Contra Severum

[hekatesheadband]

No: HPFGUIDX 134455

It's been a week since the release of HBP, of course, and I haven't 
been sacked at work yet, which means I haven't been able to keep up 
with all the discussion! But I've very much enjoyed following what I 
could of it, and thought I'd throw in my own bit, for what it may be 
worth. I'm taking a deep breath, and very cautiously dipping the 
tips of my toes into the Snape and Dumbledore issue - shallow end, 
of course. I'll state at the outset that I try to stick firmly to 
the text itself. This is because I am a pedant. ;)

Julia: <<until the 6th book we were all (almost all :D) under the
impression that we have to trust Snape. All canon evidences were
point out that although Snape is mean and cruel he is on the good
side (DD trust him, he's spying for the Order, Harry's suspitions
always turned out to be wrong etc)>>

I am one of a handful of grown-up readers who has not trusted Snape
since the end of PoA. Admittedly my own biases factor in - I'm a bit 
of an animal lover, and Snape lost much of my confidence when he 
threatened to poison Trevor the toad (regardless of whether he 
actually intended tdo so).

Kathryn Jones: <<It
was important that Dumbledore trusted him and saw something in him. 
He
did save Harry's life or attempt to do so on several occasions. >>

Snape does indeed try to save Harry's life in PS/SS, and there's 
quite a decent case to be made here. But as always, there are any 
number of good cases to be made, not all of them mutually exclusive. 
My impression has become that Snape's attempts to save Harry's life 
has been somewhat overstated in fanon. In PoA, he lurks under an 
invisibility cloak and does nothing for some time, including at 
points where Harry, Ron and Hermione appear to be in considerable 
danger. His subsequent actions reveal more interest in Black's and 
Lupin's persecution than in the children's welfare. In PS/SS, his 
actions were of course necessary and proper, but earn him little 
credit for bravery per se: they involve sitting in a spectator's box 
and muttering. 

inkling108: <<the Snape we thought we
knew doesn't exist. The sour and even mean but noble at heart
Potions master with the venomous wit -- we all loved this guy. But
it turns out he was a creation of collective imagination, seduced of
course by JKR and all the reassurances she put in Dumbledore's mouth.

The real Snape is not that person. He is somebody else.>>

Well-stated. (Many, many other remarks on this issue have been
well-stated too, but I don't think anyone would enjoy it if I quoted
them all.) My feeling has always been that while while any few of
Snape's apparently bad actions could be explained as 
misinterpretations or spying-related necessities, or any several as 
the mark of someone mean-spirited but basically good, taken as a 
set, they require some extremely gymnastic interpretive contortions 
to come out as the actions of a "white hat," many of which 
contortions the text does not support or even suggest. In a 
nutshell: while nobody "good" is perfect, neither does 
anybody "good" seem likely to go out of his way to bully students, 
*and* try to have Harry (and Ron) expelled (and kept from Hogwarts' 
protections), *and* mollycoddle the pureblood prejudices of Death 
Eaters' children (see his allowing Draco to call Hermione a 
mudblood),*and* try to send an innocent man to Azkaban and then rant 
about losing the Order of Merlin, *and* let Peter Pettigrew scamper 
off to Lord Thingie without apparent remorse, *and* reveal Lupin's 
secret to the whole school without permission, *and* scorn 
Dumbledore's belief that Harry's name was put in the Goblet of Fire 
by someone wishing him harm, *and* fail to help Igor Karkaroff (an 
unabmiguous *ex-* Death Eater, albeit a nasty piece of work), *and* 
belittle Hermione's real and obvious need for medical attention in 
GoF, *and* impede Harry's efforts to bring word about Crouch Sr, 
*and* bait Sirius throughout OotP, *and* make a "fiasco," in 
Dumbledore's words, of Occlumency (Harry was no help, admittedly, 
but in the end, Snape is the grown-up here), *and* help open his 
mind to Voldemort (I buy Harry's interpretation here, but I 
acknowledge that it isn't failsafe by any means), *and* wait several 
hours to notify the Order of Harry's disappearance (they go into the 
forest before dinner and don't arrive at the Ministry until after 
dark - at least 10 p.m. in London in late June - and it's at least 
another hour or so before the Order shows up there), *and* belittle 
Tonks in a dangerous situation when she's plainly under more 
emotional weight than she can manage, *and* ignore Harry's injuries, 
*and* possibly - though by no means certainly; this is speculative 
on my part - mislead his DADA class (Harry is quite good at handling 
Dementors, and his impression that Snape's advice for fighting them 
is misguided gives me pause),*and* drag Draco, who's in over his 
head, away from those who couldprotect him best after he's failed 
his mission from Voldemort... itdoesn't add up, in my book. A few 
selections from that list, maybe; all of them, no.

