Valky's confession; The Snape Hater Club

[Lexa_C]

No: HPFGUIDX 133559

Combining a couple of responses, here.

Valky:
> Oh I don't know about that, those of us who argued vehemently that 
it
> was not beyond Sevvie to have killed James in the pensieve scene 
(and
> wore quite the worst of venom that Fandom's Pro-Snapers could summon
> for it) are quite vindicated now. Little Severus was quite a 
demented
> young character, capable of the invention of quite one of the worst
> most horrifying curses we've ever seen and, it would seem, the use 
of
> it on his childhood enemies.

He may have invented Sectumsempra, but teenaged revenge fantasies are 
one thing, actually doing it is another. We don't have an indication 
that Snape used it – not even against Lupin in trying to save his own 
life. (Although, admittedly, being frozen in fear at the crucial 
moment would hamper your ability to throw curses.) Something that 
strikes me is the question of whether he ever used it – I would have 
expected him to use it as a DE, and yet, if he'd done that, wouldn't 
other DEs have seen it and wanted to learn it, wouldn't victims have 
shown the results of it and wouldn't knowledge of it be more 
widespread than for Harry to stumble across it in a book and not be 
able to gain any idea of what it does?

I'm certainly not going to argue that Severus wasn't an odd, 
unpleasant, possibly twisted and screwed-up kid, but he seems to be 
lacking *something* that would make him quite as vicious as "and, it 
would seem, the use of it on his childhood enemies" would make him 
seem.


johnbowman19:
> what kind of character would kill 
> the only person who has treated that character with nothing but 
> trust and friendship? 

The kind of character who could go undercover as a mole with the DEs 
and do what needed to be done to get in there and stay in there. 
I.e., the kind of person who will be able to do whatever needs to be 
done, no matter the cost, to achieve the final objective of 
overthrowing Voldemort. This is war against the Evil Overlord of a 
death cult, and it requires sacrifice, and that requires people who 
recognize that the mission is more important than a single person 
(except in the case of Harry, who's not just a single person, he *is* 
the mission). It requires people who have the will and the 
determination and the strength to *act on that*, no matter the 
personal cost, as long as it preserves and advances the mission. And 
I believe that's what Dumbledore trusts Snape to do, that's why Snape 
has been set as Harry's protector – because if Snape sets his sights 
on protecting Harry in service of the ultimate goal of defeating 
Voldemort, nothing and no one is going interfere with Snape's 
protection of Harry, not Snape's own dislike of Harry or hatred of 
James, not even protecting Dumbledore, the only person who has 
treated Snape with trust and friendship. Snape is, in some sense, the 
perfect soldier – willing to do his job at the expense of everything, 
anything, even his own well-being or anyone else's, including 
Dumbledore's. And that kind of person can be scary, and unpleasant, 
and obsessive, they may lack sentimentality to the point of lacking 
sympathy and empathy, because the things that make them the perfect 
soldier don't necessarily make them *likeable* - those things often 
make them actively unlikeable - but by god, they're going to get the 
job done. And that's what Dumbledore needs, and that's what he knew 
he had going in: Someone who would place Harry's value over 
Dumbledore's own, if it came down to it. Someone he could trust to 
make the mission the ultimate priority, even at Dumbledore's expense.

Either way, Dumbledore was dead. The only question, at that point, 
was whether Snape was going to go down with him, and if Snape died, 
his mission – to help Harry overthrow Voldemort – would die with him, 
leaving Harry without the help of either Dumbledore or Snape. 
Frankly, the person I was most emotionally distressed for in the last 
100 or so pages of the book was Snape. To be in the position of 
killing the single person in the entire world who believes in you? 
I'd be howling in pain like a wounded animal, too.

JKR has made the comment, who would love Snape? And it's a comment 
that's treated kind of flippantly sometimes, but it makes me 
incredibly sad. Because if love is so terribly important, as 
Dumbledore tells Harry and us that it is, then to have Snape cut off 
from any possibility of that ... it's not funny, it's cruel. It's 
doubly cruel when he's had to do it to himself.


> DD pleaded with Snape, and yet he was cold blooded enough to kill 
> him like a dog in the dirt. For this, Snape is, in my book, worthy 
> of death at the hands of Harry.

And what of Harry, himself? What of this young man who forced cup 
after cup of poison down the throat of a trembling, terrified, 
pleading old man who was in physical and emotional anguish, on his 
knees, on his back, groveling in the dirt on the floor a cave?

What is he worthy of?


-Alexa