ACID POPS and Teenager Draco

[Neri]

No: HPFGUIDX 157478

 
> Sydney:
> 
> <snip> Snape and Harry though are the central characters of the
> whole shebang, at least theirs is the central relationship.  It's
> absolutely amazing to me that you don't see that this is where the
> whole potential energy of the story is balanced.  Everything that is
> left about Snape has to be about Harry, tie back into Harry, affect
> Harry emotionally in some major way, force some movement out of Harry.
>  The two characters are tied togther. 
> 

Neri:
This is probably the root of our differences. I don't see at all that
Snape and Harry (the order by which you mention them is interesting)
are the central characters. I see that Harry is the central character,
with Ron and Hermione the next main characters. The story is
frequently built to serve the development of these three characters.
In all the other characters, their development (if at all) is mainly
there to serve the plot and the themes. I see Snape as a secondary
character, more important than Sirius but probably not as important as
Dumbledore. And we've seen how both Sirius and Dumbledore were used
more as plot devices than developing characters. I don't expect Snape
to be different.

In terms of relationships too I don't see that the Snape-Harry
relationship is the central relationship of the HP saga. In a saga
like this, especially in its last installation, the main confrontation
would probably be between the hero and the evil overlord, and the
internal journey of the hero. Other conflicts are not likely to
obscure it. I notice that we have already seen of Tom's childhood and
school days more than we've seen of Snape's childhood and school days,
and I suspect that Harry would meet Tom again inside himself. Same as
in the climax of LotR, Frodo is left alone with faithful sidekick Sam
and alter ego Gollum against the Dark Lord. No place for Aragorn or
Gandalf there. And naturally this was changed in the movie, because
the movie is fanon, and the fanon has rules of its own. The fans
naturally want to see more of the sexy Aragorn and less of the boring
Frodo. But it's dangerous to confuse fanon with canon. The fact that
in the HP fanon Snape (and Draco) had become much more important than
Harry has no effect on JKR.   

I'd estimate that LOLLIPOPS would tend to place Snape center stage in
Book 7, practically making him the hero of the series and distracting
us from Harry and his mission. OTOH I think ACID POPS is exactly the
proper size of SHIP for a character of Snape's magnitude.

> 
> Sydney:
> 
> I honestly have no idea how you comprehend story.  Snape has millions
> of flaws.  It's a character we already know quite well.  His downfall
> already seems assured from every possible angle. <snip>

Neri:
Snape has million flaws, but he is also portrayed as a kind of super
wizard. Potions wiz, inventing spells at school, superb occlumenn,
Dark Arts expert, a double and triple agent, winning both Voldemort's
and Dumbledore's trust and never quite caught, confronting Bellatrix
with a sardonic smile. Not every flaw is thematic enough to bring down
a such a powerful man. The critical flaw is likely to involve hubris.
If Snape thought that he could engineer things so that he also wins
another man's wife he has secretly desired since his schooldays, then
this would be proper hubris to bring him down. Especially in the
Potterverse, where Love is a force that is "more wonderful and more
terrible" than any other magic, and Merpe's misplaced love was what's
started it all.

> Sydney:
> <snip>  Introducing some overwhelming passion for Narcissa
> at this stage-- a hitherto unsuspected character flaw--  would be
> beyond weird.  It's not 'more compact' than Snape/Lily-- it's
> extraneous to the main action of the books, so it's all dangly and
> appendix-y.  And it's something she didn't even make explicit when she
> could have, so as to provide the 'tragic flaw catalyst' for the reader
> that you mention.  Now it would just be one more piece of exposition
> that Harry couldn't give a rat's ass about.  
> 
> Surely what we don't know about Snape is something Harry should *care*
> about?  
> 

Neri:
Again, I suspect you tend to assign too much importance to both Snape
and his love affairs. If Snape saves Harry's life in Book 7 because of
his debt to James, especially if as a result Snape will find himself
fighting against Voldemort, and especially if Snape did kill
Dumbledore, then this would give both Harry and Snape quite enough to
care about. Snape's love affair would be redundant for making Harry
care. It would probably have another purpose (there *are* a few other
purposes for things happening in the story than making Harry care).
And while showing ACID POPS only in the sixth book may seem too late,
it is a direct extension of a flaw that we've seen in Snape since Book
1, namely his obsession about status, fame and glory. JKR also waited
until Book 6 to introduce us to Horcruxes, but they are still a direct
extension of things that were introduced since Book 1.

Besides, ACID POPS is not "hitherto unsuspected" <g>. I too have
speculated about some things before HBP, and I also have the post to
prove it. See #106729.


> Sydney:
> 
> Yes, but why *wouldn't* JKR give things away if there was a
> Snape/Narcissa thing going on?  It would be one more for the
> 'Spinner's End Exposition Party'-- reasons for the reader to
> understand how evil!Snape would theoretically work.  'Ah', they would
> say to themselves, 'this is how the downfall of Snape starts.  He's in
> love with Narcissa'.

