Deathly Hallows, Chapter 33: The Prince's Tale, Part 3
Or, Severus Snape and the Only Pure Thing
Matthew 10:16: “Behold, I am sending you as lambs among wolves; be therefore crafty as snakes and innocent as doves.”
Because Snape’s life sucks so much, the theme song for this installment is another work by Nine Inch Nails, written by Trent Reznor. It’s called “Ruiner,” and it makes a superb theme song for Dumbledore. The end of it also serendipitously foreshadows my conclusion to this installment.
Don’t even try to listen to this song without looking at the lyrics. It’s mixed in such a way that it’s usually impossible to tell what’s being sung without knowing what the words are.
You had all of them on your side, didn’t you? Didn’t you?
You believed in all your lies, didn’t you? Didn’t you?
The ruiner’s got a lot to prove, he’s got nothing to lose, and now he made you believe.
The ruiner’s your only friend, well, he’s the living end to the cattle he deceives.
The raping of the innocent, you know the ruiner ruins everything he sees.
Now the only pure thing left in my fucking world is wearing your disease!
How’d you get so big?
How’d you get so strong?
How’d it get so hard?
How’d it get so long?
You had to give them all a sign, didn’t you? (Didn’t you?) Didn’t you?
You had to covet what was mine, didn’t you? (Didn’t you?) Didn’t you?
The ruiner’s a collector, he’s an infector, serving his shit to his flies.
Maybe there will come a day when those that you keep blind will suddenly realize.
Maybe it’s a part of me you took it to a place I hoped it would never go.
And maybe that fucked me up much more than you’ll ever know.
How’d you get so big?
How’d you get so strong?
How’d it get so hard?
How’d it get so long?
And what you gave to me:
My perfect ring of scars.
You know I can see what you really are.
You didn’t hurt me, nothing can hurt me.
You didn’t hurt me, nothing can stop me now.
(Repeat four times)
You didn’t hurt me, nothing can hurt me.
You didn’t hurt me, nothing can stop
This installment contains one particular sentence I imagine will make the Snape-haters’ heads explode. See if you can figure out which one it is. *cackles fiendishly*
Scummywhore browbeats Snape into living for Harry, in part by harping on the baby’s having green eyes like Lily’s. So what? Just because Harry’s eyes are the same color as Lily’s doesn’t make Lily any less dead. I really don’t get this sick obsession with Lily’s eyes. Lots of people have green eyes. If they were brown, gray, or blue, would that make a difference? Come to think of it, the only way this could be creepier is if she’d had “twinkling blue eyes” like Scummywhore’s. Then there’d be a kind of semi-incestuous angle to this nonsense, too. *shudder*
I actually don’t blame Snape for not wanting his motivation for protecting Harry to be publicly advertised, considering the reason for it: “I’m such a loser, I’ve thrown my life away and allowed myself to be eternally enslaved by a ruthless old scumbag just because of the memory of a dead girl who dumped me when we were teenagers.” I mean, how pathetic is that? The fact this makes no sense and therefore cannot be what’s really going on is another ugly truth that’s never acknowledged.
We get several more conversations in which Scummywhore demeans Severus and jerks him around. In the first, Snape tries to tell Dumbledore what a brat Harry is and gets virtually ignored for his trouble. Dumbledore doesn’t even bother to look up from his magazine when he tells Severus to (metaphorically) jump in the Black Lake. In the second conversation is the notorious “sort too soon” remark.
Next we see Dumbassbore after he’s poisoned himself with the cursed ring. He gives Severus what may be the only pure compliment the younger man gets in all of these scenes: “I am fortunate, extremely fortunate, that I have you, Severus.” On the other hand, it may be a setup because later in this scene, Dumbledore bullies Snape into agreeing to kill him.
The bullying continues in the next scene, when the two are walking on the grounds together. Dumbledore is still refusing to confide in Snape while also still pressuring him into killing Dumbledore. The old man makes another remark that proves Rowling is a fan of A Christmas Story when he says that for Voldemort, close contact with Harry’s soul is “Like a tongue on frozen steel, like flesh in flame--” That is clearly a reference to the most famous scene in that movie, when Schwartz is “triple dog dared” into touching his tongue to a frozen flagpole, and it sticks. In 2012 I saw a Christmas T-shirt with a close-up of that scene on it, and this year I saw a set of collector glasses, one of which also portrayed that scene.
