Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows question

I asked my husband about the behavior of James and Sirius and he said he could understand. Snape was a threat to Lupin. He was sneaking around trying to get them in trouble and that put Lupin at risk of being outed for what he was. This is a group of boys who went through an amazing and extremely difficult transformation so that they could help ease their friend's loneliness and help protect him. Snape was a threat so of course they are going to try to detour him from coming around and snooping. That and James was probably also being protected and possessive of Lily. I don't "like" the behavior of the boys but I can understand why they acted the way they did. It was bad choices motivated by loving and protective intentions.

He was a teenage boy, not a god. I liked that part of the story because it showed that no one is perfect, not even the father Harry idolized so much. It also showed that people grow up and see the error of their ways. James may have been a bratty teenage boy, like so many of them are(I know, I have four teenage boys!)but he grew up to be a wonderful man.

Kala and Elizabeth really summed it up. James and Severus were really just opposite sides of the same coin, if you think about it. The nearest I can get to their situation is Brom Bones and Ichabod Crane from Washington Irving's "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow."

James and Sirius were in no way bullies. I found Sirius and Lupin pretty decent characters, myself, and Lupin to be a good judge of character who would never have hung out with a bully.

He was an idiot like many young people - you can argue that he did what he did to protect Lupin but I disagree as both James Potter and Sirius Black went beyond that. They were bullies plain and simple. James may have realised the error of his ways but I never saw any evidence in the book that he tried to fix the error he made, Sirius never grew up and remained the same juvenile bully he was in school.

The idea that James and Sirius were bullies is based on one of Snape's memories. This is hardly the best evidence to prove that a pattern of bullying existed with either of them. Since it's Snape's memory, we can be sure that he left out anything he may have done to warrant his treatment. Imagine what impression you would get if you saw Malfoy's memory of Hermione punching him, but not all the times he called her a mudblood or mocked Ron for being poor. It seems like everyone else who knew James had positive things to say about him (the same would probably be true of Sirius if he hadn't been framed for murder), so I think the weight of evidence favors the conclusion that James was not a bully.

I think, it was just that James came from a doting family. He was used to having his way and that projected on his dealings with the outer world. In the train when they first met, James made fun of Snape because clearly their views clashed (that's a mild way of putting it). They say, the friends that you make when you are a kid are the best friends you'll EVER make. I think it's the same with enemies. Plus, Snape's turning into death eater didn't help matters. And James wasn't just mean, not really. He took Sirius in when Sirius had no place to go. If he really was mean, he would just let him hanging and just be an ass about Remus' werewolf thing. But he didn't!
OK that Levicorpus thing wasn't very nice of James. But he was just an immature kid.. We all do some stupid things when passing through that phase.
Now, about Lily, he may come of as cocky if you look at it from the Snape point of view keep an open mind about it and you'll find yourself rooting for the dashing, confident lead who knows what he is doing.. :)

Hey everyone has flaws, even good guys, and JK Rowling was good to show that.

James was a teenager who was infatuated with a girl. She wouldn't give him the time of day but she spent a lot of time with Snape, which made James jealous. The fact that Snape was practicing the dark arts probably made it worse. James didn't come off as someone who was a jerk to everyone. He seemed kind and loyal to his friends. As a teenager he was immature but he grew out of it, Snape never did. Plus, we don't know the whole story there seemed to be a rivalry between the two, so Snape might have done something to James and his friends as well.

Well, Severus Snape did hate him

Honestly, I don't think that James was an a-hole. He was a kid, and he got into a lot of trouble with his friends. He had a rivalry with Snape because they both liked Lily. He wanted to be seem cool, so he did a whole bunch of really stupid things. I don't think that James and Sirus tried to murder Snape; what teenager actually wakes up and decides to plan someones murder with their friends, plus I don't think that he would have wanted to put murder on Lupins head. They were playing a prank, they wanted to freak snape out. James realized that the prank was going to to far and he stopped it. So many people loved James and I think that if he really was an a-hole people would have said that they didn't really like him that much.

There is an interesting sub-topic going on, not only asking whether or not James was an a-hole (I don't think he was overall but towards Snape, sure), but also whether or not James and Sirius were bullies. Based on the assertion in previous posts that violence equates to bullying, then who wasn't a bully in these books? Based on calling James and Sirius bullies because they were mean to one person (one person who was also a cruel individual), is anyone in the books not a bully? Harry isn't kind towards Crabbe and Goyle, so is he a bully? Everyone was cruel towards at least one other person at some point in time in the books, are they all bullies? In that line of thought, is everyone in the world a bully? Gandhi wasn't always kind towards his fellow human beings, does that make him a bully? Whether or not James and Sirius attempted murder (a point that makes no sense to bring regular law into since the fictional magical world of Harry Potter has different fictional magical laws)is something of a side note. Is it true that anyone who uses any form of violence (phyiscal, emotional, mental, spiritual) is a bully? If so, then I doubt anyone can claim non-bully status without being an outright liar.

Back on topic, yeah James was a bit of an a-hole towards Snape, but Snape was also kind of an a-hole himself (he did call Lily a mudblood in a fit of anger when she was trying to console him). Everyone ends up being at odds with someone at some point in time, especially during school years. Accept and move on. Considering James was probably only mean towards one guy who was equally cruel towards him (probably anyways), I'm willing to give him a pass.....

half his genetics are in harry potter. he can never be a true ass and he was a spoilt only child

I think it's because we often saw them through Snape's eyes. (Harry wouldn't look like such a nice guy if Draco Malfoy was the main character instead.)

Obviously Lily was a nice gal, and surely she married him for a reason. I think he was just being a teenage boy, and that it's safe to assume he outgrew it.