Then, of course, we come to the big question of Dumbledore's death. 
Once again, I'm speculating here, and may well be rather embarassed 
once book 7 comes along, but here goes for the time being.

Fridwulfa: <<Has he in fact
been atoning for his past throughout the books (as Dumbledore
certainly seems to believe), by aiding the Order in whatever
way Dumbledore sees fit--from protecting Harry, to spying
on Voldemort, to perhaps delivering a deliberate death blow
to Dumbledore? Very possibly, and in my opinion, quite
probably.>>

Yes, definitely possible, but I remain disinclined to believe it is
probable. (Admittedly, I thought Sirius was on the safe list going 
into OotP, too.) There's a lot factoring in here, of course. One of 
these factors, for me, is again the issue of gymnastics. If Snape is 
going to be of any use to the Order, someone would have been 
informed of such an arrangement. At the end of HBP it's apparent 
that no one has been - in fact, not one person could venture a 
reason for trusting Snape other than Dumbledore's opinion - which he 
had never disclosed to any of them and none of them considered sound 
once they had heard it. Furthermore, Dumbledore would have had to 
know, and to tell Snape, that he would have to drink a potion to get 
to the horcrux (unlikely - he knew there would be barriers, but did 
not seem to have any idea of what specific barriers would have been 
chosen), know what the potion was, and know that no antidote 
existed - that it wouldn't even be worth trying to shove a bezoar 
down his throat. Further, his condition improves considerably 
between Hogsmeade and his death - he's rational and reasonably 
energetic. We can't know that he wouldn't have deteriorated again, of
course, but the text gives us no cause to suppose so, either. 

Dumbledore's interactions with Harry also suggest that, while he 
knows he might die at any time, he does not expect it. He clearly 
enough plans to tell Harry more than ends up being possible - he 
does want to tell him about the loss of the hand (Snape knows, but 
Harry does not, that a duel with Voldemort occurred), for example. I 
would venture to guess that there was further information about 
Voldemort and horcruxes that he wanted to impart - even if he wanted 
to tell Harry everything, he could hardly tell it all in one 
sitting. As for why he might beg: "Please don't kill me" (residual, 
instinctive fear of death); "Please don't do this to Draco," "Please 
don't make me wrong for trusting you all these years," "Please give 
my time to put my affairs in order," "Please don't do this to 
yourself," "Please don't do this before I impart something else 
(that only became clear in the cave?) to Harry/the Order," "Please 
don't do this to the school"...

> Pastafor5:
>
> The one key moment that makes me think (sadly) that Snape did this
> out of loyalty to Voldemort rather than Dumbledore is when Draco
> tells Dumbledore that Snape made the Unbreakable Vow to his mother.
> Dumbledore says it isn't true and that Snape just made that up to
> get information from him. 

Kel: <<DD lied when he made that
reply. He couldn't let Draco (or any other present DEs) know that DD
was aware all year long that Draco was up to something. Because the
only person who would have informed DD of the plan is Snape.>>

The most telling elemement of this for me is that by making off with
Draco, Snape is almost certainly depriving him of his best chance of
safety and salvation. Security at Hogwarts is imperfect, but it's 
safer than anywhere else, and I can't imagine that McGonagall would 
refuse Draco sanctuary from the Death Eaters. Voldemort won't be 
happy with Draco, won't be nice to him, and whatever else Snape may 
be, he's not so stupid as to think he alone can provide better 
protection than all the Hogwarts staff. Karfaroff, an older and more 
experienced wizard than Snape, was wondered at for surviving a year, 
rather than the expected few days. In other words: Snape doesn't 
mean Draco well. It seems as close as can be to certain that 
Dumbledore wanted to save Draco from becoming a Death Eater; it 
doesn't necessarily seem that this is Snape's intent.

In terms of his motivations for becoming a Death Eater in the first
place, I can't really find one that both excuses Snape and 
corresponds to canon. We don't know what Snape knew when he joined, 
but we do know that for some time before Voldemort's first fall, 
they murdered people because of the circumstance of their birth or 
for disagreeing with them, and tortured and killed Muggles for fun. 
Snape fit in well enough to earn Voldemort's trust, not something 
easily managed from the sidelines. 

