Should Snape Be Punished?

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 170667


>
> > > Mike:
> > > As I've posted before, no amount of remorse from Snape
> > > will bring back Harry's parents.
> > 
> > Pippin:
> > And no amount of punishment will bring them back either. 
> 
> Mike:
> This may prove interesting. For the purpose of this exercise, I'd 
> like to assume that the end of Deathly Hallows will have Snape being 
> ultimately on the side that eradicates the Voldemort menace. How and 
> why JKR convinces us does not matter for this little exercise, and we 
> have know way of assessing that right now anyway.
> 
> The question is, with what we know right now of Snape and his 
> misdeeds, should he spend time in Azkaban? Get a community service 
> sentence? Or should he walk free?

<big snip>

 And what about now, when it 
> appears that Snape killed the guy who vouched for him?

Pippin:
You've said it yourself. Nobody should be punished because it
"appears" that they're guilty of murder. It ought to be proven. If it
can be proven, then I think we can expect punishment for Snape.

Mike:
> My guess is that JKR will not have Snape spend time in Azkaban, that 
> is if he survives and the DDM premise is true. (My tongue-in-cheek 
> wish for him to suffer horribly, notwithstanding) Whether he does or 
> doesn't get punished is irrespective of whether he *deserves* to be 
> punished.

Pippin:
Deciding who deserves to be punished isn't something the 
WW is good at. But I don't think JKR thinks real people are
much better.

It's interesting that we've already seen Snape suffer horribly, twice
now (Snape's Worst Memory, and Flight of the Prince) yet those 
who want to see Snape suffer don't seem to be satisfied by those
scenes. Perhaps it's because the suffering is not tied to anything Snape
did.  But if Snape is DDM! and suffers because of some miscarriage
of justice, it *still* won't be tied to anything he did, so I doubt
it will be satisfying, even to the people who are longing to see
Snape suffer so much.

As a literary matter, the villain has to suffer to show us that
crime does not pay. But it doesn't seem that Snape ever
profitted from being a Death Eater, not  if he didn't want
James, Sirius  or Dumbledore dead, so all JKR has to do
is show us that he didn't want them dead.

Harry was ready enough to accept the justice of Snape
being cleared, provided he really had left the Dark Side,
when he didn't know that the people Snape harmed in his
Death Eater days were his parents. So his desire to 
reverse that verdict has an element of vigilante-ism,
and a reverse echo of Snape's own indifference to his victims.

It strikes me that some people would enjoy seeing Snape pay
horribly for just for bullying Harry, but  they kinda think
this would be overreacting, so they really, really hope that
Snape is guilty of something else worse. 

JKR could easily have written the story so that there
was no question of overreacting -- she could have made
Snape as vicious as Barty Jr. or Voldemort himself, and 
as willing to go outside the rules or rewrite them to 
gratify himself as Umbridge. But that's not what happens.

Pippin