I'll bet Lily wasn't particularly good at charms the moment her wand chose her.

This ties in with the potential/actuality discussion. Lily's wand was good at Charms, which I understand to mean that Lily had a particular potential for Charms; we don't know if this means that her actual skill at Charms as an adult witch eclipses her actual skill at Transfiguration.

I largely agree with your breakdown of the music/magic analogy, but I don't think composition is purely a theoretical skill, just as I'm not sure to what extent "being a powerful witch" is purely a practical skill. Classical composers were considered to be craftsmen, after all, and surely theoretical knowledge of magic contributes to mastery of magic.

I'll grant you that, but I was thinking in terms of magical potential. I think Ron is an above-average wizard, especially as far as defensive magic is concerned--how could he not be, given the scrapes he has survived?--but I don't think he could be described as having "the greatest potential" (as it pertains to magic). If we understand Ollivander's description to apply to the character of the wand wielder in general, rather than his magical abilities in particular, I'll concede this point.

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Maybe I expressed myself clumsily. I meant to say that the pill we have to swallow if we are to be so deterministic about wand selection is that Ron had great potential. Of course, the fact that he doesn't show great power doesn't mean he didn't have great potential.

ETA: It's possible to recognize potential, however. Certainly, a youthful aptitude for a subject is evidence of potential. So is a naively-expressed insight, which might be in need of polish and better articulation.

 

We do both have the lightning bolt on the forehead, but I'd like to think that, even heavily edited, I don't look like Voldemort.

--

It would appear that I inadvertently sparked quite the discussion, while merely making a flippant remark about James. To be clear, though, I wasn't referring to his skills or anything (teen animagus, alone, seems like a pretty decent resume, in that regard) so much as whether he's a human being that people might want to date.

Perhaps the 'weight class' metaphor sounded too combat-oriented? Maybe I should have said, 'She was out of his league.'

You see, there's a veritable parade of secondary characters who can't wait to tell Harry how the sun shined out of Lily's ass (and we have a character who was obsessed with her). James, on the other hand... well, when people finally, almost begrudgingly, cough up information about him, it's usually to admit that he was full of himself, a bit of a bully, spoiled to some degree, and a complete ass in the way he went about trying to attract Lily.

At least in a storybook, being wealthy, skilled, and athletic doesn't protect a guy from turning some girls off, when he's also a bullying jerk jock (unlike real life, where those are all apparently checks in the plus column).

Granted, I think the 'bully' thing can mostly (if not entirely) be chalked up to giving as good as he got when it came to Snape and, after he died, having 'friends' like Remus who lacked the minimal wherewithal required to muster up a defense of the actions their friend took in his youth.

Remus... god, what a fucking milquetoast.

Snape accuses James of douchebaggery, and pretty much no one steps forward with a definitive, "Yeah, but here's why he was mostly justified!" so much as they shrug and offer up a halfhearted, "Yeah. Bit of a douche... but a good friend... to me... most of the time."

It was probably fairly even, with Snape on one side being a creepy, skulking, grumbling, ass about Lily ignoring his (almost certainly unspoken) wishes that they were more than friends, while being angry that brash, well-off, James had the stones to make constant passes at the girl he liked. On the other side, you have James being arrogant and aggressive toward the urchin who was sniffing around Lily - and, by that time, James might have pegged Snape as a burgeoning bigot among the already blatantly bigoted Slytherins, during a time of escalating conflict in their world: Something that would have only increased the bad blood between the two of them.

There was probably a lot of equal back and forth between Snape and James, but you don't hear about Snape's part in it because the only people talking about it are Snape, himself, and James's half-crazed (Sirius) or wishy-washy (Remus) friends. Snape's testimonials are designed to make him look good and hurt Harry as much as possible, while Sirius and Remus are too wrapped up in their own misery to get that Harry needs to hear something definitively positive about James, beyond, "Eventually he wasn't so much of an ass; after all, Lily picked him in the end." or Sirius's own grudge-motivated spewing of, "No, Snivellus was the douche! And, he smelled! And, he was unreasonably shirty about that time I tried to murder him by proxy!"

Dumbledore's vanishingly few and far between comments on the subject are pretty useless, given that he had little interest in things like, oh, Harry's comfort, and he was way too deep in Snape's ass to give a truly honest and thorough appraisal of the man to third parties.

Still, the more I think about it, the more James sounds like one of those jocks who are always seen being raucous and loud with their friends in the hallways... maybe they look over at one of the quiet geeks who try their best to quietly scurry to the next class without drawing attention to themselves, and the jock scoffs at the geek, looks to his buddies, and none-too-quietly snickers, "What a weirdo; what's that about?"

For them, it's a totally thoughtless moment that lasts an instant, they have a laugh, and move on to the next bit of fun.

For the geek, it's the nth time they've been mocked, laughed at, or intimidated that day, and the feeling lingers all day, every day. Perhaps it's easy not to recognize your bullying for what it is, when it's so easy to do, so quick... and you don't see that the grain of sand you just dropped on the other guy was just another addition to the hundreds of pounds he was already carrying.

