{"id":195,"date":"2005-07-24T23:37:03","date_gmt":"2005-07-25T04:37:03","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=195"},"modified":"2005-07-24T23:37:03","modified_gmt":"2005-07-25T04:37:03","slug":"love-and-severus-snape","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=195","title":{"rendered":"Love and Severus Snape"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>OK, I&#8217;ve read &#8220;Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince&#8221; and enjoyed it<br \/>\nI have a theory about what will happen in Book 7.  Potential spoilers<br \/>\nabout Book 6 follow!.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>I think it&#8217;s going to turn out that Severus Snape is still, despite<br \/>\nall appearances, working to destroy Lord Voldemort.  And, moreover, I<br \/>\nthink I know why.  I&#8217;m expecting that revelation to be the emotional<br \/>\nclimax of the last book.<\/p>\n<p>Here is what I believe to be the central secret of Snape&#8217;s character.<br \/>\nIt explains his general bitterness, his hostility to Harry, and his outright<br \/>\nhatred of Harry&#8217;s father.  It also explains why Dumbledore, if he knew the<br \/>\nsecret, trusted Snape absolutely but never explained why.<\/p>\n<p>I believe that Snape was desperately, hopelessly in love with<br \/>\nLilly Potter, and still worships her memory.  That he hated<br \/>\nHarry&#8217;s father for winning her and wants to hate Harry for being<br \/>\nthe image of his father.  But he turned against Voldemort when<br \/>\nVoldemort killed Lilly.  He snipes at Harry, but is unable to<br \/>\nmuster the will to actually kill the boy in their last<br \/>\nconfrontation, because when he looks at Harry&#8217;s face he sees<br \/>\nJames&#8217;s face but Lilly&#8217;s eyes.<\/p>\n<p>This would fit a continuing theme in the books, which is that<br \/>\nonly love is powerful enough to stand against Voldemort&#8217;s will.<br \/>\nIt sets up some dramatic final scene in which Harry and Severus,<br \/>\nin spite of their history, decide that they must trust each other<br \/>\nand act together &mdash; both in the memory of Lilly.<\/p>\n<p>This culmination would also supply a motif that has been<br \/>\nconspicuous by its absence from the books.  Amidst all of<br \/>\nRowling&#8217;s exploration of morality, good, and evil, there has so<br \/>\nfar been nothing of redemption.  No instance of anyone having<br \/>\nwalked down the path of evil and rejected it for the good.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;But&#8230;but&#8230;&#8221; I hear you say, &#8220;he killed Dumbledore!&#8221;.  True<br \/>\n&mdash; and, I believe, a truly masterful piece of misdirection<br \/>\non Rowling&#8217;s part.  I think both Dumbledore and Snape knew that,<br \/>\nwith four Death Eaters pounding up the stairs behind Snape and<br \/>\nDumbledore so desperately weak, his chances of survival were nil.<br \/>\nSo Dumbledore paralyzed Harry; and his one-word plea to Snape<br \/>\nwas not to spare his life but to act so that his death would<br \/>\nmaintain Snape&#8217;s cover and not be wasted.<\/p>\n<p>I think the truly pivotal confrontation was the later one<br \/>\nbetween Harry and Snape on the front lawn.  Killing Dumbledore<br \/>\ndid not require Severus Snape to choose between light and darkness,<br \/>\nbecause it was done (in effect) on Dumbledore&#8217;s plea but could<br \/>\nalways be spun as an act of loyalty to Voldemort.<\/p>\n<p>But confronting Harry was different.  Snape knew the prophecy that<br \/>\nonly one of them could live; it was his report of that prophecy to<br \/>\nVoldemort that had moved the Dark Lord to kill Snape&#8217;s beloved<br \/>\nLilly. Snape&#8217;s contempt for Harry&#8217;s attempts at throwing curses makes<br \/>\nclear that Snape could have killed Harry at that point.  Instead, he<br \/>\ntalks.  Rehearses his reasons for hating Harry and Harry&#8217;s father,<br \/>\nlooks into Harry&#8217;s eyes &mdash; and <em>does not kill<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>I think that is the moment at which Snape makes his redemptive<br \/>\nchoice.  It&#8217;s the exact dual of Voldemort&#8217;s attempt to kill Harry.<br \/>\nLilly&#8217;s love saved Harry from Voldemort; Snape&#8217;s love for Lilly saves<br \/>\nHarry from Snape &mdash; and, ultimately, Snape from evil.<\/p>\n<p>Further prediction: Draco Malfoy is Snape&#8217;s dual.  In book six he<br \/>\nhesitates, never taking the step into irredeemable evil. In the<br \/>\nclimactic confrontation of book 7 he will take that step.  What will<br \/>\npropel him into evil is fear of weakness and the need to prove his<br \/>\nwill is strong &mdash; strong enough to deny the bonds of love as we<br \/>\nsaw him begin to do when he rejected Dumbledore&#8217;s offer. He will fall<br \/>\nas Snape rises.<\/p>\n<p>Of course I could be wrong &mdash; but can anyone plausibly deny that<br \/>\nthis is the kind of plotting Rowling <em>likes<\/em> to do?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>OK, I&#8217;ve read &#8220;Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince&#8221; and enjoyed it I have a theory about what will happen in Book 7. Potential spoilers about Book 6 follow!.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}