The Possibilities of Grey Snape (was Re: What would a successful AK mean?)

[lupinlore]

No: HPFGUIDX 142925

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Sydney" <sydpad at y...> wrote:
<SNIP>
> 
> The larger objection is a wavering, agonizing, side-switching Snape is
> just such a massive focus-puller.  It would make Snape, not Harry,
> making all the critical choices and going through the most interesting
>  emotions at the end of the book.  Story-wise I'm much happier having
> Snape running down a pretty clear, straightforward track, and Harry
> doing all the mind-changing.  For this reason I would prefer
> Evil!Snape to conflicted!Snape, because much as I'd rather read a book
> about Snape, this ain't it.
>

Would it be such a focus puller?  I would personally find DDM!Snape to 
be much more intrusive and overshadowing and to threaten to make the 
books about Snape, the noble and sacrificing superspy.  OFH!Snape, and 
particularly Grey Snape, on the other hand, does no such thing.

I really like Jen's idea of Grey Snape.  This can be seen as a version 
of either DDM!Snape (a DDM!Snape who has fallen) or OFH!Snape (an OFH!
Snape who honestly thinks that Dumbledore is in the right but who, when 
push comes to shove, hasn't the courage to place right over easy).  If 
you will, Grey Snape lives in the area where a "high" version of OFH!
Snape overlaps a "low" version of DDM!Snape.

As such, Grey Snape is an intrinsically weak man in some respects.  He 
has neither the ruthless Machiavellian will of some OFH! models nor the 
firm nobility of character often attributed to DDM!  He made a huge 
blunder, tried to attain redemption, then blundered again.  He hasn't 
the ability to dominate or overshadow anything, once you understand 
what he is all about.  Like most bullies, he is essentially a coward 
who cannot control his own emotions, and deep inside he knows it.

Now Harry is faced with the problem of what to do with a man who he 
believes to be evil and menacing who turns out to be weak and 
pathetic.  Where oh where is the villain he set out to destroy?  How 
was he replaced with this pathetic, childish creature who allows his 
own emotions to repeatedly be his undoing (and isn't that a delicious 
irony)?  Will he kill Snape and put him out of everyone's misery, or 
will he remember the nobility of Dumbledore, and like DD forgive a man 
who is not a supervillain or a superspy, but a wretch who has let 
himself be suborned by his own emotional urges as surely as the petty 
thief Dung Fletcher or the harmless blowhard Stan Shunpike?  Will Harry 
be able, like Dumbledore, to let Snape have a chance to prove himself 
once more?  Will he be able to see the "latent good qualities" in this 
pitiful, self-hating man who has destroyed his own world through his 
cruelty and nastiness and greed and cowardice? Once he understands who 
is the adult and who is the child, will he let Snape have a chance at 
redemption?  In that moment, will Harry the adult allow Snape, the 
pathetic and broken child, to know hope once again?  

And will he let himself feel a little sharp humor of his own at the 
humiliation and desperation to which his enemy has been reduced, having 
to take crumbs of hope out of Harry's hand?  Will, in the end, Harry 
like Frodo have grown "wise, yes wise and cruel" as he sends Snape to 
almost certain doom knowing that his redemption springs from the 
forbearance of a man he once despised as beneath his shoes?

Now how in the world does that take the focus off Harry?


Lupinlore