GoF CH 27-29 Post DH look/ Snape and Harry redux

[montavilla47]

No: HPFGUIDX 182192

> Magpie:
> I think Snape's personal responsibility for what happened is 
> one of those Very Important Events that Changed Everything and even 
> if the Potters *could* have died some other way, they didn't and 
> that doesn't change that Snape took action to get someone killed and 
> those someone's were the Potters. 
<snip>
> Snape *felt* responsible in ways another person would not have, 
> because of the history--and because frankly he was very reponsible. 
<snip>
> I think that's the important thing about Snape, that he's a 
> character who actually took responsibility for the unintended (but 
> forseeable) consequences of his actions and worked to counteract 
> them. Although of course it ultimately seemed to me that he was less 
> doing than than playing out his own personal penance for Lily that 
> was just manipulated by Dumbledore for his own ends. But his actions 
> on the Potter's behalf throughout the story (even if he always hated 
> two of those Potters and would not have mourned them) are at least 
> good actions. If Harry continued to hold that against him to the 
> point where he couldn't acknowledge all the good Snape did for him I 
> don't think it would reflect well on Harry.

Montavilla47:
I think these are excellent points about Snape.  We all tend to want
to shove Snape into either the good guy or the bad guy box, but he
doesn't fit in either one.  (Frankly, that bad guy box isn't big enough 
for more than about, oh, say, four people).

While JKR leaned heavily on the all-for-Lily motive, there's enough
wiggle room to wank that Snape did have a normal amount of 
human decency hidden in there to actually want Voldemort gone 
because LV was an evil, evil man who corrupted basically okay 
people into doing evil things.

It's easier to put that together out of canon than, say, Draco (not to
pick on Draco), who may have had his heart back in the right place, 
but who never got the chance to prove it.

Snape made a hideous mistake in his youth, but he realized that it
was a mistake and he took action to try and fix it.  If he didn't get
credit for that while he was alive, it was down to both his "cover"
and his own secretiveness.  (Would Dumbledore have told Harry
the truth if Snape hadn't insisted otherwise?  One must wonder.  
It's not like Dumbledore was that truthful about anything else.)

Magpie:
> Though this is a different issue than Snape's everyday nasty 
> treatment of Harry, which Harry would naturally resent. (I will 
> never stop finding Harry's naming his child after the man anything 
> but bizarre and something I have to chalk up to one of those 
> authorial moments of "This is how you're supposed to think about 
> these characters.")

Montavilla47:
Yes, but it's more bizarre to me that he gave the kid the first name
of "Albus," since Dumbledore turned out to be far nastier in the end.