Try to contain your shock

[bluestocking79]

But I actually wrote something and posted it this morning. For the first time in months, I feel capable of stringing two sentences of fiction together, which is frankly a relief. I think Azkatraz has done me a tremendous amount of good in terms of jump-starting my creativity and reinvigorating me. There was just such enthusiasm, so many

Comments

[bluestocking79]

I couldn't agree with you more. I remember vividly telling other fans at the time that I actually found Snape's death, horrible as it was, to be easier to read than Snape's flight from Hogwarts. The Sacking of Severus Snape chapter was a very painful thing to make myself read, because the injustice of it rankles. From their perspective, the reactions of McGonagall and the others are rational and justified (to their eyes, he is a murderer and traitor), and yet the reader knows (or suspects) how little Snape deserves this treatment. Being driven from a place that was once his sanctuary, hearing himself reviled and condemned by his former colleagues and teachers... at that point, my sympathy for him was acute. The year he spent in that position must have been one of the loneliest and most painful of his life, with only the portraits for companionship.

That parting is all the harder to swallow because, as you point out, he seems to have worked well with McGonagall in the past. Their rapport suggests a degree of friendliness, and their rivalry seems generally good-natured, even fond--a tradition between two competitive friends. And they frequently worked in tandem, as when ganging up on Lockhart (and how telling, in that scene, how all the faculty follow Snape's lead here), or when flanking Dumbledore as they come to rescue Harry from Crouch/Moody in GoF.

But I think one of my favorite Snape and Minerva moments is in OotP, when Snape shifts his attention from Harry in order to stop and wish Minerva well, as she returns from St. Mungo's. It always struck me as very genuine.

But what I really wish I could have read in canon is what Hermione, Ron, and McGonagall said when they learned what Snape had been doing.

Again, I agree. I didn't need to see Snape telling Voldemort off, but I would have at least felt a degree of emotional closure to see Minerva, Hermione, Ron, Flitwick (and so on), react to the truth of what Snape did and try to reconcile that with their own actions.

[drinkingcocoa]

I like to think McGonagall, Flitwick et al. wouldn't have been too hard on themselves in the end. They were so surprised at the end of book 6. And maybe little things will have started to make sense to them again, such as Snape only using defensive spells against them in that painful chapter. I forgot about that moment in OotP! Yes, it's for real. Snape has utterly absurd standards for basic intellectual acceptability -- Hermione occasionally nearly fulfills them -- but McGonagall very much does.

[bluestocking79]

I agree that they shouldn't be too hard on themselves. The situation is cruel, sure, but they were meant to react exactly as they did. Dumbledore intended for Snape's "defection" to be convincing, and so it was. I'm sure they each had moments of cognitive dissonance, where they might have wondered at Snape's choices--detention with Hagrid? Really?--that will now resolve themselves.

And damn it, now I'm getting a very tenacious story idea about how they each cope with Snape's death.

Snape has utterly absurd standards for basic intellectual acceptability -- Hermione occasionally nearly fulfills them -- but McGonagall very much does.

Absolutely. I think it's clear that McGonagall always has Snape's respect, which is not an honor that he accords lightly. I have faith that, given time and some experience to gain in wisdom, Hermione would fully meet his standards, too. It's just that at the moment we see her in the books, she is very young, and in some ways deeply naive. She hasn't learned to trust her instincts and creativity yet, and she still has difficulty appreciating her own limits--that she doesn't know everything and never will, that she's fallible, that she can sometimes be wrong even when she feels she's right, because other people have different perspectives. The experience of DH would have changed that, I suspect. I imagine a post-DH Hermione as having added a healthy pragmatism to her idealist streak.

[drinkingcocoa]

I think Hermione meets Snape's standards by the start of DH, when she's packed her beaded bag and Summoned the Dark books and Obliterated her parents. The scene of her getting everyone out of Lovegood's house while providing for everyone is just amazing and not even Snape would have found fault with any of it. I think some of Snape criticizing Hermione in the earlier years is him trying to put some distance between them, because she can see through his defenses where the others can't and he mustn't allow that, and because she so very nearly is the kind of student he wants. Lucky for him that Draco is actually bright.

Now I'm thinking of Snape's portrait getting apologies from Headmistress McGonagall. I don't write fic, but I can see how the plot bunnies multiply.