Sirius / Severus

[junediamanti]

No: HPFGUIDX 85827

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "arcum42" <Arcum_Dagsson at c...> 
wrote:
>> > Oh, yes, while Severus is surely getting on everyone's nerves by
> > reciting how nice it is to rid of Sirius, and giving them a back-
> > handed compliment by saying how fortunate that it was Sirius who 
was
> > killed rather than someone not quite so useless, still Sevvie is
> > suffering terribly from frustration because no one else rises to 
his
> > bait in the satisfactory way that Sirius did, and he gets no 
visible
> > sign of the pain he gives them. Of the grown-ups, Remus is hurt 
most
> > by these taunts but Molly is the one least good at concealing her
> > feelings ... 
> > 
> 
Arcum:
> Actually, I don't think Snape will be talking about how nice 
> it was to get rid of Sirius, any more then he does about James. 
> I honestly don't think Snape really wants to think about the 
> "typically Griffindor pointless heroic death" that either James or 
> Sirius suffered too much, though I have no doubt that he'll use 
> Sirius, like James, as a bad example. I honestly suspect he wants to
> die in a splendidly heroic death himself, subconciously, and 
resents 
> the two of them for getting there first...
> 
> --Arcum

June:
I agree about him not gloating.  Where's the evidence for Snape 
gloating about people being dead?  Secondly, he might well be 
jubilant privately about Sirius - and in his place, I might well feel 
the same, but I do not look for public gloating.  To some extent, he 
might even feel slightly bereaved by the loss of a good enemy.  No 
one left to take it all out on.  No one left to really cut a few 
snide comments on.  Lupin isn't the same kind of target - he won't 
rise, so that wraps it up for MWPP as something for Snape to vent 
some of his feelings on.

I don't agree with the concept of him wanting to die a splendidly 
heroic death.  "Oh, let me die - and then they'll all be sorry!", 
or "Death will redeem me at last!".  I think Snape wants to live the 
same way as the rest of us usually do.  I have no idea what his post 
LV fall agenda might be and will not even attempt to conjecture.  
What I do believe is there are issues in his past that drive him on 
(and yes, I''ll come blatantly out of the closet and say the issue is 
female, it had red hair and went by the name of Lily;-)).  I don't 
believe this particular Dante is seeking an early death so that he 
can be reunited with his lost Beatrice either.  But I think like many 
people with interior problems (a crap childhood, a frightful 
adolescence, a dark past, a lot of guilt) he may be hoping for a 
fairly redemptive conclusion to those aspects of his life.

He may never have sat and thought through precisely what form his 
life will take when the all-consuming goal of redemption/revenge is 
achieved.  Most similarly driven people don't.  That doesn't mean he 
doesn't want to live.  But he may well accepted the fact that he may 
well not survive the final outcome of the struggle.  That is 
different from wanting to die.

This is not a happy guy - accepted.  A guy who's making an 
unconscious appointment with death?  No.  Of course we just don't 
know enough about the character because we see him from a Harry-
centric point of view - which means that many of all the adults' true 
motivations are just not revealed (and of course JKR has good reasons 
for this - and we can also have a lot of fun mulling it all over 
too).  So perhaps he IS a subconscious suicide in the making.  I just 
don't believe that myself.


June