Changing the title because I'm tired of it, was "Some won't like it". The Sc

[nrenka]

No: HPFGUIDX 130159

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "festuco" <vuurdame at x> wrote:

<snip>

> Well, actually I don't see it that way. Both Ron and Harry do not 
> like Snape. They have known Snape for almost five years, so they 
> have experienced him as a very nast teachter and as the saviour of 
> Harry's life. They have no reason not to trust Snape, any other 
> than that he is not a nice person. Hermione even points it out to 
> Ron: 'How many times have you suspected Snape and when have you 
> ever been right?' Hermione uses her own experiences of Snape, 
> together with her faith in DD to come to the conclusion that he is 
> indeed trustworthy. She does not get her emotions about Snape get 
> in the way of her evaluation. 

But you haven't solved my problem fully: Hermione does not *know* 
that Snape is trustworthy.  She has good reasons to, but her ultimate 
trump card is, of course (to paraphrase: I'm at the library): "If you 
can't trust Dumbledore who can you trust?"

Given that the end of book 5 is Dumbledore's giant mea culpa, does 
anyone else re-read that statement and shiver ever-so-slightly?

[I've never been completely convinced by the "Snape saved Harry's 
life" argument, but that's another thread.]

I've argued elsewhere, back in the Occlumency posts, that teaching 
something like that requires trust based on a knowledge of someone's 
character.  Harry knows that Snape is capricious towards him; he's 
overheard Snape's hypocrisy in explaining his own behavior (the line 
to Fudge--"I try to treat him like any other student"--I don't see 
any other way than to read that as either overtly hypocritical or 
massive self-unaware").

So while he may know on an academic level that Snape is trustworthy, 
that's (philosophically, as well) a very different kind of knowledge 
than personal experience and evaluation of someone as trustworthy.  
It's also a different thing to depend upon another person.

So, if you can point to those clues in the story that tell us that we 
may KNOW in all security that Snape is on the side of the angels and 
should be trusted, I'd love to see them.  But that was really never 
the point.  It's much easier to go "oh, trustworthy" from our 
position outside the text, but much harder from Harry's inside, and 
even tougher when it comes to working on something delicate and 
personal as opposed to a more general confidence.

-Nora should really keep post numbers for big things