Just how nasty is Severus Snape? The case from The Prisoner of Azkaban

[strange_complex]

On Monday night, I finished reading Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkaban. I had a couple of questions in mind when I started reading this book. One, about how Sirius Black escaped from Azkaban, was quickly and easily answered. The other was already bigger when I first asked it. It hasn't been completely resolved by reading the book, but I now

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Re: What's Snape's motivation?

[strange_complex]

Well, as I've argued above, I think it goes a step further than simple narrow-mindedness. If you read the book, you'll find that his reactions to any suggestions that he might be wrong about Black are violent and extreme: in fact, he comes across as virtually insane in the latter chapters in the book because of the extreme nature of his refusals to allow anyone to suggest that Black might not be guilty.

Also, if you haven't read the book, you might not know about the history between Snape and Black which gives Snape a great deal of malicious motivation for maintaining his narrow-minded stance. Black (also with Remus Lupin, James Potter and Peter Pettigrew) taunted Snape relentlessly when they were all at school together, including tricking him into a situation in his 6th year when he would have come face to face with Lupin in full werewolf form, and hence almost certainly died - had James Potter not got cold feet and pulled him out at the last minute.

Snape is not the sort of man to let a grudge drop easily: in fact, it's clear that he has been waiting years to get his vengeance on Black for all this (he says explicitly that he'd hoped since he heard Black has escaped from Azkaban that he'd be the one who would catch him, hence wreaking his revenge).

So he seems to me to be deliberately creating in himself a state of extreme denial of any possibility of innocence, in order that he can pursue his distinctly malicious intent of paying Black back for his experiences at school by getting him Kissed by the Dementors.