[HPforGrownups] The Good, the Not so Good and the Downright Ridiculous Snape

[Bart Lidofsky]

No: HPFGUIDX 167290

From: Goddlefrood <gav_fiji at yahoo.com>
>"So, is Snape good or bad? In our opinion, everything follows 
>from it. 
>
>JK Rowling: Well, Salman, your opinion, I would say is ... right."

>From this, I get the idea that, like Dung Fletcher, Snape is an evil person who has his limits, and Voldemort, at one point, became one of them. I have just been re-reading OOP, and saw that if Prof. Snape had just told Harry something like, "When you learned the Patronus, you learned to overcome your sorrow to think of something happy. Now, what I'm asking you to do is overcome your emotions to think of nothing at all." If Harry could have discussed it with Lupin, Lupin might have suggested picturing himself as a stone, or a tree, or something like that (I know of one real-life autistic young man who managed to keep his temper under contol by visualizing himself as a tree). But Snape's technique with students he doesn't like is to put them down until they either give up or get angry enough to succeed just to spite him (you see this technique done with much more artistry by Nigel, who, even as a portait, can push Harry's buttons just hard enough to get Harry just angry enough to do what Nigel wants him to do). Unfortunately, getting someone furious is not a good way to get them to close out their emotions...

>(I say this because, as I have said 
>before, it makes sense that a life debt would only be incurred 
>in a situation where the person saved is sufficiently proximate 
>to death to incur such a debt).

I have a different take. A life debt is incurred when there's an actual debt. James would have been quite happy to see Snape dead, and Harry would have been happy to see Peter dead, but their senses of right and wrong overcame their personal desires, and that is what created the debt. Ginny does owe her life to Harry, but Harry wanted her to be alive because he cared about her. JKR said, "No, not really" because Ginny DOES owe Harry her life, but that is an informal, Muggle-style life debt rather than a formal, WW-style life debt. 

>Goddlefrood, with a little date for you once more, this time 
>1492, the death year of Nearly Headless Nick (and I wonder if 
>JKR, when putting this date had taken account of the Julian 
>Calendar?). It was the same year in which, not only was America 
>"discovered" by Christopher Columbus, but it was also Year 7000 
>from the Dating Creation, and one of the many in which an 
>anticipated Apocalypse failed to happen :) 

Also, the year of the Spanish Inquisition. 

Bart