Twist JKR? (was:Re: Dumbledore's pleading...)

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 141693

Lupinlore:
> EXACTLY!  And there is where so many of the DDM!Snape theories fall 
> down.  It IS Harry's story, NOT Snape's.  To postulate a Snape who is 
> a superspy, cleverly inserted into the DEs bosom by Dumbledore's self-
> sacrfice and just waiting to realize the fruit of his sixteen year 
> labors by striking from behind to insure the ungrateful and deluded 
> brat's victory is to miss the whole point of the series.  It makes 
> Harry into nothing but a pawn, a piece on the all-clever Dumbledore's 
> chessboard whose own decisions and actions have no real meaning 
> except insofar as they get DDM!Snape into position to strike.  The 
> books are NOT "Severus Snape and His Final Vindication," as much as 
> many seem to want them to be.

Pippin:
Allow me to ride in on Nora's favorite steed, Excluded Middle. Some
have said that if Harry does it all on his own, that will just be a tired
re-iteration of the hero's journey. And above you point out that if
Harry has nothing to do but what Snape and Dumbledore have planned
for him, he won't be much of a hero. 

But surely there can be a middle path, where Snape and Harry himself go
beyond whatever roles Dumbledore envisioned for them. Could it be that which unlocks 
the power within Harry that is now inaccessable, as symbolized by the locked room at the 
MoM? Dumbledore did not offer any hints as to *how* the power within Harry could defeat 
Voldemort. Perhaps he did not know.

That will allow for some further change in Snape, while still having
him reformed and redeemed from Death Eating, ie murder as a way of life. There are other 
characters who are candidates for redemption as you suggest, but with only one year of 
story time left, there isn't *time* for them to show that one can leave that path and 
attempt, with some success, to lead an honorable life thereafter. Ron's "poisonous 
toadstools don't change their spots" sounds like another form of prejudice to me, and I 
think we need to see it contradicted, not just for a brief shining moment, where the 
character gets to do something glorious and then die, but for decades, so that we can see 
how hard it is to live down a past, especially when people have attitudes like Ron's.

Not that Snape is utterly blameless, none of the characters are.

Spanking Snape sounds about right, but I would hesitate to suggest
it on this list; you'll probably get a *lot* of volunteers <veg>. I've never tried to say that 
Snape's treatment of Harry is laudable, just that it doesn't deserve the sort of torture some 
people seem so anxious see visited on him.

 But perhaps retribution is like food or sex; people  daydream of very elaborate
feasts, but at the end of the day they're satisfied with a fry-up and a bit of tomato.

Pippin