Snape and Dumbledore on the Tower: A Defense of Snape

[horridporrid03]

No: HPFGUIDX 165363

> >>Eggplant:
> > It's perfectly acceptable for an author to try to mislead a      
> > reader, but she must play fair. We saw Snape point his wand at   
> > Dumbledore, we heard him utter the dreaded words, we saw green    
> > bolts shoot out of his wand, we saw them hit Dumbledore, we saw   
> > him die and fall off the tower. If that doesn't mean that         
> > Dumbledore is dead and Snape killed him with the AK then JKR has 
> > crossed the line from misleading her readers to being dishonest   
> > with them.

> >>Magpie:
> I agree with you there. I'm holding out for plain vanilla AK. What 
> a shame if it was taken back.

Betsy Hp:
I'm hopeful that it wasn't a real AK for one reason and one reason 
only: I want Snape to live.  If Snape really *did* actively kill 
Dumbledore (rather than merely removing the life-support if you will) 
than I suspect he's going to die for moral reasons.  As a murderer, 
JKR will have to kill him off, no matter the reason for the murder.  

Sort of like how in a gothic story, if the ingenue is actually raped 
by the villain she dies.  Sure, she goes to heaven and everyone weeps 
for her and the hero tears his hair and rips his robes, but she's 
sullied and so she has to go.  The whole, death as the final 
cleansing of the soul, I guess.

I do agree though, that JKR can't just do a big reveal at the end if 
the AK is not what it seems.  She'll have to drop hints early on in 
DH.  But I *think* she's got enough time to do so.  HBP ended so 
quickly after Dumbledore's death, maybe she didn't think it the place 
to start dropping more hints that things on the Tower were a little 
hinky?

Betsy Hp