Secrets (Long) OLD POST REPOST

[Zara]

No: HPFGUIDX 186502

> Alla:
> > I do agree though that predicting and analyzing storylines will play a part in being surprised, we indeed probably played out every possible scenario. I wonder whether readers who did not do all that were surprised and changed their opinion of Snape.
 
> Montavilla47:
> I wonder that, too.  I guess I should ask my niece and nephew,
> since they were too young to read the thousands of posts on
> the subject.  

Zara:
I can attest to the fact that both extremes were present in the more casual readership. Online, after DH came out, I saw huge numbers of posts on a forum I belong to from new post-DH members basically saying, "I hated Snape after HBP, he was so mean and so evil, and now that he is dead I am sorry I misjudged him like everyone in the books."

On the other hand, my mother, who has never visited any sort of online forum, was nagged mercilessly by me to try the series. After a year of effort by me, she read GoF (she felt she could skip the first three books because she had to watch the movies with her grandsons before...), admitted it was OK, read OotP, ditto, and read HBP.

Immediately after finishing it, she called me (unusual, we usually talk once a week at a set time) to say two things.

1) THANK YOU, Zara, for making me read these books, now I understand why you like them so much ...

... and...

2) Don't you think Snape is going to be a big hero in the last book? 

Like Jo herself said in an interview, she left clues about Snape throughout the series. Readers with a certain style of reading and thinking or possibly with certain types of other reading experiences in their histories (thrillers, gothics) would pick them up and identify Snape as a spy in deep cover or "gothic hero" type; others might not.