Snape in the Shrieking Shack (was re:time-turning)

[Nora Renka]

No: HPFGUIDX 112760

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, Magda Grantwich 
<mgrantwich at y...> wrote:

<snippity>
 
> 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.

I buy this, but I would put the emphasis on the *feels* here.  Isn't 
it fascinating how both Lupin and Snape rationalize to themselves 
throughout the entire book?  Snape is merely trying to alert the 
world to the true dangers which everyone seems to be willfully 
neglecting, Lupin knows that Black must have learned Dark Magic that 
he's using...an odd pair, those two make.

I wonder what the post-PoA conversation between Snape and Dumbledore 
was like.  I really wonder what went through Snape's head when he 
found out that little Peter, the obsequious tag-along, was the grand 
traitor--not the flamboyant Black.  

I want to see a Snape and Wormtail scene in books 6 or 7.  Oh, yeah.

> 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.)

OotP was a corrective--a partial rounding out of the picture.  What 
we don't quite have yet is the information and circumstances to fit 
the two 'halves' of the Portrait of the Marauders together and make 
one set of information talk to the other.  I might add that we, of 
course, don't have that information for Snape either.  And a little 
context, particularly in JKR's world, makes seemingly identical 
actions by different people come out with a whole different moral 
weight and/or general interpretation on them.

> 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.

Okay--I understand the points, now.  What I think we both agree on is 
that Snape is deeply invested in his perception of reality--and that 
he's trying to do everything he can to keep it hanging together.  

Now, this is not to say that some aspects of Snape's perception of 
the situation are not absolutely dead on.  Snape has a real knack for 
deduction--about half the time.  What's simultaneously fascinating 
and damning about his character is how sharp he is and yet how often 
selective in reading the evidence.  I think we agreed in the past 
that Snape doesn't 'hear' the kids, or Black and Lupin when Black is 
pleading with him in the Shack, or Dumbledore, because he, at a 
profound level, doesn't *want* to hear them.  At least for this 
reader, it borders painfully on a particularly uncomfortable 
partially blind self-righteousness, the dark flip side of the mind 
that sees the patterns no one else seems to.

-Nora doesn't *want* to go to the nasty cold library when it's sunny 
and clear and blue skies outside