Great and Subtle Moments in Deathly Hallows

[Zara]

No: HPFGUIDX 172582


> > Kemper now:
> > Snape's death was beautiful in its subtlety.  Snape wasn't asking 
for
> > Harry to see the best in him.  And he wasn't seeing that Harry was
> > like Lily.  He was dieing.
> > "Look... at... me"
> > What Snape wanted most in his last moment was to look into Lily's 
> eyes.

> PM:
> I fully agree...and was on my way to posting that...  Snape my have 
> been noble in his devotion to keeping Harry safe (as terrible as 
Snape 
> acted) but he was driven throughout by the image and memory of 
Lily.  
> It was tunnel vision, he loved her and that was in...no one 
else...he 
> did what he did because he was tormented by her death.  In the end 
> Snape wanted to imagine he was looking into Lily's eyes before 
death.

zgirnius:
I don't doubt Snape wanted to see her eyes again. However, I can't 
dismiss the additional meaning of also actually asking Harry to look 
at him, and see him as he is.

The reason is the memories he gives Harry. He could have given just 
the relevant memory, of the explanation that Harry is a Horcrux. If 
he feared that would be disbelieved as a fabrication, just enough 
about the past to establish the reasons for Dumbledore's trust. Even 
if he thought ALL those older memories were needed for that, why show 
more recent ones? Why does Snape want Harry to know that what 
happened to George was an accident?

I conclude we are supposed to think that, at some point, Snape 
actually wanted Harry to think well of him. Personally, I don't think 
this was a deathbed conversion, either. His objection to Dumbledore's 
plan suggests it a year earlier, for one. There are signs of such an 
attitude in the earlier books - possibly Snape's extreme reaction to 
Harry at the end of HBP (though much else was going on then that was 
emotional, I grant). The moment in Occlumency lessons in OotP when 
Harry makes what he intends to be a cutting remark, that figuring out 
what Voldemort is up to is Snape's job, and Snape agrees, looking 
satisfied.