Dumbledore finally admits he’s not telling Severus everything, and tells the younger man to come to his office for the full dirt on his plans. This is when Severus finds out Harry is to die.
I summarized these scenes because I want to extract from them specific bits of dialogue that show a very ugly pattern in Dumbledore’s communication style. When I quote the conversations, I will use only the lines relevant to my point, since this installment is long enough already.
What is being illustrated in the quotations below is a kind of verbally and emotionally abusive communication that is usually called double bind or impossible bind, but my favorite term for it is another phrase: crazy-making, because at one time there was a theory that such twisted family communication patterns caused schizophrenia. While that is no longer believed, dealing with someone who talks like this can certainly make the listener feel crazy--not to mention homicidal at being jerked around so mercilessly.
Below are two definitions of the term double bind.
Double Bind
From Changing Minds.org
A double bind is a situation where a person has a choice (typically between two options), but whichever way they choose, they lose out, often with the same result.
Usually in the double bind there is no alternative, as the person is forced to choose and does not have the luxury of not choosing (this would be a third choice that could well be preferable).
From The Free Dictionary.com
A situation in which option A and its alternative, option B, both have considerable disadvantages
Psychiatry: An interpersonal dilemma in which a person is presented with mutually contradictory messages by another person, usually one who is respected by, or who has authority over, the person receiving the ‘mixed message.’
For those interested in a longer dissection of Double Bind Communication, there is this pdf.
Conversation 1: “We sort too soon.”
Snape: Karkaroff’s Mark is becoming darker too...[He] intends to flee if the Mark burns.
Dumbledore: And are you tempted to join him?
Snape: No. I am not such a coward.
Dumbledore: No. You are a braver man by far than Igor Karkaroff. You know, I sometimes think we Sort too soon....
He walked away, leaving Snape looking stricken.
In Conversation 1 (C1), Scummywhore baits Snape by implying he may be a coward. When Snape gives the only appropriate response, Scummy first compliments the younger man’s courage. Then he snatches the compliment away by implying the only reason Snape has guts is because he’s not a true representative of House Slytherin; he really belongs in (presumably) Slytherin’s rival house, Gryffindor, the house of the people who hate Slytherins and who have tortured and terrorized him since he was 11. So Snape has a choice: accept the compliment and admit his entire life has been a lie, or refuse it and be a cowardly snake. Either way he loses.
This also illustrates what I call bait and switch communication. “Bait and switch” is a sales technique that used to be prevalent but is now illegal in all 50 of the United States. In it, a product would be advertised at a ridiculously cheap price. When customers came into the store to buy the product, they’d be told, “Oh, I’m so sorry, we just sold the last one. But we have this similar item that costs just a little more.” In truth, the store either never had the “sale” item at all, or intentionally had far too few of them to satisfy demand. The real purpose of the ad was to “bait” customers into entering the store, then “switch” them to a more expensive product with a bigger profit margin.
In the same way, Scummywhore in C1 is “baiting” Snape by giving him a compliment, then “switching” him by saying the compliment wasn’t real. No wonder poor Snape looks stricken. He finally gets a compliment from this cruel, hateful man who loves to torment him, but immediately finds out the “compliment” was really an insult in disguise.
Conversation 2: “I want to you kill me.”
Snape: If you don’t mind dying, why not let Draco do it?
Dumbledore: That boy’s soul is not yet so damaged. I would not have it ripped apart on my account.
Snape: And my soul, Dumbledore? Mine?
Dumbledore: You alone know whether it will harm your soul to help an old man avoid pain and humiliation. I ask this one great favor of you, Severus, because death is coming for me...I confess I should prefer a quick, painless exit to the protracted and messy affair it will be, if, for instance, Greyback is involved...Or dear Bellatrix, who likes to play with her food before she eats it.
