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When and why did the Marauders begin bullying Snape?
Harry touched down right behind her and dismounted on a patch of unkempt grass in the middle of a small square. He took Harry by the arm and led him from the patch of grass, across the road and on to the pavement. [OotP ch. #03; p. 57]
'There –' they had reached the second landing, '-- you're the door on the right.' [OotP ch. #04; p. 60]
they went through the door from the hall and led the way down a flight of narrow stone steps [cut] He followed his godfather to the bottom of the steps and through a door leading into the basement kitchen. [OotP ch. #05; p. 60] She wrenched open the front door and stepped out into the weak September sunlight. Harry and the dog followed her. The door slammed behind them and Mrs Black's screeches were cut off instantly. [cut] It took them twenty minutes to reach King's Cross on foot [OotP ch. #10; p. 164/165]
'Harry, dear, are you sure you're all right?' said Mrs Weasley in a worried voice, as they walked around the unkempt patch of grass in the middle of Grimmauld Place. [OotP ch. 23; p. 436]
Harry followed her back to the second floor. When he entered the bedroom, he was rather surprised to see both Ron and Ginny waiting for them, sitting on Ron's bed. [OotP ch. 23; p. 441]
Kreacher, it transpired, had been lurking in the attic. [OotP ch. #24; p. 456]
'Look, Harry,' said Sirius placatingly, 'James and Snape hated each other from the moment they set eyes on each other, it was just one of those things, you can understand that, can't you?' [OotP ch. #29; p. 590]
The woman called Narcissa gained the top of the bank, where a line of old railings separated the river from a narrow cobbled street. The other woman, Bella, followed at once. Side by side they stood looking across the road at the rows and rows of dilapidated brick houses, their windows dull and blind in the darkness. [cut] Bella followed, her cloak streaming behind, and saw Narcissa darting through an alley between the houses into a second, almost identical street. Some of the street lamps were broken; the two women were running between patches of light and deep darkness. [cut] But Narcissa had rushed ahead. Rubbing her hand, her pursuer followed again, keeping her distance now, as they moved deeper into the deserted labyrinth of brick houses. At last Narcissa hurried up a street called Spinner's End, over which the towering mill chimney seemed to hover like a giant admonitory finger. Her footsteps echoed on the cobbles as she passed boarded and broken windows, until she reached the very last house, where a dim light glimmered through the curtains in a downstairs room. [HBP ch. #02; p. 26/27]
Seconds later Harry's lungs expanded gratefully and he opened his eyes: they were now standing in the middle of a familiar small and shabby square. Tall, dilapidated houses looked down on them from every side. [DH ch. #09; 141]
As August wore on, the square of unkempt grass in the middle of Grimmauld Place shrivelled in the sun until it was brittle and brown. [DH ch. #12; 184]
a woman with long hair and a kind, pretty face [DH ch. #16; 265]
'You'd better be in Slytherin,' said Snape, encouraged that she had brightened a little. 'Slytherin?' One of the boys sharing the compartment, who had shown no interest at all in Lily or Snape until that point, looked round at the word, and Harry, whose attention had been focused entirely on the two beside the window, saw his father: slight, black-haired like Snape, but with that indefinable air of having been well cared for, even adored, that Snape so conspicuously lacked. 'Who wants to be in Slytherin? I think I'd leave, wouldn't you?' James asked the boy lounging on the seats opposite him, and with a jolt, Harry realised that it was Sirius. Sirius did not smile. 'My whole family have been in Slytherin,' he said. 'Blimey,' said James, 'and I thought you seemed all right!' Sirius grinned. 'Maybe I'll break the tradition. Where are you heading, if you've got the choice?' James lifted an invisible sword. '"Gryffindor, where dwell the brave at heart!" Like my dad.' Snape made a small, disparaging noise. James turned on him. 'Got a problem with that?' 'No,' said Snape, though his slight sneer said otherwise. 'If you'd rather be brawny than brainy –' 'Where're you hoping to go, seeing as you're neither?' inter¬jected Sirius. James roared with laughter. Lily sat up, rather flushed, and looked from James to Sirius in dislike. 'Come on, Severus, let's find another compartment.' 'Oooooo ...' James and Sirius imitated her lofty voice; James tried to trip Snape as he passed. 'See ya, Snivellus!' a voice called, as the compartment door slammed ... [DH ch. #33; p. 538/539]
Cokeworth is a fictional town in the English midlands where Harry spends a night at the Railview hotel with aunt, uncle, and cousin Dudley. Cokeworth's name is supposed to suggest an industrial town, and to evoke associations of hard work and grime. Although it is never made explicit in the books, Cokeworth is the place where Petunia and Lily Evans and Severus Snape all grew up. [Pottermore]
6. Where do wizard children go to school before Hogwarts? Most are homeschooled, because they aren't really able to control their powers so it would be too dangerous to let them out and about. [JK Rowling, interview with TIME magazine, 2007] Potter is a not uncommon Muggle surname, and the family did not make the so-called ‘Sacred Twenty-Eight’ for this reason; the anonymous compiler of that supposedly definitive list of pure-bloods suspected that they had sprung from what he considered to be tainted blood. [Potter family back story, uploaded on Pottermore on 21st September 2015]
Most are homeschooled, because they aren't really able to control their powers so it would be too dangerous to let them out and about. [JK Rowling, interview with TIME magazine, 2007]
Potter is a not uncommon Muggle surname, and the family did not make the so-called ‘Sacred Twenty-Eight’ for this reason; the anonymous compiler of that supposedly definitive list of pure-bloods suspected that they had sprung from what he considered to be tainted blood. [Potter family back story, uploaded on Pottermore on 21st September 2015]
The first scene (chronologically, but not in order of publication) that we see between Severus, Lily, James and Sirius is on the train on their way to their first day at Hogwarts, when they are eleven. They are very unequal, but in different ways.
The first thing to understand is that James and Sirius are from the south of England, while Lily and Sev are from the industrial (= probably north) Midlands. That automatically makes James and Sirius of somewhat higher status, other things being equal: especially in 1971. Sev, at least, probably has a strong working-class Midlands accent, and he is obviously poor, while James is obviously glossy and well-cared for.
