Snape, the DEs and the Longbottoms

[ssk7882]

No: HPFGUIDX 33804

Hello.  Newbie here, bleary and dry-eyed and trembling from weeks
of staring at the computer screen reading old posts, and now
finally ready to de-lurk with a few comments on Snape, the DEs,
and the Longbottoms.

Proposing that Snape's shoddy treatment of Neville might be
partially motivated by some old grudge against the Longbottoms,
Dicentra spectabilis wrote:

  > The Longbottoms were powerful enemies of the Death 
  > Eaters, undoubtedly when Snape was one of them. Why
  > would Snape hold a grudge against someone who was 
  > fighting for a cause he eventually embraced? 

Well, why on earth wouldn't he?  Embracing a cause is one thing.
Embracing the individuals responsible for hunting down and 
killing your old friends, colleagues, and classmates is *quite*
another.  Just because Snape chose to betray the Death Eaters 
doesn't necessarily mean that he didn't retain a good deal of 
personal affection for them, and as Judyserenity pointed out, 
Snape's old classmates do seem to have had a poor track record 
with the Aurors.

In the Pensieve chapter of GoF it is strongly implied that
Evan Rosier met his death at Moody's hands -- and according to
Sirius, Moody was *exceptional* for the extent to which he tried
to avoid killing.  So God only knows how many of Snape's old
colleagues Frank Longbottom might have offed.  For all we know,
he could have been the one who killed Wilkes.  

While we're on the subject of Snape's old Slytherin gang, I've
noticed a curious tendency of fans, both here and elsewhere, 
to resist strongly the notion that Snape could possibly have 
retained any affection or regard for his old DE colleagues 
after his defection to Dumbledore's camp.  In fact, many 
people seem to prefer to believe that he never really liked 
them all that much to begin with.  (This is particularly 
evident in fanfiction, where Snape's relations with his old
classmates, when depicted, run a very small emotional gamut 
indeed, ranging all the way from contemptuous disdain to 
virulent hatred.)  The general attitude seems to be: "Oh, 
well, Sevvie never really could stand any of those guys in 
the first place, you know.  And even if maybe he did once, he 
sure loathes them now."

Why do we believe this?  Snape did join the DEs of his own 
free will, after all.  He went to school with these people; 
he worked with them; we can probably safely assume that he 
risked his life alongside them.  He did eventually choose to 
betray them, yes.  But that doesn't mean that he never really 
*liked* them.  Why is it so important to us to believe 
otherwise?

Is it perhaps because the Snape we see in canon strikes us 
as so profoundly anti-social that we simply find it 
impossible to imagine him ever having had any friends?  Or 
is it, perhaps, because we as readers find the DEs so 
utterly and completely loathsome -- they are the *Baddies,* 
after all -- that we are unwilling to humanize them even to 
the extent of conceding that they might ever do anything so 
sympathetic as form friendships?  Do we think them incapable 
of it?  And if so, then why?  Because they're Dark Wizards?  
Because they're Slytherins?  Because they're bigots?  

Because they're the sort of people who dehumanize their 
enemies?

Or is it, perhaps, that when push comes to shove, we just
don't really believe it possible to continue to care for 
people personally once one has broken with them politically,
ethically, and spiritually?  Do we reject out of hand the 
possibility that one might hate the sin while loving the 
sinner?

Or, alternatively, might the unwillingness to concede the 
possibility that Snape might have truly cared for his old 
friends and colleagues be really nothing more than a ploy 
we as readers have devised to ensure our *own* psychological 
comfort with the character?  Perhaps in order to redeem Snape 
_to ourselves_ we must first place him in an emotional context 
from which he was *not,* in fact, betraying his friends when he 
defected to Dumbledore's camp?

Because, really, there's just no getting around it, is there?
It's an ugly thing to do, to betray ones friends.  No matter 
what the justification, no matter how sound the principles or 
the motivations underlying the betrayal, no matter how much we 
may approve of it as a political act, it remains undeniably
*ugly*.

So is that it, perhaps?  Do we tell ourselves that Snape 
never really liked the DEs in the first place because we 
are unwilling to acknowledge the extent to which Severus 
Snape is just Peter Pettigrew, seen through the looking glass?

Heh.  Well.  Whatever the reasoning behind the assertion, 
I'm afraid that I just can't buy it.  I see nothing in canon 
to suggest that Snape never cared for his DE colleagues, and 
plenty to suggest that he did and does.  His favoritism of 
the DE's children, his advocacy of House Slytherin, his 
reactions to Crouch/Moody, the very depths of his bitterness...
there are other ways to explain all of these things, certainly.  
Many, many people have.

But I prefer not to.  Until Rowling proves me wrong, I will 
continue to operate under the assumption that even while 
conspiring to betray them, Snape retained a strong personal 
affection for many of the DEs, and that when they got 
themselves slaughtered by Aurors or shipped off to Azkaban, 
it really *hurt* -- even (or, rather, *especially*) when it 
happened due to the information he was secretly passing along 
to Dumbledore.  It is terribly common for real-world spies 
to engage in just this brand of cognitive dissonance.  One 
might argue, in fact, that the ability to maintain such a 
schismed perspective is the hallmark of a successful agent.

But returning to the Longbottoms...

Judyserenity wrote:

 > I have to admit, anger at the Longbottoms in particular 
 > would not be especially fair, since two of Snape's 
 > friends were jailed specifically for torturing the 
 > Longbottoms, but since when are emotions rational?  

