Trusting Snape

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 149064

> PJ: 
> > No where does the author tell us that "Severus, please" can't 
just 
> > as easily be the stunned surprise of a man who's alarmed and 
> > saddened to see someone he trusts joining up with the very 
people 
> > he was so sure he'd abandoned ages ago. And no where does she 
say 
> > that it's Snape's job per DD's orders to save himself.  Those 
> > thoughts are all *I think* and *I surmise* based, I feel, on a 
need 
> > to make Snape better and 1,000 times more noble than what the 
> > author has ever (in 6 books!)given us on the printed page.
 
> SSSusan:
> Of course she doesn't tell us what "Severus, please" does or 
doesn't 
> mean!  Doesn't it speak volumes that, after SIX books, people are 
> still scratching their heads and arguing about Severus Snape?  JKR 
> has carefully set things up so that we WILL be wondering and 
puzzling 
> and trying to figure out what we know and what we're assuming.  
It's 
> the beauty of it all!  


Magpie:
Actually, just from reading that scene I don't think "Severus 
please" works at all as the stunned surprise of a man who's alarmed 
and saddened to see someone he trusts joining up with the very 
people he was so sure he'd abandoned ages ago just because, as I 
think has been discussed before, there's no moment of recognition 
from DD.  If he's been trusting Snape all along and has just learned 
he made a horrible mistake--possibly the worst mistake he could have 
made--then that's got to get a dramatic beat in the scene.  Instead 
Dumbledore please as soon as Snape enters the room.  His 
first "Severus," the one that frightens Harry so much, is right 
after Snape enters.  Amycus is telling Snape Draco doesn't seem to 
be able to do it, and DD breaks in with his first 
pleading, "Severus..."  The "Severus, please..." seems a 
continuation of that, not a totally new, opposite idea.

So I just don't see how dramatically JKR has written this as DD 
having any horrible realizations or realizing anything at all.  One 
of the satisfying things about her writing is the way she lets you 
see stuff that people are doing, but sometimes only later you get 
the true motivation behind it and understand what was really going 
on in the scene.  Snape and DD have a lot unexplained moments--the 
sudden movement, some looks that cross Snape's face during the 
Occlumency lessons, Dumbledore's gleam, etc.  Here we've got a big 
clue on Snape's face, the look of revulsion.  But I think it would 
be cheating in the way JKR doesn't cheat to pass over Dumbledore's 
moment of horror where he realizes the very person he'd been 
trusting can't be trusted.  At the point when DD first begins 
pleading Snape has done nothing to indicate he's a DE, he's just 
entered the room and taken in the scene, which he would do as DDM as 
well.  Dumbledore would not be shocked at Amycus appealing to Snape 
for help, knowing that Snape is a double agent.  

It's still ambiguous.  One could say that perhaps DD knew that Snape 
had been wavering and had changed sides in his heart, so knew that 
when Snape entered the scene he'd want to kill DD, so was just 
counseling him not to do it, knowing Snape will know what he means. 
But I think that's weaker given the way it's written.  Whichever it 
is, what I don't think we've got is any change in DD, or any nasty 
shocks for him, because it's just not written there.  

-m