In Conversation 2, Scummywhore says he doesn’t want Draco to damage his soul by committing murder because he’s just a kid. The implication is that if one commits premeditated murder, the murderer’s soul is damaged. Period. When Snape confronts Scummy, in effect saying, “So my soul doesn’t matter to you,” Scummy implicitly contradicts what he’s just said. No, killing somebody doesn’t inevitably damage one’s soul. It’s really up to the killer to decide for himself whether his soul is damaged (which assertion contradicts everything we’ve learned about Voldemort and his Horcruces)--and it would be incredibly selfish of Snape to put an insignificant thing like the state of his immortal soul ahead of Dumbledore’s temporary pain and humiliation. As if that weren’t bad enough, Scummy then lays a guilt trip on Snape by calling this emotional blackmail a “great favor.” This phrasing implies Snape is really the one in control, and if he agrees to kill his leader, it’s a completely free choice on his part, made out of the goodness of his heart--as opposed to the inexcusable selfishness he’d be displaying by refusing.
It has been said that Snape’s killing of Dumbledore was “assisted suicide,” but that’s not true. As I wrote in my article, “Chaos a Hundred Times,”
Make no mistake: Dumbledore’s death was not “assisted suicide.” At least as that term is typically used, “assisted suicide” refers exclusively to giving a quick and painless death to someone who is already dying but incapable of killing him/herself. Until he’d swallowed the cave poison, the Headmaster was able to live normally and continue his manipulations leadership duties with both Hogwarts and the Order of the Phoenix. After returning from the cave, he could possibly have been given an antidote and kept alive indefinitely in decent health. Even collapsed on the Astronomy Tower, there is no reason he could not have swallowed poison on his own that Severus smuggled to him under the guise of capturing him, with Snape then Vanishing the vial before it was discovered. (Since the old man was apparently dying, such a “convenient” death wouldn’t have looked too suspicious, and we know Snape was an expert at concealing the truth from both Voldemort and his fellow Death Eaters.) If Dumbledore wanted an easy death, he could have given it to himself at any time with little or no help from anyone else. Coercing Snape into murdering him was his last con job, one final chance to exploit and degrade the man he’d been psychologically torturing, either personally or by proxy, since Severus first stepped off the Hogwarts Express as a poorly dressed little boy.
People wanting to know why Snape stayed at Hogwarts, despite clearly being miserable, don’t need to insult Snape by calling him an immature wimp, or make up ridiculous stories about his eternal devotion to a dead girl. They have only to study these conversations, which are backed up by the other Snape/Dumbledore interactions in this and other books. Every time the two men interact, the older man is demeaning the younger one. Whether he’s blowing off Snape’s concerns without even looking at him (earlier in this chapter), laughing at his extreme distress (the end of PoA), or pushing Snape to degrade himself in public (the Christmas cracker scene in PoA), Dumbledore invariably treats Snape as untrustworthy, worthless, and completely disposable. Snape is an object of ridicule, his deepest feelings, wishes, beliefs, and opinions unworthy of notice except as fodder for jokes and opportunities for further humiliation.
Snape came from a family that was at best neglectful and at worst abusive. Then he attended a school where he was constantly bullied, and no one did anything to stop it. His desperation to belong somewhere drove him to join a cult, only to find out it was run by a genocidal maniac. The man he ran to for help turned out to be just as cruel and dangerous a cult leader as the maniac, if more subtle. This lifetime of malignant neglect and relentless degradation would have forced Snape into a state of learned helplessness and kept him there indefinitely.
Learned helplessness is a psychological condition in which someone tries repeatedly to accomplish a goal or control their life, but nothing ever works, so eventually they give up. This is what we see in Snape’s interactions with Dumbledore: No matter what Snape says or does, he is ridiculed, ignored, browbeaten, or otherwise intimidated into silence and compliance. Of course he eventually gave up even trying to escape.
Conversation 3: “I give Harry information I can’t give you.” “You promised to kill me.”
Dumbledore: I have things to discuss with [Harry], information I must give him before it is too late.
Snape: You trust him...you do not trust me.
Dumbledore: It is not a question of trust...It is essential that I give the boy enough information for him to do what he needs to do.
Snape: And why may I not have the same information?
Dumbledore: I prefer not to put all my secrets in one basket, particularly not a basket that spends so much time dangling on the arm of Lord Voldemort.
Snape: Which I do on your orders!
