Harry, Voldemort and Snape

[severelysigune]

It has been rather quiet here, lately (because of Yahoo!Mort, or is 
their sleepiness in the air?), so I dare to post a small essay 
thingy. If it's old hat (it probably is), then please just ignore it.

Harry, Voldemort and Snape, for your perusal.


In HBP, Snape has been carefully set up as a kind of carbon copy of 
Voldemort. He had a Muggle father and a pure-blood mother, just like 
Tom Riddle. We have been led to assume that Eileen Prince's marriage 
was unhappy, like Merope Gaunt's. Snape grew up in straitened 
circumstances, just like Tom the orphan. From childhood onwards, 
Snape had an inclination towards Dark Arts as is evident from the 
fact that he famously knew a lot of curses when he arrived at 
Hogwarts aged eleven - again a tendency that the future Voldemort 
also possessed. And then there is their shared love of fake noble 
titles: Prince and Lord.

In previous books (most notably Chamber of Secrets), Harry has 
realised how much he has in common with Voldemort. It is not a 
coincidence that the Sorting Hat would have placed him in Slytherin 
if he had not objected against the fact. There is Parseltongue, and 
Harry's inclination to ignore rules and be economical with the truth; 
but there is also the start of both their stories. Harry and Tom both 
had unhappy childhoods, orphaned, unwanted and unloved as they were. 
The revelation that they were wizards came upon them as a surprise, 
and Hogwarts seemed a sort of paradise - both of them are loath to 
leave the school for the holidays and return to a 'home' that does 
not really welcome them. As far as we know, Snape was not an orphan 
when he arrived at Hogwarts; but it is very likely that the school of 
wizardry filled him with the same sense of wonder and excitement as 
it inspired in Harry and Tom. There was certainly very little by way 
of magic in the mill town where he grew up. Now, being suddenly 
exposed to this brave new world can easily lead to a young wizard or 
witch getting a bit carried away, and I daresay that is what happened 
in the case of Voldemort, and arguably also Snape. But what about 
Harry, who had the same set-up?

Snape says in Chapter Two of HBP that many Dark wizards were 
expecting Harry to become the new Dark Lord. Now why didn't he turn 
out to be just that? Dumbledore supplies the answer: Harry will never 
turn towards the Dark because of all he has suffered at a Dark 
wizard's hands. How can he sympathise with a man, a movement, an 
ideology that is responsible for the death of his parents and thus 
the cause of all the misery of his early life? Since he was a baby, 
Harry has lived the harm that Dark magic can do. He is not about to 
embrace it.

In this, Harry may seem very different from Snape, who is truly 
passionate about the Dark Arts. And yet: I wonder if he would have 
felt the same about them if he had been exposed to the kind of things 
Harry experienced. Snape has never, as far as we know, been a victim 
of Dark magic; indeed, it is what has empowered and sustained him. 
And we may very well ask whether Harry would not have enjoyed it just 
the same if Voldemort hadn't killed his parents.

Look at it this way: Snape and Harry hate each other. When Snape 
looks at Harry he sees a smaller version of James Potter and relives 
a schoolboy history of mutual harrassment; as such he never gives 
Harry a chance. Harry, on the other hand, takes up his father's 
legacy and refuses to see in Snape anything else than a nasty 
teacher, a Dark wizard and Death Eater; in his turn, Harry never 
gives Snape any credit. But look what happens when he stumbles upon 
Snape's annotated Potions textbook without knowing who the previous 
owner was: he likes the Half-Blood Prince.

The Half-Blood Prince's book bears all the hallmarks of Snape's 
personality. There are the meticulous annotations in a cramped 
handwriting, the sarcastic comments ("Shove a bezoar down their 
throats"), the cleverness, the ingenuity and usefulness of spells 
like "Muffliato", the nastiness of "Levicorpus" and the darkness 
of "Sectumsempra". Harry is charmed by the boy in the book. He 
recognises mischievousness and a somewhat nasty sense of humour, and 
he likes it. It is Hermione, not he, who gets upset at the less-than-
nice side of the Half-Blood Prince; Harry thinks of him as a trusted 
friend and keeps defending him even after his discovery of what 
Sectumsempra actually does. In fact, the reason why the Prince 
appeals to him is because they share this ambiguity of character. 
Harry isn't always nice. He can be quite brutal to people who he 
feels deserve it, and his own sense of humour contains its fair share 
of sarcasm. And when he is truly angry and hurt, he starts throwing 
things (remember his destruction of Dumbledore's instruments) and 
casting really serious curses (Cruciatus at Bellatrix, Cruciatus and 
Sectumsempra at Snape).

Strangely enough, although Harry did recognise the parallels between 
himself and Voldemort, he has never acknowledged those between 
himself and Snape. Indeed, as soon as he understands that the Half-
Blood Prince is really Snape, he is embarrassed and angry at having 
been charmed by him. And it is doubtful that he would have followed 
the book's instructions, even, if he had known the identity of the 
previous owner. Personally I would be very interested to know what 
Snape would have thought if he knew to what extent Harry cherished 
his book and the boy who wrote it...

To my mind, there is really a greater similarity between Harry and 
Snape than between Harry and Tom Riddle, or even Snape and Voldemort. 
Voldemort is a psychopath; Snape isn't. Voldemort has no sense of 
humour, and he believes his own lies. He has never shown the least 
bit of compassion for anyone or respected anyone except himself. He 
has tried, and pretty much succeeded, to escape his humanity. I 
realise there can be quite a lot of discussion about Snape when it 
comes to compassion and respect, and HBP has certainly caused a lot 
of confusion; but one thing we can say with certainty: Snape has 
never gone as far in the Dark Arts as Voldemort has. He is still 
human and appears to have no desire to dehumanise himself. If you ask 
me, he is very much what Harry would have become had he been sorted 
into Slytherin.


Yours severely, 
Sigune