JKR answering fan concerns/correcting impressions (was: My Reaction)

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 134206

SSSusan wrote:
> <snip> Chapter 2, especially, and a couple of other places in the
book felt to me like JKR crossing items off a list.  "Fan complaint
#1?  Yes, took care of that.  Fan misinterpretation #2?  Yep.  Fan
concern #3?  Got it."  I mean, when Bella asked all those questions in
Spinner's End, and Snape provided answers -- BING BING BING -- to them
all, didn't anyone else feel like JKR had created a list of most-often
asked or complained-about points and just got them out of the way?
> 

Carol responds:
First, shame on me for doubting Snape, DD, and JKR herself--not to
mention all my own pro-Snape arguments regarding previous books. I
think we have a new twist on the unreliable narrator here--not Harry's
misinterpretation (which we get elsewhere, though there's no denying
that Snape killed DD and I'm still worried about his *apparently*
using an AK to do it). Instead we have the dramatic point of view,
i.e, no POV character, everything viewed from the outside with the
reader instead of Harry as eavesdropper.

Someone (Valky?) pointed out that Snape is entirely in control in this
scene, and the first thing he has to do is put Bellatrix's doubts to
rest, trusting that she'll spread his answers to the other DEs who've
been whispering behind his back. Bellatrix is voicing the questions
that first Lucius and then Voldemort would have raised and answering
as he answered them, using Occlumency if necessary if any of them has
any skill as a Legilimens. (He would certainly have needed all his
skill at Occlumency in answering Voldemort.) These are also the
questions that Harry and the reader have been asking. *But* the
answers Snape gives are not necessarily the real answers. They are the
answers he has to give to end Bellatrix's doubts, which are really
ended only when he grants Narcissa's plea to bind himself with the
Unbreakable Vow. He has made a terrible sacrifice, which will force
him either to lose his life or to commit a terrible deed. 

I thought from the beginning that the explanation for Snape's argument
with Dumbledore was fishy. Snape would not have argued about
interrogating or spying on his own students. "I won't do it any more!"
must have something to do with letting Draco make his own decisions,
including the clumsy attempts to kill Dumbledore through some other
means than a direct confrontation and an AK. If he were really a DE,
he would not have blown his cover by an open quarrel with the man he
was supposed to deceive and murder (when Draco failed).

What is that potion that revives a person who's an inch from death? I
think that's what Dumbledore wanted Snape to give him. Meanwhile,
Snape saved Katie Bell from the worst effects of the cursed necklace,
saved Draco from the curse he himself invented (showing that he is
indeed a DADA *master* as well as a Potions master, and not just in
the sense of teacher, and he provided Harry with the means to save
Ron--the bezoar that he mentioned, and attempted to pound into Harry's
head, in their very first class session.

Anyway, I think (as I first hoped and then doubted when I was hit with
the AK near the end of the book--sorry, when DD was hit with the AK
and my hopes and expectations received a near-fatal blow) that the
conversation with Bellatrix is a red herring. It answers the questions
we've all been asking as Snape must have answered Voldemort, but it
doesn't give the true answers, which Snape the superb Occlumens and
accomplished liar is not about to reveal to the woman who regards
herself as Voldemort's most loyal supporter.

Carol, who would still be muttering "It can't be true! It can't be
true!" if it weren't for this group

P.S. The place that felt most like JKR crossing an item off the list
was the vampire at Slug's party, who served no other purpose than to
show that Snape wasn't one