Dumbledore: And you do it extremely well. Do not think that I underestimate the constant danger in which you place yourself, Severus. To give Voldemort what appears to be valuable information while withholding the essentials is a job I would entrust to nobody but you.
Snape: Yet you confide much more in a boy who is incapable of Occlumency, whose magic is mediocre, and who has a direct connection into the Dark Lord’s mind!...
Dumbledore: After you have killed me, Severus--
Snape: You refuse to tell me everything, yet you expect that small service of me! You take a great deal for granted, Dumbledore! Perhaps I have changed my mind!
Dumbledore: You gave me your word, Severus. And while we are talking about services you owe me....
Snape looked angry, mutinous. Dumbledore sighed.
Dumbledore: Come to my office tonight...and you shall not complain that I have no confidence in you....
In this conversation, Snape accuses Dumbledore of not trusting him. Scummy implies that’s not the case by saying he’s just trying to give Harry necessary information. He contradicts himself in the next breath by admitting he doesn’t trust anybody who spends so much time around Voldemort. This implies Snape wants to be around the Dull Lord and loves telling Voldy everything he knows, a deeply offensive and insulting suggestion. When Snape defends himself by pointing out this close association is only at Dumbassbore’s behest, Dumby tries to distract and disarm Snape with compliments.
To Snape’s great credit, he doesn’t allow himself to be distracted and comes back to his main point: that his boss not only doesn’t trust him, he does trust an inept kid with “a direct connection into the Dark Lord’s mind.” Realizing his distraction techniques aren’t going to work, Dumby then tries to change the subject by bringing up his “suicide by Snape,” even referring to it as “services you owe me.” That’s right Severus: You suck so much, you are so worthless, that you actually owe it to me to permanently damage your immortal soul by committing a murder I browbeat you into carrying out. Not only that: Scummy’s words here directly contradict his remarks in C2, when he said of his murder, “I ask this one great favor of you.” This is textbook psychopath behavior: If politely persuading your “mark” doesn’t work, bully him. The only thing that matters is that you get what you want.
Just when I think this book can’t get any more disgusting--and Scummywhore can’t get any more evil--Rowling proves me wrong.
Snape shows remarkable stubbornness by sticking to his guns wand, and even showing signs of rebellion, saying he’s tired of getting jerked around and maybe he’ll abandon their murder pact. Realizing he’s about to lose control over his slave, Scummy falls back on his old reliable emotional blackmail techniques: He first appeals to Snape’s integrity (conveniently ignoring that, since Scummy has none himself, that puts Snape at a severe disadvantage), then lays a guilt trip on Snape. When that still doesn’t work, a miracle occurs: Dumbledore gives in to Snape!
Remember that. The true significance of it will be revealed at the end of this installment.
Conversation 4: “Harry has to die.”
Dumbledore: Harry must not know, not until the last moment...otherwise how could he have the strength to do what must be done?
Snape: But what must he do?
Dumbledore: That is between Harry and me...If there comes a time when Lord Voldemort...keeps [Nagini] safe beside him...I think it will be safe to tell Harry.
Snape: Tell him what?
Dumbledore: [That a piece of Voldemort’s soul is in Harry, and as long as that is so, Voldemort cannot die.]
Snape: So the boy...the boy must die?
Dumbledore: [Yes.]
Snape: I thought...all these years...that we were protecting him for her. For Lily.
Dumbledore: We have protected him because it has been essential to teach him, to raise him, to let him try his strength....
Snape: [Snape looks horrified.] You have kept him alive so that he can die at the right moment?
Dumbledore: Don’t be shocked, Severus. How many men and women have you watched die?
Snape: Lately, only those whom I could not save. You have used me.
Dumbledore: Meaning?
Snape: I have spied for you and lied for you, put myself in mortal danger for you. Everything was supposed to be to keep Lily Potter’s son safe. Now you tell me you have been raising him like a pig for slaughter--
Dumbledore: But this is touching, Severus. Have you grown to care for the boy, after all?
Snape: [Shouting] For him? Expecto Patronum! [The doe Patronus bursts forth and leaps from the room.]
Dumbledore: After all this time?
Snape: Always.
