The Dreaded Snape/Lily Theory
As promised. I originally posted this on Mugglenet, so when I refer to "others here" or "people here" in the text, that's the "here" I'm talking about.
There was a lot about love in this book, wasn’t there? All the silly teenage intrigue with Harry and Hermione and Ron and Lavender and Ginny and et al, the use of a love potion on Ron…even Slughorn’s comment about the power of obsessive love. And what did Dumbledore tell Harry about love? He spoke again in this book of the power of love…but, for the first time, he spoke also of revenge. As Dumbledore presented it to Harry, revenge is the flip side of love. He pointed out to Harry that love is the reason Harry wants to kill LV, not the prophecy - but only because it is love that makes Harry want revenge. Voldemort killed people Harry loved, and Harry wants to make him pay.
I believe Dumbledore trusted Snape so implicitly for the very same reason: Dumbledore knows Voldemort killed someone Snape loved (Lily)…and he knows Snape wants revenge. Indeed, as Lily may very well be the ONLY person Snape has ever loved in his entire life, his reaction would be even more violent than Harry’s, his desire to see Voldemort pay even greater than Harry’s. Don’t be surprised that if, in Book 7, someone somewhere tells Harry some version of, “Possibly the only person in the world who hates Lord Voldemort more than you do is Severus Snape.”
Revenge is a powerful motivator.
And why Lily? Well, unless DD’s completely lying to Harry, it was the Potters’ being threatened that motivated Snape to switch sides in the first place. Now, we know how Snape felt about James -- we share Lupin’s incredulity that Snape would ever be sorry at James’s death - and Dumbledore knows it, too; from book one, DD has talked about the enmity between the young Severus and the young James. If Snape expressed or even tried to show faux remorse for James’s death, it wouldn’t take a Leglimens to see right through it. As Harry says in another context, “Nobody’s that good an actor, not even Snape.” No, I believe the remorse Dumbledore witnessed in Snape (and I do believe he witnessed it, firsthand; he tells Harry “you can’t imagine the remorse Professor Snape felt,” which sort of implies he couldn’t believe it himself) was for Lily, and Lily alone.
It all fits. Rowling said she was “stunned” when someone asked, shortly after GoF, if Snape would ever fall in love, and she said we’d find out why she was so stunned when we read Book 7. She also says Snape has been loved in the past. She showed us a memory in OotP in which Snape was humiliated in front of Lily, and labeled the chapter Snape’s Worst Memory. She tells us Lily was a popular girl and won’t deny that others - specifically, Snape and Lupin - might have had romantic feelings for her just as James did.
Also, she now implies that someone else besides Voldemort was at Godric’s Hollow the night Lily died, and she tells us flatly that Lily did not have to die. LV only wanted Harry. Was Snape, as others here have suggested, present that night? Did he plead for her life? Did Voldemort punish this unseemly display of love for a “Mudblood” by making Snape watch Lily die? Perhaps this is what Snape refers to in OotP, when he tells Harry that the Dark Lord makes “easy prey” of “fools who wear their hearts proudly on their sleeves, who cannot control their emotions, who wallow in sad memories.” Perhaps he’s speaking from hard and painful experience. And was Dumbledore reliving this memory in the cave while under the effects of the potion? Was he repeating words he heard Snape say the night Lily died? (“I’m sorry, it’s my fault, I know I did wrong…” ) Whosever they were, those were the words of someone truly anguished by something he/she had done.
The “awful boy.” Remember him? Petunia overheard him talking to Lily about Azkaban and Dementors. Did Snape, once he realized the Prophecy was about the Potters, go to Lily directly before he went to Dumbledore, to try and warn her? It would make more sense than going to DD, actually; if he and Lily did have some sort of friendship, she would be less likely to turn him in as a Death Eater. Perhaps, in the course of this conversation, it was Lily who suggested Snape go to Dumbledore, make a break with LV, and likely that Snape protested, saying he didn’t want to end up in Azkaban? (I am personally more convinced than ever that the awful boy was Severus. I am hoping that, for once, Petunia’s nosy nature will come in handy. Pensieve, anyone?)
Snape’s treatment of Harry: Since LV gave Lily the option to live, and she tossed it away to save Harry, well, then-by Snape’s twisted, desperate logic, doesn’t that make it Harry’s fault Lily died? Does it ease his own guilt even a little to blame James Potter’s son (not Lily’s, no, no, James’s) for her death? We have seen Harry use this same excuse to hate Snape in two books now, blaming Snape for Sirius’s death rather than blaming himself. I believe Rowling reiterated this in HBP for a reason.
