Heroes again WAS: Re: The two good Slytherins

[allthecoolnamesgone]

No: HPFGUIDX 176403

Alla
> But yes, I do think that Snape owed Harry some kindness, he truly
> did. I think he owed the boy to overcome the hatred of his father
> and truly see his mother in Harry, if for nothing else, but to ease
> his burden.
>
> That in my eyes would have been truly heroic.


Yes you are right it would, but part of Snape's tragedy is that he was not able to make it that far. He could never get past the fact that Harry looked just like his father, the root cause, in Snape's eyes, of the loss of Lily when he was a teenager and then the 'cause' of her death by fathering Harry. Add in the fact that he had told V about the prophecy to the psychological mix and I cease to be surprised at all by the way he acted. Saddened by it still, but not surprised.

We know that he wanted to die the night he learned that Lily was dead; it was Dumbledore who invoked his 'duty' to protect Lily's son to prevent it. It was then that 'duty' alone that kept Snape alive at that point. But he in many ways remained a 'dead man walking.' I think you can find evidence that he did develop from there in the later memories in the Prince's Tale, especially once he discovered that Harry had to die after all. He could have given up then.
'You have used me, I have spied for you, lied for you, gone into mortal peril for you....'  Well thanks Dumbledore, you could have saved me all this trouble, so I'm off to my dungeon now to drink the potion I made 16 years ago, that you wouldn't let me drink then.

But of course he didn't do that, he kept going, got the sword to Harry as instructed, in fact planned how to do it himself on his own wihtout Dumbledore, who was now just a portrait.

Only at his final breath did Snape finally see Harry truly as Harry,
not his father, not even just as Lily but as her son, to be loved. He
had also learned a more generalised kindness to other students, witness his 'protection' of Luna, Neville and Ginny, punishment with Hagrid instead of in the dungeons with the Carrows!

allthecoolnamesgone