Of Sorting and Snape

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 175389

lizzyben wrote:
> 
> Oh, I definitely agree that Snape is portrayed as doing good things
> throughout the course of the novels. I just meant that in the
> "Prince's Tale" chapter, every one of Snape's childhood memories shows
> him doing something "bad" - from the nine-year old dropping a branch
> on Petunia, to insulting Muggles, to defending future Death Eaters.
> It's one of the places where I could almost here the Author's Voice in
> the background saying "See, see, he was a bad kid from the get-go!" 
> I almost felt like it was deliberately included to try to forestall
> reader sympathy for this neglected little boy, & encourage us to see
> him as a lost cause. And probably that's where my sympathy for Snape
> arises. I mean, even the author doesn't love him or want him. Poor
guy. <snip>

Carol responds:

I get a very different picture, not a bad kid but a lonely, abused
child who identifies with and wants to be friends with the Muggle-born
withch of his own age who's the only non-Muggle in his village besides
himself and his mother. The tree branch is accidental magic (he
doesn't have a wand yet) much like Harry's accidental magic at the
same age and later--not on a par with blowing up his aunt but similar
to releasing the boa constrictor or making Aunt Marge's brandy glass
explode in her hand. He does lie about it, but it's because he's
embarrassed and confused.

These memories don't show a bad boy. They show an odd but eager little
wizard trying to educate a little witch about the mysteries of the WW
and Hogwarts. It's clear that Harry identifies with Severus's outsider
status, with the way he's forced to dress, the neglect of his family,
the abusive Muggle father figure, the bullying kids who reject him
because he's different, the affection for his mother, the acceptance
by the members of his own House. Many things become clear to Harry as
he sees those memories. And one is that, while the teenage Severus
chose what was easy over what was right, the twenty-year-old Snape
reversed that choice and never went back. Harry, it seems clear, both
understands and identifies with Snape after seeing his memories. There
is, in face, nothing left to forgive. The pursuit of vengeance which
had motivated him before, and perhaps was involved in the
much-discussed Crucio of Snape's supposed follower, Amycus Carrow,
simply falls away. BTW, Harry tells Ron and Hermione in detail
(off-page) about his journey into Snape's memories. His reason for
doing so? They "deserved the truth" (DH Am. ed. 746)--not only about
Harry's walk into the forest and Snape's last message, but about Snape
himself, whom Harry has already publicly vindicated.

To me, the child Severus in the Pensieve is primarily a figure to be
pitied, and I think that's how Harry sees him, too. He is, indeed, a
plant left in the dark (image from SWM), his many talents unrecognized
outside Slytherin and too easily led in the wrong direction when the
girl he loved rejects him. (I'm not blaming Lily here, just trying to
see Severus clearly.) He makes the wrong choice and follows his
friends, adopting their ambition and becoming a Death Eater. But love
for Lily and, later, anguished remorse for his role in her death,
drives him *back* to the side of good, which he was on in the first
place (pre-Hogwarts) and might have remained on had he been Sorted
into Ravenclaw, the House of "brains" that he mistakenly thought
Slytherin to be. (As for courage, I think that trait developed later,
when he was about twenty, far too late to be Sorted into Gryffindor
unless the Hat recognizes potential, as it seems to have done with
Neville.)

Carol, wondering what would have happened if Severus, James, and
Sirius had not had their unfortunate encounter on the Hogwarts Express
and the multi-talented Severus had ended up in the same dormitory with
them