Who killed Dumbledore? Heroes and Not.

[Sydney]

No: HPFGUIDX 145127

Jen:
> 
> I don't think the juxtaposing of the scene with Harry feeding the 
> potion and Snape casting the AK is for plot purposes, to show later 
> both 'killed' Dumbledore together or that Snape is covering for 
> Harry. Both of these plot ideas ignore the importance of the UV to 
> the story, which Snape took willingly with all his faculties in 
> place as far as we know. It serves no purpose to show the UV, to 
> show the tower with all the players in the UV together in the moment 
> when someone is supposed to kill Dumbledore, and then to discover ex 
> post facto Harry's potion was the actual cause of death. Rather, I 
> think the value of the two scenes is emotional, that both Harry and 
> Snape are shown to feel hatred and revulsion for what they are 
> doing. We know why Harry feels revulsion for feeding the potion, we 
> don't know why Snape appears to feel the same.

Sydney:

Yes, this is exactly my feeling-- if the point of the scene was that
the cause of death was really the potion, it cuts out the UV which was
set up right from the start of the book, relies a little too heavily
even for JKR on to-the-second timing, and transfers the 'dark' role
here completely from Snape to Harry.  Snape and Harry are PARALLELED,
as you say, but they shouldn't be switching around completely.  Sherry
is quite right when she writes:

>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

To my mind guilt and letting go of guilt is the whole point of Snape's
role thematically, and intensfying the guilt part to that wild extent
going into the last act was a real coup of JKR's.  The point of the
potion in the cave to my mind would be to have Harry be able to relate
to Snape's guilt-- which is why I could be totally down with the
potion being in the PROCESS of killing D-dore.  But for Harry to have
actually KILLED Dumbledore.. I dunno, it just takes the whole
situation from being dramatic into being ironic, which is not a tone
JKR uses that much, least of all for a climax, and doesn't quite match
the thematic structure.

-- Sydney