Sev's family live in what sounds like it's meant to be a 2up2down – that is, a terraced house, what Americans call a "row house", with a "footprint" of at most about 30ft by 25ft, with a small kitchen and living-room downstairs, two small bedrooms upstairs and, at that date, probably no bathroom, just an outdoor lavatory in a shed in a tiny paved yard at the back. This is a very common type of housing in industrial areas of the UK (although nowadays they will have had a shower room fitted in an extension or a loft conversion), generally built between about 1850 and 1950 and intended for use by low-ranking workers and their families. It was actually an improvement on the "back-to-backs" which often preceded it, and which had three vertically-stacked rooms, no back yard but just a shared back wall, and access to a shared, communal pump and lavatory. 2up2downs, showing back alley and back yards with outside lavatories. It is in a very poor area (although probably not as bad in 1971 as it would be in 1996), and if it has a front garden at all it will be a strip the width of the house and around 4ft deep, and it is unlikely, though not impossible, that it has any kind of a back garden. Most houses of that type in that kind of area would just have the small paved yard at the back with a gate that let out into a back ally, with the back-yards of more, similar houses on the other side. In American terms Sev is "trailer trash", living in a single-wide. [If you want to write a fanfic in which Severus has access to land on which to grow potion ingredients, the family may have an allotment. That's a system where a large flat field with an on-site water tap is broken up into strips, called allotments, which can be rented by local families for a token annual payment, and turned into gardens or vegetable patches half a mile from their actual house. They're deliberately kept very cheap, but there's generally a very long waiting list to get one.] Assuming that the house at Godric's Hollow belongs to the Potter family and is their only house, James's house is worth about five of Sev's family house. Sirius's family house – a multi-storey family home (it has at the very least a working basement, ground floor, first floor, second floor and attic) on a London garden square (OK, a scrubby-bit-of-lawn square), a 20-minute walk from King's Cross – is, even allowing for the fact that that area was a lot more run-down in the 1970s and '90s than it is now, probably worth ten to twenty of the Snapes' house. We do not know whether the fact that Severus is obviously poor and working-class, while daring to answer back when picked on by the posh rich kids, made any difference to the way James and Sirius treated him. However, the fact that James listened in on his private conversation, and then made loud, rude remarks about it, is spectacularly rude and culturally transgressive by British standards, and may mean that his parents have raised him to think that you don't need to waste manners on scruffy poor people. That if true would mark James out as low-class, despite his weallth, since upper-class people are meant to have good manners towards everybody: but then, we know that the Potters are not considered part of the Sacred 28 families. Or, of course, James may have no manners because he is under-socialised. Purebloods are usually home-schooled, he's an only child, and since the Potters aren't part of the Sacred 28 he probably doesn't get invited to pureblood parties much. James may simply be completely unused to dealing with other children, or to commuting in public and overhearing other people's conversations. As such he may envy Severus instead of or as well as despising him for being poor and scruffy. Sirius at least has a brother, albeit one who won't start at Hogwarts for another couple of years, and he probably has lots of cousins already at the school. James is on his own, while Sev and Lily have each other so they are starting school with a ready-made companion. The fact that Sev is friends with a pretty girl may provoke either envy or scorn, since boys that age tend to think that girls have cooties. At any rate it is clear that James has been brought up to despise Slytherins, and to have a cocky sense of entitlement. The fact that Severus wants to be in Slytherin, dares to stick up for himself, and is friends with Lily who is snooty towards him, is a red rag to a bull. While this scene cannot in itself be called bullying, more like a bit of mutual strutting and posturing, it's James who starts it, and mostly James who escalates it. James and Sirius are both on their own in a scary new life, so they bond over picking on Severus. It's not clear which of them dubs Severus "Snivellus". Although we do not hear much about their interactions between now and fifth year, the fact that Sirius says that they hated each other from the get-go and that they were still calling him Snivellus nearly five years later is probably intended to imply a continuity in their bullying behaviour.
It is in a very poor area (although probably not as bad in 1971 as it would be in 1996), and if it has a front garden at all it will be a strip the width of the house and around 4ft deep, and it is unlikely, though not impossible, that it has any kind of a back garden. Most houses of that type in that kind of area would just have the small paved yard at the back with a gate that let out into a back ally, with the back-yards of more, similar houses on the other side. In American terms Sev is "trailer trash", living in a single-wide.
[If you want to write a fanfic in which Severus has access to land on which to grow potion ingredients, the family may have an allotment. That's a system where a large flat field with an on-site water tap is broken up into strips, called allotments, which can be rented by local families for a token annual payment, and turned into gardens or vegetable patches half a mile from their actual house. They're deliberately kept very cheap, but there's generally a very long waiting list to get one.]
Assuming that the house at Godric's Hollow belongs to the Potter family and is their only house, James's house is worth about five of Sev's family house. Sirius's family house – a multi-storey family home (it has at the very least a working basement, ground floor, first floor, second floor and attic) on a London garden square (OK, a scrubby-bit-of-lawn square), a 20-minute walk from King's Cross – is, even allowing for the fact that that area was a lot more run-down in the 1970s and '90s than it is now, probably worth ten to twenty of the Snapes' house.
We do not know whether the fact that Severus is obviously poor and working-class, while daring to answer back when picked on by the posh rich kids, made any difference to the way James and Sirius treated him. However, the fact that James listened in on his private conversation, and then made loud, rude remarks about it, is spectacularly rude and culturally transgressive by British standards, and may mean that his parents have raised him to think that you don't need to waste manners on scruffy poor people. That if true would mark James out as low-class, despite his weallth, since upper-class people are meant to have good manners towards everybody: but then, we know that the Potters are not considered part of the Sacred 28 families.
Or, of course, James may have no manners because he is under-socialised. Purebloods are usually home-schooled, he's an only child, and since the Potters aren't part of the Sacred 28 he probably doesn't get invited to pureblood parties much. James may simply be completely unused to dealing with other children, or to commuting in public and overhearing other people's conversations. As such he may envy Severus instead of or as well as despising him for being poor and scruffy. Sirius at least has a brother, albeit one who won't start at Hogwarts for another couple of years, and he probably has lots of cousins already at the school. James is on his own, while Sev and Lily have each other so they are starting school with a ready-made companion.
The fact that Sev is friends with a pretty girl may provoke either envy or scorn, since boys that age tend to think that girls have cooties.
At any rate it is clear that James has been brought up to despise Slytherins, and to have a cocky sense of entitlement. The fact that Severus wants to be in Slytherin, dares to stick up for himself, and is friends with Lily who is snooty towards him, is a red rag to a bull.
While this scene cannot in itself be called bullying, more like a bit of mutual strutting and posturing, it's James who starts it, and mostly James who escalates it. James and Sirius are both on their own in a scary new life, so they bond over picking on Severus. It's not clear which of them dubs Severus "Snivellus". Although we do not hear much about their interactions between now and fifth year, the fact that Sirius says that they hated each other from the get-go and that they were still calling him Snivellus nearly five years later is probably intended to imply a continuity in their bullying behaviour.
