Other Witnesses (was Snape's Liability/Snape's Loyalty (-long-) )

[arrowsmithbt]

No: HPFGUIDX 101080

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, LadySawall at a... wrote:
> In a message dated 06/10/2004 4:59:26 PM Eastern Daylight Time, Stefanie 
> writes:
> My trust in Snape is a bit rocky. I want to believe that he's loyal 
> because Dumbledore does and have it as cut and dry as that...but 
> then again, Dumbledore trusted Quirrel who had LV growing out of the 
> back of his head, Lockheart who ended up to be the worlds biggest 
> fraud, and fake!Moody who, well, was fake.
> ---
> 

Ah, loyalty.
Snape's loyal all right, but loyal to what?

One of the joys of the books is that if you are prepared to delve a bit
deeper than in an average fantasy, you can come up with some dilemmas
that touch on fundamental concepts - good/evil, justice/injustice,
loyalty/betrayal, right/wrong. Quite frequently we have been presented 
with a blurring of the borders and the divisions have not been clear-cut.

Loyalty can come in all sorts of flavours -  to an abstract principle, 
to friends or individuals or to a stated goal or aim. Sometimes there can
be conflicts of interest and loyalty will be conditional rather than absolute.
There will be a hierarcy of loyalty where one will take precedence over
others pulling in a different direction.

This is where Snape is IMO.
We never hear him vaporing on about good and evil, something that might
be expected if he had repudiated the DE philosophy. His natural friends
and allies are not the other members of the Order, they're ex-Slytherins
and active DEs like Malfoy. What he does seem to be loyal to is the plan
to destroy Voldemort. That over-rides everything else and this is probably
what DD understands - Snape can be trusted in this, he is  committed to
the downfall of Voldy, he will do  what is necessary, he will cooperate fully.
The "why' of this will be one of the great revelations, I think. All sorts of
theories have been promoted, but the odds are that the motivation is
intensely personal,  he has a massive grudge and nothing less than seeing
Voldy in the dust will assuage it. It verges on an obsession.

Snape and DD have the same goal, but for different reasons. With DD it's
a belief in opposing evil as a matter of principle; not Snape, he couldn't
give a damn about the DEs, they're not his concern. That's possibly why he
wasn't in the Ministry fight; he couldn't be trusted,  or trust himself, to fight
in alliance with people he didn't particularly like against his natural associates.
He has a very limited and specific agenda, best not to strain it too far.

This all adds to the tension, of course - could Snape revert to type, if say,
Harry pushed him too far and increased Snape's hatred of the name
'Potter' to critical levels?

That would be really fascinating to read.

Kneasy