The trouble with Harry and how Snape saves the day.

[mooseming]

Hi all and welcome to the newbies.

For a couple of months now life (other people) has taken up most of 
my time so have not been able to participate in what have been some 
thoroughly enjoyable threads. So in passing I will note they have 
provided much thought provoking stuff and entertainment and I 
proffer a big thanks to you all.

Having been silent for so long I find I must compensate by 
submitting this extremely long and tedious post, feel free not to 
read it and accept it's a sort of overexcited `hello I'm back`!

I sense in JKR's interviews a frustration that we don't really `get' 
Harry. JKR clearly is emotionally invested in him but somehow her 
readers will keep focussing on Snape, Neville, Ron, Hermione, Baggy, 
Mark Evans, whoever.

I believe this is because, ironically, Harry sprung to her mind 
fully formed. In other words he was a character at the end of his 
inner emotional journey and not at the beginning of it. There has 
been much discussion  regarding the plausibility, given his 
background, of Harry arriving at school on his first day as a 
competent, well balanced, functioning human; but my point is, that 
in a narrative sense, this makes him very dull indeed.

Harry's failings are not driven by some inner conflict but a 
tendency to go off half cocked without getting the facts straight. A 
tendency to make value judgements, eg Snape is bad, based on 
incomplete evidence. This is prone to colour him annoying rather 
than compelling which JKR doesn't seem to have anticipated!

I think HP is, at heart, a morality tale. The dilemma that JKR is 
exploring, well illustrating really, is essentially about how we 
distinguish good from evil, how do we make moral choices. To date 
Harry has had very little difficulty in making the right choices. 
Yes he's done stupid things, ill advised things, dangerous things 
but always the *right* thing.  His story is not one of moral 
ambiguity rather it is an investigation into the world around him, 
its history, his own history and a search for a surrogate father.  

In the first 5 books of the series Harry (and the reader) is never 
presented with a dilemma to which the answer is not clear to him. 
Should Harry be merciful to Wormtail, should Flammel destroy the 
philosophers stone, should Harry trust DD, should Harry fight Voldy, 
should Harry care about people, are mud bloods bad, is freedom good 
etc? I get a sensation that in these books JKR is presenting ideals 
in a kind of shopping list manner: prejudice (tick), bullying 
(tick), greed (tick), arrogance (tick), overreaching ambition (tick) 
and so on. Which brings me to the question if Harry's story isn't 
the moral focus of this series who`s is?  

At the end of HBP we are left with our first true dilemma - is Snape 
good or bad? We are also aware that for the first time Harry is in 
peril because his hatred for Snape is the one failing that might, 
just might, corrupt his moral compass. 

JKR has repeatedly stated that what makes us good is our choices. 
Snape made two big choices in HBP, the unbreakable vow and offing 
DD. Now we can tie ourselves in knots (removes leg from behind ear) 
trying to justify these choices but without knowing the full story 
we can't make a judgement. 

We can, however, deduce the laws governing that judgement from the 
previous choices made by good people and bad people.

Almost saintly Lily's big choice was to sacrifice herself, *not* to 
save her son (there was no special charm, no extra magic at GH, Lily 
didn't know her sacrifice would protect Harry *it had never happened 
before*), not for the greater good (committed to defeating Voldy she 
was given the option to live and fight another day but didn't take 
it) but because she would not sacrifice her ideals (a mother must 
never abandon her child). Lily placed her moral beliefs above 
rational thought not knowing that this would have a positive outcome 
but because it was the *right* thing to do.

No longer human Voldy's big choice was to use the death of others to 
avoid his own death. Murder alone was not the big evil, it was the 
rational abstraction and application of that evil that condemned Tom 
Riddle. 

So we have an essential conflict between what is right and what is 
rational, where right always has priority. 

With the introduction of HRXes and the information that a living 
being can be the vessel for same we have the perfect scenario for 
confronting this conflict.

If Voldy declares that his final HRX is in an innocent (unconscious) 
third party, say, oh I don't know, um, Stunned Neville, what`s to be 
done?

Should Neville be killed so that Voldy can be destroyed? Is the 
purposeful killing of an innocent ever justifiable? 

Snape and Harry would have a different view of this question and 
polarised conclusions I suspect.

Even Good!Snape would say yes, that unbreakable vow is proof of 
that, thus failing to reach Lily's level of enlightenment. So Snape 
is the moral focus of the story.

Harry would say no, he has his mother's eyes after all. What's the 
point in Harry then? Well he's the catalyst for Snape's redemption. 
He can stop Snape nixing Neville.

Followed through this dynamic has a rather sticky outcome. To save 
Snape the last HRX must not be destroyed and thus Voldy gets to win 
this round, at least until Neville shuffles off the mortal coil. 
Nothing to stop Voldy repeating the process with a succession of 
vessels either!

Still the advantage of a story is you *can* have it both ways. If 
Voldy is deliberately misleading Snape and Harry, Snape's rational 
approach would enable him to perceive the deceit and the solution 
more readily than short sighted Harry. This way JKR can qualify her 
absolutist moral position by indicating that rational thought is 
still important. If Harry can stop Snape from killing Neville then 
Snape will have the opportunity to see that the HRX really is, for 
example, Neville's wand. 

Happy endings all round. Harry still has something to learn and 
Snape is the man to teach him, Snape equally can continue to learn 
from Harry (on the subject of bullying students for starters).  Like 
father and son perhaps. If Snape is married Harry might just have 
found some new parents. The end.

Regards
Jo