Severus Snape and the Deathly Hallows
Jul. 26th, 2007 08:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rabidsamfanI should really be working on an essay for work. Ah, well.
As I venture out into the net I'm finding a number of indignant essays about how JKR handled Snape in the Deathly Hallows, but I have to admit, my first reaction to what was done in the book was positive. And it still is. I don't think he's been turned to cardboard, or done an injustice, and even if JKR herself doesn't understand what she's done, it doesn't matter... since when has literary analysis ever depended entirely on an author's intentions?
You see, I've been convinced that Snape loved Lily since before the Order of the Phoenix came out. (Check out the Snape Dursley story comments, if you don't believe me and look at the dates.) I've also been convinced that Lily was no plaster saint herself, since Half-Blood Prince. So neither of those things surprised me, or made me feel like Snape was lessened.
Let's take the sequence in the Shrieking Shack first, shall we? Snape is doing his level best to get permission to go find Harry. Knowing what we know, I'd guess that he wants to tell Harry something important, rather than drag him back to Voldemort kicking and screaming... When Snape learns that Voldemort has the Elder Wand, he freezes and says "let me go to the boy". (To warn him, perhaps?) You'll notice that Voldemort doesn't take the chance of duelling Snape. He has Nagini get him from behind. (And as Jinx has observed so often, Snape doesn't do well against animals. From the three-headed dog to the hippogriff, being a superb Legilimens doesn't give him an advantage against something that sees him as sitting in an engraved supperdish...)
When Harry steps out into the Shrieking Shack to look at Snape (who he still hates, the narrative tells us very plainly) he doesn't know what to feel. Snape grabs him and manages one last piece of magic, one last order to Harry to "take it", as his memories flow out of him.
These are a dying man's memories, remember, and a man dying with his last most important task -- telling Harry what he needs to know about the final Horcrux -- undone. And when Harry has the vial Hermione conjured as full as it can go, Snape has one last thing to say. "Look at me."
I've seen at least one person interpret that as "Let me pretend I'm looking at Lily's eyes as I die," but I see it as something much simpler. Snape is asking Harry to actually see him -- to look at the memories and see him for who he is. There's no hint, either here or in the earlier scene with McGonagall, that Snape is sneering or being hateful to or about Harry, by the way, which is very noticeable considering how he behaves in earlier books.
Snape dies, Harry takes the memories, and goes back to Hogwarts. There we discover that Lupin and Tonks are dead, and that discovery propels Harry away from the general grief and up to the Headmaster's office. I wonder what McGonagall thought of Snape using the name "Dumbledore" as a password? I know what I think...
The first memory is of the first meeting between Snape and Lily. It's at an age much younger than I thought it would be -- I thought Petunia's "awful boy" was Snape or Pettigrew on one of Lily's school holidays -- but it makes even more sense this way. The little we know tells us that Snape's home life was pretty awful -- and if he lived in his father's home instead of a magical enclave, he was isolated from the start. To find another magical child must have felt like a miracle. And then when he finally tried to talk to her it all went wrong. (It makes me wonder how many times Harry, dressed in Dudley's castoffs, tried making a friend at school only to be rejected or to see Dudley discourage the contact before he gave up trying.)
The conversation under the trees, when Petunia has turned the tables and she's the one spying on Snape. (He did start being an observer early, didn't he? That's the trouble with being an outsider.) Lily's worry about being Muggle-born and Snape's assuring her that it doesn't matter. The breaking of the branch and the instant denial. I can't think of a nine or ten year old who'd have admitted that one -- and Lily's too young to understand that anger and fear are an impetus to mistaken magic.
Platform 9 and 3 quarters, and the Hogwarts express. Petunia's lost hope of being a witch too, and her rejection of Lily. Again, the theme of spying, of looking where one hasn't been invited. Snape saw the letter and wanted to know...
On the train, and the introduction of James Potter. Severus changing as soon as he can into his school robes, hunting the train to find Lily. He wants Lily to go to Slytherin and I think it's because he has no choice but to want the house his mother has told him is the only one he should want. The sparks striking, right from the beginning between James and Severus. It isn't clear whether Sirius or James comes up with "Snivellus" first, but from that moment it's a declaration of war.
