How will Snape come back?

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 162660

chrustoxos wrote:

Hi Carol,
>
> I'm flattered that you answered my mail, since I always read your
posts and I think that what you have to say is really interesting.
I'll jump on the occasion to ask you if you've studied Literature, or
if you have just a natural flair in book theories?
>
Carol:
Thank you very much. As a matter of fact, I have a PhD in literature
though I no longer teach college English and am now a copyeditor.

chrustoxos:
> As for our bat friend, I agree that we'll se more of this light side
he has, because we were intrigued by it, as Harry was, in the previous
books and we don't really know much about it: where has Snape learned
it all, for a start? If DD took him as a teacher so early (around the
time Harry was born, right?) he couldn't have done much study after
Hogwarts. And Healing is not something he would have learned from LV.

Carol:
Interesting question. I think that DD taught him Occlumency and that
he taught himself a great deal, maybe while he was a DE having
self-doubts. I've wondered when he learned or invented the
Sectumsempra countercurse as well. Maybe DD taught him some Healing
skills, but Snape seems to know more about healing Dark magic than DD
does. One reason for DD's trust in him, maybe?

chrustoxos:
Anyway, the reason I insisted in him contacting someone is that I
don't think that at this point of the story a gesure may be enough for
Harry to believe that he's innocent. In killing DD, Snape has gone too
far. And Harry has by now learned, though he remembers it only when
it's convenient to him, that a gesture left unexplained may have been
done for several reasons.

Carol:
Ah, yes. Harry's selective memory. You may be right. But I still think
it will take Snape doing something that Harry doesn't expect, like
healing one of his injured friends instead of killing him/her or
taking him/her to Voldemort, to persuade Harry to at least consider
shutting up and hearing what Snape has to say. Or, as I said at
another post, Snape tying Harry up and forcing him to listen.
(Pictures snape casting Muffliato all around and then sitting with a
tied and Silencio'd Harry under the Invisibility Cloak as the tells
all. ;-) )
>
chrustoxos:
> About the Order's members, I did hesitate between McGongall and
Lupin - I certainly don't see him heading to the Burrow, for various
reasons. I still think that Snape won't be the one going towards
Lupin, but you're right saying that "Lupin . . . is the very person
most likely to figure out that the AK that sent DD over the wall
wasn't a normal AK and start asking questions. <snip> More  important,
he, too, has been a victim of the DADA curse. If anyone can understand
the predicament Snape finds himself in at the end of HBP, it's Lupin
<snip>.
>
Carol:
Thanks.

chrustoxos:
> I mistrust the idea of Snape going to Lupin because this is one
thing I'd do, and when I analyse my reasons I find that Snape couldn't
have the same ones. Snape doesn't trust Lupin, never has, and Lupin
has never given him a reason to trust him. He didn't protect him as a
Prefect, he made a fool of him as a colleague. Lupin is, as Snape 
sees him, a weak creature; a creature, I say: not even human, with no
ambition to free himself from his status, from his poverty, the
contrary of Snape (I'm not judging here). Also, Snape has learned to
fear him, and therefore to hate him more: he ran after him in PoA, but
not to help him (he didn't carry him the potion), but to destroy him.
He was also not his usual rational self that night, as we see from his
reaction after Sirius' flight. He went after Lupin with the Cloak,
ready to perform Unforgivables both on him and on Black.

Carol:
I still don't think that Snape *feared* Lupin (or Sirius Black). You
don't fear someone you think is weak and Snape seldom shows fear--or
feels it, IMO. (He did know what he faced in returning to Voldemort
and his pale face and glittering eyes showed a fear that he had
mastered, outweighed by what he had to do. and he was afraid for Draco
in HBP, "Unbreakable Vow" chapter. But I see no sign that he feared
Lupin in PoA or anywhere else. He just thought that Lupin was the
werewolf accomplice of the man who intended to murder Harry. And he
knows, as you say, that Lupin is and always has been weak. I don't
think he intended to perform any Unforgiveables on Lupin, whom he tied
up with cords cast from his wand, and he resisted the temptation to
kill Sirius Black, whom he intended to turn in to Fudge, who would
give him to the Dementors. No fear there, but no understanding,
either. Still, maybe they understand each other better now. Trust, I'm
not so sure. (BTW, Snape couldn't have run to the Shrieking Shack with
a goblet full of potion. His goal at that point, IMO, was to catch the
murderer and his accomplice, not to keep the werewolf from transforming.)

