Lupin's resentment : An inside to Snape's resentment

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 94342

Alla:
>  Snape is not trying to mold and toughen students up 
> > (although he may be fooling himself that he is), he is trying to 
> > knock them down. 
> 
> Well, I used to think that he tries to toughen his students up, but 
> as I said - not anymore. That argument went out of the window for me 
> with the end of Occlumency lessons. Unless by "toughen up" we mean 
> letting his students (or one student) be possessed by Voldemort.

Carol:

The fact that LV enters Harry's mind can't be blamed on either the
Occlumency lessons or their abandonment. Nor is Voldemort's
manipulation of Harry's mind Snape's doing. It was happening before
the Occlumency lessons, which were begun (probably too late) *because*
of that manipulation. Snape is alarmed by the extent of it and relates
what he has seen in Harry's mind) to Dumbledore: "Professor Snape
discovered that [Harry] had been dreaming about the door to the
Department of Mysteries for months" (OoP Am. ed. 829). He also tells
Dumbledore about Harry's vision of Rookwood and Voldemort (829).
Whether or not the lessons are helping Harry, they are at least
providing useful information for Dumbledore, which snape dutifully
reports. Until the incident with the Pensieve, Snape is doing his part
in the lessons, defining Occlumency and telling Harry what he needs to
do (but isn't doing), but Harry distrusts him: "Snape made it
worse--my scar always hurt after lessons with him" (835). But despite
his own resistance to the lessons, he learns enough that he could have
prevented the dream from coming, even without further lessons after
the Pensieve incident. As he admits to Dumbledore: "I didn't practice,
I didn't bother, I could've stopped myself having those dreams" (829).

You said in another post that if Dumbledore knew that Snape had
stopped the lessons, then you would consider not blaming Snape for
letting Harry have the dream that sent him to the MoM. (Forgive the
bad paraphrase--if that's not your meaning, please correct me.)
Dumbledore *did* know, as he tells Harry after the battle at the MoM:

"Snape stopped giving me Occlumency lessons! Harry snarled. "He threw
me out of his office!"

"I am aware of it," said Dumbledore heavily. "I have already said that
it was a mistake for me not to teach you myself. . . ."

. . . Harry remembered Ron's thoughts on the subject and plunged on.
"How do you know he wasn't trying to soften me up for Voldemort, make
it easier for him to get inside my--"

"I trust Severus Snape," said Dumbledore simply. "But I forgot. . .
that some wounds run too deep for the healing. I thought Professor
Snape could overcome his feelings about your father--I was wrong." (833)

Note that the abandonment of the Occlumency lessons does not diminish
Dumbledore's trust in Snape. Nor does he apparently blame Snape
stopping the lessons. Dumbledore could have ordered Snape to "get over
it" and resume the lessons, but he didn't. Why not? Might it be that
*Snape* sensed that they were doing more harm than good and asked
Dumbledore to let him abandon them? Was there something in that
Pensieve that it would have been extremely dangerous for Voldemort to
see in Harry's mind? 

We don't always know why Dumbledore does things, and we know that he
(like JKR) often withholds information. Maybe he is using Snape's
hatred of James as the reason that the lessons were stopped, but maybe
there's another, more important reason. Maybe the anger Harry felt
toward Snape, like the anger he felt towards Dumbledore, was partly
the result of Voldemort's invasion of his mind. Maybe that anger made
it impossible for him to benefit from the lessons. If so, maybe Snape
(once he cooled down after the Pensieve incident) understood that
Harry was not in a fit mental state to continue the lessons. In any
case, if the lessons had been the one means of preventing Harry from
going to the MoM and Dumbledore knew that he would have insisted on
continuing the lessons. He could have ordered Snape to resume the
lessons, and Snape would have had no choice but to do so. Instead, he
chose not to resume the lessons. And I doubt very much that the real
reason has anything to do with James.

Harry's decision to go to the MoM wa not made because Snape ended the
Occlumency lessons. He himself chose to go there, against Hermione's
advice, just as Sirius chose to go there against Snape's advice.
Moreover, Harry owes his own life and that of his friends to Snape's
summoning of Dumbledore and the Order.

JKR has told us to watch Snape carefully and not to judge him by
appearances. The Occlumency lessons and their abandonment are examples
of the sort of scene into which we can easily read too much--or too
little. Even if Snape is wholly at fault (and I don't think he is),
his decision to end the Occlumency lessons no more caused Harry to go
to the MoM than Harry's going to the MoM caused Sirius's death or his
saving Peter caused Voldemort's return. It is one event in a complex
chain of events, one decision among many. And it should also be
weighed against Snape's other actions and decisions. One mistake--if
it was a mistake--should not be grounds for condemning a character who
 in other circumstances shows great courage and loyalty to Dumbledore.
At the very least, we should reserve judgment until the end of Book 7.

Carol