Why did Snape _really_ hate Harry?

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 186967

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> Betsy Hp:
> What I find so disappointing is that, imo, the essay is logical and canon is not.  Where the essay provides a neat answer that gives both Snape and Dumbledore some depth (Dumbledore becomes rather coldly calculating, but very, very clever; Snape is given complex and all too human motivations and drives), canon gives us an answer that serves mainly to flatten them. Dumbledore becomes a judgmental, fool.  (How stupid to you have to be to just *let* an eavesdropper go like that?)  Snape becomes pathetic.

Pippin:
ESE!Lupin was logical too.  The trouble is, once you've realized that a character is speaking in code, you can make him mean anything. :) 

It doesn't seem to me that Rejected!Son Snape is less pathetic than Rejected!Lover Snape. Either way, he's attached himself to an unavailable person. The theory makes Snape  even more a victim of Dumbledore's machinations, which makes him flatter and weaker, IMO. 

Canon!Snape walks free in the end, like Tom Bombadil, under no enchantment but his own. He rejects Dumbledore's advice when he chooses,  he has  a plan which he feels no need to share with his former Headmaster, and his hatred of Harry endures despite all of Dumbledore's efforts to talk him out of it.

As for Dumbledore, he let an *accused* eavesdropper go. I can just see Snape playing the outraged innocent, and Dumbledore, with his soft spot for innocence, falling for it lock, stock and cauldron, especially since Trelawney and his brother took the other side. 

Snape had to be clever enough to fool Dumbledore, or  why on earth would Dumbledore think he'd be clever enough to fool Voldemort?

Pippin