Hoist By Their Own Petard
17 Aug 2004 12:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kangeikoCut for OotP spoilers.
I felt a certain amount of vindictive pleasure upon re-reading GoF's torment of the Muggle family. It is exactly the same humiliation visited upon Snape in 'Snape's Worst Memory', culminating a removal of his underwear. Now, there can be three possibilities stemming from this:
It's a coincidence.
I do not believe that this is the case. We have had no indication that this is a relatively common torment in the Wizarding world, even amongst teens. There's no nickname for it (unlike the infamous and probably apocryphal bog-washing), and it seems to be improvised, with James, for instance, asking the crowd if he should whip Snape's underpants off.
This leaves one of the following possibilities. Either,
James Potter picked it up from somewhere
or
James Potter made it up.
Both are interesting premises, considering the fact that the torment ended up a Death Eater favourite. Where could James learn something like that? It is much more likely that he made it up on the spot. After inflicting it on Snape, he most likely didn't give it a second's thought.
But Snape obviously did. I'll go on to speculate that either Snape mentioned the idea during a spot of Muggle-baiting, or one of his classmates saw the incident and liked the idea.
What I truly find amusing is that a Gryffindor 'prank' is later labelled a Death Eater 'torture'. Now, what was that about double standards?
I felt a certain amount of vindictive pleasure upon re-reading GoF's torment of the Muggle family. It is exactly the same humiliation visited upon Snape in 'Snape's Worst Memory', culminating a removal of his underwear. Now, there can be three possibilities stemming from this:
It's a coincidence.
I do not believe that this is the case. We have had no indication that this is a relatively common torment in the Wizarding world, even amongst teens. There's no nickname for it (unlike the infamous and probably apocryphal bog-washing), and it seems to be improvised, with James, for instance, asking the crowd if he should whip Snape's underpants off.
This leaves one of the following possibilities. Either,
James Potter picked it up from somewhere
or
James Potter made it up.
Both are interesting premises, considering the fact that the torment ended up a Death Eater favourite. Where could James learn something like that? It is much more likely that he made it up on the spot. After inflicting it on Snape, he most likely didn't give it a second's thought.
But Snape obviously did. I'll go on to speculate that either Snape mentioned the idea during a spot of Muggle-baiting, or one of his classmates saw the incident and liked the idea.
What I truly find amusing is that a Gryffindor 'prank' is later labelled a Death Eater 'torture'. Now, what was that about double standards?