Snape and caring (WAS :Re: Dumbledore lied to Harry... AGES ago.)

[Zara]

No: HPFGUIDX 175760

> Lupinlore:
> Well, I don't think the text really supports the implication that
> Snape cares for Harry.  Snape has, certainly, absorbed some of DD's
> values to the point of not wanting to kill without reason.  But when
> DD makes his query, Snape immediately says "For HIM?" and produces
> his patronus.  That seems to me that he is saying very clearly "No, 
I
> don't care for the boy.  I still care for Lily and you promised me I
> was keeping the wretched brat alive FOR Lily!"  

zgirnius:
I certainly see where your reading is coming from. The thing is, so 
far as we know for *sure*, Snape had felt affection/ caring for 
precisely one human being, ever: Lily. Yet he has never said so to a 
living soul. Not to her, not to Dumbledore. (OK, he intimated to 
Voldemort he 'desired' her, not the same thing, not the whole truth, 
and he had to explain his odd request for the life of a Muggleborn in 
some way). Further, once Dumbledore knows (without being explicitly 
told) Snape swears him to secrecy as soon as he is in a position to 
impose any conditions. So the fact that he never said he felt caring 
or affection for Harry, or for Dumbledore (to name another person I 
think got past Snape's guard eventually), does not prove to me that 
he did not. His instinct is to hide 'the best of him', not 'wear his 
heart on his sleeve', etc.

We can confidently state that he loved Lily based on his actions (and 
a bit of confirmatory magical evidence in the form of the silver 
doe). So, it seems to me that *if* he ever came to care for anyone 
else, we would, again, only know it through his actions. His scolding 
when Dumbledore put on the cursed ring, and especially his 
willingness to kill Dumbledore 'to spare an old man pain and 
humiliation' are suggestive. And, to me, his horror at the plan, his 
eventual decision to go along with it anyway, and his decision to 
give Harry his whole history, are suggestive as well. 

> Lupinlore:
> Dumbledore then
> says "After all this time?" and gets teared up, which seems to me
> clearly to say that Dumbledore is crying NOT because he thinks Snape
> cares for Harry -- since Snape has just clearly said he does no such
> thing -- but because Snape still loves Lily enough after all this
> time for her to be his patronus.

zgirnius:
Snape does not deny caring for Harry. Nor does he confirm it. He 
says, "For *him*?", and casts his Patronus. Were Snape to have 
answered Dumbledore in the affirmative, it would have been the only 
time in his life that he made such an admission as far as we know, so 
its absence does not convince me.

As far as when Dumbledore tears up, you have the order wrong. We are 
shown his tears before he asks, "After all this time?". It could be a 
reaction to seeing the doe, of course (though, he must know by now?). 
To me, the scene just made sense as Dumbledore seeing through Snape's 
bluster, but not challenging him on it.