HBP: the Good, the Not So Good, and the Ridiculous (Spoilers)

[Carol]

Julie wrote:
> I don't recall any indication in the movie that the injury was a fatal curse. Of course it wasn't stated directly in the HBP book either, but Dumbledore's blackened and shrivelled hand was alluded to much more <snip>

Carol responds:

In the book, it's clear that it was a terrible (and potentially fatal) curse. Dumbledore gives himself a little too much credit and Snape not quite enough, but nevertheless it's clear to a reader a little more astute and much less anti-Snape than Harry that Snape has saved DD's life:

Dumbledore: "The ring, Harry. Marvolo's ring. And a terrible curse there was upon it too. Had it not been — forgive me the lack of seemly modesty — for my own prodigious skill, and for Professor Snape's timely action when I returned to Hogwarts, desperately injured, I might not have lived to tell the tale. However, a withered hand does not seem an unreasonable exchange for a seventh of Voldemort's soul. The ring is no longer a Horcrux." (HBP23)

Exactly what "prodigious skill" Dumbledore displayed (possibly getting himself back to Hogwarts despite being "desperately injured," destroying the Horcrux with the Sword of Gryffindor in that condition, and casting a Patronus to summon Snape?) is not clear, but Snape's "timely action" is obviously (as we later learn) confining the curse the DD's hand as he gives him a restorative potion. (Obviously, he also had to determine what kind of curse was on the ring and remove it; otherwise, he couldn't have stopped the curse and DD couldn't have worn the broken ring when he visited Slughorn.)

Anyway, DD "might [would] not have lived to tell the tale" if it weren't for Professor Snape's "timely action," knowledge of the Dark Arts, and skill as a healer, points that Book!Dumbledore also makes with regard to Katie Bell. (I suppose that the book just has Snape remove the curse from the opal necklace without saving Katie's life by, again, stopping or slowing the curse so that she can be healed at St. Mungo's.)

So is there no hint at all, other than Snape's saving Draco, that he's saving all the lives he can ("How many people have you watched die, Severus?" "Lately, only those whom I could not save"--quoted from memory from "The Prince's Tale" in DH).

It seems to me that they've made Snape seem wholly evil rather than ambiguous, but there ought to be hints for the attentive viewer that DD's trust in Snape is justified, just as there were in the books.

Carol, now fearing that "The Prince's Tale" will be badly shortchanged in DH2