As though an invisible hand was writing upon it, words appeared on the smooth surface of the map. 'Mr Moony presents his compliments to Professor Snape, and begs him to keep his abnormally large nose out of other people's business.' [cut] 'Mr Prongs agrees with Mr Moony, and would like to add that Professor Snape is an ugly git.' [cut] 'Mr Padfoot would like to register his astonishment that an idiot like that ever became a Professor.' [cut] 'Mr Wormtail bids Professor Snape good day, and advises him to wash his hair, the slimeball.' [PoA ch. #14; p. 211]
'And they didn't desert me at all. Instead, they did something for me that would make my transformations not only bearable, but the best times of my life. They became Animagi.' [cut] 'It took them the best part of three years to work out how to do it. [cut] Finally, in our fifth year, they managed it. They could each turn into a different animal at will.' [cut] 'They couldn't keep me company as humans, so they kept me company as animals,' said Lupin. 'A werewolf is only a danger to people. They sneaked out of the castle every month under James's Invisibility Cloak. They transformed ... Peter, as the smallest, could slip beneath the Willow's attacking branches and touch the knot that freezes it. They would then slip down the tunnel and join me. Under their influence, I became less dangerous. My body was still wolfish, but my mind seemed to become less so while I was with them.' [cut] '... well, highly exciting possibilities were open to us now we could all transform. Soon we were leaving the Shrieking Shack and roaming the school grounds and the village by night. Sirius and James transformed into such large animals, they were able to keep a werewolf in check. I doubt whether any Hogwarts students ever found out more about the Hogwarts grounds and Hogsmeade than we did ... And that's how we came to write the Marauder's Map, and sign it with our nicknames. Sirius is Padfoot. Peter is Wormtail. James was Prongs.' [PoA ch. #18; p. 259/260]
'Sirius thought it would be – er – amusing, to tell Snape all he had to do was prod the knot on the tree-trunk with a long stick, and he'd be able to get in after me. Well, of course, Snape tried it – if he'd got as far as this house, he'd have met a fully grown werewolf – but your father, who'd heard what Sirius had done, went after Snape and pulled him back, at great risk to his life ... ' [PoA ch. #18; p. 261]
BANG! Thin, snakelike cords burst from the end of Snape's wand and twisted themselves around Lupin's mouth, wrists and ankles; he over-balanced and fell to the floor, unable to move. [cut] 'Come on, all of you,' he said. He clicked his fingers, and the ends of the cords that bound Lupin flew to his hands. 'I'll drag the werewolf. [PoA ch. #19; p. 263–265]
'Sirius Black showed he was capable of murder at the age of sixteen,' he breathed. 'You haven't forgotten that, Headmaster? You haven't forgotten that he once tried to kill me?' [PoA ch. #21; p. 286]
Everybody present knew that 'Mudblood' was a very offensive term for a witch or wizard of Muggle parentage. [GoF ch. #09; p. 110]
'You think you're funny,' she said coldly. 'But you're just an arrogant, bullying toerag, Potter.' [OotP ch. #28; p. 570]
'... walking down corridors and hexing anyone who annoys you just because you can' [OotP ch. #28; p. 571]
Harry remembered Lupin saying back in Grimmauld Place that Dumbledore had made him prefect in the hope that he would be able to exercise some control over James and Sirius ... but in the Pensieve, he had sat there and let it all happen ... [OotP ch. #29; p. 576]
'Once James had deflated his head a bit,' said Sirius. 'And stopped hexing people just for the fun of it,' said Lupin. [OotP ch. #29; p. 591]
'You can use ingredients from the store cupboard today, and I'm sure we can lend you some scales, and we've got a small stock of old books here, they'll do until you can write to Flourish and Blotts ...' Slughorn strode over to a corner cupboard and after a moment's foraging emerged with two very battered-looking copies of Advanced Potion-Making by Libatius Borage, which he gave to Harry and Ron along with two sets of tarnished scales. [HBP ch. #09; p. 174/175]
The more Harry pored over the book, the more he realised how much was in there, not only the handy hints and short cuts on potions that were earning him such a glowing reputation with Slughorn, but also the imaginative little jinxes and hexes scribbled in the margins which Harry was sure, judging by the crossings-out and revisions, that the Prince had invented himself. Harry had already attempted a few of the Prince's self-invented spells. There had been a hex that caused toenails to grow alarmingly fast (he had tried this on Crabbe in the corridor, with very entertaining results); a jinx that glued the tongue to the roof of the mouth (which he had twice used, to general applause, on an unsuspecting Argus Filch); and, perhaps most useful of all, Muffliato, a spell that filled the ears of anyone nearby with an unidentifiable buzzing, so that lengthy conversations could be held in class without being overheard. The only person who did not find these charms amusing was Hermione, who maintained a rigidly disapproving expression throughout and refused to talk at all if Harry had used the Muffliato spell on anyone in the vicinity. Sitting up in bed, Harry turned the book sideways so as to examine more closely the scribbled instructions for a spell that seemed to have caused the Prince some trouble. There were many crossings-out and alterations, but finally, crammed into a corner of the page, the scribble: Levicorpus (n-vbl) [HBP ch.#12; p. 223/224]
'It's nothing to do with me!' said Harry indignantly. 'The Half-Blood Prince is someone who used to go to Hogwarts, I've got his old Potions book. He wrote spells all over it, spells he invented. One of them was Levicorpus –' 'Oh, that one had a great vogue during my time at Hogwarts,' said Lupin reminiscently. 'There were a few months in my fifth year when you couldn't move for being hoisted into the air by your ankle.' 'My dad used it,' said Harry. 'I saw him in the Pensieve, he used it on Snape.' He tried to sound casual, as though this was a throwaway comment of no real importance, but he was not sure he had achieved the right effect; Lupin's smile was a little too understanding. 'Yes,' he said, 'but he wasn't the only one. As I say, it was very popular ... you know how these spells come and go ...' [HBP ch.#16; p. 315]
Harry ignored her. He had just found an incantation (Sectumsempra!) scrawled in a margin above the intriguing words 'For Enemies', and was itching to try it out, but thought it best not to in front of Hermione. Instead, he surreptitiously folded down the corner of the page. [HBP ch.#21; p. 419]
'NO!' shrieked Hermione, and with a deafening blast from her wand Fenrir Greyback was thrown backwards from the feebly stirring body of Lavender Brown. He hit the marble banisters and struggled to return to his feet. Then, with a bright white flash and a crack, a crystal ball fell on the top of his head and he crumpled to the ground and did not move. [DH ch. #32; 519]
'They don't use Dark Magic, though.' She dropped her voice. [cut] 'I know James Potter's an arrogant toerag,' she said, cutting across Snape. 'I don't need you to tell me that.' [DH ch. #33; p. 541]
MA: [cut] “Do the memories stored in a Pensieve reflect reality or the views of the person they belong to?” JKR: It’s reality. It’s important that I have got that across, because Slughorn gave Dumbledore this pathetic cut-and-paste memory. He didn't want to give the real thing, and he very obviously patched it up and cobbled it together. So, what you remember is accurate in the Pensieve. [cut] MA: So there are things in there that you haven't noticed personally, but you can go and see yourself? JKR: Yes, and that's the magic of the Pensieve, that's what brings it alive. [cut] JKR: Yeah. Otherwise it really would just be like a diary, wouldn’t it? Confined to what you remember. But the Pensieve recreates a moment for you, so you could go into your own memory and relive things that you didn't notice the time. It’s somewhere in your head, which I'm sure it is, in all of our brains. I'm sure if you could access it, things that you don't know you remember are all in there somewhere. [Spartz-Anelli interview, 16th July 2005]
MA: How did they get together? She hated James, from what we’ve seen. JKR: Did she really? You're a woman, you know what I'm saying. [Spartz-Anelli interview, 16th July 2005]
Every now and then somebody asks me for the difference between a spell, a charm and a hex. Within the Potter world, the boundaries are flexible, and I imagine that wizards may have their own ideas. Hermione-ish, however, I've always had a working theory: [cut] Hexes: Has a connotation of dark magic, as do jinxes, but of a minor sort. I see 'hex' as slightly worse. I usually use 'jinx' for spells whose effects are irritating but amusing. Curses: Reserved for the worst kinds of dark magic. [Rowling's own website, 2006 so while DH was being written]
@jk_rowling just come back from a pub quiz, one question was "in H. Potter what term is given to a witch/wizard with one non-magical parent and one magical parent" our answer – half blood! The quiz master bottled it and gave a point for ppl who answered mudblood, can you confirm? Unfair question in my view, because it would depend who was speaking. Non-bigots in the wizarding world would say half-blood. Pure blood supremacists would say mudblood. In my view, you should have got the point. [JK Rowling, Twitter, 14th September 2018]
The magic used in the map's creation is advanced and impressive; it includes the Homonculous Charm, enabling the possessor of the map to track the movements of every person in the castle, and it was also enchanted to forever repel (as insultingly as possible) the curiosity of their nemesis, Severus Snape. [Pottermore]
We know that James and Sirius and possibly Peter already had a reputation for disruptive behaviour prior to fifth year, because prefects are picked at the start of fifth year, and Remus was made a prefect in the vain hope that he would be able to modify their behaviour.
