more HP6:HBP

[hermionesviolin]

See, the more i think about it, the more i think Snape is on Dumbledore's side.  The lines about "hatred and revulsion" on Snape's face when he killed Dumbledore and later when he and Harry were fighting outside are what really sold me on the whole Evil!Snape thing, but this is UnreliableNarrator!Harry telling us these things, and people have pointed out that those emotions could be Snape's reaction to the situation -- that he hates having to kill Dumbledore (hates the whole bloody situation, with Draco trying to be a Death Eater, etc.) and then later, if he really is on Dumbledore's side, having Harry call him a coward would have stung from anyone but obviously it's worse from Harry.

He made the Unbreakable Vow, so as soon as he showed up and it was clear that Draco wasn't gonna kill Dumbledore (which i think evidences that Draco really isn't evil -- echoes back to the end of Order of the Phoenix when Harry couldn't muster the hatred to Unforgivably Curse with any strength -- which, incidentally, i thought a brilliant touch, that you can't just utter these words but you really have to mean them) he had to kill Dumbledore, and the fact that his hand twitched when he had to swear to that part of the Unbreakable Vow makes me think he really didn't want to have kill Dumbledore.

This of course begs the question of why he showed up in the first place.  People have talked about him rescuing Draco, and i think that makes a lot of sense.  Draco says Voldemort is gonna kill his family if he doesn't do this, and we have no reason to believe that's not true.  Snape clearly favors members of his own house over students of other houses, and seems to favor Draco particularly, so i can totally see him having a particular interest in Draco's well-being.  If Draco really had killed Voldemort, i wonder if Snape would have killed him (Draco) on the spot.

A huge amount of people are convinced that Snape's gonna redeem himself in Book 7 and call this a cop-out on JKR's part, but honestly i think evil!Snape has been one of her biggest failings as a writer because it seems so over-the-top (it took until Snape's Worst Memory midway Book 5 for me to really understand/believe why he was being so superlatively vile to Harry).  We all know i'm a big fan of moral grey (plus frustrated by Harry -- and others -- acting upon personal feelings and not weighing this against other factors and thus making wrong decisions) and the black/white-ness of the world for most of the books was a big frustration rereading the series last week, so of course that's also a factor.  I come down on the side of Snape-proving-himself-to-not-be-on-Voldemort's-side, but i think there's enough textual evidence for both sides that JKR could end up with him on either side in Book 7 and have it be believable.

'S funny, i keep saying, "I've gone from really liking the Harry Potter books and not being interested in the fanfic, to really liking the fanfic and not being interested in the books," and yet i keep engaging with this evil?Snape question.  I'm still undecided as to whether it's stuck in my head because it's an engaging question or because everyone's still discussing it and i can never resist chiming in.


Snape being the Half-Blood Prince has been stuck in my head because i recently read Andrea13's Sorting Hat series and i keep thinking, "Huh, so Tom Riddle wasn't the only non-pureblood ever to get sorted into Slytherin," so this got me thinking about why he would have gotten Sorted into Slytherin since Slytherin's dominant characteristic is ambition and when i think "Snape" i don't scream "ambition," but then i thought of how he's always after the DADA job, and i remembered how it's cursed, and i thought, "That must be why Dumbledore never gives Snape the job; he doesn't want to lose Snape" since Snape is a proven competent teacher, plus Dumbledore trusts him so he knows he's got a potential double-agent if/when Voldemort ever returns, plus he knows Slytherin's Head of House isn't a Death Eater and thus is potentially tempering Slytherin students from growing up to be Death Eaters.  This then made me wonder if Dumbledore ever told Snape that he didn't give him the DADA job because it seemed cursed and he didn't want to lose him.  The whole not-telling-people-things drives me crazy like whoa, so of course i hope he did tell him, but i could see Snape saying it's coincidence not causality and being certain that he would be fine and thus being bitter.


My dad (who hasn't yet read HBP) sent me a link to this article by a writer he trusts (having not yet read HBP, he also hasn't read the article).  It says a lot of things i've already said, and brings up further points that make a lot of sense.  I don't buy all of them -- some are major, some are incidental -- but it's a very sense-making article.


I'm not sure Ginny's gonna let Harry break up with her.  Ron and Hermione insist on going with Harry, and i suspect Ginny will too.  And i could totally see Harry and Ginny's interactions in Book 7 being written such that i buy the pairing, since i was unexpectedly sold on it when it happened at the end of Book 6.  Except that aside from that unexpectedness, Book 6 gave me every reason to not trust JKR at all when it comes to writing romantic pairings, so i see believable Harry/Ginny far more as a fanfic possibility than a canon possibility, except that i'm likely to only read it in canon since in fanfic i'm more interested in pairing Ginny with Hermione or maybe even Luna and just ignoring Harry.

Comments

[ambrent.livejournal.com]

I don't think that Snape's really working for Voldemort either. He made an Unbreakable Vow (which he clearly had to do in order to keep his cover) and Dumbledore undoubtedly knew about that -- and also about the plan to have Draco kill him. In any case. His "pleading" is not away from death (i.e., Sorceror's Stone, where he regard's death as 'the next great adventure') but to prevent Draco from having blood on his hands.

Nor are his pleas to Snape for mercy. In order for Snape to keep his vow, and thus remain undercover (and alive) he must perform the task that he's vowed to complete. Dumbledore's last moments before Snape kills him are spent staring at Snape; Snape is glaring at him with "revulsion and hatred in his face."

