Narcissistic!Snape (was: Whither Snape?) [long!]

[nrenka]

No: HPFGUIDX 127396


--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "pippin_999" <foxmoth at q...> 
wrote:

<snips discussion of Snape as sadist (concluding that Snape is indeed 
a sadist)...not that *that* hasn't also been debated as not being 
accurate before, no...>

> Pippin:
> Why do you say Snape was in complete control? He wasn't -- he got
> knocked out! 

He wouldn't have gotten knocked out if he had shut up and listened 
and not pushed it. :)

[It's only after he really starts *raving* that HRH knock him out, 
after all.  Is it interesting that his raving is of the "You idiot 
you should be thanking *me* variety?  I find it to be so.]
 
> Snape had every reason to fear that Sirius or Lupin might be trying 
> to put him off his guard so they could enchant him.  Death Eaters
> Don't. Need. Wands.

Are you saying Snape isn't competent enough to tie two people up 
right good and keep his attention focused on them while listening?  
Doesn't speak well for his management abilities...

No, really.  Maybe I'm just being forgetful, but I don't remember any 
broad presentation of DEs doing scary things sans wands, although I 
haven't re-read the battle scene in OotP in a while.  Snape is able 
to control the cords he summons without a wand, but wandless magic is 
more of a fanon creation than a known quantity.
 
> Was it conceited of Snape not to want to listen?
> I don't think we give due credit to the wizards' ability to confound
> the will. We are too steeped in our Western liberal notion that
> thought is free and inviolate. Well, it ain't, not in 
> the wizarding world, anyway.

My question about confounding is rather a different one:  Is Snape 
sincere when he states that the children are Confounded in the 
Hospital Wing, before Dumbledore gets there?  If he is, that's one wa 
to read the earlier scene.  If he's not, then why is he so intent 
upon shutting them up (enough to shout at Hermione yet again)?  It's 
potentially sincere and potentially skeezy, and one can argue for it 
either way.

<snip>

> I really can't square Narcissistic!Snape with the man who grips the
> back of his chair as he asks how McGonagall can be sure someone
> has been taken by the monster, or the one who saved Harry's life
> first year and has never yet brought it up to him. Not once.

I don't think it means that he can't be concerned and doesn't care.  
There's an unknown hanging over this of why Snape ditched the DEs, 
which should tell us something deep about his character, be it self-
interest, moral conversion, revenge--I don't know, and neither does 
anyone but JKR.  The narcissism aspect does speak to some of the 
insecurities and behavioral peculiarities that he seems to evince.  
He doesn't say anything about the first-year incident (not that 
everyone agrees that is a straightforward case of 'Snape saves 
Harry's *life*'), but one wonders if the "You should be thanking me 
on bended knee" isn't an explosion of built-up frustration.  C'mon, 
Severus--tell us how you really feel.

-Nora wonders how incommensurate JKR's horizon will become with the 
fandom