Snape and moral courage WAS: Re: The Houses, Finally

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 184682

Alla:
> 
> Pippin, quite honestly I do not find anything that you wrote in the 
> snipped part of the paragraph relevant to the point I am making at 
> all.

Pippin:

The safety of Harry's soul is irrelevant? 

Harry's quality of life is irrelevant??? 

Snape finally accepts he has a duty to Lily that goes beyond keeping
Harry physically safe, and it's irrelevant ??????

Who are you, and what have you done with the real Alla? <g>

Alla:
<snip>
> I am saying that he did not fulfill his promise to protect
**Harry**,  that's all.

Pippin:

The soul in the Potterverse is the seat of self, sentience, will and,
in Harry's case,  intellect.  The body that survives without it can
only "lie huddled and blank-eyed, slumped against a wall" though it is
still a living, breathing entity. 

How can Snape agree to protect Harry, and not agree to protect the
most precious part of him? 

I don't think you are crazy, Alla, but do you understand that at this
point in the story, the baby that  Lily died to protect  no longer
exists? 

Lily did not die so her child could live forever. She died  so that
her baby could have the chance to grow up and become a man, make his
own choices, and  decide for himself, as she did, what is worth dying
for. Snape was asked to protect him for the same reason. He did not
know it at the time, never having been a parent, but IMO, he came to
understand it. 

It could be a bit creepy, I guess, that both men, Snape and Harry,
accept that Harry must die without asking Dumbledore if he is quite
sure that it is necessary. But only if you see them as children. The
adult who is given a difficult task does not reply "Aww, do I have to?"

Snape and Harry have both seen enough to understand that everyone
dies, that for all their striving to survive, the best anyone can ever
hope for is to die at the right moment. That's not being a pig for
slaughter. It's being a grownup.

I'm not really into JKR's mysticism, but it's clear to me that there
are two kinds of life in the story. There's physical life, and then
there's a spiritual life that begins in physical existence but whose
ultimate purpose is to continue beyond it. 

The ghosts' "pale imitation of life" is a pale imitation of *that*
life. I hope that Snape is right, and their actual souls have
departed. But you see, even he and Hermione, who are very unspiritual
sorts, never doubt that souls exist, are much more precious than
physical lives and are the essence of a person. 

Only a character as lost to truth as Voldemort would think that
protecting someone means ensuring their existence as a damaged soul.

And in a world where souls can be damaged, is it not inevitable by the
laws of chance that every soul will be damaged if it stays there long
enough? 

Pippin