I don't know what I think of such promises now, because the idea still gets me. The fact that all that tormenting and pain just doesn't matter and never did because the person just gets away with it. Though I suppose if they're not assholes later in life then they've learned something, somewhere.

Yeah, I know just what you mean. I guess the trouble is that if the only person caring is you, then you're just hurting yourself with the memory. The best case scenario is that you become friends with the person and then if you remind them of it they are sincerely sorry--then they are the one who has to live with it. For me, I find it much harder to live with behavior of my own that I don't like rather than other people's.

But you're right it can't just be that it doesn't matter, because look at James. He may have wound up being a nice guy, but what he and his friends did as a teenagers *did* have a big effect on Snape and changed Snape's life. In fact, the very idea that they were just given a free pass over it seems to be one of the main sticking points with Snape. Like remember when Harry throws it in Snape's face that James saved his life and Snape wants him to know that he didn't do it in a heroic way--you know that Snape hates the fact that James gets a heroic quality from that too!