My current opinion of Snape (Longish) / Re: Clues to Snape's Loyalties

[leslie41]

No: HPFGUIDX 170849

jbenne: 

I feel ya'll are missing the point on this.  While depending who does 
the reading, many things written in the books can be interpreted 
differently.  That is what makes these books so much fun and hard to 
figure out.  Back to my point, to know if Snape is good or bad look 
at JKR herself.  She is DD: she believes in second chances, she sees 
good in everyone, and she has lead everyone to think of Snape as a 
bad person.  The work she has put into casting him in a bad light and 
the path she has lead us down...she wants everyone to think of him as 
bad.  She has worked hard at this but always leaving a tiny light 
that he could be good.  Seeing how hard she has worked to paint him 
as a dark person,  he will turn out to be dark but on the correct 
side.  He will help Harry in some way but he will never like Harry 
and will always have a dark personality about him.  But he will 
support the OOTP in the end.

Leslie41:
This is what I have felt for a very long time.  We have to add to all 
of this that the perspective is (almost) always Harry's, in all of 
the books.  And Harry hates Snape, and always has.  He is not able to 
look at him rationally, or without bias.  Not that he should, because 
Snape is very nasty to him, but Snape is also not overfond of 
Hermione.  His "I see no difference" to the sight of her overgrown 
teeth is for some the cruellest remark he makes to any student in the 
series.  And he is constantly calling her a know-it-all.

Yet Hermione does not seem to hate Snape.  She does not precisely 
take his side, but she is able to step back.  In book 1, she speaks 
approvingly of Snape's logic, a quality lacking in many wizards.  In 
HBP she responds to Harry's loathing of Snape, and his disgust at 
Snape's first DADA lesson, with a very intelligent and well-observed 
commentary on both Snape and Harry.  

I don't think that Rowling is DD.  Rowling is Hermione.  She 
identifies with Hermione more than any other character (or at least 
so she's said).  She's most like Hermione. 

And Hermione's reaction to Snape has always been very balanced and 
clear-headed, perhaps far more than he deserves (for who can blame 
Harry, really, for hating him?).

That more than anything makes me believe Snape is on the side of the 
Order.