Victory for TEWWW EWWW?? Snape the hero

[M.Clifford]

No: HPFGUIDX 174235

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "dumbledore11214"
<dumbledore11214 at ...> wrote:
>
> --- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Dennis Grant" <trog@> 
> wrote:
> > Snape's path to redemption is a path of extreme loneliness, 
> isolation,
> > and pain, but he stays the course right up to the end and pays the
> > ultimate price. It can, I think, be forgiven if some of that pain
> > leaked out along the way.
> 
> 

Ahhh dontcha just love a good Snape debate? :) I'd like to add my own
thoughts to this as I feel, saving that I come to basically the same
end as Dennis (quoted above) I have some perspective unique to this
thread.

Is Snape a hero? Well I will say he did something very heroic;
somewhat by putting himself to the hazard for a good cause, but
mostly, almost entirely, IMO, for sticking to it til the very end.

Snape's love of Lily at the start was flawed, impure and selfish. The
fact is he did not join the Order for the right reasons because he
felt them in his soul. It simply didn't happen that way. He was
fortunate in his moment of deepest remorse, the beginning of his
redemption, to have been guided by another to *see* the right reasons,
and to see that for all his crying out that he loved Lily there was no
honour to her in his self pity and misery, a true act of love was
going to be more painful than that. Snape was pretty hopeless at the
start, unable to see how in his obsession with Lily, he didn't love
the real her at all. To do that, he would have to honour who she truly
was, Harry's Mother. And to quote an old wise man he may have done it
grudgingly, furiously, unwillingly, bitterly, yet still, he did it, he
gave Lily his love and it redeemed him.

It was much later in his life that Snape truly became a heroic person,
he protected Harry at first as an obligation, a necessary contrition
for his misdeeds. But then he grew into it a little, he started saving
people simply because he could save them, and making right choices
because they were right. In his heart he was always doing it for Lily
but now he is really doing something that would honour her memory, he
is actually on her side. At this point Snape is a fully redeemed man,
he doesn't owe any more and he has no moral obligation to stay. Right
then and there, Dumbledore drops the bombshell, Harry will die, and by
the way Severus, please do me the honour of a diginified death while
you're still about. 

Severus did not have to do these things, he wasn't obliged to stand by
Harry til his last day, and he was not compelled by any influence to
grant DD's dying wish at enormous risk to himself and his soul, he was
no longer sticking around out of remorse but out of pure bravery. 

In the end he wasn't watching over and protecting Harry for Lily
because someone had told him it was the right thing to do, he was
genuinely, wholeheartedly in it for the long haul, right to the end.
For her. 

All up I don't think Harry's forgiveness and honouring of Severus in
the end was pure saviour-style altruism, but rather a very wise
understanding of the fact that when Snape had already redeemed all his
sins he risked his life and his soul for a friend, and when he had
already paid his dues and was free, he stayed there right beside Harry
to his death. For that, he was very very brave. 

Valky