The sorting. That's the moment that they begin to part, when Lily goes to Gryffindor and Snape goes to the tender mercies of Lucius Malfoy and a bunch of roommates who aren't going to care how he learned all the hexes he knows. (Did his mother use them as discipline on a young boy? Or did she just aim them at his father?)
We know from the Half-Blood Prince that he was brilliant from the beginning. If he hadn't wanted Slytherin I think he'd have fit into Ravenclaw. But his is a fluid nature, as befits a future master of Potions, and like any fluid he adapted to the shape he was poured into.
I think, perhaps, of all the Marauders, only Remus Lupin ever had any clue about how important it was to Snape to fit in with his roommates -- and I don't think he actually heard the clue phone until they were adults. That he stayed friends with Lily for as long as he did was something of an accomplishment.
At fifteen/sixteen, of course he was in love with her. Throw hormones into the mix and a girl who actually talks to you like you haven't got greasy hair and bad skin and I defy any fifteen year old boy who doesn't fancy boys not to fall in love. And Snape can see that James fancies her too. She's bright, she's brave, she's pretty... I think half the boys in that year probably looked at her more than once. And James, who hasn't managed to get Lily to talk to him like a human being yet, egged on by Sirius, who isn't a Death Eater only because he's not doing anything Regulus is doing thank you, is busy making Severus' life a misery. (Note to file... James saves Snape's life before Snape's worst memory... Even nearly getting a classmate killed didn't stop the Marauders from being a load of prats.)
Even when I was reading "Order of the Phoenix" I didn't see Snape calling Lily a "mudblood" because that's how he thought of her. I thought then, and even moreso now, that he was trying to get her to go away -- either because he didn't want to be humilated in front of her, or more likely because he was trying to keep her out of the line of fire. His vigil outside the Gryffindor common room only makes me sure of the latter. And here is where Lily proves that she is human and fallible. She doesn't accept his apology. With the black and white logic of an adolescent she condemns him to a path away from hers. And in the black and white logic of adolescence, Snape who is unforgiven, decides that he must be unforgiveable. What other mistakes matter, now that he's made this one?
But of course, once he's made the mistake of telling Voldemort what he overheard about the prophecy, he discovers that his mistakes still do matter. That no matter how much he might have consigned Lily off into the dark reaches of "I don't care" because she's gone off and married James the-Quidditch-Hero Potter, when his choices threaten her life he is filled with remorse. He goes to Dumbledore, warns him, chooses to save James and Harry too if it means saving Lily, and then agrees to pay the price of saving them.
Let me clarify something here. I think this represents the time that Snape realizes that he might not be "in-love" with Lily Evans Potter, but that he loves her still. That her safety is worth "anything" -- up to and including his life.
And then she dies. And in his grief, Snape is truly transfigured. This, perhaps, is the moment that Dumbledore recognizes the remorse for what it is (although I see it clearly in the earlier memory.) Snape wants to die -- he is forced, by Dumbledore's relentless logic, to live. But he is relentless too. He recognizes, I think, the quality in Dumbledore that makes him so excellent a secret keeper, and asks for one more secret between them.
Ten years pass before the next memory -- ten years which have wrought a change in the relationship between Snape and Dumbledore. No longer is Dumbledore a towering figure who uses every ounce of leverage he can find against Snape -- now he is almost absentmindedly friendly, pointing out Snape's blind spots almost casually before entrusting him again with a task too delicate for others.
That snippet from the end of the Yule ball. What's that doing in Snape's memories? Why, of all the things that Snape is thinking at the end of his life, does he pass that memory along to Harry? "I sometimes think we Sort too soon." Ah, but where would the first years' sleep until you'd Sorted them? (Some of you may remember the little drabble I wrote months ago. I thought of it, reading this bit.)
And now we see Snape trying to keep Dumbledore alive, their friendship at a place where he can scold the most powerful wizard he knows for doing something foolish. Dumbledore is still commanding -- there is no question who is the mastermind and who is the agent -- but Snape has earned a certain license. I howled with glee at his offer to allow Dumbledore a chance to compose an epitaph.
As the two of them discuss the danger to Snape's soul it is clear that Dumbledore truly is choosing the manner of his death -- that he is asking for a mercy, not a murder, and it is only then that Snape agrees.
