Snape and Slytherin; various redemptions

[abigailnus]

No: HPFGUIDX 37895

Porphyria said, in respnse to my saying:
> > Actually, I've been wondering if that isn't going to be a problem for Snape 
> > in the coming books.  If Snape has indeed gone back to spy on Voldemort, 
> > he has to maintain the appearance of being a secret Death Eater - there 
> > are too many children of DEs in Slytherin house to allow him to show 
> > sympathy for Dumbledore's side without jeopardizing his cover. 
> 
> I do agree with both you and Marina that it is, or should be, his job to cough up some decent advice for any student-at-risk asking him for it. Assuming he is going to be spying in future books, I think the only way he could help someone would be to swear to secrecy about it.  Of course he'd have to suss out whether one of them was only pretending to turn against LV in order to suss out Snape's loyalties in turn, but he's perfectly capable of doing that. That's his specialty. 

I'm not sure it would be so simple.  I'm thinking of the scene at the
 end of The Sounds of Music, where Captain Von Trapp is trying to 
get Liesel's boyfriend to ditch the Nazis and come with them.  You 
can see the kid starting to come around, and then he realises what 
he's about to do and tries to turn the Von Trapps in.  

Now, obviously I'm not arguing the emotional honesty of The 
Sounds of Music, but I think that scene is rather accurate with 
regards to the kind of dilemma the Slytherin kids might come to.  
When I say that some kids might teeter over the edge, I'm not 
talking about the ones who are already in opposition to DEs.  Snape 
doesn't have to worry about them.  I thinking about the kids who 
really don't know which side the right one is, and need the guidance 
of someone they trust.  

In that situation, they may very well turn on the person trying to help 
them for making them feel something that's contrary to what they 
think is right.  Snape can stipulate secrecy as much as he wants, but 
if some kid he tried to bring back to the light side suddenly turns back, 
he'll be as good as dead.  In this case, Snape can't be expected to 
know how the kids are leaning because the kids don't know themselves.
> 
> OTOH, Abigail said:
> 
> > I don't happen to be one of the people who believe that Snape secretly 
> > hates Draco or that he's trying to weaken the next generation of DE by 
> > being soft on the Slytherins. 
> 
> Since I've argued just this myself in the past, for the sake of consistency I'll add that I don't see any evidence that he's doing anything *other than* weakening them, whether he means to or not. You all have made me feel very guilty about imagining that Snape intends harm to his own house, but redemption-speculation aside, they do get more hopeless every year, don't they? Meanwhile Harry is the one throwing off Imperius Curses and standing down Voldemort in duels. This takes strength of will, and practice at standing up to antagonism. I'd like to see Draco attempt something like that. 

You do have a point, in that Slytherin seems to be made up of weaklings, 
but that might very well be a complaint laid against JKR rather than Snape.  
I'm not the first person to feel that descriptions of Slytherin are far too 
one-dimensional.  The only excuses I can come up with are that the books 
are being told from Harry's point of view, and he (a) sees Slytherin as the 
main competition to his house and therefore thinks nothing but the worst
 of them and (b) seems to concentrate on Draco as the main representative 
of Slytherin (he's certainly the Slyth kid Harry has the most contact with) 
and that must color his impressions.  

Also, I think Draco's dominance in the house is not helping.  Draco is a 
spoiled rich kid who thinks he's entitled to everything.  He encourages an 
environment of toadying.  Given how powerful he seems to be in the 
house, and given Slytherin's relative isolation from the rest of the school, 
Draco could be adversely affecting the kind of kids Slyterin is producing.  
Of course, this could only be true for kids younger than Draco, but we 
hardly ever see Slytherin kids outside of Harry's year anyway - the only 
one I can think of is Marcus Flint.  There might be some halfway decent 
Slyth kids in the years above Draco. 

Or maybe these are simply the people that Snape thinks are going to be 
successful in the world.  If Snape is nothing else, he's very good at coming 
to the wrong conclusions.  Maybe he thinks he's doing well by his house, and 
has a hard lesson coming.   Either way, I can't believe that Snape is deliberately 
sabotaging his own kids - that seems to be in direct opposition to his duties 
as head of house.
> 
> Abigail also asks:
> 
> > ...what makes Sirius so reluctant to believe that Snape was a DE?  Is it just 
> > because Dumbledore trusts him?
> 
> I didn't get the impression that he was reluctant to believe Snape was a DE; he was just pointing out that Snape had never been *accused* of it, while the other five were. Sirius can't understand why Dumbledore would hire a former DE, but I don't think he feels this way in defense of Snape; he just can't see why a former torturer-murderer would be allowed to teach little kids. 

Well, I went back and checked GoF, and Sirius does more or less say 
that he's reluctant to believe that Dumbledore would hire a former DE.  
Silly Abigail.  But that leads me to wonder what Sirius' attitude towards 
Snape is going to be in the coming books now that he knows about his 
past (apart from the blinding hatered, I mean.)  Will Sirius defer to 
Dumbledore's judgement, or will he, like Snape did towards Lupin in PoA, 
harbor great suspicion towards Snape?

And then Catlady wrote about Snape being unable to help 
Slythering kids in trouble:

>He *could* tip off Dumbledore to send someone else (ideally, a 
Slytherin Old Boy or Old Girl) to recruit the wavering Slyth kid to 
the Light Side.

Well, that's what I meant by positive Slytherin role models.  Given 
how isolated the Slyth kids are at Hogwarts, they would never 
accept help from another house, and maybe not even from 
Dumbledore.  The only problem with this is finding the older Slyth 
kid to do the job, assuming there are any good ones left, and then 
recruiting *them* without blowing Snape's cover, which brings 
us right back to the beginning (because even the older, good Slyths 
are likely to be suspicious of Dumbledore.)

So I think Snape's in a bit of a tricky situation, and I hope that gets 
dealt with in the coming books (plus I'd like to see Slytherin kids 
who are a bit more three-dimensional.)

Abigail