Look, nothing in Snape’s nature indicates he gives a tinker’s tuss about humanity at large, or the welfare of the wizarding world in general (Snape is bitter, lonely, and paranoid - “What the hell’s the world done for me lately?” is practically stamped on his forehead.) Even when he turned from LV, Snape only regretted what he had done when he realized it affected people he knew-well, one person he knew, anyway (ahem). Snape started to care when Voldemort made it personal. Which isn’t noble or heroic or even very nice, when you get right down to it - but it is very human.
If the first two books were about the parallels between Harry and Voldemort, and Book Five showed us the similarities between Snape and Harry, in HBP, we came full circle: we got Snape, the self-titled Half-Blood Prince, aligning himself and patterning himself, whether knowingly or not, on the young Lord Voldemort. Harry even wonders how that old doofus Dumbledore could have possibly missed it. So now we have these three people, three generations of Hogwarts’ finest, from similar backgrounds…yet they are three very different people, and will, I believe, end up at three very different places. Voldemort has never known love, and is thus incapable of it; Harry loves freely and often despite his loveless upbringing, a remarkable feat; as Dumbledore tells him, he has “no idea how special you are.”
And where does that leave Snape? Why, in the middle, of course. Literally (old enough to be Harry’s father, young enough to be Voldemort’s son) as well as spiritually. At first blush, and especially after HBP, Snape seems a carbon-copy of LV. Like Voldemort, he let his past fill him with hate and bitterness, and he gave in to the dark side of himself - he embraced the Dark Arts, he took the mark, he became a Death Eater. He’s a bad guy. But is he nothing more? What’s the point of that? Do we really need, for the sake of our story, two Lord Voldemorts running about making trouble? No. We need something that will differentiate between the Lord and the Prince, something that, for all his darkness (and I think his most optimistic fans would have to agree, Snape is an even darker character than we ever believed) keeps him human in a way Voldemort can never be. And I believe that something is Dumbledore’s old standby. Love. Snape may not be capable of Harry’s kind of love - easy, frequent, without complication - but he is capable of having loved, and of being loved, at least once in his life. And therein lies the difference.
Well...I still like it and believe it. But, Christ, what a pompous ending that was. Like I was writing my master's thesis or something.
*ducks head and feels like a dweeb*
Oh, and before I forget...Happy Birthday, adaveen! Your present is in my icon - i.e., Paul's thighs. Do with them what you will. xP
There was a lot about love in this book, wasn’t there? All the silly teenage intrigue with Harry and Hermione and Ron and Lavender and Ginny and et al, the use of a love potion on Ron…even Slughorn’s comment about the power of obsessive love. And what did Dumbledore tell Harry about love? He spoke again in this book of the power of love…but, for the first time, he spoke also of revenge. As Dumbledore presented it to Harry, revenge is the flip side of love. He pointed out to Harry that love is the reason Harry wants to kill LV, not the prophecy - but only because it is love that makes Harry want revenge. Voldemort killed people Harry loved, and Harry wants to make him pay.
I believe Dumbledore trusted Snape so implicitly for the very same reason: Dumbledore knows Voldemort killed someone Snape loved (Lily)…and he knows Snape wants revenge. Indeed, as Lily may very well be the ONLY person Snape has ever loved in his entire life, his reaction would be even more violent than Harry’s, his desire to see Voldemort pay even greater than Harry’s. Don’t be surprised that if, in Book 7, someone somewhere tells Harry some version of, “Possibly the only person in the world who hates Lord Voldemort more than you do is Severus Snape.”
Revenge is a powerful motivator.
And why Lily? Well, unless DD’s completely lying to Harry, it was the Potters’ being threatened that motivated Snape to switch sides in the first place. Now, we know how Snape felt about James -- we share Lupin’s incredulity that Snape would ever be sorry at James’s death - and Dumbledore knows it, too; from book one, DD has talked about the enmity between the young Severus and the young James. If Snape expressed or even tried to show faux remorse for James’s death, it wouldn’t take a Leglimens to see right through it. As Harry says in another context, “Nobody’s that good an actor, not even Snape.” No, I believe the remorse Dumbledore witnessed in Snape (and I do believe he witnessed it, firsthand; he tells Harry “you can’t imagine the remorse Professor Snape felt,” which sort of implies he couldn’t believe it himself) was for Lily, and Lily alone.
It all fits. Rowling said she was “stunned” when someone asked, shortly after GoF, if Snape would ever fall in love, and she said we’d find out why she was so stunned when we read Book 7. She also says Snape has been loved in the past. She showed us a memory in OotP in which Snape was humiliated in front of Lily, and labeled the chapter Snape’s Worst Memory. She tells us Lily was a popular girl and won’t deny that others - specifically, Snape and Lupin - might have had romantic feelings for her just as James did.