And yet he is still human. He is hurt that Dumbledore is confiding in Harry. And he still can't understand what it is about Harry that has made him worth his mother's death. (That, I think, is what has truly made him hate Harry all these years. He needs someone to blame...) Dumbledore keeps talking about Harry like he's something shiny, and all Snape can see is a boy who keeps getting lucky. And it's worse when he finally finds out why he has done all these things for all these years. Has protected the boy only to see him be killed. Has failed Lily's memory as he failed Lily. He still loves her, has never stopped grieving for her. (Why do you think he always wears black?) She died to save Harry's life, and Snape has to let Harry die. But we see tears in his eyes here -- the first sign of a thaw.
Another memory, Snape still taking Dumbledore's orders, still bound by his own word to the service of a man who is dead. If the Fidelius charm changed upon Dumbledore's death, surely any Oath Severus might have given would be broken magically. But he has promised to do his best to protect the students at Hogwarts, and he is sticking to that task. You'll notice here, as I did, that Dumbledore isn't using Harry's safety as any kind of bait. It's Hogwarts that Snape is defending now.
The escape, and Snape's attempt to save Lupin, that goes wrong. Is that why he went to Grimmauld place? Whatever he was seeking, he found something else.
Now, the general consensus seems to be that Snape is weeping over that letter because of Lily. I've got a different interpretation. I think that Snape has been learning -- just as Harry has been learning -- how very much different Albus Dumbledore was than the man they thought he was. Why wouldn't Snape take the whole thing? Yes, the picture of Lily -- my personal bet is that he hasn't got a single one left to him -- he'd take that. But why only take the part of the letter that mentions Grindelwald? Why leave for Harry (because honestly, who else might ever find it) the part of the letter that describes that happy home and the one-year-old terror on a toy broom. (I love it that Harry is just as destructive as Dudley at that age. I've worked with toddlers!)
And one last memory. Snape, still taking Dumbledore's orders, still not knowing why he's doing it, but going blindly on faith for the sake of the wizard -- not the witch -- that he'd come to love as much as ever he loved Lily. Snape, the alchemist, knowing that Harry must go through water and fire and air and earth to reach where he is going, and setting out to place the sword where only courage can reach it. Snape, who has somehow forgiven Dumbledore for being a manipulative, secretive old bastard, and is going on...
As I venture out into the net I'm finding a number of indignant essays about how JKR handled Snape in the Deathly Hallows, but I have to admit, my first reaction to what was done in the book was positive. And it still is. I don't think he's been turned to cardboard, or done an injustice, and even if JKR herself doesn't understand what she's done, it doesn't matter... since when has literary analysis ever depended entirely on an author's intentions?
You see, I've been convinced that Snape loved Lily since before the Order of the Phoenix came out. (Check out the Snape Dursley story comments, if you don't believe me and look at the dates.) I've also been convinced that Lily was no plaster saint herself, since Half-Blood Prince. So neither of those things surprised me, or made me feel like Snape was lessened.
Let's take the sequence in the Shrieking Shack first, shall we? Snape is doing his level best to get permission to go find Harry. Knowing what we know, I'd guess that he wants to tell Harry something important, rather than drag him back to Voldemort kicking and screaming... When Snape learns that Voldemort has the Elder Wand, he freezes and says "let me go to the boy". (To warn him, perhaps?) You'll notice that Voldemort doesn't take the chance of duelling Snape. He has Nagini get him from behind. (And as Jinx has observed so often, Snape doesn't do well against animals. From the three-headed dog to the hippogriff, being a superb Legilimens doesn't give him an advantage against something that sees him as sitting in an engraved supperdish...)
When Harry steps out into the Shrieking Shack to look at Snape (who he still hates, the narrative tells us very plainly) he doesn't know what to feel. Snape grabs him and manages one last piece of magic, one last order to Harry to "take it", as his memories flow out of him.
These are a dying man's memories, remember, and a man dying with his last most important task -- telling Harry what he needs to know about the final Horcrux -- undone. And when Harry has the vial Hermione conjured as full as it can go, Snape has one last thing to say. "Look at me."
I've seen at least one person interpret that as "Let me pretend I'm looking at Lily's eyes as I die," but I see it as something much simpler. Snape is asking Harry to actually see him -- to look at the memories and see him for who he is. There's no hint, either here or in the earlier scene with McGonagall, that Snape is sneering or being hateful to or about Harry, by the way, which is very noticeable considering how he behaves in earlier books.
