Could Harry have saved Snape? (was Reacting to DH...)

[Ceridwen]

No: HPFGUIDX 178087

Julie:
> Thanks for the canon. I didn't recall the specifics, but I
> did recall that it took awhile to get help to Arthur. 

Ceridwen:
No problem.  :D  I'd looked it up after Rowling revealed that Arthur 
was the character who'd had the reprieve back in OotP.  This way, I 
get twice the mileage for the same amount of checking.

Julie:
> And as
> you say, he bled for half an hour before help came. There was
> a copious amount of blood after that length of time, but it
> just proves that Snape's injury was much more severe. Arthur
> is still alive if very weak from loss of blood after some
> thirty minutes, while Snape bled for perhaps five minutes
> at most before he died.

Ceridwen:
Since the reveal that Arthur was the one who had been reprieved, I 
think she wrote that scene to kill him off and just didn't change it, 
making Arthur's recovery that much more spectacular.  The problem is 
that, by changing the criteria for death by Nagini, and enhancing the 
magical medical, for me, anyway, that makes Snape's death harder to 
believe.  If Arthur had been rescued earlier, or if Snape had died 
later, I may not have this disconnect.

Julie:
> Snape's injury was much more serious than Arthur's, which
> makes sense if his carotid artery was severed. As with the
> femoral or aortal arteries, a person would bleed out very
> fast. While Arthur apparently bled continuously before 
> help came, he was clearly not bleeding from a major artery,
> or he would have been well dead by the time help arrived.

Ceridwen:
I don't know much about anatomy, so I would probably have guessed 
jugular vein.

I think the reason we're seeing different things is that I don't know 
that much about anatomy or medical.  I do know that an injury to the 
veins or arteries in the neck would have a Muggle dying quickly.

The thing for me is, we've been shown a world where people drop 
toddlers out of windows to see if they bounce, where a potion can re-
grow bones when a spell has removed them, where a child can fall 
several stories and only break a bone, where a person can randomly 
lose body parts in transit, and the resulting injuries are minor and 
relatively easy to repair. To me, the normal medical realities don't 
apply.  These characters are either more indestructable than people, 
or the magic is that much superior to Muggle medicine.

Magic is the context from which Harry and Hermione interact with 
Snape's attack and death.  That's the point Pippin tried to make, in 
my opinion - Harry didn't think of saving Snape when it's one of his 
defining character traits to save people, and Hermione also went 
against her character traits in not digging out the dittany and/or 
trying some spell to reverse the bite's effects.  The character died 
because two other characters suddenly changed.  The hero didn't try 
and save the victim, the smart girl didn't use her knowledge to try 
and save the victim.

That's disappointing.  It's tragic.  It creates a huge disconnect for 
me.  Couple that with Arthur's attack, which was supposed to have 
killed him but didn't, and the disconnect is too large for me to 
ignore.

Julie:
> But that's just my opinion

Ceridwen:
That's what makes the list so interesting.  We all see things 
differently, even when we agree, because of different backgrounds.  I 
think these differences enhance our reading experience.  Sometimes, 
we learn something that changes our minds, sometimes we don't.  I 
still feel the same way I did, but I can now find the carotid artery 
in Gray's Anatomy!  ;)

Ceridwen.