Neri:
What? And deprive us of such a juicy theory to speculate and argue
about for two years? And since when does JKR give away things about
Snape, unless she absolutely must? It's against her official policy.

> Sydney:
> Then when JKR pulls out the lifedebt thing or
> whatever you think is going on, they can go, 'Ah!  He was in love with
> Narcissa, BUT there's this other mystery factor!'.  I don't understand
> what is to be gained from making this one more Mystery about Snape
> when the big chance to make it explicit was there.  The only reason to
> make a Snape thing mysterious is so that Harry can find out and go
> "What?!?"

Neri:
Life debt and ACID POPS give you two "What?!?" moments in Book 7
instead of just one. And since when is JKR cutting down on the number
of mysteries? We are talking about the same woman who introduced three
unregistered animagi, a werewolf and a smart half-kneazle in a single
book, aren't we? Especially since, unlike many conspiracy theories,
ACID POPS wouldn't require ten pages of confession to explain it. All
JKR has to do is write "Snape loves Narcissa" and suddenly the reason
for the UV as well as Draco's strange behavior in HBP become clear. 


> Sydney: 
> But this about Draco realizing that he's *not* a killer.  That he's
> horrified by it.  That it leaves him a nervous wreck crying in the
> bathrooms.  He's trying to be a stone-cold killer and instead he's
> just a normal kid.  Of course he's going to be ambivalent about going
> up to the guy who *is* a stone-cold killer and going, 'hey, maybe I'm
> not emotinallly cut out for this outfit, could you kill him for me?'.
>  Draco going to Snape would not just be admitting that he's having a
> hard time with the practicalities, it's owning up to the fact that
> he's going to fail ahead of time, because he doesn't have it in him--
> so Voldemort might as well just go ahead and kill him right then. Is
> that not what Snape meant by, "What thoughts are you trying to hide
> from your Master?" 
> 
> Draco's coming of age is his separating himself from the Death Eater
> fantasy he had.  Snape has been his Death Eater role model.  It would
> be like a kid who was realizing he didn't really want to be a Nazi
> going to his SS officer and saying he wasn't sure about this whole
> killing thing.  What Draco is trying to do is to suck it up, let no
> one see that he's actually this creampuff, and become the DE his dad
> always wanted him to be.  
> 

Neri:
Draco asks Borgin how to fix the cabinet, so why can't he ask Snape?
That wouldn't be admitting to failure, only asking for information.
When he succeeds in repairing the cabinet, Draco has no problem
calling in several SS officers, I mean several DEs, into a school for
an assassination mission, but he doesn't call Snape, who had taken a
UV to guard him and had just saved his life. What does Draco's have
against Snape personally that he *doesn't* have against any other DE
or bad man out there? This is not a minor question, it is a critical
one. The whole tragedy in the end of HBP would have been prevented if
only Draco, at any single point during this whole year, would have
told Snape. I think this requires a more specific reason than "it was
Draco's coming-of-age story".

**********************************************************
HBP, Ch. 27, p. 588:

"But I haven't told him what I've been doing in the Room of
Requirement, he's going to wake up tomorrow and it'll be over and he
won't be the Dark Lord's favorite anymore, he'll be nothing compared
to me, nothing!"
**********************************************************

This sounds to me like Draco has a serious grudge against Snape
personally. He doesn't want just to prove that he can do it by
himself. He wants Snape demoted. He wants to be more important than
Snape. Are we not supposed to ask why? 

> Sydney:
> And, I hate to cast aspersions on teenagers, but Draco's behaviour is
> entirely normal, as you would see if you opened the newspaper any day
> of the week.  How many parents with perfectly healthy relationships
> with their kids only find out something is wrong when the police show
> up?  I never found anything strange with Draco's behaviour under the
> circumstances.  I thought it was an incredibly compelling plot (that I
> rather wish we could have broken the Harry PoV for). Neither did any
> Draco fan I know, who have made a protracted study of the subject. 
> Neither has anybody on this or any other list.  It's the "missing five
> hours" of Draco theories-- another one of yours, I think-- something
> that doesn't bother anybody in the universe of readers but you.  
> 

Neri:
Oh, I see. If nobody thinks so, then it can't be true. How did I dare
think about it? Especially if the Draco *fans* decided that Draco's
behavior is so compelling here, then who am I to say otherwise?
Perhaps you should also notify Pippin that she's wasting her time on
ESE!Lupin, because all the Lupin fans are sure he's a good guy.

And regarding the Missing Five Hours, I'll have you know that I
convinced at least half the list members it's canon. What, don't you
believe me? Potioncat, you tell her! <g>


Neri, 
who notes also that nobody's interested in discussing the juicy SHIP
clues in Spinner's End, which is quite strange for HPfGU.