LONG collection of DH related thoughts.

[Zara]

No: HPFGUIDX 172902

Joe:
> Unforgivables - If you read back to GOF, you'll notice these curses 
> are not so much unforgivable because they are <i>malum in se</i> 
but 
> because they have been deemed so by the Ministry.

zgirnius:
Oooh, lots of interesting comments!

Yes, I think that is what we were supposed to get from the book. 
*Not* intrinsically utterly evil, it matters why you are doing them. 
The definiteive statement of which position seems to be Dumbledore's 
words to Snape when they are discussing the idea that Snape should 
kill Dumbeldore instead of Draco:

"You alone know whether it will harm your soul to help an old man 
avoid pain and humiliation."

No mention of the significance of the mechanics Snape chooses for the 
purpose. I liked this, as I always had a problem with the idea that a 
killing with a wand was somehow more evil than a killing with a gun, 
intrinsically.

> Joe:
> Snape/Pensieve - Remember, we are only seeing what Snape wanted 
> Harry to see. This is Snape's edited version of things. Yes, a 
> pensieve shows only true things, but it doesn't show EVERYTHING. It 
> doesn't show what we might call "refuting evidence." 

zgirnius:
This occured to me, and is in my opinion an important point. It is 
one reason I believe that Snape came to care for Harry, and why I 
think his "Look at me" meant not only that he wanted to see Lily's 
eyes one last time before he died, but also that he realized, in his 
final moments, that he wanted Harry to understand him, not to win him 
to yet another false view of himself. And to achieve that, he needed 
to give an honest account of himself, at least as far as he could 
manage in the final seconds of his life, lying in a pool of his own 
blood.

Because the memories we saw were not particularly sanitized at all. 
Why show himself dropping the branch on Petunia? Why show enough 
memories that Harry could understand his mother's decision to cut off 
ties? Why, most damningly, show that first meeting with Dumbledore in 
its full glory, from start to finish, including the admission that 
disgusted Dumbledore so deeply? 

> Joe:
> In a way we are taking Snape's "word" for it, a 
> dangerous proposition in the Potterverse.

zgirnius:
It is a deal less dangerous now that the series is complete. 
That "Albus Severus" bit in the much-loathed Epilogue is more or less 
the last word.

Joe:
> Doe Patronus - How can two people have the same Patronus?

zgirnius:
I think the emotional trauma of Lily's death caused a change to 
Snape's Patronus (we know from HBP this can happen). Since she was 
dead, they did not have the same Patronus, as she no longer had one 
at all. That's probably the 'ironclad reason'.

> Joe:
> Neville - I had wished it had been Neville who got to Bellatrix 
> first. I found it a small letdown that it was Molly. He wouldn't 
> have had to AK her, mabe squirt bubotuber pus on the black mark 
> which proves poisonous...OK, I'll quit that.

zgirnius:
Oh, but the Sword of Gryffindor! And killing Nagini!! (How cool is it 
that Neville avenged Snape's death, though of course he did not know 
it at the time?) I thought that was an amazing moment for him, and 
was happy to see Molly have hers too.

> Joe:
> Ron the Parselmouth - Clunky and clumsy device. Parseltongue is not 
> something learnable. IIRC, DD calls it a gift in COS. (Although, 
> it's funny that he faked it.)

zgirnius:
I think the gift part is when you are born speaking it, like Tom was. 
That does not rule out the possibility of learning it like a language.

> Joe:
> I defy anyone to tell me they'd 
> want someone loving them the way Snape loved Lily.

zgirnius:
Yes, being loved by the person Snape was as a young Death Eater would 
not be near the top of my list. But he was not the same person when 
he died.

> Joe:
> Snape & Lupin - Going back to POA, I never saw Lupin being 
> particularly hostile to Snape, beyond being a Marauder. Yet Snape 
> was always unpleasant to Lupin, but he finally saved Lupin from 
> being AKed. The fact he had been awful to Lupin until recently 
> bolsters my thinking that Snape's conversion was not complete by 
> PS/SS, indeed, it wouldn't be until sometime between HBP & DH.

zgirnius:
I would say the conversion (as in, choosing a new side and sticking 
with it) occured in the scene after the Potters died. What was an 
ongoing process, even to the moment of Snape's death, was a gradual 
process of becoming a better person, which I would not term complete 
except in the sense that it ended with his dath.

> Joe:
> Ravenclaw - LOVED the Ravenclaw password system.

zgirnius:
That is SOOOO the House for me. <bg>

> Joe:
> How does the (by my scoring anyway) third best wizard in the world, 
> Snape, "accidentally" curse off George's ear?

zgirnius:
I presume because everyone involved (Snape, Lupin/George, the otehr 
Death Eater) were all flying at high speeds when it happened.

> Joe:
> What did *Lupin* ever do to earn Snape's wrath? (Being friends with 
> James & Sirius doesn't count for much here.)

zgirnius:
Snape claims to believe that Lupin was in on Sirius's little joke. 
The only tangible act one can point to is that it must have been he 
that told Sirius how to get into the tunnel. Snape had no way to know 
this was so his Animagus friends would be able to free him for jolly 
romps through the countryside - I presume he therefore decided Lupin 
told Sirius for the purpose of the prank.