Snape's canon opposite/ Proving loyalty (Re: Hearing from the Great Middle)

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 140206

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Jen Reese" <stevejjen at e...>
wrote:

> When JKR tells me Snape is a deeply horrible person, abuses his 
power, is culpable in a way Voldemort is not, isn't 'too nice', 
well, I get it: He's a Very Mean Person. He was not even capable of 
*acting* nice like Voldemort, instead, he waved it around like a 
 flag of honor--'look, Deeply Horrible Person over here.'
> 
> All I'm saying is JKR has done a considerable job of shaping Snape 
into a person who has very few redeeming qualities in his 
*personality*. If indeed she is striving to tell us through text
and  interviews that Snape is evil, well yes, I'm guilty of missing 
her 'anvil size clues' on this one. 
> 

Pippin:
Especially since we have another canon character who is a deeply
horrible person, abuses his power, isn't nice at all, has in fact very
few redeeming qualities in his personality, but "whatever Morphin
was, he did not deserve to die as he did, blamed for murders he
had not committed."

Morfin is not someone I'd invite to dinner, and he sure isn't my
idea of boyfriend material, but if JKR wanted to convince me that
he was evil, she failed. 

Lately I've been noticing JKR's comments on instincts. Dumbledore
says that Voldemort has instincts for cruelty, secrecy and domination.
In opposition to him, we can see that other characters have instincts
for protectiveness, openness and willingness to serve. She says that
James protected Harry and Lily by instinct, but with Lily something
more than instinct was involved.

That JKR calls these things instincts suggests that she thinks we need
all of them to survive.  But love, at least in the Potterverse, is
not simply a creation of instinct. It is a power in itself, a power
which allows the characters to realize that there is something more
important than survival. To Voldemort, untouched by love, this is 
nonsense. There is nothing more important than survival to him. But
only because there was something more important than survival to
Lily was she able to ensure that Harry survived.

We are set up by the vow to think that Snape killed Dumbledore so
that he himself would survive, and this, in JKR's cosmos, would be to
reject the power and purpose of love. It would be evil.

But there is the possibility that Snape, in accordance with
Dumbledore's wishes, allowed Dumbledore to die and expected to die 
himself because there was something more important than survival. 
That would be an act of sacrifice and heroism.

This leads me to wonder if Snape deliberately misperformed the
curse,  expecting to die, his look of hatred and revulsion because 
doing what was right rather than what was easy was about to get 
him killed for no practical gain.  He survived, then, not due to 
some plot of his or Dumbledore's but due to Dumbledore's
impending death and the tangled conditions  of the 
vow.

Snape really doesn't act to me like a man who has just committed a
murder either reluctantly or gleefully. He acts more like one who has
had a narrow escape and is anxious to get away before something
worse happens.

Under this theory, Snape would have  proved his courage to 
himself, and would not be  upset by Harry's accusation of cowardice.
Indeed he is not, at first,  and almost banteringly brings
up James. But then Harry says,"Kill me like you killed him."

Harry, of course, is speaking of Dumbledore. But Snape has been
talking about *James*. And for a moment we glimpse Snape in
hell "...his face was suddenly demented, inhuman, as though he
was in as much pain as the yelping, howling dog stuck in the
burning house behind them--"  before he  finishes with 
" CALL ME COWARD!" What he meant  at first, I think, was 
" Don't say I killed James."

There's the remorse, if anyone but me is looking for it.

Pippin