Snape - A very good hater

[rshuson80]

No: HPFGUIDX 69544

Kneasy said;

> Snape hates Harry because of James and his crew. Really? I don't 
>doubt Snape hates James and Sirius, probably Lupin and feels 
>contempt for Wormtail. But Harry? Why should he hate Harry? 
>Probably doesn't like him much, reminds him of James, but Snape 
>isn't an idiot, he's cold and calculating. He knows that Harry has 
>nothing to do with events long gone.....
> Snape is a Death Eater who's switched sides and is hoping like 
>hell that other DEs such as Malfoy, Goyle and Crabbe haven't caught 
>on. (And they obviously haven't -  Malfoy praises Snape to 
>Umbridge.) How would it look if a good little DE didn't take every 
>opportunity to  torment the proximate cause of Voldemorts downfall? 
>It could be awkward  if Sneak!Draco ran home with less than 
>convincing tales. There have even been a few hints, particularly in 
>OoP, that in private Snape is not so unfeeling about Harry as he 
>once seemed. 

I say:

Indeed!  Private Snape and Public Snape do seem rather at odds with 
each other.  If we assume that Public Snape, who is almost always 
being observed by a class full of Slytherins in his dealings with 
Harry, is acting a part, his behaviour is much more excusable, and 
makes a little bit more sense. It's interesting to speculate how his 
behaviour might be different if Gryffindor didn't always have 
Potions with the Slytherins.  I certainly detect a theatrical air 
about Public Snape at times. 

Private Snape is hardly nice, but he's much more helpful.  Harry 
gets more information out of him in five minutes in OOP than anyone 
else has yet told him – all Snape stops short of telling him is 
presumably what Dumbledore has decided he shouldn't yet know.  Okay, 
Snape does not present him with a big box of chocolates, but he is 
the teacher, and Harry is being really quite surly and insolent.  
The nicest teacher I ever had would still have insisted I called 
them Sir or Miss, and that I didn't interrupt them, and Hogwarts is 
run along more formal, old-fashioned lines than any school I 
attended. He even –almost- praises him. "Well, for a first attempt 
that was not as poor as it might have been."  For Snape that's 
bordering on gushing!

Don't get me wrong, I don't think that he likes Harry, and I think 
he has been prejudiced against him from the start simply because he 
thinks he's like his father.  But then Harry's hardly done much to 
dissuade him of that idea – he's forever breaking rules, for no 
genuine reason that Snape could possibly know about, he's often 
insolent, and he's participated in raids of Snape's private stores 
on more than one occasion.  JKR reminds us of that in the Occlumency 
chapter; "In the corner stood the cupboard full of ingredients that 
Snape had once accused Harry – not without reason – of robbing." 
(p467 in my edition). Oh, and accused him of being in league with 
the Dark Lord within his hearing at least twice.  (Once in PS, and 
Barty Crouch jnr reveals that Harry suspected Snape while under the 
influence of Veritaserum in GoF).     

> JKR has confirmed that there are staff members who have families. 
But 
> it's confidential. To be revealed later. There are only two real 
> candidates for plot significant families. Dumbledore for possible 
> bloodlines and Snape, probably for motivation.
> 

I say: 

 I'd go with the Snape-as-widower idea, simply because if there's a 
reason for his always wearing black, that's the obvious one.  

Kneasy says:

> This is the best possible lead to a motivation for Snape that I 
have 
> come across yet.
> 
> Suppose the man is Snape, the woman Florence, the child theirs. I 
doubt 
> if Snape would be a sharing, caring father; or a lovey, dovey 
husband. 
> But he would not tolerate an intrusion into *his* family. What if 
> Voldemort did intrude, violently, irrevocably. How would Snape 
react? 
> Voldemort would have a new enemy. 

I say:   

Hmm... interesting.  I'm not sure I buy that the hook-nosed man 
Harry saw in the pensieve may have been Snape himself; you would 
have thought he'd recognise him as an adult at least.  But you're 
right, it never specifies who any of the people in his memories are -
 we assume he's the teenager in the room, because he's the only one 
there, and similarly that he's the boy on the broomstick because 
he'd hardly be the girl (... that's an idea!  Put that one away for 
later ^_^) so it could be red herring central.  

It does make sense in terms of Snape's side-shifting.  Not 
necessarily Florence, but his falling for a muggle-born woman, or 
even, God forbid, a muggle, who then came a cropper against 
Voldemort provides valid motivation for him to go from foul mouthed 
racist teenager (Calling Lily a mudblood in the pensieve) into 
someone who Dumbledore won't even entertain the idea of his 
betraying them.  

The problem – Snape switched sides before Voldemort fell and passed 
information to the good guys – if V had done damage to a member of 
his family, why would he still consider Snape trustworthy enough to 
remain in his ranks?  Did his massive ego not even entertain the 
possibility that he might be betrayed, even by someone who's family 
he's fried?  Or is it Snape's Occlumency – V thinks he can't be lied 
to, but he can?  That ego of his, I don't know... Well, I don't 
know!  But that's my thought 

^_^

Nyarth 

(ps apologies if there's an serious repetition of points made before 
here, but I haven't been keeping up since the release, and you 
people have gone mad with the posting!)