In this conversation, Dumbassbore contradicts what he said at the end of the previous encounter by refusing to confide in Snape again. Then he turns the conversation by talking about the importance of killing Nagini. This information is bizarre enough that he succeeds in distracting the younger man. He expects Snape to tell Harry the ugly truth: that Harry must die himself to finally kill Voldemort. He also expects Harry both to listen to Snape and to act on Snape’s instructions despite the fact Dumbledore himself has fostered unrelieved enmity between the two for almost seven years! (That is, it will be almost seven years by the time Harry has his final confrontation with Voldemort.) Then there’s the little matter of Snape killing Dumbledore, which will certainly not endear him to Harry. Could this plot be any more stupid?
Then Mr. Courageous (alleged) Gryffindor wimps out by refusing to tell Snape directly that Harry has to die. He explains the whole Harrycrux phenomenon and lets Snape figure it out for himself. When Snape is understandably appalled, Dumbassbore tries to distract Snape again by ridiculing his feelings: “Hey, you have no right to look like that because you’ve sat on your can and watched people die plenty of times. It should be no big deal to you at this point.” Never mind that there’s a moral difference the size of the Mariana Trench between allowing people to die whom you cannot save, and deliberately keeping someone alive just so they can be killed at the right time.
Maybe it’s because Dumbledore’s deteriorating health is undermining his ability to intimidate. Maybe it’s because Snape’s spying is making him feel more independent. For whatever reason, this Snape is breaking through to stage 4 in his spiritual development, and he’s not allowing himself to be conned by the old geezer any more. He refuses to be distracted or ridiculed into silence. He comes right out and accuses his boss of being a liar, user, traitor, and backstabber--not just to him, but also to Harry.
Dumbassbore tries to ridicule Snape into silence again, but it doesn’t work this time. The doe Patronus is commonly assumed to be a reference to Lily, but is it? Remember what I quoted about the white hind in chapter 19?
Poised in moon- or sunlight, Eilid invites us to begin an exploration of the Otherworld, of the spiritual dimension of life.
Drawn reversed, this card may be warning you to be less self-effacing. Rather than adapting yourself, like a chameleon, to the perceived demands and expectations of those around you, you may need to be more assertive.
Rather than a declaration of his continuing devotion to Lily, the doe can be interpreted as Severus’s declaration of independence. The autonomy forced on him by his years of living as a spy has pushed him to develop spiritually past the second and third stages he’s been stuck in for decades. Another factor would be his horror at being expected to commit murder. He clearly is strongly opposed to performing that “small service”; the revulsion he would feel towards Dumbledore for pressuring him to do something he finds morally repugnant would help to create a psychological separation between the two, whether Dumby is aware of it or not. Mix in Snape’s justifiable bitterness and resentment caused by decades of Dumby’s abuse, neglect, exploitation, humiliation, and deception, and these emotions combine to form a powerful spiritual acid that begins to eat away at Snape’s emotional dependence on and submission to Dumbledore’s authority.
Of course, Snape is not going to admit to any of this. He can’t afford to let Dumbledore know he’s growing up. Particularly after this last betrayal, he knows better than anyone the old man cannot be trusted, and must not be confided in. So he performs a little distraction of his own by implying, “Sure it’s still all about Lily. What else would it be about?” *blinks innocently while Occluding* And please notice he refers to “Lily Potter.” Snape haters never give him credit for that. More important, it means he has finally accepted she is lost to him. She married another man in life, and now she is dead.
So with Lily out of the way, why does Snape continue to protect Harry? It’s because he truly has, as Harry allegedly does, “a saving people thing.” Mary_j_59 has stated she believes Severus is a saint. She’s never explained what she means by that, and I’m not Catholic, so I can’t offer a theological opinion. But in his willingness to protect all the students of Hogwarts, at the cost of his well-being, and even his own life, Severus Snape is the living embodiment of God’s grace. My computer’s dictionary defines grace like this: “(in Christian belief) the free and unmerited favor of God, as manifested in the salvation of sinners and the bestowal of blessings.” In just this way, Snape’s mercy and protectiveness fall on the worthy and unworthy students alike. Whether the child in need is a rude, lazy slacker like Harry and Ron, a privileged DE wannabe like Draco, or some nameless nobody caught in the undertow of Dumbledore or Voldemort’s ambitions, Severus Snape will “do all in his power” to protect that child.
