[HPforGrownups] Re: Snape in the Shrieking Shack (was re:time-turning)

[Magda Grantwich]

No: HPFGUIDX 112758

>> Magda Grantwich wrote:
>> An innocent Sirius being dementored would not have been
>> satisfying at all.  It ignores Snape's iron morality with his 
>> exquisitely honed sense of fairness.


> Nora wrote:
> You mean 'exquisitely idiosyncratic sense of fairness', right? :)
> SNIPPING TAKES PLACE HERE
> That whole scene has always been the thing that troubles me most 
> about Snape, and this is why: he generally *does* seem to have a 
> fairly strict sense of responsibility about doing the generally
> right 
> thing, even when he sometimes goes about it in a way that leaves 
> something to be desired--I can deal with that.  I...I...I just
> don't know quite what to make of:
> 
> "You see, Minister?" said Snape. "Confunded, both of
> them....Black's 
> done a very good job on them...." (p. 389, hb)
> 
> and
> 
> "But if -- if there was a mistake --"
> 
> "KEEP QUIET, YOU STUPID GIRL!"  Snape shouted, looking suddenly
> quite 
> deranged.  "DON'T TALK ABOUT WHAT YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND!" (p. 360,
> hb)

Well in that particular instance - in the Shack - Snape is right in
that Hermione doesn't know what he would regard as the whole story. 
And the whole story in Snape's view would be that ever since he was a
teenager, Black has fooled everyone into thinking that he's just a
regular guy whereas Snape knows (KNOWS!!!!, I tell you!) that in
actual fact he was a wanna-be murderer at the age of 16 and that he
was just fooling everyone into thinking he wasn't.  Then at the age
of about 21/22 he showed the world his true colours (HIS TRUE
COLOURS!!!!!, mind you!) by betraying his best friend to Voldemort. 
Etc. Etc.

So for Hermione the issue is the here-and-now whereas Snape is in
another time-space entirely, namely twenty years in the past and
what's happening in the Shack is simply the latest episode in a
long-running epic saga - which is about to reach its climax when
Snape hands both Lupin and Sirius over to Dumbledore and receives the
vindication that he feels is long overdue.

Put simply, Snape feels he knows Sirius better than anyone else:
everyone else is duped by Sirius' charm or good looks or status of a
Gryffindor or whatever.  He knows the REAL person within.  And of
course, Snape knows Lupin is Sirius' helper because that's Lupin's
speciality: taking part while managing to keep his own hands clean.

At the end of POA, the reader has no choice but to think Snape is
completely wrong because we know better and also because throughout
three books we've seen Snape being unreasonable about a lot of things
including James.  Not until OOTP do we realize that Snape had a point
about a lot of things and that from his perspective, his comments
about Sirius, Lupin and James look dismayingly accurate.  (Which is
not to say they were nothing but bullying gits, but rather that
whatever good qualities they possessed were not displayed towards
Snape and therefore he doesn't believe they existed.)

Returning to the point that started this whole thing:  Snape has a
lot of emotional capital invested in being right.  He's got to be
right about Sirius Black being Potter-betraying scum because he's got
this wonderful revenge fantasy where Dumbledore concedes that he was
wrong and Snape was right all those years ago and humbly begs his
forgiveness.  Which Snape will grant, as he's as fond of Dumbledore
as of anybody.  For Sirius to be innocent will absolutely ruin this
wonderful fantasy.  For an innocent Sirius to be dementored would
mean yet another load of guilt for Snape to assume.

Magda



		
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