Which characters are dynamic?

[nrenka]

No: HPFGUIDX 141826

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "horridporrid03" 
<horridporrid03 at y...> wrote:


>> Nora: 
>> Special emphasis on how much Snape thinks he's right on #2, 
>> which he tends to think about most people and things:
> > <snip>
> 
> Betsy Hp:
> How do you figure that?

That's defined the Harry and Snape dynamic from the beginning, 
starting from "Harry Potter, our newest celebrity".  What is that if 
not an assumption, resistant to revision?  It's also the thematic 
flaw in Snape's character in the Shrieking Shack: when he has Black 
and Lupin at his mercy, Hermione (the voice of reason and logic) begs 
him that it wouldn't hurt just to listen, but Snape shoots back at 
her that she's a 'silly girl' and doesn't understand.  I think that's 
readable as conviction in his rightness.  A pity it's wrong.  Or one 
thinks of how quickly he jumps to the argument that Harry *must* have 
put his own name in the Goblet.  Snape's a terrier in many regards; 
he holds to some things past sensibility and without examination.

> Betsy Hp:
> He doesn't actually.  I brought this up before in post #140547.  
> Here's the relevant bit:
> 
> "Snape brings James up once in PoA (and I've given my theory on that
> <g>). He says nothing about James throughout GoF that I could
> find. He brings James up twice, that I found, in OotP. The first
> time the insult was aimed directly at Sirius (Harry ignored it,
> caught up as he was in Sirius's anger). The second time was when he
> caught Harry in his pensieve and I think that was pure anger rather
> than a need to hurt Harry. And then there were the two times in
> HBP."

Ah, but look at the placement of these things, and how they knot into 
a thread.  James is always brought up in a negative sense, sometimes 
as the bad role model who Harry is just like, and sometimes as 
Snape's own inferior.  But really, when JKR has Snape screaming about 
James as Harry's 'filthy father' in the middle of such a heated 
confrontation, what are we *supposed* to think?  Things that come up 
in anger are things that still bother people, are still meaningful to 
them.  James may be dead, but Snape ain't never gotten over that he 
is.  In most of those examples, Snape is the one who brings James 
into the equation in the first place.

> Betsy Hp:
> I guess you thought wrong. <g>  I don't take everything Dumbledore 
> says or does as from on high.

Only when it's utterly essential to believe him without question to 
bolster support for a character? :)

> I think Dumbledore talking about the life debt in PS/SS did Snape's 
> and Harry's relationship no favors.  (Actually, I think his 
> handling of those two was probably his biggest mistake.)  I'm sure 
> he was just trying to help keep Snape's cover, but I think he 
> should have gone a bit more generic at that moment.  Maybe used 
> Alla's "any teacher would have done the same" argument. 

But what if it's true, and Dumbledore is simply stating it as it is?

> Snape would be the best children's book villain ever.

Don't count it out, yet. :)  [It has a nice symmetricality to it, now 
that I think of it; cleared in the first book, convicted in the 
last.  Appealing on aesthetic grounds, but not an argument for 
anything.]

> Betsy Hp:
> Again (surprise! <g>) I disagree.  Snape made an effort with the 
> Occlumency lessons.  Harry made no effort at all. 

God knows I don't want to get into the Occlumency discussion again, 
but 'no effort at all' is absolutely not supported by canon.  We have 
Harry trying, asking some pointed questions about method and lack of 
clear instruction therein, becoming frustrated and hurting, and then 
giving up.  'No effort at all' is just not true.

-Nora will look up things if it becomes necessary in the morning.  Or 
maybe someone else can do it, who has a fine and accurate eye for 
canon...