Offered Theory

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 96681

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Silverthorne" 
<silverthorne.dragon at v...> wrote:

> 
> The obvious is that here is where the 
up-til-now-invisble-and-unknown Vamp makes his 
appearance...almost makes sense, in a weird sort of way. Sirius 
comes back, but he's breaking the rules of Life and Death, and 
he's in a dead body--but the body needs something to keep it 
going. So, it becomes the 'classical' vampire body--making 
Sirius needing to feed to keep it active, or he turns to dust. Fits
all the traditional requirements, gives us back Sirius, and gives 
him something 'new' to deal with (and thus, perversly, maybe 
helps him do all that maturing he didn't get to do as a regular 
wizard after he escaped Azkaban. Trauma cna ruin a man, but it 
can remake him to into something better if he's strong 
enough...)<<

Sorry, I don't think Harry will see Sirius again in any bodily form. 
That last, fleeting half of a hug is too poignant to be undermined. 
I don't want to see Harry and Sirius reunited for a touching 
farewell, not if JKR wants to be honest about the sacrifices made 
in war. Soldiers who die on the battlefield  don't get to hug  their 
children  again.

Nonetheless this is an interesting theory. I now understand the 
conflict in our ideas about vampires a little better. 	If you see 
the vampire, especially the modern, charismatic vampire, as a 
metaphor for the ascendancy of the spiritual and moral life  over 
the physical and material, however rich and prolonged, I agree 
that has little to do with Severus Snape. I also see that if Snape 
is considered to be naturally  inferior to Harry, then the struggle 
that each has to make the other see him as an individual worthy 
of respect would not end as we Snape fans would wish. 

But things which we think are only  metaphors turn out to be real 
in the Potterverse. Potterverse vampires must exist 
independently of  real life, Muggle and wizarding myth.  How 
would *they* feel about  the idea that they were  spiritually and 
morally inferior to humans? Wouldn't they resent being regarded 
as metaphors? Especially if some of the things that make them 
such dandy metaphors weren't even true? Even if their appetites 
were  bloodthirsty and their culture predatory,   wouldn't JKR ask 
us to judge them by their choices, far more than anything else? 

It seems to me that could have lot to do with Snape as an ex-DE 
and Head of Slytherin House, especially with the general feeling 
that no Slytherin could possibly be the moral equal of a 
Gryffindor. And what must be the corresponding feeling among 
Slytherins that Gryffindors consider themselves morally superior 
to everyone else.

Pippin