Draco, Snape and Others: Castles in the air?

[lupinlore]

No: HPFGUIDX 124779



> Neri:
> Heh. This is JKR we are talking about. Each of these clues alone could
> have been explained away, but taken together (and there's more I
> didn't mention) it's like Neville has a big sign on his back saying
> "Very Suspicious Wizard!". There's no way JKR didn't notice she's
> implicating Neville in so many ways. It could be a red herring, but
> not something she has done without thought. The thing is: red herrings
> exist for a reason, to draw our attention from something else. For
> example, Bagman was created to draw our attention away from
> Crouch!Moody, and in the end of GoF he was exposed as a red herring.
> But if Neville has been a red herring for five books now, then for
> what cause?
> 
> Also, I noticed you didn't try to deny the Snape mystery. So why is it
> so important to deny the Neville mystery? The fact is, we DO seem to
> have mysteries about characters other than Harry, and why are these
> mysteries so complicated if the characters are simple?
> 
> Neri

I agree that Snape is more mysterious than Neville.  But I agree with
Nora on this one, it is because of missing pieces, not because of
inherent byzantine reversals of character we are going to discover. 
I'm not at all sure I'd agree with you that we are missing all that
much or that most of what we have is a puzzle.  We know pretty well that:

1) Snape is a nasty, bitter man
2) Snape hated Harry's father
3) Snape hates Harry at least in large part BECAUSE he hated Harry's
father and James humiliated/tormented him
4) Snape was a DE
5) Snape left the DEs and is working with Dumbledore
6) He told DD his story and DD believes him and trusts him
7) Snape saved Harry's life, after which Quirrel told Harry that "Oh
my yes, he hates you, but not enough to want you dead"
8) Snape has "latent good qualities" but he is also a deeply horrible
man who bears watching

We're missing the story Snape told DD, which should explain why he
left the DEs and why DD trusts him.  We are also missing Snape's
present intentions (i.e. how loyal he is to DD and how much his view
is skewed by his hatred of James/Harry).  Those two pieces of info and
we've pretty much got Severus down pat.


Lupinlore