Some time in their fifth year, after Sirius's sixteenth birthday on 2nd November 1975 and before the scene by the lake in June 1976, Sirius put Severus in danger of being killed or infected by Remus in his werewolf form, and James put a stop to it and rescued Severus. This event is covered in its own section. This doesn't tell us whether or not James was already bullying Severus: only that if he was he drew the line at murder, and/or didn't want Sirius and Remus to get into trouble.
Then we see a scene between Severus and Lily in the courtyard, a few days after the werewolf incident (referred to as "the other night"). James is mentioned, and there is no specific referrence to him bullying Severus, but Lily calls him an "arrogant toerag". Lily does however say that James and his gang don't use Dark magic. According to Rowling's statement that all curses are the worst form of Dark magic and hexes are also pretty bad, James and Sirius were certainly using Dark magic by the end of the year. This could mean that their behaviour got worse over the course of the year, or that Lily doesn't know the half of what they get up to, or that Lily is a hypocrite (since Rowling has implied she already fancied James, at least by the end of the year).
Also by the end of the year, and probably before, they are known for hexing anyone who crosses them: both Lily and Remus say so. They are equivalent to the sort of boy who swaggers around punching people for "disrespecting" him, but Lily doesn't mention that in the courtyard scene either, so her not mentioning their bullying specifically doesn't mean it isn't already happening. [On the other hand yes, we can draw an inference from her accusing Severus of having a friend who does Dark magic but not accusing him of doing it himself, because she phrases it as if she expects him to be shocked by the idea of Dark magic. Ergo, he does not yet have a reputation for being into the Dark Arts himself, unless it's in a purely academic way.]
At some point Severus either invents or learns (that part is never clearly established) a flick-knife spell called Sectumsempra. When Harry comes into possession of Snape's old sixth-year potions textbook (at least, it's a sixth-year text in Harry's day) it includes in the margins the workings-out of the ankle-hoisting spell Levicorpus which Remus says became popular in fifth year, so we know that Severus was working out spells in a sixth-year book in fifth year, if not before.
Sectumsempra is simply written down in the margins of the book, without workings-out but just labelled "For enemies". So we don't know whether Snape learned it, or worked it out somewhere else and then copied it across. Nor do we know when he learned or invented it. It may also have been in fifth year, after the near-attack by Remus. The fact that even in human form Greyback had to be taken down by physically whacking him over the head; that Severus, with his wand, had to be rescued from Remus, without his wand; and that in the scene in the Shrieking Shack in PoA Snape wants to bind Remus with physical ropes (albeit magically generated) all suggest that werewolves are resistant to direct magic but can be injured physically. On the other hand Snape comes from the Midlands (Pottermore says so) and, from the description of Spinner's End, probably from the industrial north Midlands (probably Derbyshire), which means that as a child he grew up in or close to the hunting grounds of four notorious serial killers (the Moors Murderers, the Beast of Manchester and the Yorkshire Ripper), two of whom specialised in children. His mother might well have taught him a self-defence spell which would leave injuries that looked like ordinary knife wounds, and so wouldn't alert the Muggle police to the use of magic.
It was certainly during during fifth year that James, Sirius and Peter became Animagi, began letting were-Remus out to run, and started to work on the Map. We do not know whether the Map was completed in fifth or in sixth year. We do know that the first voice on the Map to insult Severus, mocking him for his big nose, is that of Remus, a prefect; and that Rowling has said that the Map was charmed specifically to insult Severus, not just any unauthorised person who handled it. The tone of the comments on the Map is highly abusive, and dedicated to jeering at Severus for his appearance.
I am not going to quote the Snape's Worst Memory scene (known as SWM) in full in the quotes because that would mean quoting half a chapter. But I will summarise it here:
In the book, Severus Snape has been teaching Harry Occlumency. On the fateful evening, Snape left the classroom to see to one of his Slytherins who had been seriously injured by the Twins, and while he was gone Harry snooped in his Pensieve and looked at memories he knew Snape wanted to keep private. The fact that the memory was in a Pensieve means it was absolutely true and objective, like a headcam film (Rowling has said so). Everything Harry sees, happened just the way he sees it. What he sees is as follows – and bear in mind that in the books the student's robes are like a monk's robes and they usually wear nothing under them except underpants, unless the weather is very cold.
Severus’s school year, or at least a major section of them who don't have to be somewhere else, stream out from the DADA OWL exam and many of them sit down around the edge of the lake. After fooling around with a Snitch for a bit James notices that Severus is sitting on his own nearby, poring over the exam questions which he has just been answering, and decides to attack him in order to entertain Sirius, who is bored. He says it’ll "liven [Sirius] up", showing that it’s an established pattern of behaviour, and meaning that he is encouraging Sev’s almost-murderer to go on attacking him. Peter, James's personal cheerleader, is described as showing "avid anticipation".
Severus, still peacefully minding his own business, gets up to walk away but James addresses him loudly as "Snivellus" so Severus makes to draw his wand, suggesting that he is very jumpy around them. James takes Severus’s wand off him with Expelliarmus and it is flung 12ft away. Severus tries to grab it but Sirius knocks him down with Impedimenta. Other students are now watching – some are enjoying the attack on Severus, others are wary of the Marauders, who we know routinely attack people at random.
Severus is now helpless and bound on the ground. James and Sirius stand over him with wands drawn and threaten and insult him and call him "Snivelly". Sirius – who seems obsessed with Severus's physical appearance – jeers at his big nose and greasy skin. Severus swears at them, and James punishes him for daring to protest by filling his mouth with soap and nearly choking him.
