Snape (what else?), branching off a Sirius discussion

[Amanda]

No: HPFGUIDX 34435

  Cindy Quoth:

  Snape, on the other hand, has not moved past his old Hogwarts grudges at all.  Opposing Lupin's appointment as DADA teacher.  Trying to tip off the students that Lupin is a werewolf.  Spilling the beans to the Slytherins so that Lupin must resign.  Accusing Lupin of letting Black in the castle.  Motivated to catch Black in PoA to settle a school-boy grudge.  Following Lupin to the Willow not to give Lupin his potion but to catch him doing something wrong.  Being unwilling to acknowledge Black's membership on the team until Dumbledore forced him too.  Snape is also showing a certain lack of personal growth, and unlike Sirius, Snape doesn't have a very good excuse for it.

  --------This is me, I'm caught in Cindy's format. Rrgh. My thoughts:
   
  I don't think Snape is immature, so much as simply beyond caring on many points. I think he was probably immature when he went over to Voldemort, and that was part of his going, and he came of age in truly horrifying circumstances. He went from young to "seen far too much" in a very short time; he spent very little time at what most of us judge a sane, mature state. Far from not developing, he was pushed too far, to where he doesn't give a thought to what most of us think are big, major, awful things to do.

  Snape has probably been where Harry just went at the climax of book 4, a situation so charged with testing of fundamental loyalties and genuine, grinding, constant mortal danger that everything else seems trivial. Unlike Harry, I'm betting Snape lived in that mental state for rather a long time. Consequently, I suggest that it is not a case of arrested development we see in Snape's behavior now, so much as a falling back on what still seems mostly trivial, something to do while he passes the time.

  He does not expend the energy to grow and develop, unless he is forced to--why should he? After the past it is hinted that he's had, probably damn little seems very important, and the day-to-day sniping at students or rolling on with old grudges is simply his "autopilot," the mode he functions in without thinking, and again, given the past he has, he probably does not care to think too much. Perhaps he's *trying* to let such trivialities be major again, to get away from the starkness and substance of what he had to deal with before. 

  About the only thing that seems to make Snape honestly examine facts and/or his reactions (this, by inference, from changes in how he reacts to things as the story goes along) is Dumbledore, which makes me think Dumbledore was the only positive in the great struggle and danger Snape went through. I seriously doubt that, barring the Shrieking Shack scene and the "gripping the chair" moment, we have seen any of a personal level of Snape--the rest is just his "cruise" mode.

  I note also, that at the end of book 4, the look that Harry and Snape exchange seems to bode a change in how Snape sees Harry, and I think on some level it is because of this shared "beyond the trivial" experience. Snape is coming, for the first time, to see Harry as Harry and not a mass of old associations. Harry is seeing Snape as something besides a cantankerous teacher. Their prior relationship is trivial in the face of what they now face, and on some level they both know it. And I think they will both carry it on, hating each other, if for no other reason than normality.

  If that made sense.

  --Amanda


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]