I also find Dumbledore's explanation of his trust in Snape 
disturbing in the extreme: he didn't know the information would lead 
Voldemort (whose true nature was universally apparent by the first 
half of 1980, the time of the first Sybilline oracle) to *the 
Potters,* he's sorry that *James and Lily* are dead. Even if that's 
true - which I'm not inclined to believe - it indicates that what 
Snape was sorry about was the choice of target. Not about the idea 
of killing a baby (or more than one baby; Voldemort might have gone 
after Neville if he'd been able), or that he might just set the 
Death Eaters on very pregnant witches who were in no condition to 
run and duck efficiently (running and ducking appear to be a major 
elements of wizarding defensive strategy). Just that it was the
Potters who died rather than the Longbottoms. The worst childhood in 
the world doesn't excuse that. And I'm with quigonginger on this 
one: 

> ...there are so many unanswered questions that it seems to me
> that an analysis of abused!Snape is way over what we see in canon>

I would also add that at least some of my sympathy for
Pensieve-scene!Snape evaporated at the revelation that he had 
invented the hex in question - how do we suppose it became well-
known to the school, and known to the Marauders at all, as Lupin 
says? (I'm also much more inclined to credit the hypothesis that 
Snape was the one, specific Death Eater puppeteering the Robertses 
through the air at the World Cup.) The Marauders were unquestionably 
in the wrong here, and I'll make no excuses for them, but it does 
put a bit of a damper on victim!Snape. So does the fact that the 
whole incident started when Snape hurled what we now know was some 
form of Sectusempra at James for calling him Snivellus. James was 
indeed a "right berk," in Lupin's words, but that level of curse is 
rather an overreaction to a teasing nickname. He's alone in this 
scene, and accuses James of only fighting four-on-one, but let's not 
forget his "gang of Slytherins" and his apparent preference
for fighting one-on-one only when the other party is disarmed.

As for Snape's future, and the implications for book 7 and the 
series as a whole... where to begin? There are a million possible 
places, but I'll go with inkling108 here: <The real Snape...is 
capable of great evil...
Many people think that this must make him boring, compared to the 
Snape
of our imagination. But just because someone is capable of great evil
doesn't mean they are completely evil for all time, thatthey are 
beyond
redemption... JKR has spoken of a redemptive pattern in connection 
with
Snape.And I think (#132930) it fits the psychological and spiritual
logic
she has set up for Snape to be redeemed...>

Excellent points here! I have one extremely tiny caveat, regarding
Rowling's exact words, which are from a 1999 interview with the "The
Connection," WBUR radio. 

<<Question: There's an important kind of redemptive pattern to
Snape.

Rowling: He, um, there's so much I wish I could say to you, and I 
can't
because it would ruin. I promise you, whoever asked that question, 
can I
just say to you that I'm slightly stunned that you've said
that and
you'll find out why I'm so stunned if you read Book 7.
That's all I'm
going to say.>> (transcript at http://www.quick-quote-quill.org)

The water here gets rather murky. It strikes me that there are a few
spiritual/religious questions here in particular.. The Harry Potter
books are not "Christian stories" in the same way as the Narnia 
books. Rowling is not out to convert anyone, or to say that her 
religion (Christianity) is better than animism, Buddhism, Hinduism, 
Islam, Judaism, Shinto, Taoism, or anything else. Neither am I, and 
I'll add another caveat: I'm Catholic myself (firmly in the Hans 
Kung camp and definitely out of the Josef Ratzinger one), while 
Rowling is a Calvinist (although she doesn't give the impression of 
being a completely orthodox one), so our perspectives may differ 
significantly. All that aside, Rowling has indicated that her 
perspective in this area does have some bearing on her ideas and 
plans, so here goes.

Snape poses many questions regarding redemption, not all of them
answerable. (And, of course, not all of them will be addressed as 
such, or even necessarily implied directly, in the text.) We've 
often though of him as a bit of a Saul figure, but it now seems that 
he may be more along the lines of Judas. That said, I don't see 
Dumbledore as a Christ figure - that distinction goes to Lily
Potter, if anyone. Dumbledore forgave Snape for his actions as a 
Death Eater - but how much of that forgiveness was his to offer? He 
can forgive Snape for his role of depriving him of two valuable Order
members, just as Harry can forgive him for his role in making him an 
orphan. But the only people who can forgive him for his role in 
James' and Lily's deaths are James and Lily, and they're in no 
position to extend it on this side of the Veil. Then there's the 
nature of redemption. It's given to those who need it, not 
necessarily those who deserve it or who have earned it. But what if 
someone in need of redemption refuses to accept it, again and again? 
Where does that leave any of the characters - in other words, where 
does it leave us? Once again, no answers here - just food for 
thought.

-hekatesheadband
(off to make herself a nice cup of tea, if she can find her mystic 
kettle of Nackledirk)