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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.

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Ooh, thank you! This prompted me to go look at Snape's Pensieve memories in DH as well (duh on me! I'd forgotten they talked about this in those memories) and that indeed answers the question – the prank came sometime before the fifth-year "worst memory" scene, though we don't know specifically when. (More about that below.)

"PoA mentions Sirius having been sixteen" – do you remember where? I didn't find that.

I completely agree that this order of events (the "worst memory" bullying coming after the prank) doesn't speak well of the Marauders at all. Their taunting of him in the "worst memory" scene seems casually malicious (they were bored, he was there), as opposed to targeted at getting Snape to keep quiet about what he knows about Remus, and that seems pretty awful. To nearly get him killed (even if James did also save him), then just go on casually bullying him... Harry (and Lily!) isn't wrong that 15-year-old James was a pretty insensitive jerk... 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...?

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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!

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Go for it! :-) I'd think there's potential there, even, to do a sort of "five different ways..." fic or something – as in, exploring the same snippet of time from a bunch of different angles – I'd say there's enough leeway there to do everything from "Sirius as a sociopath and Snape as unfairly wronged" to entirely the opposite...

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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.

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Thank you! I checked (more detail below) and the prank did come before the "worst memory" scene, though we don't know for sure that it was during the same year. (So I guess we also don't know for sure whether James was an Animagus yet at the time.)

You're completely right that Snape already knows for sure about Remus (having glimpsed him, transformed, down the end of the tunnel during the "prank") at the point that he's heavily dropping hints to Lily. Funny, I'd vaguely assumed, just based on my memory of that dropping-hints scene, that Snape didn't yet know for sure at that point – he was only guessing based on what he'd been able to figure out himself. (He's "ill"? Every full moon?) But that conversation states quite specifically that the prank had already happened before it. I guess what's going on is that Snape does know, but he's trying to present it to Lily *as if* it's just a theory of his, backed up by quite a bit of circumstantial proof. ("There's something weird about that Lupin. Where does he keep going?") Quite clever of him, actually, given that he's forbidden to tell what he knows!

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shimotsuki.livejournal.com

I think I'd agree with

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. :/

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You're right! The prank came before the worst memory (more in my reply to author_by_night above, and I'll lay out what I found in a more careful look back through the books below), though I haven't found anything to conclusively pin it to fifth year – theoretically, the prank could have been a year or two earlier than the worst memory, though happening during the same year seems like a more logical guess.

Completely agree – I would like to think the prank caused the Marauders to grow up a bit – but apparently it didn't. In fact, in PoA, adult Sirius even says – of having nearly gotten Snape killed – "It served him right. Sneaking around, trying to find out what we were up to... hoping he could get us expelled..." YIKES. Possibly Sirius' worst moment in the entire series, revealing that he feels no remorse for having nearly gotten a fellow student killed.

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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.

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I'll buy that – that Sirius said things in the heat of the moment during that tense scene in the Shrieking Shack that he might regret at other points. Then again, I'm guilty of just what you say, liking these characters and thus wanting to find ways to write them as ultimately sympathetic, if flawed, people! (Definitely I've come to like Sirius a huge amount more through fanfiction, which...does that mean fanfiction is simply giving us a chance to explore the character more deeply? Or is fanfiction distorting the character from who he actually was in canon? I dunno!)

Do you really think JKR meant us to see the Marauders as responsible for their own downfall? It seems to me she has a lot of love and sympathy for them in the way she writes them, and that their tragedy is more a result of forces around them that are beyond their control. You could make that argument, though, that the mistrust and lies and suspecting the wrong person was what led to their downfall, and that the difference with the trio was that they found a way to come closer together despite their doubts and jealousies, rather than be pushed apart...

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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.

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All right, y'all, if you're interested in the answer to this question as I've been able to piece it together so far, here goes:

PS: Doesn't give us anything about timeline, just Dumbledore saying, "Your father did something Snape could never forgive. [...] He saved his life."

PoA: Remus describes the prank, including stating that Snape did in fact catch a glimpse of him, in werewolf form, at the end of the tunnel, but doesn't say how old they were when it happened.

OotP: Snape's worst memory (being taunted by James and Sirius and then inadvertently insulting Lily, resulting in the end of their friendship) happened during OWLs, i.e., end of fifth year. But we don't learn anything about the prank or when it happened in relation to the "worst memory."

DH: Here's where we actually get the timeline, since we're presented Snape's memories in the Pensieve in chronological order.

In the scene where Lily's objecting to Snape's Slytherin friends, and they then start talking Remus, with Snape very heavily hinting that he's a werewolf, Lily says, "I heard what happened the other night. You went sneaking down that tunnel by the Whomping Willow and James Potter saved you from whatever's down there." – As in, that conversation between Lily and Snape takes place very shortly after the "prank" happened.

In the sequence of Snape's memories that we see, that Lily-and-Severus conversation is directly followed by the "worst memory" scene that took place during OWLs at the end of fifth year. However, the memory directly before the Lily-and-Severus conversation is of them getting Sorted on the first day of their first year. So obviously there are big time jumps between memories. All we know to place the Lily-and-Severus conversation is that Harry, observing, thinks they look "a few years" older than at the Sorting. So theoretically that conversation – and by association, the prank – could have happened any time from, say, late in third year, to very shortly before the end of fifth year (though before OWLs and Snape's worst memory).

Logically, I'd guess that it makes sense to assume it happened sometime during fifth year – but I don't see any evidence in canon that establishes that for sure.

Thoughts? Any details I missed that would pin this down further?? (author_by_night, you said something about Sirius having been described as 16 at the time of the prank...?)

(Again, I don't actually *need* to know, for my current story-writing purposes, I just find it interesting...)

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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

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Oh, nicely spotted! Yes, Snape says that during one of his rants in the hospital wing near the end of the book.

Actually it looks like the wiki has Sirius' birthday in autumn (his death was in June), so that works – he would have turned 16 sometime in the middle of 5th year. Yay, for once JKR math works! ;-)

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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)

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Huh! I wonder what hp-lexicon is basing that on. I generally trust them as very thorough, but if that's based, for example, only on the statement that Sirius was 16 at the time, then that's not really enough proof, because he easily could have been 16 for the second half or so of his 5th year...

I suppose Snape's memories might not be chronological, but all the rest of them do seem to be in order... Also, as stereolightning pointed out above, Lily and Snape's friendship ended completely when he called her a Mudblood (in the worst memory, at the end of 5th year), so that conversation where they're talking as friends and discuss the prank that happened "the other night" has to have come before the worst memory.

...Which, darn it, I totally agree, character development-wise, I want it to be in 6th year, too! But it looks like the evidence in favor of 5th year is pretty strong.

Then again, JKR is notoriously bad at keeping her math straight, so maybe we should feel free to interpret it as we like. ;-)

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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

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So true! And that's the wonderful thing about fanfic, we're free to interpret and imagine all kinds of background events we didn't get to see, which can color canon events in an infinite number of ways... :-)

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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.

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Ooh, nice detail! I don't have the books in front of me right now either, but I'm pretty sure Sirius refers only to James – that James was 15 at the time. Then again, apparently James has a March birthday, so by OWLs of his 5th year, he was already 16. Ugh, JKR math, whyyyyy?

(Okay, to be fair, Sirius is making an off-handed comment about something that happened decades ago, so it's realistic that he doesn't remember whether James was 15 or 16 at the time. Also, JKR was very much focused on making the point that James was (about) 15 then, and Harry is 15 now, so that's fair enough, too. But still, JKR math...!)

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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)

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It's a canon-drum!

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Ha. :D

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