Also, she now implies that someone else besides Voldemort was at Godric’s Hollow the night Lily died, and she tells us flatly that Lily did not have to die. LV only wanted Harry. Was Snape, as others here have suggested, present that night? Did he plead for her life? Did Voldemort punish this unseemly display of love for a “Mudblood” by making Snape watch Lily die? Perhaps this is what Snape refers to in OotP, when he tells Harry that the Dark Lord makes “easy prey” of “fools who wear their hearts proudly on their sleeves, who cannot control their emotions, who wallow in sad memories.” Perhaps he’s speaking from hard and painful experience. And was Dumbledore reliving this memory in the cave while under the effects of the potion? Was he repeating words he heard Snape say the night Lily died? (“I’m sorry, it’s my fault, I know I did wrong…” ) Whosever they were, those were the words of someone truly anguished by something he/she had done.
The “awful boy.” Remember him? Petunia overheard him talking to Lily about Azkaban and Dementors. Did Snape, once he realized the Prophecy was about the Potters, go to Lily directly before he went to Dumbledore, to try and warn her? It would make more sense than going to DD, actually; if he and Lily did have some sort of friendship, she would be less likely to turn him in as a Death Eater. Perhaps, in the course of this conversation, it was Lily who suggested Snape go to Dumbledore, make a break with LV, and likely that Snape protested, saying he didn’t want to end up in Azkaban? (I am personally more convinced than ever that the awful boy was Severus. I am hoping that, for once, Petunia’s nosy nature will come in handy. Pensieve, anyone?)
Snape’s treatment of Harry: Since LV gave Lily the option to live, and she tossed it away to save Harry, well, then-by Snape’s twisted, desperate logic, doesn’t that make it Harry’s fault Lily died? Does it ease his own guilt even a little to blame James Potter’s son (not Lily’s, no, no, James’s) for her death? We have seen Harry use this same excuse to hate Snape in two books now, blaming Snape for Sirius’s death rather than blaming himself. I believe Rowling reiterated this in HBP for a reason.
Look, nothing in Snape’s nature indicates he gives a tinker’s tuss about humanity at large, or the welfare of the wizarding world in general (Snape is bitter, lonely, and paranoid - “What the hell’s the world done for me lately?” is practically stamped on his forehead.) Even when he turned from LV, Snape only regretted what he had done when he realized it affected people he knew-well, one person he knew, anyway (ahem). Snape started to care when Voldemort made it personal. Which isn’t noble or heroic or even very nice, when you get right down to it - but it is very human.
If the first two books were about the parallels between Harry and Voldemort, and Book Five showed us the similarities between Snape and Harry, in HBP, we came full circle: we got Snape, the self-titled Half-Blood Prince, aligning himself and patterning himself, whether knowingly or not, on the young Lord Voldemort. Harry even wonders how that old doofus Dumbledore could have possibly missed it. So now we have these three people, three generations of Hogwarts’ finest, from similar backgrounds…yet they are three very different people, and will, I believe, end up at three very different places. Voldemort has never known love, and is thus incapable of it; Harry loves freely and often despite his loveless upbringing, a remarkable feat; as Dumbledore tells him, he has “no idea how special you are.”
And where does that leave Snape? Why, in the middle, of course. Literally (old enough to be Harry’s father, young enough to be Voldemort’s son) as well as spiritually. At first blush, and especially after HBP, Snape seems a carbon-copy of LV. Like Voldemort, he let his past fill him with hate and bitterness, and he gave in to the dark side of himself - he embraced the Dark Arts, he took the mark, he became a Death Eater. He’s a bad guy. But is he nothing more? What’s the point of that? Do we really need, for the sake of our story, two Lord Voldemorts running about making trouble? No. We need something that will differentiate between the Lord and the Prince, something that, for all his darkness (and I think his most optimistic fans would have to agree, Snape is an even darker character than we ever believed) keeps him human in a way Voldemort can never be. And I believe that something is Dumbledore’s old standby. Love. Snape may not be capable of Harry’s kind of love - easy, frequent, without complication - but he is capable of having loved, and of being loved, at least once in his life. And therein lies the difference.
Well...I still like it and believe it. But, Christ, what a pompous ending that was. Like I was writing my master's thesis or something.
*ducks head and feels like a dweeb*
Oh, and before I forget...Happy Birthday, adaveen! Your present is in my icon - i.e., Paul's thighs. Do with them what you will. xP