Lily at this point intervenes and tells the boys to leave Severus alone. She demands to know what Severus has done to them to deserve this and James says that Severus's crime is that "he exists". James promises to leave Severus alone if Lily will go out with him, and Lily says "I wouldn’t go out with you if it was a choice between you and the giant squid", so it’s clear she doesn’t want to date James, but James is using Severus as a hostage to try to force her to do so.
Meanwhile the Impedimenta has worn off and Severus has managed to get his wand back. He hexes James with what is probably a very controlled use of Sectumsempra, cutting his cheek. James retaliates by hanging Severus upside down with Levicorpus, exposing his bare legs and underpants. He has skinny legs, and Lily smiles a bit, but then demands that James let him down. James does, rather violently, by dropping him in a heap. Severus manages to get up and starts to sort out his robes, doing nothing aggressive, but Sirius knocks him down again with Petrificus Totalus.
So, on the one hand, when he first manages to get up, Severus takes revenge – or perhaps defends Lily, since James is at that point trying to mnorally blackmail Lily into dating him against her will – by cutting James rather than simply backing away. On the other hand, we see that even when he in't fighting back and is just trying to pull himself together, Sirius still punishes him for standing up and knocks him down again.
Lily again tells the boys to leave Severus alone and James says "Ah, Evans, don't make me hex you" – that is, he threatens her with violence for trying to protect her friend. She tells him again to stop hexing Severus and he backs down and does so. He lets Severus go but tells him he is lucky Lily was there – i.e. James is saying that Severus could never have saved himself unaided. Severus is stressed and angry and snaps that he doesn't need any help from "filthy little Mudbloods". Bear in mind that "filthy" doesn't actually mean "dirty": it's Rowling's polite substitute for "fucking", which we know because she jokingly called one of her own friends "A filthy, filthy liar", and because adult Snape also calls pureblood James "your filthy father". Also Severus is himself a Mudblood,since Rowling says it also applies to half-bloods with a Muggle parent.
Lily rounds on Severus, joins in in calling him "Snivellus", sneers at his shabby clothes, yells at James and then storms off. James hangs Severus upside down again and announces that he is about to pull his underpants off. We know this because in British English "pants" = underpants, and because aside from his robes, which are over his head, Severus is clearly only wearing underpants, shoes and socks, since his legs are already bare. This is where the memory is interrupted. We don't get to see if James really carried out his threat but adult Snape's extreme reaction suggests that he did, and having made the threat it’s difficult to see how James could have backed down without losing face.
Adult Snape comes back from trying to comfort a student seriously injured by two of Harry’s friends, to see Harry face down in his most humiliating memory, so of course he expects Harry will tell everyone. It’s a common thing that if somebody was abused as a child, and recovered, but then is abused again they lose their recovery and fall back into the trauma and childish behaviour they felt the first time. Snape acts like a traumatised teenager, drags Harry away from the Pensieve, shouts at him and throws a jar at him (but misses, probably deliberately). He refuses to go on with the Occlumency lessons – very sensibly, since Harry could easily have got him killed by Voldemort and we don’t know what other memories were in there – and acts shaky and weird for weeks.
Bear in mind that Rowling has stated plainly that what is in a Pensieve memory is absolutely accurate: it's not biased in any way. This is what happened.
Because it was Severus himself who invented Levicorpus, which was then used on him, some Marauders fen cry that it was all his own fault for inventing this monstrous spell (nearly as bad as the mildest of the things the Twins come up with). Others, having noticed that Remus said everybody was using it, correctly say that Levicorpus was clearly regarded as no big deal. Both are missing the point.
What makes the SWM scene extreme isn't the fact that at two points Severus is hoicked upside-down by his ankle which, yes, by Hogwarts standards is fairly minor, and arguably his own fault for having thought of it first. It's the fact that he is just minding his own business when he is attacked for kicks by the boy who had previously nearly taken his life and the boy who had saved it, disarmed, bound, jeered at, choked with stinging liquid (think waterboarding) to punish him for daring to swear about it – effectively saying "You're so low that we can do whatever we like to you and you aren't even allowed to protest because we own you" – told that his mere existence is the crime for which he is being punished, meaning he has no way out except to kill or die, and then (almost certainly) publicly stripped and his naked genitals displayed to the mob.
Imagine if it were Lily whom James hung upside-down and stripped and displayed her naked vagina to the mob. Would the Marauders fen still say "Oh, it was just a bit of fun"? And no, it's not "different when it's a boy".
'It served him right,' he sneered. 'Sneaking around, trying to find out what we were up to ... hoping he could get us expelled ...' [PoA ch. #18; p. 261]
'We were in the same year, you know, and we – er – didn't like each other very much. He especially disliked James. Jealous, I think, of James's talent on the Quidditch pitch ... ' [PoA ch. #18; p. 261]
'When did I ever sneak around people who were stronger and more powerful than myself? But you, Peter – I'll never understand why I didn't see you were the spy from the start. You always liked big friends who'd look after you, didn't you? It used to be us ... me and Remus ... and James ...' [[cut] 'You weren't about to commit murder right under Albus Dumbledore's nose, for a wreck of a wizard who'd lost all his power, were you? You'd want to be quite sure he was the biggest bully in the playground before you went back to him, wouldn't you?' [PoA ch. #19; p. 271]
'Snape's always been fascinated by the Dark Arts, he was famous for it at school. Slimy, oily, greasy-haired kid, he was' [GoF ch. #27; p. 460/461]
Sirius let out a bark of laughter. 'Impedimenta!' he said, pointing his wand at Snape, who was knocked off his feet halfway through a dive towards his own fallen wand. [OotP ch.#28; p. 569]
'Leave him alone,' Lily repeated. She was looking at James with every sign of great dislike. 'What's he done to you?' 'Well,' said James, appearing to deliberate the point, 'it's more the fact that he exists, if you know what I mean ...' [OotP ch.#28; p. 570]
'Leave him alone.' 'I will if you go out with me, Evans,' said James quickly. 'Go on ... go out with me and I'll never lay a wand on old Snivelly again.' [cut] 'I wouldn't go out with you if it was a choice between you and the giant squid,' said Lily. [OotP ch.#28; p. 570]
Sirius said 'Petrificus Totalus!'' and Snape keeled over again, rigid as a board. [OotP ch. #28; p. 571]