Chrustoxos:
So if Lupin understands that Snape is somehow innocent and wants to
claer him, imo he must be the one to find Snape, and not the other way
round.

Carol:
I don't know. I picture Snape sending him a message using his new
Patronus, something Dumbledoreish that would persuade Lupin of his
loyalties. But that could be what I want to happen rather than what
will  happen. I do think that Lupin might figure a few things out if
he starts thinking about the holes and contradictions and oddities in
Harry's version of events, but I wonder how he would find Snape, who
probably won't be hiding in Spinner's End these days.
>
>
Carol earlier:
> >I imagine him engineering a prison break with Bellatrix, all the
while planning to subvert Lucius Malfoy, at least, and get him to join
the fight against the Dark Lord who sent his son on a suicide mission.
>
chrustoxos:
> Mmmh. If Barty Crouch could say 'I have no son' while Dementros
dragged his son away, Lucius is likely going to do exactly the same.
Any hope Draco has to survive reside in Narcissa, In Snape and
possibly in the Order.
>
Carol:
I'm not so sure. I think that Lucius does love his son. Otherwise,
what would be the point in Voldemort's seeking to punish him by
killing Draco (I mean, assigning him a task that he thought Draco
couldn't complete and then killing him for his failure)? I think that
Snape's and Lucius's friendship will come into play, along with
Narcissa's gratitude. And Draco, if he has any sense, will realize
that Snape saved him twice, and not out of loyalty to the Dark Lord.

Carol earlier:
> >As for Snape reaching Hermione, I suppose there's some hope. She
alone of the Trio believed Dumbledore that he was trustworthy, and
(very oddly, given her year-long antagonism to the HBP) she tells
Harry after learning his identity that "evil is a strong word" to
describe the teenage inventor of Sectumsempra who grew up to kill
Dumbledore.
>
chrustoxos:
> I think that this is a very important point. Hermione has grasped
what Harry has not: there is always the possibility to redemption,
there is always a cause for one's cruelty. This, of course, doesn't
stretch very far, as we see from her treatment of Marietta.

Carol:
Exactly. It's odd that she's always been Dumbledore's Woman with
regard to Snape and came back around to something close to that
position, even researching the HBP nickname at a time when Harry felt
nothing but hatred for Snape and regret that he'd been attracted to
the HBP as a friend. But Hermione often sees other people more clearly
than she sees herself. (Cho Chang and Sirius Black, for example.) If
nothing else, maybe she'll stop seeking vengeance on others. I do
hope, though, that she helps Harry to see that he might be wrong about
Snape--as he was wrong, to some extent, about Draco. Not that Harry is
likely to listen, but maybe he'll hear and remember things that he
rejects at the moment of hearing them. And his own mind keeps coming
back to Snape healing Draco.

Carol earlier:
> > Or in LOTR? I think a Boromir-style repentance scene is what many
fans are expecting. I very much doubt that JKR will give us one. 
Personally, I hope she finds a way to save Snape. But I don't doubt
for a moment that he'll be instrumental in the Horcrux hunt, as well
as in betraying Voldemrot to Harry at the last moment. [Carol notes
her own typo, "Voldemrot" and deliberately leaves it unaltered.]
> 
chrustoxos:
> Why do you doubt it? Please please please convince me, as this is
exactly the kind of scenario I fear, a character left to die without
explanation, some guessing and it's finished.

