Truth vs. what meets Harry's eye (Was: Is Harry an idiot because he thinks Snap

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 140561

Alla wrote:
> 
> I think that he [Harry] is acting as any person who would just
witnessed a killing in front of his eyes, but that is just me.
<snip>
He has the most important piece of evidence - Dumbledore is dead, 
Snape threw Avada at him. <snip>
> Harry took it for granted that Snape murdered Dumbledore, because he
SAW Snape murdering Dumbledore. 
> To me, it is just simple as that. Could it be that events on the 
Tower were mor complicated than what Harry saw? <snip>

Carol responds:
To answer your last question, yes, they could. Which is not to say
that they are, only that we know how deceptive appearances can be in
the Potter books. The Snape plot may appear to be resolved, but I'm
betting that it isn't.

Rather than arguing (again) that Snape's supposed Avada Kedavra curse
really doesn't resemble the ones we've seen, including even the one
that kills the spider in GoF, or bringing up other points already
discussed like the Unbreakable Vow and the choices Snape faced on the
tower, let me try another tactic. Let's look at what meets the eye of
other characters besides Harry and how their perceptions compare with
the facts.

We know that things very often aren't what they seem in the HP books.
Granted, Harry's suspicions of Sirius Black, for example, were not
based on what he saw with his own eyes, but Black's arrest for the
murder of Peter Pettigrew and twelve Muggles *was* based on what many
Muggle witnesses saw with their own eyes. The witnesses, we now know,
were wrong, but they believed what they saw, and their testimony put
Black in prison for twelve years.

Harry himself was suspected as the Heir of Slytherin based on what the
members of the Duelling Club saw with their own eyes. Overhearing
Ernie Macmillan's suspicion that Harry is targeting the Muggle-born
Justin Finch-Fletchley, Harry confronts Ernie:

"Hello," said Harry. "I'm looking for Justin Finch-Fletchley."

The Hufflepuffs' worst fears had clearly been confirmed. They all
looked fearfully at Ernie.

"What do you want with him?" said Ernie in a quavering voice.

"I wanted to tell him what really happened with that snake at the
Duelling Club," said Harry.

Ernie bit his white lips and then, taking a deep breath, said, "We
were all there. We saw what happened."

"Then you noticed that after I spoke to it, the snake backed off?"
said Harry.

"All I saw," said Ernie stubbornly, though he was trembling as he
spoke, "was you speaking Parseltongue and chasing the snake toward
Justin." (CoS Am. ed. 200)

Ernie and the other Hufflepuffs *saw with their own eyes* that Harry
was telling the snake to attack Justin. Therefore, by your reasoning,
they must be right. And yet we know they're not. For one thing,
Ernie's view of events is colored by his preconception that
Parseltongue is "the mark of a Dark wizard" (CoS 199). The reader,
being a Muggle, has no such preconception. 

Also, unlike the Hufflepuffs, the reader is inside Harry's mind. We
don't see him from the outside egging on the snake; we hear his
thoughts and know that he's really telling the snake not to attack.
The Hufflepuffs, seeing Harry from the outside, perceive the scene
differently. What they see with their own eyes is the truth from their
perspective, just as the Muggles who testified against Sirius Black
were telling the truth from their perspective. But in both cases, it's
what they don't see (or hear or understand) that's important. The
Hufflepuffs hear a hissing noise, not the words Harry is speaking; the
Muggles don't see Peter Pettigrew blowing off his finger--and the
street--behind his back. Both judge by appearances but believe they
know the truth. 

Harry, too, judges from what he sees on the tower and believes that he
knows the truth--which happens to fit nicely with his preconception
that Snape is evil. But what Harry sees throughout the books, even
Dumbledore struck by a spell that knocks him from the tower and is
followed by his death, is subject to interpretation, both Harry's and
the reader's. And certainly both Harry and those readers who regard
his POV as accurate are likely to see this scene in the worst light.
But Harry has often been wrong before, and neither what he see nor
what he feels is an infallible guide to truth in the sense of what
really happened. (If we regard books 6 and 7 as two halves of the same
book, as JKR has said somewhere, we are really only halfway through
the book. At this point in PoA, we, like Harry, thought Sirius Black
was out to kill him. Can we confidently conclude that we really know
what happened on the tower? I don't think so.)

Certainly Dumbledore is dead. Certainly Snape spoke the words "Avada
Kedavra" and cast the spell that sent Dumbledore over the wall of the
tower. But we know, and Harry knows, that's not the whole story. There
is at least the role of the Unbreakable Vow to be considered--and
Harry has conveniently forgotten that, as he's forgotten to consider
Dumbledore's condition and his own role in force-feeding him the
potion on DD's own orders. To what degree these complicating
circumstances excuse Snape, if at all, I can't say. I'm only saying
that Harry is not seeing the whole picture. He is not even seeing all
the physical details presented by the narrator, or at least he is not
perceiving their significance. (Again, there's the question of Snape's
spell in contrast with a normal AK and the peaceful expression on
Dumbledore's face in contrast with, say, Cedric Diggory's. Maybe I'm
reading significance into these details that isn't there, but I'm far
from the only reader who's seen them.)

And of course there is the built-in limitation of any observer in life
or in literature--seeing others from the outside. Just as the
Hufflepuffs could not see inside Harry's head and so did not know what
he was really saying to the snake and the Muggles didn't know
Pettigrew's plot to fake his own death and frame Black for his murder,
neither Harry nor the reader knows Snape's thoughts as he meets
Dumbledore's eyes, raises his wand, and casts the spell that shook the
Potterverse to its foundations. We don't know his motivation, his
thoughts, or his feelings; we don't know what passed between him and
Dumbledore; we don't know whether that spell was really an AK. We do
know, if we look carefully at that scene and the following pages, that
Harry has overlooked some details that may or may not be important
(the absence of a blinding light and a rushing sound; Snape's actions
in getting Draco and the DEs out of Hogwarts; the peaceful expression
on the dead Dumbledore's face, etc.). Harry's interpretation of
Snape's look of hatred and revulsion, reflected in the narrator's
words, may or may not be the right one. Only Snape (and JKR) knows
what Snape was really thinking and feeling. We do know, though that
Harry is wrong in believing that Snape is Crucioing him. "Snape was
going to torture him to death or madness" (HBP Am. ed. 603), a glaring
example of unreliable narration reflecting Harry's inaccurate POV, 
suggests that Harry's perception of reality in the rest of that
chapter and the previous one may not be entirely accurate, either.

Ernie Macmillan and his fellow Hufflepuffs judged Harry to be guilty
of petrifying his fellow students based on what they saw with their
own eyes in the duelling club. But Ernie and his friends were wrong.
It's possible, and in my opinion probable, that Harry is wrong,
too--not in thinking that Snape killed Dumbledore (which appears to be
indisputable) but in thinking that he knows the whole story and in
believing that Snape is a murdering traitor. The evidence has not been
examined, and there's a lot more to it than what meets Harry's eyes.

Carol, who does not think for a moment that Harry is an idiot, only
that what he sees with his own eyes (or hears with his own ears) isn't
the whole truth