Harry IS Snape!

[saraquel_omphale]

No: HPFGUIDX 141103

Saraquel: Who loved Juli's original post and saw in it more fuel for 
the forgiveness argument which she hammers away at as well!

>>Ceridwen wrote:
JKR is setting us up to see the Power of Love. <snip> Harry will 
have to be more like Lily, in order to grow up like James. Lily 
didn't seem, at least in the Pensieve scene, to have much animosity 
toward Snape.
<snip> And it was her Power of Love that protected Harry from death, 
from the DiaryHorcrux, from all the things which could have happened 
to him at Privet Drive but didn't. He'll have to stop trying to be 
just like James, who had to consciously change his behaviors, and 
try to be like Lily, who apparently *didn't hate*.

>>Lupinlore:
I am not at all convinced that the power of love will necessarily
turn out to be the power of forgiveness, or if it does that it will
necessarily be the Harry/Snape dynamic that will come into play.


Saraquel:
Harry definitely hates and Lily didn't, it would appear, by nature.  
It will need a BIG BANG moment for Harry to expunge hatred.  Sorry 
lost the post where someone said that if Harry doesn't expunge it, 
then LV will use it against him.  

I've been pondering Godric's Hollow a lot lately, and have been 
toying with the thought for a while, that what made Lily's sacrifice 
unique, was that as she stepped in front of Harry, her motive was 
not only to protect Harry, but in some way, it was in the spirit of 
forgiving Voldemort.  Hence, making a unique connection between 
forgiveness and the awesome aspect of the power of love.  The 
uniqueness would then be, not just that she sacrificed her life for 
Harry, which as we've argued, had surely happened before and did not 
bounce an AK, but that it contained an element of forgiveness.  I do 
find this a bit OTT myself, so if you're either needing a bucket at 
this moment or your jaw has just dropped open, I can quite 
understand.

But as Alla points out:
No, Snape who helped made Harry an orphan, Snape who killed Harry's
mentor in front of Harry's eyes is REALLY hard to forgive and if
Harry manages to do so, I think he can truly call himself a hero.

We know that Lily really is a Heroine, with a capital H, and that is 
why Harry survived.  So what is the most difficult-to-believe thing 
that could have happened to make into that?  Forgiveness of 
Voldemort.

At the risk of repeating myself, yet again, I think Harry will put 
his own memory of GH into the pensieve and go back into it. 
(Remember JKR has said that the magic of the pensieve, is that it 
recreates a total memory for you, not just the memory you have of 
the incident.) He will see, in his mother's death, what is necessary 
to employ the power of love.  Harry may know that he has this 
special weapon/power, but to date, he has no idea of what it 
actually `looks' like.  He has no concept of what it is in reality – 
hence his dismissiveness of it in the Horcrux chapter.  Neither dies 
he have any idea about how he could use it.  So he has a weapon 
which he doesn't know how to work – hmm – hang on a minute 
Voldemort, just stay there whilst I figure something out!  Harry has 
to learn to reach the power inside him, and exactly what it is that 
will trigger it.  IMO, he needs to see his own mother's death to 
understand that.  Now that is what I call a BIG BANG thing – a 
transforming experience.

Lupinlore wrote:
And if
the forgiveness is one-sided, well, Harry becomes a kind of saint-
like figure, if not a Christ figure forgiving the world that
crucified him. Such is the foundation of a silly and insipid and
preachy saga that will make for very good kindling.

Saraquel:
Yes Lupinlore, I've been struggling with that as well.  But I think 
that Lily, to date, is the Christ-like figure.  I posted something 
on that ages ago, that her death parallels Christ's death on the 
cross, which I came up with based on JKR's statements about her 
faith, and the fact that at the end of the series, no-one would be 
in doubt about what her faith was.  

Not long ago, I posted about the nature of forgiveness (message 
140680), which was to say that it was not a gooey thing, but rather, 
a relinquishing of blame, setting the blamed person "free" to make 
their own decisions.  In the Lily/Voldemort scenario that I am 
proposing, Lily forgives Voldemort, but Voldemort does not forgive 
himself (i.e. he does not take the opportunity to change),  and 
continues with his action to kill Harry and this is why it blows up 
in his face – or rather blows up his face.

Hence, perhaps the mechanism for the power of love to work, is for 
Harry to relinquish blame and therefore hatred.

I'm running out of time here, so will have to move on to some 
thoughts I've been having about GH.  In PoA, Snape says something 
along the lines of James dying because he was too arrogant to 
believe that Sirius was a spy. (Sorry no time to hunt for the 
canon.) Now this implies to me that Snape tried to warn James that 
LV was coming to get him.  This would work because it is quite 
possible that Snape found out from LV that LV knew where the Potters 
were and that he was going to get them, without knowing that it was 
Pettigrew that was the informant.  As far a Snape knows, I is Sirius 
who is their SK. (This theory does need me to make this assumption) 
Ideally, I would like Snape to have met with James to warn him, but 
I can't get round the secret keeper problem, so how about Snape 
sends his patronus or an owl, with a message along the lines of –
Sirius is a spy, LV has found out where you are and is coming to get 
you.  Get out now!  But James knows that the secret keeper is 
Pettigrew – doesn't trust Snape and thinks that it's a trap to get 
them to leave GH, so they stay where they are.

I've got to go now, so if no-one takes this up, I'll come back to it 
later, along with other thoughts on this thread!

Saraquel