Hmm... maybe James was a real douche, up until his reformation. Either way, canon seems to dictate that, for much of their time at Hogwarts, Lily was a total catch, sought after by many, while James was too jerky to be of interest to the one girl that apparently mattered.

That is all. It has nothing to do with wealth, blood status, social standing, how well they did in whatever class, general magical skill, or accomplishments (though defeating the Killing Curse is a good one). Also, it was a throwaway joke...

Edit: That crack about the Killing Curse? Also a joke.
Could I really have saved myself all this writing by using a different metaphor?

 

No. You ove writing, and we (I) love reading it, so it works out for the best.

Oh, and Taure, the main difference between you and Warocke, is that his text isn't pompous, condescend and systematic. How very british of you.

 

Why did James change though? What sparked him to 'mature'?

 

He mellowed out a bit once he got his wand polished?

 

Aside from that one muggleborn girl being mentioned, was there actually ever another incident of him bullying someone else brought up or mentioned in a passing?

 

That means he was an asshole as an adult, not that he was a bully as a schoolchild.

ETA: Given how much Sirius hates Snape, why didn't he take the opportunity to claim that Snape was a bully as well, when Harry confronted Sirius and Remus about his father's behaviour?

 

Becoming a Deatheater is pretty indicative.

Given that Sirius told Harry that Snape arrived at Hogwarts knowing more dark magic than some seventh years, maybe he didn't feel it was worth mentioning.

Then again, I'll certainly acknowledge that Sirius isn't the most reliable source for an opinion on Snape, given that he tried to murder him and all.

 

But I thought we were talking about his years as a student, rather than teacher?

Did he become a Death Eater while still at Hogwarts? I honestly can't remember that.

How would that happen in the first place? Wasn't his mother disowned by her pureblood family for marrying a muggle?

Too true.

Note: I don't like Snape's character as he is in the books, during Harry's years at Hogwarts. I simply dislike outright vilification/sanctification of characters in general, and in this case retroactive vilification.

 

What we know of Snape's school years is basically that he was friends with Avery and Mulciber, planned to become a Death Eater, and used the word mudblood freely on every muggleborn but Lily. She also thought that Mulciber's sense of humour was evil. I'm hesitant to say that Snape stayed away from that if he was friends with Mulciber, given his free use of blood supremacy rhetoric.

No, I think Snape was probably a bully during school as well. It doesn't excuse James' actions at all, but the retroactive whitewashing of Snape's character doesn't sit well with me. Even Dumbledore held him in some contempt, since Snape didn't care about Harry or James when he told Dumbledore of what Voldemort planned to do to them.

 

It's also implied that he used Sectumsempra (or at least a precursor to same) on James during their schoolyard spat, a pretty notable escalation if so. In HBP, he claims to have invented the spell ("You dare use my own spells against me, Potter?") during his Hogwarts student days, transcribing it into his N.E.W.T. potions textbook. This same spell is one that was branded as dark magic in DH when discussing George's amputated ear. Lupin also notes that the spell was a specialty of Snape's, suggesting he'd seen him use it on one or more occasions.

Given that there was limited opportunity for this in the time following PoA, it's entirely plausible that he observed Snape using the spell during their school days or shortly thereafter.

 

Unknown, but he was heavily into that camp.

What's that got to do with an 11 year old Snape being well versed in dark magic?

The man was a douchebag. Both as a student and later in life. If the shoe fits, and all.

That's not to say he wasn't a brave douchebag. Anyone who lies their ass off to Voldemort has some serious stones.

 

Snape hadn't seen much of good will from anyone but Lily Evans, so he treated in same way everyone but those whose favour he wanted, and later, even them. At least he doesn't beat up unfortunate kids like his father and many muggle teachers of his time did.

Snape most likely was a kid that did homework and dirty work for the pureblood company, so they kept him around as long as he was useful. Not yet a bully, but trying to be one, so he wouldn't be perceived as weak mudblood (muggle father, muggle surname are pretty damning in Slytherin) to be crushed.


Perspicacity:
Sectumsempra is easy to cast and hard to heal, but it's still pretty weak when compared to other well known and popular dark curses. For example, Malfoy would have gotten much more flak for only attempting Crucio, if there ever was an official investigation.

Snape's spells were mostly non-verbal, thus hard to pick through observation. He shared some with his 'friends', most likely, and then said spells leaked to the rest of Hogwarts.


dmacx:
The best of it? He managed to get both to trust him implicitly. So whatever side would have won the war he would be very well off, if only Ollivander hadn't told Voldemort of the Elder Wand.

 

Just curious how exactly an 11 year old can already know dark magic when he's mostly confined to the muggle world before he goes off to Hogwarts, before he even properly sets foot into the wizarding world.

 

Odran:
From reading mother's books, when cursing dead his own father is pretty much the only thing he wants to do? It isn't that hard to sneak into the Alley and buy or steal some worn books either, if his mother's ones lack in curses.
We weren't told that those curses were Snape's own.

 

Tom Marvolo Riddle didn't have any problems with that.

 

Xandrel:
Tom made his accidental magic deliberate, there's difference.

 

Yes, but we're talking about Snape here.

You're confusing fanfiction here with canon shit.