Snape's Destiny/JKR quotes (or Snape-aholics and Siriophiles)

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 105509

> 
> SSSusan:
> I'm curious how you would take DD's remark to Harry, then, 
near the 
> end of OoP:
> ************************************
> "Snape stopped giving me Occlumency lessons!" Harry 
snarled.  "He  threw me out of his office!"
> 
> "I am aware of it," said DD heavily.  "I have already said that it 
> was a mistake for me not to teach you myself...."
> 
> "Snape made it worse, my scar always hurt worse after 
lessons with  him--... How do you know he wasn't trying to soften 
me up for Voldemort...."
> 
> "I trust Severus Snape," said DD simply.  "But I forgot--another 
old  man's mistake--that some wounds run too deep for the 
healing.  I  thought Professor Snape could overcome his feelings 
about your  father--I was wrong."  [US, 833]
> ************************************
> 
> Is this speech of DD's part of the act, then?  Or is there 
> *something* going on w/ Snape besides a minor dislike of 
Harry and  an act to maintain for preventing spoiled!Harry?  DD 
said Snape  was "too old & clever" to have allowed Sirius' "feeble 
taunts" to  hurt him.  How can he turn around a minute later in the 
conversation  and say what he did about Snape's relationship 
with James?
> 
> So IS Snape's hatred [or whatever word is appropriate] of 
James a  part of Snape's treatment of Harry or not?
> 

That's a typo, right? Or possibly a Freudian slip <veg> In any 
case it was Sirius that Dumbledore said was too old and clever 
to be hurt by Snape's feeble taunts. Which makes sense, I think. 
Sirius, AFAWK,  has never had any real doubts about his 
courage, so why would Snape's taunts get to him? He could 
have ignored them if he chose to--but he was bored and spoiling 
for a fight.

On the other hand, when Snape threw Harry out of the office, he 
had just been forced to actually relive his memory of how James 
had treated him. And fifteen year old Snape was obviously not 
too old or too clever to let James's taunting, which I wouldn't call 
feeble, get to him.

I guess I'm in the middle between SSSusan and Kneasy on 
this--I think that Dumbledore does see advantages for Harry in 
letting Snape be his nasty self, and that he co-operates far more 
closely with Snape than Harry realizes. On the other hand, I think 
Snape has a genuine loathing of Harry, based on Harry's looks  
and on Snape's honest belief that fruit doesn't fall far from the 
tree.  Dumbledore wishes this weren't so, but has no power, as 
he says, to make men see the truth.

Perhaps both Snape and Dumbledore feel that   since Harry is 
going to benefit unfairly from the good things people like Hagrid 
and Sirius remember about his parents, it's corrective that he 
suffer for the bad as well. Note that Dumbledore doesn't say that 
he hoped Snape would overcome the feeling that Harry was like 
his father--rather he hoped it was Snape's feelings about James 
that could be overcome.

Pippin