Carol:
My primary reason for doubting a Boromir-style death for Snape is that
JKR likes to surprise the readers, and she seems to think that no one
will guess what she's up to with Snape, so the obvious way of dealing
with her repentant anti-hero--dying after performing a heroic deed--is
unlikely to be her choice. It's too predictable. And there's no way
that she'll leave Snape unexplained. Harry's been asking questions
about him, and Dumbledore has been giving him partial answers or
refusing to answer him, for six books now. She's not going to leave
Harry's questions, or the reader's, unanswered. Snape is too important
a character, and too loved or hated forby the fans, for her to
neglect. Everyone on all sides wants him explained, if only so they
can say "I told you so!" And since there's no Dumbledore to do the
customary wrap-up scene near the end of the novel, why not have the
character whose motives and actions most require explanation do it?

chrustoxos: 
> And yet everything, imo, points to this: Snape is in hiding, and
trust no one of the Order enough to contact them; excellent plot
diversion a character switching sides at the last moment; powerful
scene of a dying Potions master, surprise at Harry wishing Lv's death
even more because LV killed Snape.

Carol:
I don't quite understand you here. Yes, snape will be in hiding with
no one trusting him, which we all agree is an obstacle to be
surmounted if he's DDM. (I think a changed Patronus is his most likely
means of communication with the Order, but he'll only be able to use
it when he's out of Voldemort's sight.) But if a character switches
sides, it won't be DDM!Snape, who is already on Harry's side. Harry
just doesn't know it. I expect a reversal revealing that the seeming
villain of Book 6, Severus Snape, is really Dumbledore's man, but the
revelation of his loyalties is not the same as a change in loyalties,
which, if we're right, happened about seventeen years before the end
of Book 7. Nor do I understand why Snape would be surprised thy
Harry's killing LV; that's what he wants him to do and why he's been
protecting him this whole time. And if LV kills Snape (rather than
Snape helping to kill or defeat him), there won't be time for a
redemption scene in which Snape asks forgiveness and explains the
motives that require understanding rather than forgiveness. With an
AK, you die on the spot. No Snape in Harry's arms confessing his sins
a la Boromir and Aragorn (unlikely in the first place, and as someone
pointed out, Boromir doesn't die in the arms of Frodo, the character
he betrayed. He'd have to die in DD's arms for the parallel to work,
and obviously, that can't happen now). That type of scene just
wouldn't work with Harry and
Snape--though if Harry dies (or seems to die) along with Voldemort, I
can actually imagine a dead (or seemingly dead) Harry in the arms of a
weeping Snape, who feels that he's failed yet again.)

chrustoxos:
I see only a small light at the end of the tunnel: Snape may be, as
others have said, a 'training' for Harry before his duel with LV; in
this case, Harry must learn to use his powerful weapon, his capacity
to love and forgive, on Snape - in this case, we only have to worry
about LV...

Carol:
Yes, that's more or less what I believe. At least in some scenes,
Snape has been standing in loco inimicis, acting as Harry's enemy to
prepare him to fight the real enemy, Voldemort, and Harry has to
forgive him in order to use his ultimate weapon, Love. I'm not in the
least worried about Snape's redemption, which has been set up since
the beginning of the books. I *am* worried about his survival, but JKR
can pull it off if she so chooses.
>
> > Carol, who hopes that either Lupin or Hermione will be the person
who works with Snape and hopes that Snape will be the narrator of the
obligatory expository scene near the end of Book 7
> >
chrustoxos:
> This is something else that will earn you a golden star if you can
convince me of it...Snape has not uttered more than a two sentences
one after the other since his memorable speech in PS.
>
Carol:
Ah, but I think that, like Petunia with her two outbursts (in SS/PS
and OoP), he's dying to tell his story. He's keeping a lot inside and
imagine the thrill he'll feel in being able to reveal to the Chosen
One that despite hating him as an arrogant and dishonest little
mediocrity and preserving his own cover as DD's Man, he's been helping
and protecting Harry all along.

Carol, feeling that she hasn't earned her golden stars yet but
thinking that this post is too long already