Dumbledore, of course, was the only person to give Snape a chance at all; he had steadfast reasons to trust Snape (which I don't believe had anything to do at all with James and Lily Potter) and I believe that those reasons were valid. Additionally, Snape and Dumbledore were both accomplished Legilimens and I find it difficult to believe that the two of them were not communicating in those moments in which Dumbledore was "pleading" and Snape was glaring at him disgustedly. Something was going on. I think that Dumbledore was insisting that Snape kill him; Dumbledore was already weakened and without his wand. There was really no other option.

Of course, there is the matter of an earlier Dumbledore quote which may prove this entirely wrong. He, in one of his one-on-one sessions with Harry, says something to the tune of "I, being rather cleverer than most men, am liable to make mistakes with huger results." Something like that. This may have been a hint that he was wrong about trusting Snape. But who knows.

That's pretty much verbatim my comment to sharya's entry regarding this. She also makes a very good argument about Dumbledore potentially being a phoenix.

[hermionesviolin.livejournal.com]

I keep forgetting about the whole Legilimens thing, though you're not the only person who's mentioned it. Makes total sense to me.

Assorted people have pointed out that Dumbledore said the poison wouldn't kill him "immediately," suggesting that he's in pain and begging Snape to kill him, but i'd forgotten about that moment in the first book, and you make a very good point. I suspect then it's the "Please, even though you don't want to do this, you have to" reading of the plea that is accurate.

"being – forgive me – rather cleverer than most men, my mistakes tend to be correspondingly huger" (187, UK) is one of my favorite lines, and while i don't think Dumbledore was lying, i suspect it's JKR's biggest red herring in the whole "make people think Snape is evil, then redeem him in Book 7."

Someone mentioned phoenix!Dumbledore in passing, and i don't remember who. My bet is portrait!Dumbledore, with possibly a cameo from returned!Fawkes (who will probably bring OriginalCharacter!help of some sort with). Some people having been making Gandalf the White noises, saying resurrected!Dumbledore would be too much.

[ambrent.livejournal.com]

Yes, Portrait!Dumbledore has been mentioned to me as well. And I'm not really sure how I feel about the possibility of Dumbledore resurrected, either -- then again, regardless of my current feelings toward the Jossverse, I am from the Whedon school of things and always expect/crave the worst.

Re: Gandalf comparisons, I dislike comparing the series to Lord of the Rings, though I realize that it's impossible to do any serious analysis without bringing Tolkien into it. Which is why I generally avoid HP analysis.

I'm not sure if you've seen the awesome theory of Ron-as-Dumbledore?

[hermionesviolin.livejournal.com]

Since i'm indifferent to LotR, i tend not to even think the comparisons (and for the most part i don't think comparisons between the two make sense, since the books are trying to do largely different things), but since she did just kill off the wise old wizard mentor/leader, i can totally understand people thinking of Gandalf. Given the last 6 books, i don't think resurrection is a part of JKR's world, like maybe there are Dark Magic possibilities, but nothing that would be used to bring Dumbledore back, especially since she already has an easy option with the whole portrait device.

I was linked to the Ron-as-Dumbledore theory ages back, though i recall little of it and didn't bookmark it.

[ambrent.livejournal.com]

I don't think that killing Dumbledore was as much killing off the wise old wizard mentor/leader as much as it was killing the one person that Harry could unfailingly count on. With his parents dead, with Sirius dead, with Dumbledore dead, Harry is (for the first time since he found out that he was a wizard) entirely alone. True, he has the Weasleys -- who have seven of their own children to worry about and Ron and Hermione -- but Dumbledore was the last parental figure that he had to call his own.

Ron and Hermione are his own age and cannot be expected to take care of Harry in crisis. Not that James, Lilly, Sirius and Dumbledore haven't done their parts ten-fold, of course, but Harry (at sixteen) is still too young to have to deal with that. Clearly obvious, and probably the main reason why Voldemort wanted Dumbledore dead.

Agreed with resurrection and the improbability of it, though sharya brings up that Dumbledore's return is necessary in order to prove Snape innocent. I'm not sure how the portrait thing works, so I don't know whether that would be the prime solution. That's why the phoenix thing makes sense to me, because I've always also thought that it is highly improbably for Dumbledore not to have an animagus of his very own.

Someone else made the point that Harry is going to need to forgive Snape and Voldemort in order to defeat Voldemort. This point was made in response to my claims that Harry and Voldemort both needed to die in order for the series to end satisfactorily.

I think I just want Harry to die, though.

Weasley is our king. (http://www.knight2king.net/Knight2King/weasleyisourking.html)

[hermionesviolin.livejournal.com]

Yeah, i think JKR's intention in killing off Dumbledore was to push Harry irrevocably into adulthood, but in reading the series even i've made the Dumbledore-Gandalf connection, so for people who actually frequently think (in terms) of LotR i think it makes sense that when Dumbledore gets killed off, people think of Gandalf's death.

I don't know portraits work either, though since portrait!Dumbledore was mentioned at the end of Book 6, i imagine we'll be interacting with it and probably learning some about how portraits work in Book 7. I imagine it will have Dumbledore's personality and his full knowledge up to some point before his actual death. I'm rooting for Harry forgiving Snape, slash Snape proving his redemption, without Dumbledore. I'm not sure how i feel about Harry actually forgiving Voldemort, though love will definitely play a major role in the final showdown between the two. (So having flashes of Meg's showdown with IT in A Wrinkle in Time.) Though what i'm really hoping for is more love and forgiveness along the way -- i.e., recognizing the inherent value of people you're not fond of, understanding mixed motivations and grey areas, working with people you don't like, being honest, etc.

I could see Dumbledore as an animagus, but one has to be alive to transform -- though silent spells were a big theme in this book, so perhaps Snape cast some sort of spell before he uttered the killing curse.

I feel (though strangely less so after having read this most recent book) like Harry should die in the final showdown but don't at all think JKR will do it.

And thank you for the link.