'I think James was everything Snape wanted to be – he was popular, he was good at Quidditch – good at pretty much everything. And Snape was just this little oddball who was up to his eyes in the Dark Arts, and James – whatever else he may have appeared to you, Harry – always hated the Dark Arts.' [OotP ch. #29; p. 590]
'She started going out with him in seventh year,' said Lupin. 'Once James had deflated his head a bit,' said Sirius. 'And stopped hexing people just for the fun of it,' said Lupin. [OotP ch. #29; p. 591]
He pulled out a card from one of the topmost boxes with a flourish and read, '"James Potter and Sirius Black. Apprehended using an illegal hex upon Bertram Aubrey. Aubrey's head twice normal size. Double detention."' Snape sneered. [HBP ch. #24; p. 497] 'Who wants to be in Slytherin? I think I'd leave, wouldn't you?' James asked the boy lounging on the seats opposite him, and with a jolt, Harry realised that it was Sirius. [cut] '"Gryffindor, where dwell the brave at heart!" Like my dad.' [DH ch. #33; p. 538/539]
'Mulciber! What do you see in him, Sev? He's creepy! D'you know what he tried to do to Mary Macdonald the other day?' Lily had reached a pillar and leaned against it, looking up into the thin, sallow face. 'That was nothing,' said Snape. 'It was a laugh, that's all –' 'It was Dark Magic, and if you think that's funny –' [cut] 'I know your theory,' said Lily, and she sounded cold. 'Why are you so obsessed with them, anyway? Why do you care what they're doing at night?' 'I'm just trying to show you they're not as wonderful as everyone seems to think they are.' The intensity of his gaze made her blush. 'They don't use Dark Magic, though.' She dropped her voice. 'And you're being really ungrateful. I heard what happened the other night. You went sneaking down that tunnel by the Whomping Willow and James Potter saved you from whatever's down there –' [cut] 'I know James Potter's an arrogant toerag,' she said, cutting across Snape. 'I don't need you to tell me that.' [DH ch. #33; p. 540/541]
J.K. Rowling: James always suspected Snape harboured deeper feelings for Lily, which was a factor in James' behaviour to Snape. [Bloomsbury.com livechat, 30th July 2007]
Remus functioned as the conscience of this group, but it was an occasionally faulty conscience. He did not approve of their relentless bullying of Severus Snape, but he loved James and Sirius so much, and was so grateful for their acceptance, that he did not always stand up to them as much as he knew he should. [Remus Lupin's back story, uploaded on Pttermore on 10th August 2015 but afaik originally published in the press at Christmas 2007]
Let us consider, for a moment, why we are told that the Marauders targetted Severus specifically. Bear in mind that Rowling stated in Remus's published back-story, written only a few months after DH came out, that James and Sirius subjected Severus to "relentless bullying", that they attacked a lot of people in a more general, less intense way, and that Sirius compared Peter's seeking shelter with himself and James to his wanting to be sure that Voldemort was "the biggest bully in the playgorund".
Sirius claims that James disliked Severus because Severus was involved in the Dark Arts, and James hated Dark magic. This cannot be true, at least at the time of the werewolf incident, because we see that Lily expects Severus to be shocked at the idea of somebody using Dark magic. It might have been true later, but if so it makes James and Sirius hypocrites. Rowling has said that curses are the worst kind of Dark magic and hexes are also pretty Dark, and we see Sirius use a hex (Impedimenta) and a curse (Petrificus Totalus) on Severus and James is evidently OK with that, and we know one of them got into trouble for using an illegal spell on one of their many victims. At the end of fifth year Lily describes James as hexing anyone who annoys him, and Remus later says he hexed people just for fun, so James himself uses at least fairly Dark magic on his many victims. And as at some time in fifth year they are routinely exposing bystanders to the risk of being killed or infected by a Dark Creature, and laughing about it.
Sirius claims that Severus was following them around trying to get them expelled. If Sev was doing so spontaneously then that would be a valid reason to dislike him: but if he was doing it because they were already persecuting him and he wanted to get them off his back, and/or because he suspected them of a serious crime (and by some point in fifth year they were in fact illegal, unregistered Animagi, putting innocent bystanders in danger from a werewolf and working on a surveillance device which enabled them to spy on children), then he was fully justified.
Sirius also says that they attacked Severus because he was just a "little oddball", and that part seems to be true. They bully him for the same reason people (try to) bully Luna.
Rowling has said that James attacked Severus in part because he was afraid Severus might have "deeper feelings" for Lily and he didn't like that, even though he and Lily weren't yet dating and wouldn't be for years.
It is unlikely that it was because they thought he wanted to be a Death Eater, since there is no evidence that they attacked any of the other DE-wannabe crowd to the same degree, though they may or may not have hexed them occasionally. It surely isn't, as some Snaters assert, because Severus had attacked Muggle-borns, because in the scene by the lake, when James is trying to make himself look good to Lily, he can think of no better or more gallant reason for persectuing Severus than "he exists", and tries to use him as a hostage, promising to leave him alone in future if Lily will agree to date him. So however you slice it James's reason for persecuting Severus is at least somewhat sexual, even before he stripped him naked.
Remus claims in the Shack scene in PoA that the cause of the enmity between Severus and James was that Severus was jealous of James, but given everything else we are told and shown, this was absolutely, definitely a lie. Not that Severus necessarily wasn't jealous of the rich pureblood jock who made his life a misery, and got away with it because the staff didn't know he had Death's own cloak and could turn into a beast, but it certainly wasn't the cause of their enmity, which began with James's conditioned prejudice against Slytherins. And it emphatically wasn't jealousy over Lily, on Sev's part, because for the first five years of his interactions with James he had Lily's friendship and James didn't, and by the time she got together with James she and Severus hadn't been friends for fourteen to twenty months.
Finally, Severus was an ideal target for persection: bearing in mind that Sirius, Remus and Peter all take the form of predators (even if only part-time, in Peter's case) and James that of an animal which seeks dominance. Severus fought back enough to make the Marauders feel better about themselves than they would if they picked on someone who just lay down and submitted, while at the same time not being strong enough to defeat them, so they had a sense of achievement when they beat him down and humiliated him. And he rewarded their predatory instinct by being hurt and humiliated and filled with miserable, futile rage, whereas somebody like Luna would just give them a blank look and get on with her day, as if they were midges.
