[HPforGrownups] Re: ESE, DDM, OFH, or Grey? (WAS: DDM!Snape the definition)

[elfundeb]

No: HPFGUIDX 162480

Sarah:
I guess I'm not seeing the difference between that and OFH. Any Snape
that would help Dumbledore's side for unselfish reasons wouldn't give
serious consideration to really being on Voldemort's side, and vice
versa. I still think if his motives don't get completely cleared up,
then book seven isn't done yet. It just doesn't seem likely to me
that we'll get to see Snape's epic internal battle for good vs. evil,
since the story is told from Harry's point of view. So the shortest
road is OFH.

Debbie:
Grey!Snape has weaknesses that cause him to waver, and even change his
allegiances over time.  He joined the DEs because he wanted to, and his
repentance was real.  In all the time he was at Hogwarts, staying on
Dumbledore's side was relatively easy.  Even when he went back to Voldemort
at the end of GoF, it wasn't too hard because he could serve Voldemort
without betraying Dumbledore, and of course he was at Hogwarts with
Dumbledore on a daily basis.

Now, he can't go back to Hogwarts or the Order -- who would believe him?  If
he's weak, he'll go back to Voldemort.  If he feels betrayed by him, that's
an extra incentive to leave the do-gooders behind (and it's worth pointing
out that in my view betrayal (or perceived betrayal) of Snape by his father
figures played a big part in his decision to join the DEs and his decision
to leave).  Now, Dumbledore has asked Snape to split his soul for the
greater good.  That's a lot to ask of anyone, and even though Snape carried
out his task, I'll bet he is feeling mightily ill-used right now, and ready
to throw in the towel.  If he has to play the part of a reviled murderer,
permanently estranged from the team for whom he committed said murder, why
not cast his lot with the side who will appreciate that?

Debbie:
> And that's why I have settled on what Jen calls Grey!Snape. In my
book, DDM!Snape doesn't account for Snape's volatility, his passion,
his anger.

Carol:
Why not? DDM!Snape hates James, whom he failed to save. He feels
remorse for the eavesdropping and Godric's Hollow yet hates Harry
(because he's a living reminder of that failure?).

Debbie:
You're 100% right; of course DDM!Snape has plenty of volatility, plenty of
passion.  My reference should have been to OFH!Snape.

Sydney:
So, IMHO, OFH!Snape isn't in the book, ESE!Snape isn't narratively
possible, and grey!Snape is DDM!Snape with added water where I like my
characters neat (still not clear on the difference between grey! and
OFH!Snape, except that Grey Snape seems to reserve some mind-changing
for the final book where at least we can see it, but where it wouldn't
have been set up by all the books before).

Debbie:
There's no doubt that I like Grey! over DDM! because I like my characters
spiced rather than neat.  However, Grey! is a much closer relative to DDM!
than to OFH!Snape.  More like DDM! spiked with self-doubt and indecision.

Sydney:
The shortest road is either DDM! or
ESE!-- for precisely that reason, that it's both difficult and weak to
have a non-POV character making all sorts of off-screen choices with
complicated and conflicting motivations.

Debbie:
I'll admit this is the biggest obstacle to Grey!Snape.  We'll never see
Snape's thought processes unless he makes that final decision on-screen, in
front of Harry, and he'd probably need a soliloquy to go along with it.  In
that respect, a DDM! ending would foreclose the possibility of Grey!Snape.
And even I'll admit that the finale would Bang equally well (perhaps even
more so) if the real Snape revealed himself suddenly (as in HBP) without
long-winded explanations of the kind we associate with the Evil Overlord
manual.  However, we did have Spinner's End, which was not told from Harry's
POV, and we might see another such chapter in Book 7.

Carol:
. Much as I would like to believe that DD died from
> the poison and Snape cast some other spell disguised as an AK (I do
> think there was an additional nonverbal spell that sent him over the
> battlements, but that's beside the point), his agony is only
> explicable if he really killed Dumbledore against his will, for the
> cause, at the expense of his own soul and everything he had before--a
> comfortable job, the respect of the WW, the trust of the Order
> members, the freedom to go anywhere without fear of Azkaban.

Pippin:
His agony is over what happened to *James*, the person they had
been discussing just before Harry said "Kill me like you killed him,
you coward. " I believe the break between "DON'T" and "CALL
ME A COWARD" is significant. Like Myrtle's "Don't", Snape's is
meant to stand alone; the "CALL ME A COWARD" is play-acting
for the DE's, IMO.

Debbie:
Though the use of a pronoun in this sentence is more than a little vague,
and Snape's revelation of the prophecy did cause James' death (and Lily's),
there is nothing in the passage to contradict the reading that his *current*
and most immediate agony is over his mentor Dumbledore and what Snape has
been made to do for him.

 Dumbledore may have been poisoned in the Cave, but I agree that the
proximate cause of his death was the AK delivered by Snape.  Sometimes
things are not as they seem, but JKR seldom (if at all) allows that kind of
misdirection to span more than one book.

Debbie
realizing that she appears to have almost talked herself into DDM!Snape


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