Indeed.  Emotions are not rational, and anger is very rarely
"fair," and blaming the victim, while it may be horrendously
unjust, is also an all-too-human tendency.  I can easily 
imagine Snape feeling particularly resentful towards the
Longbottoms.  They are, after all, the reason that the
Lestranges (who should have been *safe,* dammit -- the 
war was over, the arrests had come to an end, they would
have been home free if only they hadn't had to go messing 
with the Longbottoms like that) are now serving life in 
Azkaban.

(Note to nitpickers: for purposes of this discussion, yes,
I *am* assuming that the Pensieve couple and the Lestranges
are the same people.  And yes, I *know* that this Remains
To Be Proved.  But I think it strongly enough implied by
the text to operate under the assumption for the nonce.)

But even if we assume that Snape bears no particular animosity 
toward the Longbottoms themselves, the fact still remains that 
Neville must serve as a highly unpleasant reminder to him that 
two of his oldest friends are to this very day gibbering their 
sanity away in wizard prison hell -- something that I feel 
certain he'd much rather avoid thinking about.

And there are likely guilt issues as well.  From what Sirius 
tells Harry et al in GoF about Severus Snape's School Days
(famous for his fascination with the Dark Arts, entered
school knowing more curses than half the 7th years, and so
forth), it seems more than likely to me that Snape was the
one who led the rest of his old Slytherin gang down the road
to damnation in the first place.  If such is the case, then
he's doubly culpable, bearing responsibility not only for 
what eventually happened to Rosier and Wilkes and the 
Lestranges, but also for the fates of all of their victims 
-- the Longbottoms included.  

That can't be a nice feeling, and once you factor in 
Neville's propensity for melting cauldrons and generally 
making a mess of things in Potions class, I think it gives 
us more than sufficient explanation for Snape's treatment of 
the poor lad.  Really, while it is a great deal of fun to
contemplate the possibility that Snape might harbor some old
grudge against Frank Longbottom, I hardly consider it necessary.  
His behavior seems perfectly comprehensible to me without
adding a personal grudge on top of all of it.


Pigwidgeon37 asked:

 > ... does anybody have an idea as to why the Lestranges
 > got it into their fanatical heads that the Longbottoms 
 > might eventually know his [Voldemort's] whereabouts? 

To which Judy replied:

 > I assume the Lestranges and their accomplices (Crouch 
 > Jr. and the other guy) started with the Longbottoms 
 > because the Longbottoms were the easiest to catch, and 
 > then got caught themselves before they could torture 
 > anyone else. 

Well, of course that's always possible.  But I tend to assume
that the Lestranges started with Longbottom because they had
reason to believe that if anyone knew anything about Voldemort's
current whereabouts, he would.  I doubt he was targetted simply
because he looked like easy pickings.  On the contrary, I 
suspect that Longbottom was quite a high-ranked Auror, privy
to the details of the MoM's search for Voldemort: a Person 
In the Know, and no easy prey.  Had he been such a 
lightweight, then surely his protestations of ignorance would 
have been believed long before both he and his wife were 
tortured to the point of irrevocable insanity?  

(Of course, I suppose Crouch, Lestranges, et al *could* have 
just been entertaining themselves.  But I've got a feeling
that they were in a rather goal-oriented frame of mind at the
time: had they not believed that Longbottom was holding out
on them, I suspect that they would have moved on to the next 
victim, rather than hanging around increasing their chances
of getting caught just for the sake of getting a few sadistic 
kicks.)

We do tend, I think, to envision the Longbottoms as hapless
innocents -- at least, I know that *I* do.  It's hard to
avoid the temptation to read them as young and inexperienced,
as profoundly vulnerable, as defenseless.  And of course, 
there are a number of reasons we read them this way.  There's
the identification with Neville, for starters.  There's also
an identification with James and Lily Potter, who if they 
were not hapless, were at least very young at the time of 
their deaths.  Then there's Dumbledore's evident outrage 
over what was done to them.  And, of course, there's also
the fact that suffering of the magnitude that we can imagine 
the Longbottoms must have experienced grants the status of
"innocent" as a matter of humanitarian default: in the face
of such suffering, all men are innocent.  

But all that said, I think that we might want to bear in
mind that Frank Longbottom was not precisely an innocent
in the full meaning of that term.  His wife may have been,
but he himself was not.  He was not a hapless bystander,
caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.  He wasn't
even a civilian.  He was an _Auror_, invested with the 
authority to investigate, interrogate, arrest, and -- in 
the last year before Voldemort's defeat -- also to torture, 
to magically coerce, or even to kill those he suspected of 
malfeasance.  Not to say that he abused his power, of course
-- Dumbledore seems to have liked him, so we may perhaps 
safely assume that he did not -- but the fact nonetheless 
remains that we are not talking about a defenseless bystander 
here.  What happened to the man was horrible beyond imagining, 
yes.  But he wasn't exactly a *lamb.*

Nor was he even necessarily all that young.  We are told that
the Longbottoms were "very popular," which does rather 
encourage us to think of them as popular in the same way
that the Potters were popular -- which is to say, as young
and handsome and overflowing with potential -- but given
the mood of wizarding society at the time, "very popular"
could equally well refer to a hardened, tough-as-nails
war-hero, well out of his twenties.  Not everyone chooses
to have their first child at the tender age of twenty-one,
as the Potters did.  Certainly the impression I get of
Neville's grandmother is one of old age, rather than late
middle-age, which to my mind rather implies that the 
Longbottoms weren't all that young when Neville was born.

My own feeling on the question of "why the Longbottoms?" 
is that Longbottom was probably an experienced Auror of 
high rank and no small repute, deeply involved in the MoM's
search for Voldemort, and that while the Lestranges and 
their accomplices may very well have been sadistic, 
fanatical, and more than half-mad, they were nonetheless 
not being _entirely_ unreasonable in their choice of 
target.

Then, of course, I could be wrong.


  -- Elkins