'... anyway, Snape had seen me crossing the grounds with Madam Pomfrey one evening as she led me towards the Whomping Willow to transform.' Sirius thought it would be – er – amusing, to tell Snape all he had to do was prod the knot on the tree-trunk with a long stick, and he'd be able to get in after me. Well, of course, Snape tried it – if he'd got as far as this house, he'd have met a fully grown werewolf – but your father, who'd heard what Sirius had done, went after Snape and pulled him back, at great risk to his life ... ' [PoA ch. #18; p. 261]
'Did you like question ten, Moony?' asked Sirius as they emerged into the Entrance Hall. 'Loved it,' said Lupin briskly. 'Give five signs that identify the werewolf. Excellent question.' [OotP ch. #28; p. 566/567]
Snape followed, still poring over the exam paper and apparently with no fixed idea of where he was going. [cut] Snape had settled himself on the grass in the dense shadow of a clump of bushes. He was as deeply immersed in the OWL paper as ever [OotP ch. #28; p. 567/568]
'You might,' said Lupin darkly from behind his book. 'We've still got Transfiguration, if you're bored you could test me. Here ...' and he held out his book. But Sirius snorted. 'I don't need to look at that rubbish, I know it all.' 'This'll liven you up, Padfoot,' said James quietly. 'Look who it is ...' Sirius's head turned. He became very still, like a dog that has scented a rabbit. 'Excellent,' he said softly. 'Snivellus.' Harry turned to see what Sirius was looking at. Snape was on his feet again, and was stowing the OWL paper in his bag. As he left the shadows of the bushes and set off across the grass, Sirius and James stood up. Lupin and Wormtail remained sitting: Lupin was still staring down at his book, though his eyes were not moving and a faint frown line had appeared between his eyebrows; Wormtail was looking from Sirius and James to Snape with a look of avid anticipation on his face. [OotP ch. #28; p. 568/569]
It was, as Harry had anticipated, useless, boring work, punctuated (as Snape had clearly planned) with the regular jolt in the stomach that meant he had just read his father or Sirius's names, usually coupled together in various petty misdeeds, occasionally accompanied by those of Remus Lupin and Peter Pettigrew. And while he copied out all their various offences and punishments, he wondered what was going on outside [HBP ch. #24; p. 498]
I know some Marauders fen claim that the Marauders didn’t begin bullying Severus until after the werewolf incident, which was what turned them against him, and even that the SWM scene was the start of the bullying, since the bullying isn’t mentioned in the courtyard scene. But that interpretation results in multiple serious problems: far more than the idea that Severus and Lily didn't discuss the bullying which, if it was already taking place, was presumably already well-known to both of them and quite literally "went without saying". Lily asks "Why are you so obsessed with them, anyway? Why do you care what they're doing at night?" and you would expect the answer to the first question to be "because they won't leave me alone", but maybe he's answering the second question: what does he hope to achieve by finding out what they're getting up to at night?
[Note: the Doylist explanation is that Rowling was writing to a deadline and was running late, so she just didn't think the conversation in the courtyard through very well. She used it as an info-dump, rather than thinking through what either of them could be expected to actually say. This is also presumably the reason for Lily's callous lack of interest in the fact that Severus was nearly killed two nights earlier, and why in that scene Lily says James and Sirius don't use Dark magic when Rowling had already shown them doing so two books ago.]
In the SWM scene it is made clear that attacking Severus is a well-worn groove which James thinks will enliven Sirius, and Peter expects to find exciting. We also know they already had an established pattern of serious misbehaviour even before fifth year, because Remus had been made a prefect ten months earlier in the hopes that he would be able to modify their behaviour. We know that they already have a reputation for hexing anyone who crosses them, because Lily says so.
Yet, Sev is not on the look out for them, despite having just answered a question about werewolves which you would think would cause his mind to dwell on the incident with Remus. Some Marauders fen take that to mean that they hadn't attacked him before. Since James speaks as if attacking him is a well-worn groove and Peter anticipates it "avidly" that would have to mean that what they then go on to do to Severus was the kind of thing they did to all their victims, for which we don't see evidence: the offences in their detention records do not seem so severe or drawn-out. In any case James speaks as if it is specifically attacking Severus, not just attacking anyone, which will liven Sirius up.
The alternative is that it's attacking Severus specifically which is the well-worn groove, which suggests that they have left him alone for long enough that he has started to feel safe. Why? It’s logical I think to assume they had left him alone since the werewolf incident, either because they were in detention for months or because they genuinely felt shocked about having nearly killed him. That means that the well-worn groove was worn before the werewolf incident.
Let’s also look at some of the consequences of the claim that they only began to bully him after the werewolf incident, or only in the scene by the lake.
If they began to bully Severus after and because of the werewolf incident, that means that Sirius put Sev’s life in danger without having spent years learning to see him as less than human. That makes Sirius a lethally dangerous thug who might kill anybody at any moment on a whim. It also makes them all the most appalling hypocrites. They all know, and Sev knows, and Remus at least knows that Sev knows, that Remus was being taken down the tunnel by Madame Pomfrey and that what was (officially) happening with him was sanctioned by the staff. There wasn’t any trouble Sev could get Remus into over it. By setting up a situation in which Remus could have killed or infected a fellow student, it was Sirius who put Remus in danger – certainly of being expelled and possibly of being executed – so to then persecute Severus over it casts them in an appaling light.
If James saved a boy’s life and then began to attack and torment him, it makes James a monstrous control freak, even worse than he appears in canon.
If SWM was the start of the bullying it means the Marauders started persecuting and torturing a fellow student when they were a few months from being legally adult. It would mean the "relentless bullying" the author referred to had to have extended well into sixth year, when Sirius at least was seventeen, so they were criminally responsible. That’s far, far worse than what’s implied in canon, which is that they began bullying at eleven, and by sixth year they were growing out of it.
Rowling has stated that the Marauder’s Map was made specifically to insult Severus. It does so in very abusive terms, starting with Remus jeering at him for his big nose, so it was made when they were already bullying Severus. If the bullying began with SWM that would have to mean the Map wasn’t completed until the last two weeks of fifth year, or into sixth year.
Now, it’s true that we aren’t told for sure when the Map was created – only that they became Animagi in fifth year and then collected information for the Map. But again, the older they were when the Map was created, the creepier the fact that they designed a surveillance device which spied on eleven-year-olds becomes, the more appallingly childish the insults they built into it become, and the more culpable Remus becomes for joining in, if he had been a prefect for a year or more, not just a few months.
So, it’s 85% sure in canon that they were already bullying Sev before the werewolf incident, and 100% that they were doing so before SWM. Any other assumption not only clashes with the evidence but makes the Marauders monsters, hypocrites and immature brats to a greater extent than Rowling probably intended.
