[HPforGrownups] Re: On the perfection of moral virtues (long)

[Marion Ros]

No: HPFGUIDX 168881

Phoenixgod;
>>>And I'm not talking about the teaching or the meanness or the ordinary
point taking. Snape, lest anyone forget about it, was the spy that
told Voldemort the prophecy. In a very real way, he got Harry's
parents killed. He may not have pulled the trigger, but he was the
informant. He was part of the process that left Harry an orphan at the
tender mercies of the Dursleys.<<<


Marion:
Gosh. Snape as the Root Of All Evil. Now *that's* original... <bg>

And then it turns out in DH that Snape was already working for DD when that prophecy was made, and that DD, being selfappointed warchief against Voldemort, ordered his spy to 'leak' the first half of the prophecy to Voldemort.
Voldemort was very close to *winning*, after all.
What better way to stop a megalomanic-who-is-afraid-of-death by dangling a prophecy about his demise in front of his nose? DD would know (knowing Tom Riddle intimately) that this would be irresistable. Voldemort would concentrate less on taking over the WW and go after this perceived threat. It would give the Order of the Phoenix more time, time that they desperately needed. 
It was simply a matter of 'give Voldemort enough rope and he'll hang himself'.
Dumbles didn't know at that time of course that two of his own (Lily and Alice) would turn out to be pregnant and due in late July.

Didn't DD say something about making mistakes and being more sorry about things than he could tell?

Of course, it was not such a stupid move. It worked. As a tactical move it was actually close to brilliant. Voldemort focused all his formidable resources in finding this prophecised child, the Order got precious breathing space and could regroup. Prophecies are after all just that: prophecies. They usually don't come out. Unless one *makes* them come out.. DD even tells Harry this , that prophecies don't come out unless people are told about them and start to arrange their life as to make them come out.

HBP, page 510, Scholastic:
"If Voldemort had never heard of the prophecy, would it have been fulfilled,
would it have meant anything? Of course not! Do you think every prophecy in
the hall of prophecy has been fulfilled?"

But still, it was a good tactical move, and it worked, and it only took a minimal amount of lives. To bad for Harry that it was his mum and dad, but it could just as easily have been Ron's mum and dad or anybody elses. 
And besides, why the hell didn't Lily and James make DD their secret keeper? Why didn't they make *eachother* their secret keeper? Why this 'we only trust our own dear friends Sirius and Peter' attitude? Did DD tell the Potters that he let the prophecy leak and that they would get into hiding, and did this sour relationships enough for the Potters to become dangerously isolated from those who could protect them? 
Let's not forget their own responsibility in their demise.
What idiot would rely on Sirius Black and Peter Pettigrew to be their secret keeper when they could've gotten DD?
Look at what happened at the MoM! Sirius impulsively hares off to 'battle the baddies' and he gets swatted like a fly. Would he have had a chance against FullPower!Voldemort? Of course not. And wouldn't it have been *obvious* that James Potter's Best Friend was

So, what would this mean for Hating!Harry, if he would to find out in DH that it was *Dumbledore* who was responsible for leaking that prophecy, in order to distract Voldemort from taking over the WW?
I'm not asking you to believe this, as I'm not asking you to believe in DDM!Snape, but just try to imagine it. If it turns out at the end of DH that Snape was ESE! after all, and that he willingly and gloatingly (wringing his hands in glee and twirling his moustache) leaked the prophecy with the express purpose of destroying those pesky Potters ("and I would have succeeded too, if it wasn't for those darned kids!" - whoops, wrong fandom! ::bg::) then I will bow to you and your superior insight, but try to imagine this scenario, please. It's not such a farfetched one, after all. The Order of the Phoenix was created with the express reason to counter Voldemort, after all and not to sit on their collective bum to wait for Harry Potter to be born and save them all. It stands to reason that DD had a plan (probably several) to undermine Voldemort. DD is not stupid, after all. He would recognise a golden opportunity like that prophecy when it fell into his lap.

