Will there be an ESE!character in Book 7?

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 147557

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "nrenka" <nrenka at ...> wrote:
>
> --- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "pippin_999" <foxmoth@> 
> wrote:
> 
> > Pippin:
> > It was a bang for me, though I am DDM!Snape through and through. 
> > Although I'm not clear on who Nora thinks JKR's ideal reader is -
- 
> > if it's someone who's accepting Harry's evaluation of events 
> > without much analysis, Dumbledore's death would be bangy because 
it 
> > never occurred to Harry that Dumbledore might die, much less be 
> > murdered.

Nora:
> 
> I think (and this is a guess) that her ideal reader is someone 
whose 
> fundamental sympathies and inclinations lie with Harry.  She 
> certainly doesn't understand people who read the books and don't 
find 
> him to be the hero and the sympathetic character.
> 
> But she is playing a game with us-the-reader in HBP because of the 
> inclusion of these chapters where we aren't riding on Harry's 
> shoulder, so she's playing our inclinations against each other.  
One 
> strong one is that we've seen things Harry hasn't, so we 
say "Snape?  
> Nah.  Too obvious, and we trust Dumbledore."  But there is always 
a 
> strong pull to feel what Harry does, because we're put into his 
head 
> and thus know him in a way that we don't any of the other 
> characters.  Harry is by far the most real and detailed person in 
the 
> series.


Magpie:

That seems like an unreasonable gamble on the writer's part.  I 
completely agree with your explanation of how Harry might learn that 
he shouldn't demonize Snape because that can obscure Harry's vision, 
but that this could still leave Snape free to encompass actual 
evil.  (As a former DE, I think at the very least we have to accept 
that he has done evil in the past, so you can't say "Snape would 
never do that!")  But it seems odd to base the whole surprise of 
your book on the chance that most of your readers will disregard 
your telling them what's going to happen because you're just that 
tricky.  Especially given the UV.  Once Snape takes it we know he's 
got to either do an evil DE deed or die (and I can't have been the 
only one who never doubted the deed was to kill Dumbledore).

I mean, mike_smith on lj read HBP without ever reading any of the 
other books before, and surely other people might do that too.  
Dumbledore's trust in Snape has always been highlighted as a shaky 
idea since he's always refused to explain it, and he's got a history 
of underestimating things about other peoples' characters.  Not to 
mention that what we see always takes precedence over what we're 
told--hence the one vision we have of Snape sitting alone and being 
picked on completely obscures our being told he gave as good as he 
got and was in a gang.  Here we *see* Snape being a DE and we only 
hear Dumbledore say he's on his side.

Plus even if we do discount Snape in chapter two, that's still JKR 
giving us the same bang twice.  Snape outs himself as a current DE 
in chapter two, and then again in chapter 32? (Or whatever chapter 
he was.)  That's not exactly a "bang" so much as "I really meant 
that bang back in chapter two!"  As would a later explanation 
retroactively bang the Lightning Struck Tower.  Snape killing 
Dumbledore is shocking no matter what, but the shock that Snape is a 
traitor doesn't work if it's been discussed outright since chapter 
two.  If the author makes a bang and nobody hears it for a several 
chapters, it's not a bang.

Not that this means Snape has to be DDM or ESE or in between--there 
are plenty of possibilities, but like Carol, that moment didn't come 
across to me like a big surprise or seem like Dumbledore was really 
wrong. My instinct based on stuff before and after it left me 
feeling much the same way about Snape as I did before, leaning 
towards DDM.

-m