Snape dies, Harry takes the memories, and goes back to Hogwarts. There we discover that Lupin and Tonks are dead, and that discovery propels Harry away from the general grief and up to the Headmaster's office. I wonder what McGonagall thought of Snape using the name "Dumbledore" as a password? I know what I think...
The first memory is of the first meeting between Snape and Lily. It's at an age much younger than I thought it would be -- I thought Petunia's "awful boy" was Snape or Pettigrew on one of Lily's school holidays -- but it makes even more sense this way. The little we know tells us that Snape's home life was pretty awful -- and if he lived in his father's home instead of a magical enclave, he was isolated from the start. To find another magical child must have felt like a miracle. And then when he finally tried to talk to her it all went wrong. (It makes me wonder how many times Harry, dressed in Dudley's castoffs, tried making a friend at school only to be rejected or to see Dudley discourage the contact before he gave up trying.)
The conversation under the trees, when Petunia has turned the tables and she's the one spying on Snape. (He did start being an observer early, didn't he? That's the trouble with being an outsider.) Lily's worry about being Muggle-born and Snape's assuring her that it doesn't matter. The breaking of the branch and the instant denial. I can't think of a nine or ten year old who'd have admitted that one -- and Lily's too young to understand that anger and fear are an impetus to mistaken magic.
Platform 9 and 3 quarters, and the Hogwarts express. Petunia's lost hope of being a witch too, and her rejection of Lily. Again, the theme of spying, of looking where one hasn't been invited. Snape saw the letter and wanted to know...
On the train, and the introduction of James Potter. Severus changing as soon as he can into his school robes, hunting the train to find Lily. He wants Lily to go to Slytherin and I think it's because he has no choice but to want the house his mother has told him is the only one he should want. The sparks striking, right from the beginning between James and Severus. It isn't clear whether Sirius or James comes up with "Snivellus" first, but from that moment it's a declaration of war.
The sorting. That's the moment that they begin to part, when Lily goes to Gryffindor and Snape goes to the tender mercies of Lucius Malfoy and a bunch of roommates who aren't going to care how he learned all the hexes he knows. (Did his mother use them as discipline on a young boy? Or did she just aim them at his father?)
We know from the Half-Blood Prince that he was brilliant from the beginning. If he hadn't wanted Slytherin I think he'd have fit into Ravenclaw. But his is a fluid nature, as befits a future master of Potions, and like any fluid he adapted to the shape he was poured into.
I think, perhaps, of all the Marauders, only Remus Lupin ever had any clue about how important it was to Snape to fit in with his roommates -- and I don't think he actually heard the clue phone until they were adults. That he stayed friends with Lily for as long as he did was something of an accomplishment.
At fifteen/sixteen, of course he was in love with her. Throw hormones into the mix and a girl who actually talks to you like you haven't got greasy hair and bad skin and I defy any fifteen year old boy who doesn't fancy boys not to fall in love. And Snape can see that James fancies her too. She's bright, she's brave, she's pretty... I think half the boys in that year probably looked at her more than once. And James, who hasn't managed to get Lily to talk to him like a human being yet, egged on by Sirius, who isn't a Death Eater only because he's not doing anything Regulus is doing thank you, is busy making Severus' life a misery. (Note to file... James saves Snape's life before Snape's worst memory... Even nearly getting a classmate killed didn't stop the Marauders from being a load of prats.)
Even when I was reading "Order of the Phoenix" I didn't see Snape calling Lily a "mudblood" because that's how he thought of her. I thought then, and even moreso now, that he was trying to get her to go away -- either because he didn't want to be humilated in front of her, or more likely because he was trying to keep her out of the line of fire. His vigil outside the Gryffindor common room only makes me sure of the latter. And here is where Lily proves that she is human and fallible. She doesn't accept his apology. With the black and white logic of an adolescent she condemns him to a path away from hers. And in the black and white logic of adolescence, Snape who is unforgiven, decides that he must be unforgiveable. What other mistakes matter, now that he's made this one?
But of course, once he's made the mistake of telling Voldemort what he overheard about the prophecy, he discovers that his mistakes still do matter. That no matter how much he might have consigned Lily off into the dark reaches of "I don't care" because she's gone off and married James the-Quidditch-Hero Potter, when his choices threaten her life he is filled with remorse. He goes to Dumbledore, warns him, chooses to save James and Harry too if it means saving Lily, and then agrees to pay the price of saving them.
