What is with the "Prank" ?

[severelysigune]

No: HPFGUIDX 99557

Amber wrote:
<< I would not be surprised if suicide was not on his mind even 
before the prank....and even if it hadn't got to that point 
yet...this is the boy who grew up to spy on Voldemort, for whatever 
reason, and if he had to take a lethal risk to get the torment to 
stop, or just out of revenge, I wouldn't put it past him....   And 
Sirius walks up to him and says, "If you want to know, just prod the 
knot on the Whomping Willow."  In front of witnesses, probably. ( 
James heard about it, not heard it. From who? )  If Snape dies under 
that tree or comes back to say what he saw and who sent him to see 
it,  Sirius and Lupin, and he believes James was responsible too, 
will get what he believes what they deserve for at least five years 
of hell.  Expulsion.

But fate or Murphy's Law or whatever intervenes.  James saves his 
life, and it gets hushed up.  And Snape becomes a DE, and you know 
the rest.

Now for heaven's sake, someone prove me wrong. >>

Jo Ann replies:

< Sorry, I think it's a coolly evil idea.  I love the perversity of 
the thought that Snape hates Harry because his blood debt to James, 
carried on through Harry, is the only thing stopping him from ending 
his own miserable life.  And though I strongly suspect it's not going 
to turn out that way, and ultimately I really wouldn't want it to (I 
*like* Severus,) I can't really cite anything from canon that 
disproves it. >


Sigune now:
There certainly is something to the idea, and it is a clever theory, 
Amber! Hmmm, dark...
But even though I must agree with Jo Ann that there is no canon to 
really *disprove* it, there is no canon to really *support* it 
either, I think. Although in its perverseness the scheme seems worthy 
of Snape, I somehow cannot see him as suicidal from the way he is 
portrayed in canon - but that is just my interpretation. Snape is a 
survivor, he will go to any lengths to save his own neck, even though 
it may seem *to us* at first sight that there is not all that much 
for him to live for. It seems more consistent with his personality to 
struggle on exactly to spite his tormentors, too, and getting himself 
killed during an act of vengeance would deprive him of an occasion to 
laugh sardonically in triumph at the results of his revenge plot. 
What would be the use of taking revenge when he is not able to savour 
it? Besides, as a calculating, cunning Slytherin he would not, I 
think, entrust the execution of the punishment to others - he would 
want to be there to make sure it was properly done. I mean, with 
Dumbledore in charge, and the culprits being Gryffindors... ;-)

Well, you asked to be proven wrong, which is quite an impossibility; 
but I offer my own reasoning as one theory against Suicidal!Snape...

Yours severely,

Sigune