Did you LIKE Snape?

[Mike]

No: HPFGUIDX 183145

> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/183136
> 
> Pippin:
> <snip examples>
> 
> Those do not seem to me to be the actions of someone who is just
> going through the motions of being on the good side, or solely
> concerned with keeping Harry alive for Lily's sake.

Mike:

I'm sorry for being so vague in my question. I was looking for 
another impetus that may have caused Snape to have a change of heart. 
Something besides Lily's impending doom. Your examples showed that 
Snape was a decent human being that cared for the sanctity of life; 
he was concerned for all people. But I don't see him changing from 
some callous youth into this person. I have no indication he was 
somehow different before the prophecy and the Lily dilemma.

Along with my belief that Snape was really on the good side comes a 
conviction that Snape wasn't an evil person. That is, Snape was 
basically an upstanding member of the wizarding community. One that 
had his faults and foibles like all the rest. IOW, he wasn't a Death 
Eater at heart. This, of course, makes his decision to join the DEs 
all the more confounding.

I suspect that Voldemort was still in his charming, recruitment mode 
when Severus became enamored with the idea. Yet the name alone, Death 
Eaters, should have been a large enough red flag to warn off a person 
of Severus's intelligence. Another enigma that we won't ever get 
solved.

Back to my point: I didn't expect to find that Snape had joined the 
Death Eaters. And when I found out he had, I still thought he must 
have been different from the typical DEs, that he must have joined 
through some kind of deception. So all those examples you pointed 
out, I would have expected nothing less from someone I was sure was 
on Dumbledore's side, someone that Dumbledore would vouch for. They 
don't look like something done above and beyond the call of duty for 
a true OotP member, which he was.

But, he came back to the good side because of Lily. Once there, he 
acted like anyone would act that had pledged his allegiance to 
Dumbledore and his mission. I don't think those actions would have 
changed had the prophecy never happened, it's just that Snape 
wouldn't have been around to have done them. 

I'm wading into some speculation waters here, but I think Snape would 
have been the same decent human being even as a DE. I think even 
without the prophecy and Lily, eventually something would have 
impelled Snape back to the side of good. But did you see anything 
like that in the story, anything besides Lily that caused Snape to 
return?


> Pippin: 
> 
> I don't think Snape had any grand Dumbledorean hopes of making
> the WW a better place. To his mind it was a cruel world and would
> remain so, whether Voldemort stood or fell. And he was always
> going to think Harry James Potter was a waste of space. But there
> were definitely things he cared about other than Lily.


Mike:

I'm with you here. Though I do think some of what Dumbledore stood 
for rubbed off on Severus over the years. I take him for his worded 
when he said " *Lately*, only those ..." Before his "lately" do you 
suppose he just stood by when he could have done something?

Speculating again; I think it was a matter of degrees. In the past, 
he probably didn't raise a finger to save another DE, as he likewise 
wouldn't have stopped what he was doing to save Sirius Black. But he 
would have saved an innocent if it was within his power to do so. In 
his later days, I think he would have saved both the DE and Sirius.

JMO,
Mike