Let me clarify something here. I think this represents the time that Snape realizes that he might not be "in-love" with Lily Evans Potter, but that he loves her still. That her safety is worth "anything" -- up to and including his life.
And then she dies. And in his grief, Snape is truly transfigured. This, perhaps, is the moment that Dumbledore recognizes the remorse for what it is (although I see it clearly in the earlier memory.) Snape wants to die -- he is forced, by Dumbledore's relentless logic, to live. But he is relentless too. He recognizes, I think, the quality in Dumbledore that makes him so excellent a secret keeper, and asks for one more secret between them.
Ten years pass before the next memory -- ten years which have wrought a change in the relationship between Snape and Dumbledore. No longer is Dumbledore a towering figure who uses every ounce of leverage he can find against Snape -- now he is almost absentmindedly friendly, pointing out Snape's blind spots almost casually before entrusting him again with a task too delicate for others.
That snippet from the end of the Yule ball. What's that doing in Snape's memories? Why, of all the things that Snape is thinking at the end of his life, does he pass that memory along to Harry? "I sometimes think we Sort too soon." Ah, but where would the first years' sleep until you'd Sorted them? (Some of you may remember the little drabble I wrote months ago. I thought of it, reading this bit.)
And now we see Snape trying to keep Dumbledore alive, their friendship at a place where he can scold the most powerful wizard he knows for doing something foolish. Dumbledore is still commanding -- there is no question who is the mastermind and who is the agent -- but Snape has earned a certain license. I howled with glee at his offer to allow Dumbledore a chance to compose an epitaph.
As the two of them discuss the danger to Snape's soul it is clear that Dumbledore truly is choosing the manner of his death -- that he is asking for a mercy, not a murder, and it is only then that Snape agrees.
And yet he is still human. He is hurt that Dumbledore is confiding in Harry. And he still can't understand what it is about Harry that has made him worth his mother's death. (That, I think, is what has truly made him hate Harry all these years. He needs someone to blame...) Dumbledore keeps talking about Harry like he's something shiny, and all Snape can see is a boy who keeps getting lucky. And it's worse when he finally finds out why he has done all these things for all these years. Has protected the boy only to see him be killed. Has failed Lily's memory as he failed Lily. He still loves her, has never stopped grieving for her. (Why do you think he always wears black?) She died to save Harry's life, and Snape has to let Harry die. But we see tears in his eyes here -- the first sign of a thaw.
Another memory, Snape still taking Dumbledore's orders, still bound by his own word to the service of a man who is dead. If the Fidelius charm changed upon Dumbledore's death, surely any Oath Severus might have given would be broken magically. But he has promised to do his best to protect the students at Hogwarts, and he is sticking to that task. You'll notice here, as I did, that Dumbledore isn't using Harry's safety as any kind of bait. It's Hogwarts that Snape is defending now.
The escape, and Snape's attempt to save Lupin, that goes wrong. Is that why he went to Grimmauld place? Whatever he was seeking, he found something else.
Now, the general consensus seems to be that Snape is weeping over that letter because of Lily. I've got a different interpretation. I think that Snape has been learning -- just as Harry has been learning -- how very much different Albus Dumbledore was than the man they thought he was. Why wouldn't Snape take the whole thing? Yes, the picture of Lily -- my personal bet is that he hasn't got a single one left to him -- he'd take that. But why only take the part of the letter that mentions Grindelwald? Why leave for Harry (because honestly, who else might ever find it) the part of the letter that describes that happy home and the one-year-old terror on a toy broom. (I love it that Harry is just as destructive as Dudley at that age. I've worked with toddlers!)
And one last memory. Snape, still taking Dumbledore's orders, still not knowing why he's doing it, but going blindly on faith for the sake of the wizard -- not the witch -- that he'd come to love as much as ever he loved Lily. Snape, the alchemist, knowing that Harry must go through water and fire and air and earth to reach where he is going, and setting out to place the sword where only courage can reach it. Snape, who has somehow forgiven Dumbledore for being a manipulative, secretive old bastard, and is going on...
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(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-27 08:29 am (UTC)That he loved Lily shone through in a way but I never expected it to be the way it is presented in DH - though it makes perfect sense.
As for Snape's "Look at me." I totally agree with you - he wanted Harry to see him as he was not what Harry thought was true.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-27 05:29 pm (UTC)