Of Sorting and Snape

[houyhnhnm102]

No: HPFGUIDX 175467

lizzyben:

> Again, it's a totally irrational intuitive reaction, 
> but I think that baby had a great deal to do with Snape. 
> I say that w/absolute, unexplainable certainty. The 
> parallels between the descriptions of Snape in the 
> previous chapter & the baby in King's Cross are just 
> too striking.

houyhnhnm:

This is your perception and you certainly have the 
right to your own psychological reaction to the story, 
but I don't see anything in the entire series to support 
it and a great deal to contradict such a reading.

First of all, the previous chapter to "King's Cross" 
is "The Forest Again".  It contains nothing about Snape, 
so Snape is not juxtaposed with the wretched "baby" under the seat.

Secondly, fifty or more people died that night.  If 
King's Cross is some kind of way station on the journey 
to the afterlife, why don't we see any of them.  Why 
would Snape's soul be there with Harry (when he died 
hours before) and none of the rest?

I did find the presence of the baby confusing on the 
first read.  I thought at first it was the soul piece 
liberated from Harry by the AK.  I was confused when 
Dumbledore said, "you have less to fear from returning 
here than he does."  Why would Voldemort be "returning 
here" unless the whimpering baby is Voldemort himself?  
How could he "return"?

Then when I re-read the last three chapters, I realized
 that Snape's death, followed by the story of his life, 
had left me in a state of shock so that I had not really 
taken in very much that was in the following chapters.

The first thing we learn in chapter 36 after Harry 
recovers consciousness is that the Death Eaters were 
not cheering.  "Solicitous murmurs filled the air."  
"The Death Eaters had been huddled around Voldemort, 
who seemed to fallen to the ground." "And both of them 
had fallen briefly unconscious and *both of them had 
now returned*." [Emphasis added]  I don't see how it 
could be any clearer that it was Voldemort himself, 
with his mangled eighth of a soul, that we saw in the station.

And Voldemort didn't have to end up as a helpless, 
suffering, moaning creature for eternity.  He could 
still have avoided his fate, even after the terrible 
things he'd done, even after shredding his soul into 
pieces, if he had been able to feel remorse.  He had 
two chances that I saw, besides Harry's admonition (and 
I admit that Harry didn't try very hard to convince him).  
He could have felt sorrow at the death of Nagini or the 
fall of his "last, best lieutenant" and that might have 
been the beginning of remorse.  Instead, his only reaction 
to both of these deaths was rage at being thwarted.

So, if Voldemort with all his grievous sins could still 
avoid damnation by feeling remorse, how could there be 
any doubt of Snape's fate in the afterlife.  Snape whose 
face looked "as though he was in as much pain as the 
yelping, howling dog stuck in the  burning house".  Snape, 
wringing his hands, promising "anything" to Dumbledore, 
"looking like a man who had lived a hundred years of 
misery", wishing he were dead and then summoning the 
courage to see his way forward, protect Lily's child, 
and evolve even beyond that to see no one die "whom I 
could not save", and finally to remain faithful to 
Dumbledore even after DD was gone.

I, too, am made uncomfortable by the imagery of the 
small maimed, creature, trembling under the chair.  
It reminds me a little too much of the child in the 
closet in Ursula LeGuin's short story, "The Ones Who 
Walk Away From Omelas".  I tend towards Universalism 
in my vague, uncertain notions of the afterlife.  But 
even I am willing to admit that if anyone deserves 
damnation, it was Voldemort.  And it has nothing to do 
with Severus Snape.