Spinner's End

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 156760

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "houyhnhnm102" <celizwh at ...> wrote:
>
> Magpie:
> 
> > Weak and circular?  The man comes out an introduces himself 
> > as the Half-Blood Prince in the book.  Pretty straight and to 
> > the point with nothing we know contradicting it.
> 
> houyhnhnm:
> 
> And nothing supporting it except the statement of the man who ran 
> across the lawn.  How do we know it was Snape?
> 
> Talk about a Chekhov's Gun.  Rowling brings a .500 Magnum on stage, 
> shows it to us no less than three times in the first five chapters 
> (purple homeland security leaflet, DD's remark about stawberry jam, 
> Arthur and Molly's exchange of passwords) and then uses it to shoot 
> blanks (Grabbe and Goyle disguised as little girls).
>
Carol responds:
Nothing except his handwriting, mentioned in OoP, his potion-making
ability, his invention of those spells, etc. Only snape would have
brought up James as he was (very skilfully) fending off Harry's
spells. do you think it was also someone else who saved DD from the
ring horcrux, Katie Bell from the cursed necklace, and Draco from
Sectumsempra? And who but the inventor of Sectumsempra would know the
countercurse?

Assuming a straightforward reading with the man on the tower being
Snape, the evidence for Snape as HBP is all there in the book--and
IMO, that mystery is solved, as the minor mystery of each book always
is. If that man is an imposter and snape is not the HBP, all the irony
of Harry learning from and identifying with the young Snape is lost.

We have enough mysteries to be getting on with just figuring out
Snape's motives on the tower. What's to be gained by making him
someone else?

Carol, who thinks that if anyone wasn't who they appeared to be in
HBP, it was Tonks