Dragging Harry in through the Back Door

[linman6868 at aol.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 17509

Hi:

For Harry Fortnight, we sure are talking a lot about Snape! (Not that 
I mind.)  ;)

I'm wondering if this isn't, after all, an accident.  Snape seems to 
be the prism that focuses Harry's antagonism throughout the books.  
Draco Malfoy might be called his school enemy, but what have they 
really done except trade hexes and insults?  The Dursleys--well, 
Harry expects them to treat him rudely and neglectfully, but he's 
self-sufficient enough that this can usually be treated as a banal 
given (except when Marge is around).  Voldemort is the stuff that 
nightmares are made of, but Harry doesn't (yet) live in a nightmare 
world.  

Snape is something else again.  Nobody (except for Marge, and for 
similar if less constant reasons) can make Harry see red like Snape.  
If Snape would love to get something on the Troika [loved that, Neil 
and Haggridd!] Harry would love to score points off Snape.  Without 
Snape's presence, Harry wouldn't have to practice much self-control 
in the face of anger.  Without that, maybe he wouldn't have kept his 
will in the duel with Voldemort.  That's a mere speculation on my 
part, but it does seem to me at least that nothing and nobody does 
such a good job of focusing Harry's angers and frustrations into one 
solid beam as Snape does.  

With interesting results.  We know (at least abstractly) that Snape 
is one of the good guys.  But "swooping around like an overgrown 
bat," acting as nasty as they come, Snape introduces Harry to the 
complicated moral universe we live in.  Knowing he's on the right 
side, while simply impossible to believe for Ron, for Harry makes him 
all the more frustrating.  One of G.K. Chesterton's characters 
says, "You can't be angry with bad men.  But a good man in the wrong--
why one thirsts for his blood."  Precisely for this reason, Snape is 
capable of bringing out the best and the worst of Harry at one and 
the same time.

So, here's my gauntlet:  what is the "best" and "worst" of Harry that 
Snape brings out?

Lisa