[HPforGrownups] Who killed Dumbledore? WAS: Re: Karmic justice in Potterverse again.

[Sherry Gomes]

No: HPFGUIDX 145092

Sydney: 

The pleading intersects so very neatly with the Unbreakable Vow and
all the other choreographed circumstances; so the interpretation of
D-dore begging Snape to fullfill the Vow rather than dying himself
slips in just like the missing piece of a jigsaw.  Any other
interpretation of that scene IMO requires a little bit of snipping and
shoving a piece that doesn't quite fit.  Harry actually being the one
to kill D-dore with the poison would be an awesome piece of plotting
but I don't think that's the one called for here.

-- Sydney



Sherry now:

I see it completely opposite.  Any idea that lets Snape off the hook,
especially one that would make Harry the true killer has to do way too much
snipping and shoving to make it believable or acceptable for me.  Again,
Harry is the hero.  Snape is not the hero.  Snape faking the AK to keep
anyone from knowing that Harry had poisoned Dumbledore to death would make
Snape the hero again.  But even more importantly, though I think  that
Harry, as the hero, has and can and must make mistakes, for Harry to be the
one who actually killed Dumbledore by force feeding him the poison would be
a sick miserable outcome.  Knowing all we do of how Harry thinks, does
anyone believe he could live with such a horrible thing?  

Whether or not JKR set out to write children's books, she knows now that
millions of kids are reading them, and she is concerned about their
reactions to certain characters and plot lines.  Would she honestly want to
show them a Harry Potter who was the real killer of the beloved Dumbledore?
For that matter, if that how it ended up, I'd be the one sending all my
books to a trash masher or something.  (I could not burn any book!)  She can
do almost anything and make it work for me.  She can even redeem Snape and
make it work, I think.  Even though I am firmly convinced he is a murderer.
But to turn it around and make Snape the hero, saving Harry from the
knowledge of what he'd done--knowledge that would inevitably have to come
out or how would anyone know of poor noble Sevvy's great sacrifice for the
worthless, ungrateful wretch Harry potter--that would be the thing I could
not take.  But then, I couldn't take that from any author.  I don't always
have to have a happy ending, but an ending without hope, with the total
emotional destruction of a character with the innocence and tragedy of
Harry, that would be just too much.

Sherry