The point I'm trying to make is this: would Harry, if he found out that Snape was not responsible for the Potter's death (strictly speaking it's of course Voldemort who is responsible for the Potter's death, Peter who betrayed them and the Potters themselves and Sirius who behaved quite foolishly, but since you prefer to blame the messenger boy I'm going along and am making DD the one who wants Voldemort to have partial knowledge of the prophecy), if Harry was to find this out, and if it turned out that everything Snape did was on DD orders, pact and parcel of his role as a spy against Voldemort, *would this make any difference to Harry's hating*?

My thought is it would not.

I swear, sometimes, whilst reading those books, I believe I've stumbled into a world where everything is turned upside down and distorted like mirrors in a carnival. We constantly are told things, but we are *shown* things that are the exact opposite. The 'Snape hates Harry because James' thing is one of them (and one of these days I'm going to write a separate post about this)
We are *told* that Snape hates Harry (and I've no doubt that Snape actively loathes the brat after six years of backtalk, suspicion, hating looks and snotnosed rulebreaking) but what we've been *shown* is a eleven-year-old boy who instantly hates his teacher and who, for six years, is determined to continue to hate him. Book after book we see Harry holding on to and feeding his hatred of Snape. Book after book we see him trying to find excuses why it would be a good thing to hate Snape. Oh, Snape must be after the Philosopher's Stone! Oh, Snape must be in cahoots with Malfoy to open the Chamber of Secrets! Oh, Snape wants Sirius and Lupin dead because he'd get a medal! Oh, Auror Moody distrusts him, I must be right about Snape! Oh, Snape can't be trusted, he's probably in cahoots with Voldemort! Oh, he's got a Dark Mark, he *is* in cahoots with Voldemort! Oh, he's a spy, but we still can't trust him because he's probably still working for Voldemort! Oh, he wants to teach me Occlumency because it will make me vulnerable to Voldemort! Oh, Snape doesn't like Sirius so he's to blame when Bellatrix kills Sirius when Sirius impusively runs off to save me when I impulsively ran off right into a trap because I didn't trust Snape so it's Snape who is to blame for Sirius death!
*Hurrah!!* I've found out that Snape leaked the prophecy, so now I can safely go on hating Snape for being responsible for my parents death (just as he was responsible for Sirius death - didn't have anything to do with me or Sirius or Bellatrix at *all*), since now I've found a legitimate reason for doing so! 
(phew! and only after six years of hating him without a good reason for doing so! Even broken clocks are right twice a day and not once every six years)

No, Snape being a strict and sarcastic teacher is not reason enough for this level of hatred.

I'm telling you, it's not *healthy* to be so full of hatred. It's positively Voldermortish to be so full of hatred... (but more about this in a later post - this one is getting too long anyway)

I think (I *hope*) that in book 7 the crisis will come when Harry finds out, somewhere at the end of the books, just before vanquishing Voldemort, that his hatred, the hatred which he carefully nursed and nurtured for seven long years, is simply based on a small boy's prejudice ("there's not a wizard gone bad not from Slytherin"), his inability to trust people (especially adults) and his inability to interpret other people's behaviour, translating every bit of criticism as a direct attack.

Harry has, in fact, the emotional maturity of a three year old. 

If Harry wants to face Voldemort (who snacks on emotionally insecure teenagers between meals) and if he wants to have any chance of surviving this encounter, let alone vanquishing Voldemort, then Harry, imo, has to *grow up* already and get over his hatred.
This is what I meant in my last post, really. For six years our hero has been allowed to stay the same, to nurture the same prejudices, to make the same mistakes, to hang on to his deep, bitter hatred of his teacher. If book seven is a 'coming-of-age story' (since Harry will officially have come of age in DH), then Harry really, really, *really* needs to grow up.

If not, then the message of the books would be that a eleven-year-old essantially knows all that he ever needs to know. That there is nothing he could possibly learn from life. And that though, my friends, is simply to depressing to entertain.

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]