I assume it's in their fifth year because in Snape's pensieve memory when he's talking to Lily, pretty close to the moment when they break off their friendship forever, he is giving her very strong hints that he knows what Remus is. "Every month? At the full moon?" And I think she says "I know your theory." This conversation can't be later than fifth year because they're not friends after that. And Lupin's account in PoA makes it sound like Snape didn't know for sure what Remus' deal was until he "glimpsed me at the end of the tunnel and from that time on he knew what I was" or something to that effect. So it seems like the "prank" was what solidified that information for Snape, although I guess he could have just been guessing before. Anyway, I thought Snape was supposed to never speak of Remus' secret again, and he was trying really hard to tell Lily anyway, because of course he would - he is desperate to drive a wedge between her and those pesky Gryffindor boys.

I suppose the other place you could look for clues is in Book 1 when Dumbledore tells Harry that James saved Snape's life when they were at school.

But with the evidence I can recall off the top of my head, I assume it's in fifth year. And also - that would mean that James can probably transform at this point, and DOESN'T, or Snape would have known he was an Animagus (and probably worked out that everybody else in that group was, too). Which - CRAP. Kudos to James for holding that together in the middle of a crisis.

Date: 2014-03-30 03:45 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] shimotsuki.livejournal.com
I think I'd agree with [livejournal.com profile] stereolightning that Snape's sequence of memories in DH suggests fifth year -- in fact, before the Snape's Worst Memory scene, which happened during their OWLs. This deeply disappointed me on first reading DH, because I'd always assumed The Prank had made the Marauders grow up quite a bit and that it was their last time really bullying Snape. But if the scene by the lake was after The Prank, then it looks like there wasn't so much growing up done, after all. :/

Date: 2014-03-30 10:00 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] author-by-night.livejournal.com
To be fair, Sirius wasn't quite in his right mind at that point. However... I think fandom took a more favorable approach to MWPP than we were supposed to have. I think they had the best of intentions, but the reason they're all killed off is because they really screwed themselves over the first time around; Snape included. They're slaves to their own mishaps, they're their own Dementors. The trio (and to a certain extent, Teddy) are the second chance they never got. Which is downright depressing, but I think that's what JKR intended.

However, because I want to love them, I choose to ignore the fact that it may have been the entire point of their arc.

Date: 2014-03-31 11:29 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] author-by-night.livejournal.com
Oh, I definitely think we're still meant to love them - she certainly seems to; apparently killing Sirius off was awful for her, she loved Remus and had him as a metaphor for AIDS patients who were discriminated against, and she gave Harry James's patronus. But I think she also wanted them to essentially be tragic heroes, good men who were nonetheless taken down by their own flaws. And yes, I think distrust was a huge part of it - the trio has some of that, but they're able to come back from it before it's too late.

Date: 2014-03-30 01:53 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] stereolightning.livejournal.com
Oh yes, in PoA Snape says something to Dumbledore about Sirius proving he was "capable of murder at the age of 16." So I think that puts the prank definitely in fifth year. After whenever Sirius' birthday is. Which apparently is in June. Wait, what? http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Sirius_Black

Date: 2014-03-30 02:05 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] huldrejenta.livejournal.com
The hp-lexicon.org says "the prank" took Place in their Sixth year - here's this from Snape's timeline:

1 September: Begins sixth year at Hogwarts. Snape is 16 years old.

1976-1977 school year: Sirius tricks Snape into following Lupin through the passage beneath the Whomping Willow. James Potter, realizing that Snape would encounter a full-blown and very dangerous werewolf at the end of the passage, stops Snape from going through, thereby saving his life. Snape, much to his disgust, is indebted to James Potter because of this. Dumbledore calls this a "life debt."


http://www.hp-lexicon.org/timelines/timeline_snape.html

I feel it's more logical that it happened during their Sixth year, for reasons you've already mentioned.
I don't know how certain we can be that Snape's memories are purely cronological? Snape was not exatly in a very relaxed state when he retreived the memories to Harry, heh.
Edited Date: 2014-03-30 02:06 pm (UTC)

Date: 2014-03-31 11:30 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] huldrejenta.livejournal.com
Then again, JKR is notoriously bad at keeping her math straight, so maybe we should feel free to interpret it as we like. ;-)

Absolutely!
There're several inconsistencies, and apparently some mistakes on birth dates and so on.

Another thing - even if The Prank happened before Snape's worst memories - that certainly doesn't seem good for the Marauders, especially Sirius and James - but we know very little about what really happened and the circumstances leading up to it. What we do know about the relationship between Snape and the Marauders we see mostly from Snape's POV, and while I do have quite a lot of sympathy for Snape as a character, he is more than able to be quite cruel himself even as an adult. Okay, this is totally besides the point, lol, and maybe it's just me trying to justify the actions of beloved characters ;) I really love the Marauders, and the people they grew up to be ;D

Date: 2014-04-01 08:07 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] huldrejenta.livejournal.com
Fanfic is a wonderful thing :)

I thought of one thing, though, but I don't have the books here now to confirm, so this is based solely on what I remember.

When Harry uses the Floo to talk to Sirius and Remus about Snape's worst memories he'd just seen, doesn't Sirius say that they were fifteen when it happened? Harry says something like his father was an idiot, and Sirius answers "of course he was an idiot, we were fifteen, we were all idiots" or something like that. And then in the conversation with Dumbledore in PoA, Snape says that Sirius was sixteen when "The prank" happened. If I remember correctly.

Date: 2014-04-02 10:08 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] huldrejenta.livejournal.com
I agree that Snape's memories in DH may lean towards The Prank happening first.
On the other hand I do find it rather odd that JKR specifically says that at least some of the Marauders were fifteen during Snape's worst memories and that Sirius is sixteen when The Prank happened, if The Prank happened first.

Maybe this is just one of those things we won't know for sure until if or when JKR says anything more about it for instance on Pottermore.
And I've grown a bit weary about these revelations tbh, prefering to leave canon to be canon, and more so after the whole Ron/Hermione - Harry/Hermione-thing ;)


Edited Date: 2014-04-02 10:08 pm (UTC)

Date: 2014-03-30 07:44 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] stereolightning.livejournal.com
It's a canon-drum!

Date: 2014-03-30 10:10 pm (UTC)

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