CHAPDISC HBP 15, The Unbreakable Vow

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 152083

Carol asked:
> > 7) Did you feel any sympathy for Snape during this conversation?
Why or why not?
> 
SSSusan responded:
> None at all.  Can't imagine any reason *to* have felt sympathy, 
frankly. 

Carol again:
Ah, well, I had to cut a lot from the synopsis, including the details
that made me feel sympathy for Snape. Slughorn kept saying things like
"I don't think even you, Severus--," making Harry sound like a Potions
genius who was more brilliant than Teen!Snape when it was young
Severus whose marginal notes he was using to get those brilliant
results. Unfair! And to top it off, Slughorn credits Harry's supposed
exceptional ability to a genetic inheritance from Lily, again shunting
Snape into second place, as if he's less brilliant at Potions than
Harry's dead mother, which I doubt given what we've seen of Snape's
aptitude for the subject. (There's no suggestion that the notes in the
Potions book are anyone's but the HBP's, and we've already seen
Snape's exceptional abilities illustrated with the Wolfsbane Potion,
among other evidence.)

Interestingly, even the narrator (and Harry?) seemed to empathize for
a moment with Snape, referring to him as "trapped" as Slughorn puts an
arm around him and drags him willy nilly into the conversation. (Poor
Sevvy; he'd have preferred to "skulk"!)

I *did* feel sorry for Snape, even on a first reading before I knew
for sure that he was the Half-Blood Prince, because it seemed as if,
once again, his brilliance wasn't being fully acknowledged and others
were bing credited with his accomplishments. (We know that he's a
Potions genius and Harry isn't; we don't know whether Lily's supposed
natural ability matched Severus's and there's no evidence other than
Slughorn's testimony, biased in her favor by his fond memories of her
"cheek" and his guilt over her death, that her skill at Potions came
anywhere near Severus's. I still think, based on Ollivander's remark
about her first wand, that her forte was Charms, not Potions.) Of
course, the irony that Harry really is learning from Snape via the
notes he wrote as a teenager is delicious, but that doesn't undo the
sense I felt that he was being shunted into the background, the former
prodigy being pushed aside for the new one, who didn't even deserve
his place and was taking credit for the old prodigy's discoveries.
(Nothing against Harry, who wasn't doing it on purpose, and certainly
wouldn't have used Severus's notes if he'd known whose they were. It's
Slughorn whose conduct bothers me, as does he treatment of Ron.)

I don't think that Snape felt sorry for *himself* or that he resented
Slughorn's treatment of him. He seems more interested in the
"exceptional" abilities he knows that Harry doesn't have. I doubt that
he suspects the source of Harry's information at this point, but his
suspicions are certainly aroused. I wonder if, as his eyes bore into
Harry, he was using Occlumency on him.

BTW, I also wonder whether Snape already knew that Harry intended to
become an Auror and why JKR brought that brief exchange into the
conversation. Surely if Snape is DDM, he would want Harry to have
exactly those skills. Would Snape, if he had remained Potions master,
have found a way to let Harry pursue that ambition despite the E on
his OWL, or was that just one reason among half a dozen why DD gave
Snape the DADA position at last?

Carol, wondering why SSS saw no reason to sympathize with Snape in
this scene