OFH, Life-debt and Snape/Lily-no-way

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 162585

Susan wrote:
> >The most compelling argument to me about Snape being  basically
self centered and nasty come from JKR herself, who is surprised  that
there are those amongst us who still think Snape might be a good guy.
He is vile, cruel and abusive. His verbal abuse of Harry, Neville  and
Hermione, his total unfairness as a teacher, his abuse of  authority,
his hatred of Sirius and his willingness to give ANYONE up to have
their soul sucked out is pretty awful.

Carol responds:
Setting aside the whole argument as to whether abuse of authority and
(occasional) unfairness as a teacher constitutes being "evil" (I think
it has nothing whatever to do with Snape's loyalties and that JKR is
building up the the *appearance* of evil before springing her
reversal), I just want to say that Snape's hatred of Sirius Black, who
joined James Potter in an unprovoked attack on him in their fifth year
and planned the so-called Prank which could have led to Severus's
death (or to his becoming a werewolf) is perfectly understandable and
in no way makes him evil. Neither Black nor Snape can let go of that
schoolboy hatred. More important, the evidence in PoA indicates that
Snape thought that Black had betrayed the Potters to their deaths, an
act that Snape was apparently trying to prevent--otherwise, his change
of sides and decision to spy on LV for DD *before* Godric's Hollow is
inexplicable. So hatred of Sirius Black, himself no angel, and whom
even Dumbledore believed to have betrayed the Potters, is not evidence
that Snape is evil. Harry hates Black, too, for much of the same book.

As for the willingness to let a character, any character, have his
soul sucked, being evidence for evil, I guess we'd better give up on
any hope of Harry's goodness or heroism because he was perfectly
willing to have Peter Pettigrew punished in exactly that way:

"'Harry, this piece of vermin is the reason you have no parents,'
Black snarled. 'This cringing bit of filth would have seen you die
too, without turning a hair. You heard him. His own stinking skin
meant more to him than your whole family.'

''I know,' Harry panted. 'We'll take him up to the castle. . . . We'll
hand him over to the dememntors. . . .'" (PoA Am. ed. 375).

So Black wants to murder Pettigrew because he's the reason the Potters
are dead; Harry wants to hand him over to what passes for justice in
the WW, the soul-sucking Dementors, for the same reason. Snape resists
the temptation to murder Black and intends to turn *him* over to the
Dementors because he believes Black to be the traitor who betrayed the
Potters. (Yes, he hates James, but he didn't want him dead.) He also
believed Black to have murdered thirteen people, including PP, whom he
at that point did not know to be alive and in that very room as a rat
Animagus. So I fail to see how his wish is any different from Harry's.
And to point out a further parallel, Harry intended to kill Sirius
Black earlier in the scene. Good thing he didn't know Avada Kedavra at
that point in his life. And both Lupin and Black were ready to commit
murder, a temptation that Snape resisted. They stopped because Harry
persuaded them to turn PP over to the Dementors. Too bad that didn't
happen, and PP escaped to resurrect Voldemort.

Somehow, I can't accept Snape's desire to turn Sirius Black, whom he
thinks is a murdering traitor, over to the Dementors as evidence that
Snape is evil. And it's interesting that Snape refers to PP as
"vermin," the very word Black uses in this scene, in "Spinner's End."
Now that he knows who the real betrayer is, his view of him matches
Sirius Black's. 

Carol, who thinks that Black's description of Pettigrew, if we
subtract the venom and examine the essence, is the epitome of OFH!