Understanding Snape

[pippin_999]

Jim:
 >>JKR is doing something else important.  She's introducing 
complexity to young readers about characters, especially good 
guys who aren't plaster saints.<<

Agreed. And the lurking corollary: plaster saints who aren't good 
guys.
  
Jim:
>>The scene that just has to happen is the one where Harry tells 
Snape that Harry and James Potter are two different people, that 
Harry doesn't like what his father did to Snape, and Snape ought 
to remember that.  Can Snape even absorb that statement? It'll 
be interesting to find out.<<

Funny about how we all have different ideas about what has to 
happen. <g> I don't see that scene coming at all. Harry's not an 
innocent victim anymore.  At the end of OOP, he is nursing a 
grudge against Snape as overblown, and potentially as 
dangerous, as Snape's old grudge against Sirius. That has to 
play out somehow.

 I think "Snape hates Harry because Harry reminds him of 
James" is a bit of a red herring. If Snape hated people who were 
popular and arrogant, he'd hate Draco Malfoy. IMO, Snape hates 
Harry because, underneath it all, Harry reminds him of *Snape*.

Pippin