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...?
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2014-03-30 10:08 am (UTC)"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...?