[HPforGrownups] Snape as Death Eater

[Margaret Dean]

No: HPFGUIDX 14241

Tina Smart wrote:

> Was Snape already a spy (Dumbledore's spy)? Was he working for Dumbledore
> all the time? No one has questioned his loyalty to Dumbledore, and maybe it
> extends further than the last 14 years.
> We have all thought that maybe he would go back to the death eaters as a
> spy, but maybe he was that from the very beginning. He is nasty on the
> surface, but how many times has he helped harry? Under all that surface
> nastiness he has shown himself as a caring and loyal person. He would still
> need to appear mean to be believed by the death eaters that he has come
> back.
> I think that obviously that will be addressed in one of the future books,
> but I see this as just as much a possibility as him truly having been a
> committed death eater.
> 
> Any thoughts?

I dunno . . . I think it gives Snape more depth if he's allowed
to be nasty as part of his true personality, rather than it being
a put-on of any kind.  (That's my one problem with the otherwise
excellent and moving fic "The Potion-Master's Apprentice.")

I see him, as a student and young man, as a kind of person who'd
be easily lured into the Death Eaters by his envy of people (like
James Potter or Sirius Black) who were better looking, more
popular, or more skilled than himself, in the spirit of "I'll
show =them!=."  We don't know anything about his family
background yet (which I hope to find out in later books!), but I
would guess that his family was =not= a happy, loving one. 
There's a lot of stored-up bitterness in Snape -- you can see it
spurting out like hot lava in the later chapters of PoA, where he
has to deal with the "Marauders" Lupin and Black.

I do agree that he's loyal to Dumbledore, who I would suspect
more or less hauled him out of Hell once he realized he
=couldn't= go the distance with the Death Eaters.  Under the
surface he is a principled man, and I don't think he's incapable
of caring for people, but I don't agree that he is what we
usually think of as a "caring person."  I see him as bitter,
lonely, still envious but nevertheless on the right side and
determined to stay there. 

Other comments?  Opinions?


--Margaret Dean
  <margdean at erols.com>