Clues to Snape's Loyalties-Response to Magpie

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 170895

> >Magpie wrote:
> Snape's personality has been shown to be so--that is, we see him 
> being vicious to people, we even know he was a Death Eater, we 
know 
> he invented a deadly spell....
> 
> 
> vmonte:
> Right. Snape is vicious. I agree. Snape creates deadly spells. 
Yes, 
> that's true. 
> 
> So, how is it that you still think that spider and bat mean 
> something positive?

Magpie:
I didn't say they were positive, I just said they didn't mean Snape 
had to be ESE. In canon we've already been provided with the 
explicit possibility that Snape can be malicious but also one of 
the "good guys." Snape's batlike-ness or spider-ness isn't even 
connected much to his maliciousness in the text. He's at his most 
spider-like in the Pensieve when he's an awkward teen and an angry 
teen zapping flies, and at Spinner's End (due to the title) where 
he's spinning a web for Death Eaters and describing his life as a 
spy (which can be good or bad). He must spin tales no matter which 
side he's on. When he's being cruel to Harry and Neville he's 
usually spitting and snarling and sneering etc. He's a bat more when 
he swoops around in his cape--and iirc he's called an "overgrown 
bat" which makes him more funny than malcious, imo. 

I think he's equally believable as a bat or a spider whether he's 
DDM, ESE or OFH--the spider would certainly lend itself to the 
person trying to play everyone and really grab power for himself, 
but I can't think of anywhere where he really seems to be doing 
that. Pettigrew is a rat and in retrospect we can make the 
connection that he's a "dirty rat" and that his animagus form is 
part of his bad character, but only after the fact. Before that 
revelation Peter's being a rat seems more about his being small, and 
Scabbers himself wasn't a negative presentation of that animal. 
Weasels have similar connotations, but she likes those. If just 
comparing the guy to a bat or a spider absolutely marks him as evil, 
I don't think Rowling would have done it. Or if Snape was supposed 
to be really nice but then had these associations. But it seems like 
if anything it's his better nature that's hidden. The idea that he 
can't be malicious and DDM seems to have been presented as 
definitely possible.

-m