Calling Tonks Nymphadora, and Snape's button pushing in general

[lupinlore]

No: HPFGUIDX 152124

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "leslie41" <leslie41 at ...> 
wrote:

> Thus, the Severus Snapes in our lives actually make us better and 
> stronger people.  The people in the books with the greatest 
strength of 
> character don't let Snape get to them.  Remus Lupin, for example.  
> 
> Harry at this point is much like his godfather.  Undisciplined.  
> Frazzled.  A hothead.  The ONLY way for him to get the better of 
Snape 
> is to discipline himself, to close his mind.  To NOT feel hatred.  
> 

Well, once again, IMO if that's the message JKR is sending, she will 
have failed in a reprehensible and monstrous way.  In effect, she 
will have celebrated the abuse of children.

Actually, though, I don't think she's trying to do any such thing.  
She isn't, I think, usually trying to send any particular message.  
That isn't to say that there aren't themes in the Potter saga that 
come through, or that there won't be clear messages that come out of 
the series as a whole.  But I don't think she's particularly 
thinking about those messages in crafting particular scenes or even 
particular character interactions.  By and large, JKR is driven by 
plot, which is one of her greatest strengths and one of her greatest 
weaknesses.  Most of the things that happen occur as plot points, 
not philosophical propositions.  And herein is where she gets into 
hot water again and again.  Just look at what happened with 
Dumbledore at the end of OOTP, and the rapid back-peddling she had 
to do at the start of HBP to get out of that mess.  In effect, she 
had to craft half-a-chapter in order to say "Okay, here's this 
situation and here's what I mean to get across and didn't in the 
last book."

In terms of emotions, there are plentiful points where Harry's human 
emotions are spoken of as his greatest strength -- and the 
implications are that it is Voldemort's inability to feel ordinary 
human emotions in any but the most twisted and perverse forms that 
is his greatest weakness (what is the snake but the epitome of 
coldness?).  I wouldn't be surprised if the same is true of Snape.  
If we want to read between the lines -- I don't, but if we were to 
do so -- then the message being sent by the failure of occlumency 
and its aftermath is that Snape's "discipline" is the thing that 
will undo him in the end, since the only thing that can defeat 
Voldemort is the type of emotion that Snape has deliberately cut 
himself off from (and much of Snape's bitterness and confusion may 
come from the fact that he doesn't understand why DD favors Harry's 
love over Snape's discipline and intellectual prowess).  And therein 
lies, I think, Harry's real challenge.  There is no danger of him 
becoming another Voldemort.  There is an outside chance of him 
becoming another Snape, and that would be the sure doom of the 
Wizarding World.  And the greatest mistake he has ever made, to boot.


Lupinlore