Griphook unlocked the door. A lot of green smoke came billowing out, and as it cleared, Harry gasped. Inside were mounds of gold coins. Columns of silver. Heaps of little bronze Knuts. 'All yours,' smiled Hagrid. All Harry's – it was incredible. The Dursleys couldn't have known about this or they'd have had it from him faster than blinking. How often had they complained how much Harry cost them to keep? And all the time there had been a small fortune belonging to him, buried deep under London. [PS ch. #05; p. 58]
As though an invisible hand was writing upon it, words appeared on the smooth surface of the map. 'Mr Moony presents his compliments to Professor Snape, and begs him to keep his abnormally large nose out of other people's business.' [PoA ch. #14; p. 211]
'Severus was very interested in where I went every month.' Lupin told Harry, Ron and Hermione. 'We were in the same year, you know, and we – er – didn't like each other very much. [cut] ... anyway, Snape had seen me crossing the grounds with Madam Pomfrey one evening as she led me towards the Whomping Willow to transform. [cut] He was forbidden to tell anybody by Dumbledore, but from that time on he knew what I was ...' [PoA ch. #18; p. 261]
'Yeah, I camped out at your dad's in the school holidays, and when I was seventeen I got a place of my own. My Uncle Alphard had left me a decent bit of gold – he's been wiped off here, too, that's probably why – anyway, after that I looked after myself.' [OotP ch. #06; 103/104]
Harry moved around behind Snape and read the heading of the examination paper: DEFENCE AGAINST THE DARK ARTS – ORDINARY WIZARDING LEVEL. [OotP ch. #28; 564]
'You might,' said Lupin darkly from behind his book. 'We've still got Transfiguration, if you're bored you could test me. Here ...' and he held out his book. But Sirius snorted. 'I don't need to look at that rubbish, I know it all.' [OotP ch. #28; p. 568]
'And Crabbe, loosen your hold a little. If Longbottom suffocates it will mean a lot of tedious paperwork and I am afraid I shall have to mention it on your reference if ever you apply for a job.' [OotP ch. #32; p. 657]
'Well done!' said Mrs Weasley proudly, ruffling Ron's hair. 'Seven O.W.L.s, that's more than Fred and George got together!' [HBP ch. #05; p. 101]
'... he's a – a bit of a mess, that's all. Greyback attacked him. Madam Pomfrey says he won't – won't look the same any more ...' Ginny's voice trembled a little. 'We don't really know what the after-effects will be – I mean, Greyback being a werewolf, but not transformed at the time.' [cut] 'I'm fine ... how's Bill?' Nobody answered. Harry looked over Hermione's shoulder and saw an unrecognisable face lying on Bill's pillow, so badly slashed and ripped that he looked grotesque. Madam Pomfrey was dabbing at his wounds with some harsh-smelling green ointment. Harry remembered how Snape had mended Malfoy's Sectumsempra wounds so easily with his wand. 'Can't you fix them with a charm or something?' he asked the matron. 'No charm will work on these,' said Madam Pomfrey. 'I've tried everything I know, but there is no cure for werewolf bites.' 'But he wasn't bitten at the full moon,' said Ron, who was gazing down into his brother's face as though he could somehow force him to mend just by staring. 'Greyback hadn't transformed, so surely Bill won't be a – a real –?' He looked uncertainly at Lupin. 'No, I don't think that Bill will be a true werewolf,' said Lupin, 'but that does not mean that there won't be some contamination. Those are cursed wounds. They are unlikely ever to heal fully, and – and Bill might have some wolfish characteristics from now on.' [HBP ch. #29; p. 571/572]
'Bill,' whispered Mrs Weasley, darting past Professor McGonagall as she caught sight of Bill's mangled face. 'Oh, Bill!' [cut] 'You said Greyback attacked him?' Mr Weasley asked Professor McGonagall distractedly. 'But he hadn't transformed? So what does that mean? What will happen to Bill?' 'We don't yet know,' said Professor McGonagall, looking helplessly at Lupin. 'There will probably be some contamination, Arthur,' said Lupin. 'It is an odd case, possibly unique ... we don't know what his behaviour might be like when he wakes up ...' [cut] 'You theenk Bill will not wish to many me any more?' demanded Fleur. 'You theenk, because of these bites, he will not love me?' 'No, that's not what I –' 'Because 'e will!' said Fleur, drawing herself up to her full height and throwing back her long mane of silver hair. 'It would take more zan a werewolf to stop Bill loving me!' 'Well, yes, I'm sure,' said Mrs Weasley, 'but I thought perhaps – given how – how he –' 'You thought I would not weesh to marry him? Or per'aps, you 'oped?' said Fleur, her nostrils flaring. 'What do I care how 'e looks? I am good-looking enough for both of us, I theenk! All these scars show is zat my husband is brave!' [HBP ch. #29; p. 580/581]
Bill, badly scarred and long-haired; [DH ch. #04; p. 44]
She had just set some knives to work, chopping up steaks for Griphook and Bill, who had preferred his meat bloody ever since he had been attacked by Greyback. While the knives sliced away behind her, her somewhat irritable expression softened. [DH ch. #25; p. 412]
'They sneak out at night. There's something weird about that Lupin. Where does he keep going?' 'He's ill,' said Lily. 'They say he's ill –' 'Every month at the full moon?' said Snape. 'I know your theory,' said Lily, and she sounded cold. 'Why are you so obsessed with them, anyway? Why do you care what they're doing at night?' [cut] She dropped her voice. 'And you're being really ungrateful. I heard what happened the other night. You went sneaking down that tunnel by the Whomping Willow and James Potter saved you from whatever's down there –' [DH ch. #33; p. 540/541]
JKR: Lupin was very fond of Lily, we'll put it like that, but I wouldn't want anyone to run around thinking that he competed with James for her. She was a popular girl, and that is relevant. But I think you've seen that already. She was a bit of a catch. [Spartz-Anelli interview, 16th July 2005]
A few other points. Given that they were already bullying Severus before the werewolf incident, he had reason to want to get something on them. Even if he knows – as we know he did know – that whatever was happening with Remus was sanctioned by the staff, at least the next time Remus jeered at him for having a big nose he could say “At least I don’t have a tail”.
But also, and perhaps more importantly, it’s made clear in the courtyard scene that Severus has repeatedly tried to tell Lily that Remus is a werewolf, even though she got annoyed with him and tried to suppress him (but now he can’t tell her he knows it’s true, because he promised Dumbledore). The implication, almost certainly deliberate on Rowling’s part, is that Severus is concerned that Remus may be a threat to Lily.
Nor would that be a silly fear. Even though yes, he knows Remus is being taken elsewhere to transform, we see from what happens with Greyback and Bill that even an injury from a werewolf in their human form can lead to permanent scarring and changes in behaviour. It sounds like Bill was actually bitten, but there might be concerns about scratches too, because it's said that a wound caused by a werewolf is cursed. Severus would want to tell Lily e.g. "If you’re doing practical Herbology with him, wear gloves, because even an accidental scratch with a fingernail while potting plants could leave you with a lifetime of craving raw steak." Given Rowling's statement that Remus was "very fond of Lily" (which I suspect was influenced by the films, because there is precisely zero sign of it in the books), Severus might even be worried that she and Remus might end up having sex. We must presume that when he has sex with Tonks Remus trims his nails, wears gloves, and is very careful never to bite.
Another point is that James and Sirius attack Severus in public, torture and sexually assault him, after their OWLs, and we don't see them check the Map to make sure there are no staff or prefects with an actual spine nearby. Are they so confident they won't be expelled – or do they just not care? Now that they've sat their OWLs, and assuming they passed, being expelled won't stop them from using a wand, and a bad reference from McGonagall can't affect them. They do still have one OWL to go, Transfiguration, but Sirius at least doesn't care: missing one exam certainly wouldn't prevent them from being cleared to carry a wand, since the Twins apparently only got three OWLs each, left school without NEWTs and were able to function and run a business. James is independently wealthy and will never need to get a job, except as a hobby. Sirius has probably already inherited money from his uncle Alphard (we know he inherited it before he turned seventeen, and he will be seventeen in just over four months), enough both to buy a flat and to live on, and if he ever needs a job no doubt James can find him a place in the family firm he is about to inherit. They've made it clear they don't care about detentions or lost points, and they probably can't be sent to Azkaban as minors, so between their OWLs and turning seventeen – November for Sirius, the following March for James – there is nothing anyone can do to control them.
