EBA!Snape

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 162548

Bart wrote:
> I figure it's about time to put a label on my own favorite Snape
theory: Evil but Allied.<snip> 
> 
> Now, as JKR has made clear, Tommy "Lord Voldemort" Riddle is a user,
plain and simple. By the philosophy of his own organization, he is an
inferior, and should not be the head. He doesn't care about
philosophy; all he cares about is his own power. He only cares about
his followers in terms of how he can use them.

Carol responds:
Interesting. I agree with your assessment of Voldemort, at any rate. 
> 
Bart:
> Snape was clearly taken in by the philosophy of the Death Eaters,
having the basic self-conception, "I'm better than everybody else; why
doesn't everybody recognize it?". 

Carol responds:
Can you supply some canon here to connect these two ideas? I don't see
how Snape's view of himself (the Half-Blood Prince?) relates to
Voldemort's ostensible philosophy of pureblood superiority. Regulus
Black would have been taken in by this philosophy, but why young
Snape? I think what he wanted was recognition and acceptance (and
possibly revenge against certain Gryffindor opponents of LV).

Bart:
And it is clear that he still has the idea. But it is also clear that
he has a clear moral and ethical code of his own, and saw that the
person he had chosen as a leader was a fake. 

Carol:
Clear that he still thinks highly of himself, do you mean? Are you
thinking of the "I, the Half-Blood Prince" speech? I can't think of
any other evidence to support this view, but perhaps you can cite
some. (Of course, Snape is *aware* of his own abilities, but he never
brags about them. And he certainly says nothing about saving DD from
the ring Horcrux or any of his other acts as Healer in HBP. Granted,
he *has* to keep quiet about these actions and others, or he'd be a
dead man, but he could have boasted more directly about his own
abilities as an Occlumens in OoP. I don't recall his boasting at all
on any occasion. Even the HBP speech doesn't involve any gloating
about his own abilities, only resentment that Harry would used his own
spells against him.)

And how, exactly, can you reconcile "a clear moral and ethical code of
his own" (which I agree that he has) with being evil? What is that
coed, in your view, and how does it fit with his leader's being a
fake? (Snape is a half-blood, too, which didn't prevent him from
joining the DEs.) DD says that Snape's motivation for turning against
Voldemort was his recognition of how LV interpreted the Prophecy. Why
reject DD's testimony in favor of Snape's recognition that LV didn't
support his own code? We have no evidence that Snape supported it,
either, other than his once, under duress, calling Lily a "Mudblood."
He didn't want her to rescue him any more than he later wanted James
to save his life. Too humiliating, and besides, in a fair duel, he
could take care of himself. He doesn't call anyone else a "Mudblood"
(unlike Draco, who buys the philosophy hook, line, and sinker), and
his nickname for himself as a teenager suggest (to me) that he views
himself as being as much a Prince as the "pureblood Princes" (who
could not have treated him well or he would not have had that pallid,
stringy look of a plant kept in the dark).
> 
Bart;
> I suspect that he did have feelings for Lily; certainly there are
hints that he saw her as an intellectual equal, although a social
inferior. 

Carol:
I'm not so sure. It's interesting that he never insults Lily as he
does James, and I'm sure that he regretted having placed her in danger
because of the Prophecy, but beyond that, I'll wait and see. In any
case, having feelings for her and/or viewing her as an intellectual
equal would not make him evil. Nor, BTW, do the scrawled notes in his
Potions book, which make Harry view him as a friend.

Bart:
He also owed his life to James, although it is also clear that he also
attributed his being in danger in the first place at least in part to
James, making his owing his life double-hateful. Sirius, of course, he
despises; there wasn't even the saving grace of repentance that
occurred with James (from Snape's point of view). 

Carol:
I'm not sure about repentance. Snape hates James precisely *because*
he saved his life--not that there was any love lost in the first
place. But I think you're right that he despises rather than hates
Sirius Black. His treatment of him in OoP resembles his treatment of
Bellatrix, whom he also despises. (It's different in PoA, where he
still thinks that Black is a murderer out to kill Harry and the spy/SK
who betrayed the Potters. Once that's cleared up, he has no reason to
hate Black except for the Prank, and he sneers at him and taunts him
in retaliation for "Snivellus" and other insults. Neither of them can
get past their schoolboy grudges, rather like brothers and sisters who
behave like civilized adults until they come home to visit their
parents for Christmas and fall into the old habit of bickering.)
Anyway, none of this makes Snape evil or even amoral. It just makes
him unforgiving, like a lot of other characters on the good side,
Sirius Black, Hermione, and Harry himself, for starters.
> 
Bart:
> There is also, although not explicitly hinted at, a probable
jealousy of Dumbledore. Both Snape and Dumbeldore were demonstrated to
be highly creative and had a sufficient understanding of the basics of
magic to improve upon the techniques commonly taught, yet Dumbledore
was everybody's favorite, and Snape was nobody's (which left Snape
vulnerable to the entrapments and temptations of the Death Eaters). 

Carol:
Can you show some canon for this perceived jealousy? DD is hardly
Snape's contemporary--he's about 115 years older, more like a
great-great-grandfather than any kind of peer or equal, and he's
always in a superior position to Snape--headmaster, head of the Order,
etc. I don't think that Snape envies Dumbledore: I think that he wants
DD's approval and envies *James*, who became Head Boy despite being a
troublemaker and a bully (and never even having been a Prefect). In
PoA, for example, he wants DD to pay attention and believe him when he
suggests that Lupin is helping Black to get inside the castle.
(*Someone* is, but it turns out to be Crookshanks!)
> 
Bart:
> So, when whatever happened (but certainly linked to the revelation
of the prophecy) that opened Snape's eyes (and it is vaguely hinted
that it was his putting Lily into jeopardy), Snape changed sides. He
clearly did this well BEFORE the initial defeat of Voldemort; the fact
that he received no hint of punishment speaks to that. 

