Snapedom

We had a debate going on the PoA spork about the “poisoning Trevor” Potions lesson. It sparked some thoughts: first on cruelty to animals in the Potterverse; secondly, on how JKR chose to highlight some incidents and downplay others (part I). And then I thought about how Snape used this particular incident to establish a reputation for cruelty, and why he might have wanted to do so… (part II) . So I thought I’d bring the debate about the “poisoning Trevor” potions class over here, and let everyone join in.


Part I: PETA has no Branch in the Potterverse



When I was eleven (not thirteen), a classmate brought a garter snake to school. Had he been caught, the snake would have been confiscated and the boy punished. But if a teacher had threatened to kill the snake in front of us, we would not have believed the threat. Even if we believed that the teacher hated snakes, or hated the boy, or was evil enough to relish killing animals, we wouldn’t have believed s/he would follow through. Because in my town any teacher who openly killed a child’s pet would have been sacked, and probably the principal sacked for hiring that teacher in the first place, and maybe a new school board voted in for having hired the principal. Killing pets in front of children was simply not acceptable behavior. In my community.

So while it’s certainly to Snape’s discredit that Neville (and apparently the other children) thought him capable of wanting to poison a pet—it’s equally to the WW’s discredit. Because to take the threat seriously, the children had also to believe that the professor expected he could actually carry it out with impunity. Neville, Ron, and some of the Slytherins are, after all, Purebloods from old families—they have, by age thirteen, at least some idea of what behavior is condoned in their society and what is not. Which means that abusing, even killing, pets—in front of children—was conduct they thought their seniors would consider acceptable in a teacher.

The only other time we saw a Hogwarts student bring a pet to class (also Neville/Trevor, as it happens), the professor used the pet in a classroom demonstration. So that may actually be S.O.P. at Hogwarts—scare the kids into leaving their pets in the dorms by using any animal brought to class as a test subject.

Now, the scene in which Snape used Trevor as a test subject was written with great detail; Neville’s fear for his pet was made very real to us. So of course, Snape looked cruel (as he was) for subjecting Neville to such fear, even though he never actually harmed the toad. In contrast, the class where Flitwick used Trevor as a test subject was just casually mentioned after the event. So we weren’t shown anything that could trigger a “how mean!” reaction about nice little Professor Flitwick.

But when you think about it—what Flitwick actually did was to “zoom” Trevor about the room. Now, my family had pets of many species—no toads, but many other types, from turtles to Labradors. Every animal I’ve ever owned would have been terrified at being levitated. You know, like those Muggles levitated by Malfoy’s crew at the QWC were? So it’s arguable that Flitwick’s use of Trevor as a test subject would have caused the toad distress, as Snape’s did not.

Moreover, Neville is the boy whose family tested him for magic by dropping him—off piers, out of windows…. And it’s canon that Neville is afraid of flying (brooms in book 1, thestrals in book 5)—he’s described variously as “white with fear” and “shaking.” So though Harry (who loves flying) might have found the sight of a toad being “zoomed” helplessly about the room cool, it is hard to imagine that Neville wouldn’t have been upset by it. But as it all happened off camera, JKR’s readers were not affected by seeing Neville terrified for Trevor.

Similarly, we are told (in Ron’s notes in Fantastic Beasts) that Fred killed Ron’s pet Puffskein by “using it for Bludger practice.” Stop and think about that. A boy took a club and beat a ball of fluff, his baby brother’s pet, to death. If we had seen that—if JKR had made us read that scene, or one of Ron coming across the bloodied body of his pet—would we so easily have bought the image of Fred as a lovable prankster?

Indeed, in CoS when the twins experimented with stuffing fireworks down a salamander’s gullet, JKR played the scene for laughs. I reread carefully; we aren’t actually told whether the unfortunate beast survived. We are told that sparks showered from its mouth, that the terrified beast escaped into the fire, and that there were “accompanying explosions.” And no one but Percy reacted negatively to the salamander’s possible danger, fear, or pain, and we readers are expected to react that, oh, that was just Percy being an officious little rule-upholder again. We would certainly have felt differently about the incident if the salamander, rather than being stolen from the teacher, belonged to a firstie who was screaming in terror for her pet while the twins laughed.

The point is this: Snape is set up to be condemned by readers for threatening to commit an atrocity against an animal—which he did not in fact commit. JKR carefully builds up Neville’s fear to make it clear to readers that Snape is cruel. Yet when Fred & George commit actual atrocities against animals, when Flitwick did something that reasonably ought to have terrified both Trevor and Neville, the author takes care to have the crime committed out of sight, or presented as humorous, lest our sympathy for those characters be tarnished.

Yet it’s only because, in JKR’s world, people like the twins get away with assaulting animals that Snape’s threat could be credible.

And along those lines, does anyone remember what the First Task of the Triwizard Tournament was?

Oh, right, dragons. Harry decoyed his away from her egg by flying, and Fleur tied to put hers to sleep. But the noble Cedric Transfigured a rock into a dog for the dragon to munch on instead. Do Transfigured dogs feel pain like real ones? That’s a philosophical question JKR doesn’t address. However, we can infer that Cedric must have created the dog to REACT like a real one if he expected it to keep the dragon’s attention—that is, it must have fled, and acted terrified, and yelped in agony, bleeding or burning, if the dragon caught it. And the only criticism made of Cedric is that his dog wasn’t wholly effective as a distraction.

Similarly, Victor used the spell which Sirius had tried to recommend to Harry, the Conjunctivitis Charm—which hurt the (real) dragon so badly that she trampled her own eggs thrashing around in pain. Victor got points taken off for damaging the eggs (not for causing the animal distress), but he still tied with Harry for first place.

But again, JKR chose to make these scenes happen off-screen—we might have reacted differently if she’d made us actually watch the Chinese Fireball writhing on the ground in agony (and reflected that Sirius had wanted Harry to do that), or if we’d seen a singed Labrador panting in terror as it darted back and forth in the enclosure, yelping and trying to dodge a dragon’s flames and claws.

So yes, public displays of cruelty to animals are perfectly acceptable in the WW. Though not in much of ours, so JKR is careful to keep such scenes non-graphic (and without visible emotional impact for the animals’ owners) except where she WANTS us to blame the perpetrators.