Chapter 2
N/A because I get a lot of comments about Harri letting Snape's behavior go and only focusing on Sirius and her father and her saying she wouldn’t hold it against Fred if he acted that way. And this is easier than writing it a bunch for each comment I get about it.
this is going to be a little long so bear with me. All Readers are 100% entitled to your opinion I'm just going to explain my thought process on while trying not give spoilers to other chapters.
She isn't giving a free pass to Snape.
“Get used to it,” Harri snarled. “You can’t give me detention for anything I say here. You so desperately wanted me to know the man my father was. You never failed to have a nasty thing to say about him. I know now, and I still think you’re pathetic. I still think you’re nothing more than a bully who gets off on using his power to torment others. You couldn’t even admit you were friends with my mother! You have every nasty word in existence ready for my father but can’t admit you cared for a muggle-born. Wouldn’t want your death eater buddies to know you associated with filth right? You disgust me.”
“SILENCE,” Snape bellowed. “DO NOT SPEAK OF THINGS YOU KNOW NOTHING ABOUT.”
“What’s the matter? I thought we were speaking truths. Well? Go on, tell me? What was it really like? What did you do to make my mother drop you as a friend? Why did she pick my father over you? WHY CAN'T YOU EVEN SAY HER NAME?” (Pulled from the previous chapter where Harri is visibly angry at snape too.)
How awful Snape had been in some of these memories did not surprise her. Snape was always awful (Pulled from another chapter.)
Harri accepts that Snape is a vile human being even a teenager because to her Snape has always been vile. That's not new to her. She isn't focused on Snape's actions the way she is on her father's or Sirius’s because to her that's just Snape, but she still doesn't see her father's and his friends actions as right.
She is upset and confused right now because what little she did know about her father was all positive, and now that' the image she had made of him has been shattered.
She and Sirius have already spoken and are working it out, but Sirius is basically a stranger to Harri. There’s a lot Harri still doesnt know about Sirius. She wants to trust Sirius and beleive he is a good person but she also feels as if Sirius as lied to her about who her father really was by keeping the truth from her. So she’s still unsure about the entire thing. For all Harri knows Sirius and her father could have tormented the defenseless. She has no idea what everyone is still keeping from her, the only thing she does know is at some point every adult she is supposed to trust has kept stuff from her.
In OOTP Harry finds out about Snape's worst memory (not shown to her yet in this fic) and Snape calls Lily a mudblood, but Harry isn't mad at Snape for that. No by the end of the memory, Harry compares himself and Snape.
He had no desire at all to return to Gryffindor Tower so early, nor
to tell Ron and Hermione what he had just seen. What was making Harry feel so horrified and unhappy was not being shouted at or having jars thrown at him — it was that he knew how it felt to be humiliated in the middle of a circle of onlookers, knew exactly how Snape had felt as his father had taunted him, and that judging from what he had just seen, his father had been every bit as arrogant as Snape had always told him.
Pulled from the book. Harry only is shown one memory and believes in Snape. Nor do we see any anger later toward Snape for the muddled comment, no instead in Later chapters we see Harry think his father used a lover potion on his mother. Even after knowing his father tried to save his mother by immediately giving his life because the dementors told him that, despite all the kinds of words the professors and Dumbledore had told Harry about James for 5 years he still thought his father capable of using a love potion on his mother.
The whole issue is then brushed under the rug by his talk with Sirius and Remus, but I wanted to actually dive into those feelings and how Harri feels about learning about James' less stellar side, and not just brush it to the side.
Harry also sees more of Snape's memory. He sees Snape try and hurt Petunia with a tree branch, see's him admit to thinking Remus is a werewolf before going down to the Willow, finds out Snape is the one who told Voldemort about the prophecy, and still names a kid after Snape.
Book Harry let a lot side, which I don't plan on doing. she has and will continue to call Snape out in this. But again she doesn't think just because snape was a terrible person as a child he deserved everything done to him. Nor is she going to focus on Snape because him being vile isn't new.
As for Fred.
Book Harry again lets a lot slide, in book 5 Harry doesn't bat an eye when the twins threaten another student with physical harm at the Hog's head. Nor does book Harry care in book five that the twins shoved a Slytherin in the cabinet. yet had such a terrible reaction to Snape's worst memory.
The reason I think this is is Harry and Fred have an actual tangible relationship in the books, their friends, Harry has stayed with the Weasley's, and spent hours with Fred at practice, whereas Jame's was just an image Harry had created in his head, with what little facts he had about James. Because James was dead there was no bond made other than that of "He was my father and I love him because he was my father."
In this Fic, Fred is saying he would do it for Harri not just because he could or felt like it and Harri sees this situation differently than the one with her father.
Harri's thought process is kind of like an example take a dog,
Dogs are capable of killing a person. Does that mean they will? Typically not right? But say your pet killed a person in defense of you. Are you going to love the dog any less? Are you going to think the dog is a bad dog or evil because it did a terrible thing for you? Change dog to a family member or friend. Now if they did it because they just felt like it or could that would be different right? and that's how Harri feels here.
Harri isn't painting her father or Sirius as a man with no redeeming qualities. She's upset right now, and thirteen. She just learned her father who she thought was a great man wasn't always great, and she's working through that. She's angry and isn't rational. kids say and think things they don't actually mean. She needs time to process it all. It's a lot to take in. Because like in book five she compares her situation to what Snape went through.
I hope this helped explain my thought process and Harri's better.
Let me know if you all have any more questions about it. And I hope this all made sense