Patterns in the six books

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 146273

I've noticed some patterns in the six books relating to Snape, DADA,
and minor villains (the series villain remains the same, of course)
and I'm wondering if they mean anything.

First, Snape is always in some way opposed to the DADA teacher, either
thwarting or exposing him or her in some way (most obviously in SS/PS
and PoA), as if he's some sort of agent, witting or unwitting, of the
DADA curse. In HBP, this aspect of Snape's role in the books reaches
its epitome and he in essence engineers his own downfall via the DADA
curse. We're told (JKR in a recent interview) that there *will* be a
DADA teacher and it won't be Snape (not that anyone expected that it
would be). Has Snape, by inflicting the curse on himself and by
destroying Dumbledore (whom LV was presumably punishing by cursing the
position in the first place) brought the curse to an end?

Also, although the primary villain is always Voldemort, whether he
plays an active role in a particular book or not, there's always a
sub-villain (usually not the person we thought it was). In SS/PS, it's
Quirrell (not Snape); in CoS, it's Diary!Tom (acting through Ginny),
not Draco, though it could be argued that Diary!Tom is just Voldemort
in another form and the surprise sub-villain is Lucius Malfoy (who put
the diary in Ginny's cauldron); in PoA, it's Peter Pettigrew, not
Sirius Black; in GoF, it's Crouch!Moody, not one of a whole crowd of
other suspects (including Crouch Sr. and Karkaroff). In OoP, the
pattern changes; we know that the sub-villain is Umbridge almost from
the time we first meet her, and unlike Quirrell, Diary!Tom (or Lucius
Malfoy), Wormtail, and Barty Crouch Jr., she's not an agent (or
aspect) of Voldemort. And in HBP, it changes again. The people Harry
suspects, Draco and Snape (falsely suspected in Books 1 and 2) seem to
be what Harry thinks they are, bringing the pattern full circle. What
will happen to the pattern in Book 7? Will Snape and Draco continue to
be the sub-villains, only to be found--not innocent, exactly, but
something other than villains in the end? Will Harry realize, at he
started to do in GoF when he thought about Barty Jr. supposedly dying
in Azkaban, that it all comes down to Voldemort and that Voldemort has
ruined Snape's life, and maybe Draco's, too?

Carol, wondering how it all fits together and whether there's any
significance to these patterns