Harry's ability to trust his instincts, and ESE!Snape

[davenclaw]

No: HPFGUIDX 134138

I am about halfway through my re-read of HBP and it has become even 
more obvious that a huge theme of this book is that Harry has a much 
greater ability to trust his instincts than before. 

In the past books, the readers were "mislead" (setting up great 
surprise endings) only because the CHARACTERS were mislead.  HRH 
were convinced that Snape was the bad guy in PS/SS, so we went along 
with it.  In CoS they were sure that the Heir of Slytherin was 
someone like Malfoy, so we thought so too, and when it wasn't, I for 
one didn't even think of the obvious - and I sure didn't think Ginny 
was involved. Everyone thought Sirius Black was a traitor and 
murderer, so we assumed they were right.  And so on.

But in HBP, we meet a much more mature Harry.  He even takes his 
concerns to adults, though in the end this doesn't help.  All along 
Ron and Hermione and even Lupin think his suspicions of Malfoy and 
Snape are ill-founded, but he ignores them.  And it turns out Malfoy 
was indeed plotting something awful (it's not clear that he's an 
actual DE - maybe DD's murder was intended to be his initiation).

This is really the first time in the books that some mystery really 
was exactly as it appeared.  It was Malfoy all along, just as Harry 
suspected.  I think this is a VERY significant departure from 
previous books, where we are lead down the wrong path in order to 
create a twist.

Because this theme seems so significant to me, this leads me to 
conclude that Harry is right about Snape as well.  It fits in better 
with our Mature!Harry about to embark on his destined journey to 
destroy Voldemort.  It makes more sense for this new Harry to go 
into things with the ability to trust his instincts.

Now, what about Harry trusting the HBP?  If Snape is actually Good, 
then we see that Harry even has correct instincts about Snape, when  
he doesn't know that it's Snape.  If Snape is ESE, then we see that 
Harry was wrong to "befriend" the HBP in his mind, but he was very 
right about Snape himself.  Dilemma!

I can imagine an incredible scene in which Snape has to convince a 
VERY reluctant Harry that he had to kill DD because of his orders, 
and Harry will have to pause when he remembers how he was forced to 
promise to make DD drink the potion in the cave.  Perhaps that will 
be the culmination of Harry's maturity - the ability to listen to 
Snape, despite his hatred, desire for revenge, and absolute 
certainty that Snape is ESE, and put aside his emotions and consider 
what he is being told and make the decision to believe Snape.  This 
might be Harry's final act of Growing Up just prior to heading off 
to kill LV, possibly with Snape's help.  I think that will be an 
amazing conclusion to the story, and I welcome it.

(I can also see such a set-up ending with a shocking, mind-twisting 
betrayal by Snape, who is about to AK Harry but then Wormtail has to 
defend him because of the life-debt.)

But when I read HBP, I can easily see Snape being truly ESE on the 
basis that it fits in with the theme of Harry finally being able to 
trust his instincts - but I can also see it as a huge step in his 
progression, which would actually culminate with his ability to 
trust a Good!Snape.

- davenclaw