Harry Potter: 10 Evil Acts Committed By Gryffindors

Whenever Snape mentioned Harry’s father, he always described him with disdain. Harry largely ignored these snide remarks, but during his fifth year, he witnessed his father’s bullying behaviour first hand.

After gaining access to Snape’s memories, Harry observed his father ridiculing his nemesis in front of a sea of onlookers. James gave Snape no chance to defend himself and even had the nerve to use one of his own spells against him (Levicorpus). What’s more, James was aided by Sirius throughout this encounter, whilst Snape was forced to struggle alone. (Though Lily Evans did eventually come to the rescue.)

But this look into James’s behaviour at school was just a small insight into his vendetta against Snape. It’s implied several times throughout the books that the pair of them consistently hated each other whilst at school. As such, the memory Harry witnessed was just one of many instances in which Snape was bullied by James.