Grey!Snape and Character Growth

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 162925

Carol:
> Carol, who will continue to use the term DDM!Snape because she thinks
> that Snape's loyalty to Dumbledore is the key to Harry's forgiveness
> of and compassion for Snape (for which the seeds have already been
> sown by those other revelations)
>

Pippin:
I agree with almost everything in your post, but I don't think Snape's
loyalty is the key. Harry understands Snape's capacity for loyalty, he
just thinks that it's devoted to the side of evil. What Harry doesn't
get at all is Snape's capacity for remorse. 

According to Dumbledore, Snape was so remorseful over his
remote involvement in the potential murder of James and his family 
that he turned his whole life upside down trying to forestall it, and
then spent years trying to protect Harry as best he could from 
the consequences. If Harry believed that,  he would
understand that such a person could never have stood face to face
with Dumbledore and killed him with an Unforgivable curse, not
if you have to really mean them. And then, perhaps, Harry will start
thinking about what really happened on the tower.

It's always dangerous to predict the course of a future book, but
maybe Harry will decide that he needs to explore Snape's past in
order to discover his weakness, as Dumbledore's investigations
revealed Voldemort's, and in the process Harry will discover the
evidence of Snape's capacity for remorse.

I agree that Harry will have to forgive Snape for all the humiliations
that Snape put on him in class, but that will happen after Harry
understands that Snape isn't any different than Sirius or
Ron in his ability to ignore the pain he visits on others. It's only Harry 
who has that special, almost godlike gift (or curse) of not being able
to shut down his compassion  when he wants to, much less
without even realizing that he has done so. 

Pippin