Will there be an ESE!character in Book 7?

[nrenka]

No: HPFGUIDX 147558

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "sistermagpie" <belviso at ...> 
wrote:

> Magpie:

<snip>
  
> 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. 

But we're still encouraged to believe in him wholeheartedly, despite 
all the flaws and such seeded through the books.  I started getting 
nervous about it back in OotP, where Ron and Hermione split over 
Snape and Hermione pulls out the "If we can't trust DD who can we 
trust?" card.  And one of the cornerstones of belief in DDM! is that 
Dumbledore can't possibly have been that wrong--so all those readers, 
a substantial portion of the list, are choosing to view those hints 
of shakiness as not key to what happens.

I'm not saying that this is a perfectly obvious BANG in which 
everything is resolved, because it's written with ambiguity of motive 
and the like.  I don't think it's as ambiguous as some listies want 
to make it, but we're all experts at finding ambiguity where none 
turns out to exist.

> 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.

My uncharitable explanation here (don't flay me, plz) is that it 
involves Snape and a tendency to assume the best of him and to argue 
therefore.  Hence something like the "It was a fake AK" argument, you 
know.  Or maybe it's just the desire to believe the best of the good 
guys in most situations.  Young!Snape is the underdog in the scene 
that we see, so we ignore what else we've heard.  But Dumbledore's 
trust points to the better side of things, so we take that over what 
we've seen.

> Plus even if we do discount Snape in chapter two, that's still JKR 
> giving us the same bang twice.

I'm going to stand by my position that the BANG is totally dependent 
upon the process of reading here, but when is it not?  I figured out 
early in PoA that Sirius Black wasn't evil, which certainly lessened 
the BANG of Peter (although that's still her finest hour in terms of 
pulling one out, hands down).  These books are very different in the 
re-reading than in the initial pass.  I suspect that future 
generations, spoiled from the beginning and having all seven at once, 
won't think up half of what we have on here.  

> Snape outs himself as a current DE in chapter two, and then again 
> in chapter 32?

But chapter two is set up to be as confusing as possible.  For 
instance, Snape tells us he had something to do with Black's death.  
That could be a tipoff to us-the-readers that he's lying.  (Or a 
setup for a future BANG, but that's a slim chance.)  Narcissa and 
Bellatrix don't know what to make of Snape for sure there, and 
neither do we.  This is deliberate.  It's all talk and one action.  
The Tower scene is the big action.

> Snape killing Dumbledore is shocking no matter what...

Hence labeling it a BANG.

> 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.

I don't agree, because I think we've been led to discount the opinion 
that Snape is actually a traitor.  The BANG does not have to come out 
of nowhere and have no preparation, it is merely the opposite to the 
Steady State, where things move at a gradual rate.  I think it all 
made more sense back when we'd talk about the Destroyer. :)

Chapter 2 is the setup for events, and things could go any number of 
ways from there.  And at least for me, the process of reading the 
book without knowing what would happen is the process of trying to 
sort through what I knew as to truth and falsehood.  That said, the 
suddenness of events surprised me.  YMMV, but I do believe this still 
meets the basic standards of BANG...if, alas, it is not the BANG 
which we wanted.

-Nora says that maybe it's a little like the end of Gotterdammerung.  
I mean, you totally know everyone's going to die, but it's still BANG-
y when Hagen spears Siegfried in the back