Snape's Fury (was: The Shrieking Shack-did Snape have ulterior motives?)

[eloiseherisson at aol.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 85769

Entropy:

>But why was Snape so dead-set against Black being freed? It was so
>important to Snape that he get Black back to the dementors for the
>kiss that he was willing to forego any explanation from anyone --
>didn't even want to entertain the possibility that he might have
>gotten the story wrong. 

Eloise:
I believe that Snape blames himself for failing to protect the Potters and 
that his fury at Sirius is in part a projection of this.

We know that Dumbledore had a spy in Vodemort's camp who warned that the 
Potters were in danger. At the moment the logical assumption is that this was 
Snape. So he did the first part of the job, but in his view he fell down in not, 
as he thought, recognising that the weak link in the chain was Sirius. Having l
et Sirius fall through the net once, he wasn't going to make the same mistake 
again. Sirius, he thought, tricked him, made a fool out of him, made him fail. 
Those are not things you do to Snape if you know what's good for you.

Entropy:
>Seems that Snape was acting purely
>emotionally, rather than logically. Perhaps revenge? But Snapes's
>reckless actions to have Sirius "kissed" seem to go beyond a childhood
>grudge over a reckless prank.

Eloise:
Precisely. It goes much deeper than that and is, I believe, linked to the 
anger he displays towards James' memory, too. After all, Snape seems to have 
tried to have protect James and Lily (despite his animosity to James) but even so 
James, by his own (as Snape would see it) pig-headed insistance on choosing 
his own Secret Keeper instead of allowing Dumbledore to do the job, managed to 
get the pair of them killed. *He* made Snape fail, too. Of course, Snape is 
right to an extent: it *was* James' choice of Secret Keeper that led to his and 
Lily's deaths, albeit that Snape didn't know the true identity of the Secret 
Keeper. Snape has logic alright, even if it is informed by personal animosity.

He doesn't *want* to "look at the rat"; he doesn't need to complicate things. 
He's already coping with the discomfort of knowing that he's fouled up once; 
he really doesn't want to contemplate the fact that he might have been wrong 
about something else. I am sure that all this has far more to do with his own 
psyche and feelings of self worth (or the lack thereof) than with anything 
else. He *needs* to be right. He *needs* to be in control of situations.

I might have mentioned this in my last post, but I think this is also at the 
root of why he goes it alone instead of summoning Dumbledore's help when he 
goes to the Shrieking Shack. To him, it's his own unfinished business. Something 
he has to do alone, to prove himself. The fact that he gets sweet revenge on 
a personal enemy is  the icing on the cake.

This leads me onto something else. Well, it's the root of all this really, 
because it's where my thinking about Snape all started. I believe that one of 
the keys to Snape's personality is this deep seated need to prove himself. To me 
this explains much about his relationship with Harry. Put simply, he is 
jealous of Harry. Snape's life has not been an easy one. He chose the wrong path, 
risked all to correct that, put his life on the line in the attempt to defeat 
Voldemort and yet so far we haven't seen him achieve anything very much.

He doesn't save Harry's parents and fails to protect Harry himself, yet 
infant Harry with no effort at all somehow, temporarily at least, defeats the Dark 
Lord.

He craves recognition (does anyone doubt how much he would have liked that 
Order of Merlin?) yet every heroic deed he has done has had to be done in 
secret. Harry on the other hand has a celebrity of which he, as a schoolmaster 
locked away in his dungeon, can only dream. Why else should he make so much play of 
Harry's "celebrity", his "fame"? Harry has done nothing to warrant Snape's 
aspersions;this is purely to do with what is going on inside Snape's own head. 
He's projecting his own need for recognition onto Harry.

He attempts to protect the Philosopher's Stone from Quirrel 
and Voldemort, but in the end it is *Harry* who does it.

Poor Severus. The pattern just carries on. By the end of PoA, he thinks he 
has managed to right part of the situation. He's captured Sirius. For whatever 
reason he hasn't exacted an immediate personal revenge, but is awaiting an 
official, Ministry sanctioned execution, he's being the model wizarding citizen 
about to be officially recognised for his role...and the dratted Potter kid 
thwarts him again. Worse than that, he does it with Dumbledore's collusion and 
Snape has to recognise that he was wrong in his interpretation of events. No 
wonder he's angry.

Entropy:
>Which leads me to (sorry, folks) the "Snape loves Lily" theory. This
>seems to be a logical reason (makes sense to me) for Snape's blind
>fury at Sirius. If Snape has believed all along that Sirius was the
>Potter's secret keeper, then he has been blaming Sirius and stewing
>over the loss of the love of his life, Lily, for twelve long years.

Eloise:
This may also be so. I've held out against L.O.L.L.I.P.O.P.S for a long time 
now, but I have to confess that OoP does seem to indicate that it might be 
true. But I think I've demonstrated that even so he may have other reasons for 
his feelings towards Sirius.

Entropy:
>Or, being a Voldie insider, he may even have been privy to the fact
>that Pettigrew was a spy, funneling information to the Death Eaters
>whenever he could. So even if he knew after the fact that Peter had
>been the Potter's true secret keeper, he may have still blamed Sirius
>for being so stupid as to pass on this sacred trust to someone who was
>so obviously untrustworthy.

Eloise:
If this is the case, then his failure to alert Dumbledore to the identity of 
the mole in his organisation is unforgivable.

I don't believe that he knew Pettigrew was a Death Eater until after the 
infirmary scene in PoA (when I *hope* that Dumbledore sat him down and gently 
explained a lot of stuff to him). We are told more than once that Snape has an 
uncanny knack of putting two and two together. A lot of the time he's right. 
Sometimes he's very wrong. But he has such conviction that he's right that he's 
not likely to look readily at alternative explanations, especially from sources 
he has reason to suspect such as Sirius or Lupin.

After OoP, however, I am left wondering a few things.
If Snape and Dumbledore are such experts at occulomency, I wonder how between 
them they were not able to divine who was the spy in the Order of the 
Phoenix. OK, I let Snape off this one, as I assume he was working deep under cover 
and the members of the OoP didn't know about him. But Dumbledore?

But how come Snape didn't suss Crouch!Moody? Was he really so intimidated by 
Moody's apparent suspicion of him that he was unable to divine his true 
nature?  

~Eloise
    
    



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