Love, Hate, Joy, Despair---the Greatest is Love

[mandolabar]

No: HPFGUIDX 191100

> Pippin:
> :;blushes::
> Amanda! And I thought you had left us forever :)

AG:
All spells wear off sometime...LOL

> Pippin:
>  But when he shrinks, in Dumbledore's office, it's Dumbledore's contempt he shrinks from, not Lily's -- he doesn't see that *she* needs Harry and James to be happy; that their happiness is necessary to hers.  And tearing the photograph shows, IMO, that  he always felt that way. He could put Harry's life before his own desires, for her sake, and then recognize, also for her sake, that the Order was more important still. He couldn't have done that as a teenager, and in that way he grew. But he was still stunted, IMO. 

AG:
Well said, and I agree. I was just responding to the blanket categorization as "selfish love." How about we agree it's a continuum--and I think Snape moved along that continuum during his life, from being pretty much grounded in the "selfish" end, towards the unselfish. Maybe he didn't get all the way--but most of us don't; and the distance he did get let him do some heroic things in the service of the good.

Pippin:  
> Tearing the photo was brutal -- maybe I read it as stronger than JKR meant it to be, because I know how it feels to have a child torn from your life. But I don't think so. 

AG:
Oh, that's right, I'd forgotten that. My selective memory may be biased. You know, I found the "tears dripping" bit in that scene a bit over the top, as well as tearing the photo. Maybe both things were there to illustrate the abiding strength of his feelings(besides JKR *needing* him to have been there to do that, for plot furtherance). Maybe seeing Lily in the photo was a shock, that provoked the reaction? Snape doesn't strike me as the type of person to have a photo of Lily as a memento--so this may have been the first time he saw her moving and smiling in 16 years. Maybe that provoked the strength of his reaction.  But that's pure speculation on my part, and your point is well taken.  Snape is not entirely unselfish, ever.
 
Pippin:
> I think it is a rebuke to the fantasy of the "good Slytherin" in more ways than one. It puts Snape in a bad light  just when we've seen him at his best. But it also tells us something about ourselves. 

AG:
Ever the philosopher--but I agree. As JKR has said, "All of my characters are flawed." It's unrealistic to expect a good Slytherin to be perfect; but it's unrealistic to expect anyone to be. But I think Snape comes the closest.

I just had this thought--so canon support is invited--but it seems to me that when we see Slytherins doing good, it usually is n spite of themselves, or under duress (Phineas), or in return for gain (Narcissa).  But Snape does good for none of those reasons; he does it because of the value of his word, and because he cares about those on the side of good--which I don't think is true of any other Slytherin we see.

> Pippin
> who likes her Snape the way she likes her chocolate -- dark, bitter and complex

~Amandageist
LOVING that tagline