Moved from Main - the Dark is rising series and movie

[marion11111]

> > 
> > Alla:
> > 
> > I am comparing Dumbledore and Snape v Merryman and Walker. I do not 
> > remember Dumbledore asking Snape to love him, no?
> 
> Magpie:
> Oh--Snape. Then no. But even there there's a lot of differences. But 
> I don't have a problem with the way Dumbledore treats Snape. 
> 


marion11111:
You two stay up much later than I do, I'm having trouble keeping up. :-)  

Magpie, I DO have a problem with how Dumbledore treated Snape.  Snape was not a good 
man - he worked for Voldemort, he was willing to watch James and Harry die just to keep 
Lily alive and he was mean to kids, BUT Dumbledore made a trade.  Snape's protection of 
Harry and loyalty to "the cause" in return for keeping Lily safe.  Dumbledore took minimal 
measures to do this and must have known it was a lost cause yet held Snape to his word 
as long as was needed for Dumbledore's plan and then set him up to die.  And I won't even 
get started on his use of Harry.

Merriman, I believe, did spell it all out.  His mistake was in not understanding the 
complexities of human emotion.  He needed to sit Hawkins down and say "You understand 
you could die and I wouldn't be able to save you.  No matter how much I love you, I would 
have to let you die" or something like that.  But Hawkins seems very young in his own time 
when he would have agreed to this and he loved Merriman.  None of us would believe that 
someone we loved would let us die no matter what the cause.

And Hawkins is so much more tragic a character than Snape. To pay such a price for 
simply being human and perhaps not intelligent enough to grasp what was being asked.  
Again, as a kid, I couldn't even begin to get all this.  I just thought "Too bad, he shouldn't 
have switched sides."

So, I'm back to trying to figure out why I can't stand Dumbledore and yet have no problem 
with Merriman.  I guess I felt betrayed by Dumbledore.  He was so cuddly in the first books 
and gave the impression of protecting people - Hagrid, Trelawney, Harry.  To suddenly 
discover that he was coldly using some people was hard to take.

Merriman was never all that cuddly.  On my first reading, I started with DiR and was 
introduced to him as a wise, powerful,yet cold Old One.  Even after seeing him through the 
Drew children's eyes, he was never overly warm and fuzzy.  I think Jane even says at one 
point that he's not that kind of Uncle.  So, when he treated the Walker with such coldness, 
it didn't seem that unexpected.   

And whichever of you pointed out that Will is OK with everything Merriman does because 
he is also an Old One had never occurred to me.  But of course that's it.