Carol:
Exactly. Snape *risked his life* to spy on Voldemort *before* the
Potters were killed. Hardly the act of an evil young man. (And I don't
think thee's any hint that it was Lily per se, only the way that LV
interpreted the Prophecy, meaning, IMO, that LV intended to go after
the infant and his parents, who turned out to be people that Snape knew.)
> 
Bart:
> The point is that Snape's cruelty, his, face it, evil nature is NOT
an act. He IS as reprehensible as he seems. 

Carol:
Okay, here's where we get into opinion rather than interpretation.
What cruelty? Do you mean his sarcasm and his unfair point deductions
or his hatred of Harry or something else? Can you show me a single
instance of Snape's ostensible cruelty that's comparable to Umbridge's
detentions or her sending Dementors after Harry or her intention to
Crucio him, or to Bellatrix's actual Crucio of Neville? Snape *saved*
Harry from a Crucio? How is that cruelty? I think "reprehensible" is a
matter of opinion here. Just show me any actual cruelty, please, and
I'll show you nastiness and a mean disposition and a penchant for
revenge not very different from hermione's. Not admirable, I'll grant
you, but a far cry from Umbridge or Bellatrix or Barty Jr., all of
whom are actual sadists and all of whom, unlike Snape, are in some way
associated with the Cruciatus curse. And I almost forgot Voldemort,
from whose clutches Snape has saved Harry more than once. If you call
Snape's mean-spirited detentions cruel, we'll just have to agree to
disagree.

Bart:
But, like the generals who turned against Hitler, he sees that Lord
Voldemort is, even by his own standards, thoroughly evil, and is
willing to do whatever he can to stop him, even trying to work with a
kid who reminds him of everything he hated as a youth, even if it
means slaying a man who, by his own standards, should have hated him,
but offered him nothing but friendship and support.

Carol:
Snape is "evil," but he objects to a tyrant who's even more evil? I
don't get it. Sorry. Nor do I see any evidence that he's evil or even
cruel at age twenty or so when he changes sides. Bitter, yes.
Disappointed, yes. Angry, yes. Evil, not that I can see.

I think he joined the DEs because he wanted recognition from a fellow
Slytherin for his intelligence and skills but balked when he realized
how far LV would go to insure his real agenda, his own immortality.
The fact that, as you say, he cared no more for his DEs than for his
enemies may have played a role. If Snape wanted from Voldemort what he
felt that he should have received from DD, as I suspect, he certainly
didn't receive it, and the death of Regulus (which I'm guessing that
young Snape witnessed) would have given him additional reason to want
to "return to our side," as DD puts it. Snape must have realized that
he had made more than one great mistake, including joining the DEs in
the first place as well as revealing the Prophecy.
> 
Bart:
> Was he Dumbledore's man? Not really; at best, he was an ally, not a
friend. 

Carol:
I'm not sure that DDM!Snape requires him to be DD's friend, more like
his faithful follower, a dutiful son (great-great-grandson) who
resents DD's perceived favoritism toward the less dutiful son, James,
the one who refused to have DD as his Secret Keeper, a decision that
led to his death. And now that favoritism is extended to Harry, who
unfortunately resembles James in more ways than one. But that doesn't
mean that DD and Snape don't love each other in a father/son way. DD
knows that he's sending Severus into grave danger and can't bring
himself to speak for several minutes after doing so in GoF. And Snape
doesn't want to kill Dumbledore, which is what the hand twitch and the
look  of revulsion and hatred and the agony like that of the dog in
the burning house are all about.

Bart:
He did what Dumbledore said not because Dumbledore said it, but
because Dumbledore was right. His arguments with Dumbledore showed
that he was quite capable of disobeying Dumbledore if he disagreed.
And it was clear that Dumbledore could not trust him 100%; he not only
dropped Harry's Occlumancy lessons, but, as is obvious through
context, failed to tell Dumbledore that he had. But, while Dumbledore
could not always trust the man, he DID know where his loyalties lay,
and that is where he found Snape to be trustworthy. 

Carol:
But DD could and *did* trust Snape completely. there was every reason
to drop the Occlumency lessons after Harry betrayed Snape's trust by
entering the Pensieve. They weren't working and it's possible that
they were having the opposite of the intended effect. DD doesn't blame
Snape for dropping them or force him to resume them. Instead, he
continues to trust him, even placing his life in his hands, not once
but twice, the first time trusting him to save him, the second time
trusting him to keep his vow. He also trusted him to save Katie Bell
and to teach the cursed subject DADA, which he did more effectively
than any teacher so far, including Lupin and Fake!Moody. Completely is
completely.

Bart: 
> And, for those who believe in ESE Snape, I have one question which I
have posed several times, and yet to have heard a satisfactory answer:
Why did Snape raise the alarm about the Ministry raid so quickly? A
little bit of stalling, and Voldemort would not have been defeated,
yet Snape's cover would have been intact. 

Carol:
Well, at least we agree here. If Snape were ESE! or OFH! he would not
have raised the alarm. But I don't think he'd do it if he were evil,
either. You know, Bart, I think you're actually a DDM!Snaper even
though you don't want to be. You just dislike Snape and so you
consider him evil without presenting any evidence to support that
label. Maybe a better label for your view would be DDMNB!
(Dumbledore's Man But Nasty). 

Carol, who understands but doesn't share your dislike for this complex
and fascinating character