Because nobody knows better than he what happens to children who are not protected.
This scene may also mark the last appearance of Snape’s doe Patronus. In the future, as he comes more into his own, I’d expect his Patronus to take the form of a ram-headed serpent. This mythical creature is both Slytherin and masculine, and represents virility, power, healing, regeneration, and the Underworld, which Snape has had to spiritually traverse (with Eilid as his guide?) to become an independent adult. It is a Patronus that refers to Severus himself, his needs, feelings, desires, personality, and life, rather than commemorating both a relationship and a girl that are equally dead.
One further point: Snape haters like to make a big deal of his referring to Harry as “a pig for slaughter,” rather than a lamb, as if equating Harry with one cloven-hoofed barnyard animal rather than another is somehow indicative of inexcusable prejudice on his part. They completely ignore this ugly little fact: Dumbledore has just admitted that he planned all along for Harry to die! So Snape’s a terrible person for equating Harry with a pig, but Dumbledore’s an okay guy just doing his job by setting up for death a dumb, trusting kid who loves him. The only way someone could seriously believe that makes sense is if s/he had hir mouth surgically grafted onto JKR’s ass.
This also proves people who describe Dumbledore as the God of the Potterverse are right. At least, they are if they’re referring to George Carlin’s version of God: “Religion easily has the greatest bullshit story ever told. Think about it, religion has actually convinced people that there's an INVISIBLE MAN...LIVING IN THE SKY...who watches every thing you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a list of ten special things that he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry for ever and ever 'til the end of time...but he loves you.”
In just this way, Albus Dumbledore condemns to eternal (lifetime) torment anyone who submits to his rule, while insisting he really, truly cares about them and is only hurting them because either “the greater good” or their own good demands it. What was it Aberforth said in chapter 28 about his brother? Oh, yes, this: “Funny thing, how many of the people my brother cared about very much ended up in a worse state than if he’d let ‘em well alone.”
There are only a few scenes after C4. We see the end of Lily’s letter to Sirius; it expresses her disbelief that Albus could ever have been friends with Gellert. I felt sad when I read that. It proves she was just a naive kid who was taken in by Dumbledore, too. Like mother, like son.
The last scene affirms my belief Severus has finally begun to grow up and free himself from Dumbassbore’s oppression. After nine months of running the school while running interference between the DE staffers and the students, as well as running the gauntlet of double agenting, Severus Snape is a different man. Although enormously stressful, triumphing over these experiences has given him a tremendous sense of power, accomplishment, and independence. Freed from Dumby’s constant oppression and in a position of authority himself, he has finally learned what it feels like to be strong, confident, and in control.
The portrait of Phineas Black has just told Snape where Harry is located on his camping trip. Black calls Hermione a “mudblood,” and Severus corrects him. When Snape goes to fetch Gryffindor’s sword, Dumbledore continues to try to control him from beyond the grave via his portrait. But Snape isn’t having any of that.
“Now, Severus, the sword! Do not forget that it must be taken under conditions of need and valor--and he must not know that you give it! If Voldemort should read Harry’s mind and see you acting for him--”
“I know,” said Snape curtly...”And you aren’t going to tell me why it’s so important to give Potter the sword?”....
“No, I don’t think so...He will know what to do with it. And Severus, be very careful, they may not take kindly to your appearance after George Weasley’s mishap--”...
“Don’t worry, Dumbledore,” he said coolly. “I have a plan.” And Snape left the room.
Look at that! Twice in succession, Snape cuts off Dumbledore’s speechifying. His tone is no longer angry or resentful, as it was in the previous scenes, but “curt” and “cool.” This is of enormous importance: People feel anger and resentment towards those who have power over them, be it physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, or financial. A “curt” and “cool” tone indicates a detachment that can only be the result of psychological independence. That means Snape is no longer being ground under Dumbledore’s boot heel. And note how the transition in tone is made: Snape is curt when Dumby is just trying to give him orders; he’s cool once he’s tried, one final time, to get Dumby to confide in him--only to be rejected and patronized again. Self-absorbed as always, Albus is too dumb to pick up on the subtleties of his former patsy’s behavior. He doesn’t realize the man who walks out that door is no longer Dumbledore’s man.
He is his own.