Beedle the Bard SPOILERS The Warlock and his hairy heart

[Zara]

No: HPFGUIDX 185167

> Alla:
> Take Warlock and its Hairy heart for example. When I started 
reading 
> this tale I was thinking oh, it reminds me of "A Heart of Stone" by 
> Gauf (spelling?) where young Peter Munk due to his own idiocy and 
> succumbing to gambling addiction in essense gives up his heart and 
> ends up with stone one.

Zara:
Wilhelm Hauff. The story to which Alla refers may be found here, you 
may need to copy the whole URL and stick it into your browser's 
address line rather than just clicking on a broken link:

http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/mcdonnell/hauff/hauff.html

> Alla: 
> I was wondering if JKR meant to say something about Snape in this 
> tale as well, especially when she mentioned young warlock's 
excessive 
> pride and dungeons. However, after reflecting I thought that Snape 
> seems to be the exact opposite to the guy in this tale. Snape 
seemed 
> to love too much, if it is possible to love too much?
> 
> Is JKR saying that excessive love is just as bad as no love at all?

Zara:
No, I definitely don't think so. His love is what saves him, after 
all. (Not in the sense of making him safer, in the sense of 
preventing him from living and dying a Death Eater). I also don't 
think he's at all similar in terms of his motivations. The warlock 
was born to privilege and his pride led him to think he did not need 
anyone.  As a poor, lonely young boy, Snape sought out a friend.
Snape's eventual tendency to suggest he might consider loving 
feelings a weakness were not based on supercilious amusement at the 
romantic travails of others, but his own personal experience of such 
problems.

I suppose if one did want to make a parallel to the warlock, one 
could compare his joining the DEs and throwing himself wholeheartedly 
into his interest in the Dark Arts as a young man with the spell the 
warlock used to lock away his heart, except in Snape's case it was 
too late, the dratted thing had already fallen in love when he tried.