good and bad slytherins/Disappointment and Responsibility

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 175069

Alla wrote:
> 
> This is my interpretation as well. Moreover, I think that Snape only
did not care about Lily being Muggle-born, I think he already had 
contempt towards the Muggles in general at that tender age, yes.
> 
> Doesn't he call Petunia just a muggle? I only reread the book once,
so may be wrong.
> 
> I think this contempt, if existed, played a very important part as
to why Snape ended up in Slytherin. I mean, he wanted too, but his
views I think played a role IMO.

Carol responds:
"Just a Muggle" is different from "just a Muggleborn." I won't repeat
va32's arguments, which I agree with, but i think that Severus saw
Lily as a witch (and a companion and friend, someone like him in his
horrible Muggle neighborhood). He had good reason to hate Muggles
given his experience with his father. (As for how he learned all those
hexes, and perhaps developed an aptitude for Potions, it must have
been when his father wasn't around. Almost certainly he's been taught
at home like the Weasleys. I can't see him going to a Muggle school
unless that's how he learned enough Latin to name his own spells.)

I think that Lucius Malfoy's welcoming attitude toward him,which must
have developed into something more when he realized what a prodigy the
little boy was, is the basis for his lifelong friendship or affection
for the Malfoys, his willingness to risk life and soul for Draco as a
grown man, and for Sirius Black's sneer, "Lucius Malfoy's lapdog" in
OoP, which can only refer to Prefect Lucius's fondness for a boy five
years his junior. "Snivellus," too, turns out to be an unearned
insult.) I agree with va32 that, never having had a loving home, that
he adopted the values of his housemates (with the exception that he
never applied them to Lily until his much-regretted moment of anguish
and humiliation).

Canon says that he thought a Muggle-born could get into Slytherin and
that he thought it was a House for brains, not brawn. He cannot have
acquired that view from his Muggle father. It must have been taught
him by his mother, who was taught by Slughorn and was a classmate of
the brilliant and charming Tom Riddle, judging by her Potions book.
What else is little Severus, whose acquaintance with pure-blood
wizards seems restricted to his mother (his grandparents having,
apparently, written her off the family tree since there's no reference
to them), supposed to think? He's a Half-Blood, his own mother married
a Muggle. Why would he be prejudiced against Muggle-borns?
Non-magical, brutal, nasty Muggles, whom his mother can't hex without
being thrown into Azkaban like Percival Dumbledore, but why
Muggle-borns? Prejudice is learned, and he hasn't been reared in
Malfoy Manor (or even 12 GP) among snobs.

Albus Dumbledore started out with a much greater prejudice against
Muggles than Severus Snape did. They had permanently incapacitated his
sister (not unlike the Lestranges Crucioing the Longbottoms into
insanity, only this is an attack by children on a child) and his
father had been sent to Azkaban for punishing them. Albus, Sorted into
Gryffindor, came to believe that Wizards should rule Muggles for the
greater good. (How he felt about Muggle-borns is unclear; possibly,
like little Severus, he just distinguished between Muggles and
Wizards--us and them.)

At any rate, canon tells us that he thought that Lily could join him
in Slytherin, which he doesn't seem to associate with prejudice or
Dark magic or with brains. In the absence of evidence to the contrary,
I think we should go with what we have.

On another note, since we still have a quota, I want to bring in the
reasons why I think that Harry identifies with young Severus, as shown
by the "abandoned boys" reference.

He, too, has been raised by unloving Muggles, one of them the "Tuney"
of Harry's memory, whom he perhaps also learns to understand though
it's far less important than his understanding and forgiveness of
Snape. Tobias Snape appears to be even more brutal and unloving than
Uncle Vernon, and at least Vernon and Petunia love each other and
never fight. There's no love, or little love, in the Snape household
that we can see.

Harry, too, has had to wear ridiculous hand-me-down clothes which the
other kids make fun of. Compare his overlarge jeans and sweatshirts to
Severus's smock (where in the world did that come from? Another
century?). The neglect and abuse Severus suffers is even worse than
his own.

Severus Snape, as someone astutely pointed out, is giving Harry his
mother. Till now, he's only had glimpses of her, never known her as
she was, and Severus did--and loved her till the end of his days. Not
desired her but loved and valued her long before James Potter (who
wants the attractive "Evans" to appreciate his Quidditch and hexing
skills ever did). 

Harry sees that Snape was right about James, no hero even to Lily
after the so-called Prank but still a bullying "toerag." (Poor James
is even robbed of his moment of heroism in fighting Voldemort!) He and
Sirius had no better reason to hate Severus thatn "because he
exists"--or rather, because he expressed a desire to be in Slytherin.

And then, of course, there's the remorse and the progress from only
caring about Lily to protecting Harry without wanting Harry to know
(does he understand now why Snape tried to prevent him from going to
Hogsmead, for example?) to being horrified that DD would send Harry to
his death and understanding that Snape tried to heal DD and didn't
want to kill him. Harry has heard DD tell him that he was saved by
Snape's "timely action," but here he sees it happening. The argument
in the forest, hinted at and misinterpreted before, sheds new light on
what happened on the tower. But it isn't just having his perception
cleared. Here again he can identify with Snape. Snape's words about DD
using him echo Harry's earlier in the book. Both of them feel like
Dumbledore's puppets. And both of them choose to do Dumbledore's will.

Snape could have walked away. He could have returned to the Death
Eaters. Instead, he obeys DD's last request and continues to work with
him even after his death.

How can Harry *not* identify with this man who is so like him in so
many ways? How can he not forgive the man who loved his mother and
spent his life in suffering atonement for his role in her death? How
can he not see the change from not caring about Harry to protecting
Harry for Lily to protecting and helping him even after he "knows"
that Harry has to die? How can he not be appalled at Snape's death and
want to make his last act matter? Or rather, once he knows that he is
not going to die himself, make Snape's love and loyalty publicly known
as a means of compensating for that terrible death?

I see nothing wrong, BTW, with Snape's wanting to see Lily's eyes
before he leaves this life. If I could, I'd want to see the eyes of my
dead daughter whom I loved above all else before I passed into the
next world. I'd want her to meet me there, and maybe that's what Snape
is hoping for, that Lily will meet him and extend the hand of
forgiveness and eternal friendship. We don't know what was in his
mind, only that his last request was to look into Harry's eyes, where,
rightly or wrongly, he had never seen anything but lies and insolence
and Jamesian arrogance, in HBP his own Potions book rising to the
surface of Harry's mind as Harry lied to him, and, later, curses that
Harry intended to cast against him, visible to Snape before he spoke
them because Harry had never learned Occlumency.

But I think we should also consider what Dumbledore told Snape
regarding Harry when Snape says that Harry is "his father over again":

"In looks, perhaps, but his deepest nature is much more like his
mother's" (684). Harry (like sirius Black) has never seen Harry as
himself, only as James. And he has never seen Lily in him despite the
green eyes. Maybe, understanding that Harry would have to sacrifice
himself as his mother had done, and seeing Harry catching the memories
instead of gloating or finishing him off, Snape realized at last that
Harry was not James. Maybe what he saw, and wanted to see, with his
last sight was Harry's "deepest nature," his mother alive in him as
she lived also in Snape, through his Patronus.

Carol, wishing she had time to go through all the books for
Harry/Snape parallels to show Snape representing the tragic vision
while Harry represents the "comic" or optimistic worldview which
triumphs in the end