Snape, Draco, and Harry in DH (WAS Re: ChapDisc: HBP30, The White Tomb...)

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 165856


> > bboyminn:
> > I picture Snape luring Harry into a clandestine meeting,
> > Snape offerring his explanation, but no matter how I
> > word that explanation in my mind, Harry is just not 
> > going to buy it. He has too much hatred of Snape to
> > forgive so easily. 
> 
> zgirnius:
> I'm replying to you, but really I want to say something more 
general 
> about this type of discussion, about how Harry and DDM!Snape could 
> ever again cooperate, and am just using your post as a spot to 
jump 
> off.
> 
> There are a lot of very interesting theories about how Harry will 
> come to realize that Snape is on his side. What they have in 
common 
> is cold, hard facts and logic. An Order member knows the plan, he 
> will explain to Harry. Lupin or Hermione will figure it out 
(Lupin, 
> because he seems capable of a dispassionate view of a situation, 
or 
> Hermione because she is so darned smart) and will explain it to 
> Harry. Harry will find a letter from Dumbledore. Harry will see a 
> Pensieve memory of the argument in the Forest (either one 
Dumbledore 
> has left, or perhaps Hagrid's). And then Harry will be forced to 
> reexamine his ideas about Snape. I've probably missed a few.
> 
> I can see one or more of these playing a role, but to me Harry's 
> feelings about Snape really have very little to do with facts and 
> reason, and a lot more to do with emotion. To be clear, at the end 
of 
> HBP Harry has an excellent, logical reason to hate and be 
suspicious 
> of Snape. He has just seen with his own eyes that Snape is a 
> murdering traitor.
> 
> But, Harry was already burning with hatred for Snape at the 
*start* 
> of the book. He blames Snape for Sirius's death - but the plot 
that 
> led to it was facilitated by Kreacher, not Snape, as Harry knows 
> well. He is aware Snape saved Dumbledore's life, that Snape sent 
the 
> Order to the Ministry, that Snape returned to Voldemort as a spy 
in 
> GoF, and that Snape tried to save his life from Quirrell's broom 
> jinx, but none of these facts make a dent in Harry's feelings. For 
> this reason, I think that the breakthrough will have to involve 
> emotion. 
> 
> Which is why I don't think it will be accomplished through the 
clever 
> machinations of Snape, but probably come about spontaneously, when 
> Harry and Snape next bump into one another. (Yes, I think Rowling 
is 
> promising us that with Harry's comments at the end of HBP).

Magpie:
I couldn't agree more--that's the kind of stuff the books usually 
turn on as well, not legal technicalities and strategy. And even 
more importantly, I think Harry's story with Draco in HBP points the 
way to the same thing. Harry's change of heart about Draco at the 
end of HBP--small as it is--is not just a case of Harry learning 
that Draco's family is being threatened and feeling sorry for him. 

First, it comes at the end of a year trailing Draco and seeing 
shadows of other perspectives on him. It's seeing private moments 
that point to his personality that other people don't know--this, I 
think, is probably very much like Dumbledore's secret understanding 
about Snape. Harry probably couldn't explain why he feels certain 
things about Draco now that he does feel, because it came from 
seeing him at key moments (throughout the year he couldn't 
successfully articulate why it made sense Draco was acting as a DE 
either). Harry and Draco also share some intimate moments in HBP 
that have perhaps unconsciously shifted Harry's perception. He also 
finds himself more intimately connected with Snape than he ever 
wanted to be, but in a way that just validates how he's felt before 
and pushes Snape farther away--Snape's now reponsible for his 
parents' death as well as Sirius' death. He's responsible for 
everything! 

Perhaps most importantly, Draco, albeity unwittingly, proved himself 
in a small way. It's too much to say that he met Harry "halfway," 
but he took a step in the right direction (or didn't step in the 
wrong direction) when he didn't kill Dumbledore. That's the thing 
Harry focuses on at the end of HBP, and is perhaps the thing that 
makes him able to more easily feel that drop of pity. If Draco were 
simply under threat to his family Harry might just consider him all 
the more dangerous (rightly so--Wormtail's under threat too). He 
might see him as deserving of that danger as well. It's seeing that 
Draco would not have killed Dumbledore despite the threat, seeing 
the kind of "choice" that "shows" who he is, that molds Harry's 
impression.

At this point with Snape Harry's not able to do this. As you pointed 
out, Harry is not moved by anything good that Snape does. (In the 
past he's been equally careless with Malfoy on a smaller scale just 
in that he'll casually accuse him of things he hasn't done and upon 
learning the truth not think of himself as being wrong about Malfoy, 
if that makes sense.) I think he'll need a significant emotional 
shift of a kind that can't help but affect Harry. The Pensieve was 
one, but quickly dismissed.

-m