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Ever since mary_j_59 posed the question of how readers can NOT read Snape as brave, I’ve been pondering it.
Partly, as we discussed, it’s the difference in how one faces danger: Jo uses her authorial voice to privilege Gryffindorish “courage” (which Joanna Russ, in her novel The Female Man, neatly epigrammed as manly men being “slaves to the fear of showing fear”).
So Sirius died laughing, relishing the risk he faced, and Harry, offering himself to Tom, was nearly as afraid of disgracing himself by showing fear before Tom and the Death Eaters as he was of his impending death itself. He displayed Gryffindor “courage” —being terrified of being seen (by his enemies) to experience (even merited) fear.
Whereas Severus, when he (as a known-to-Albus Death Eater, legally subject to Unforgiveables) approached Albus to beg for Lily’s life, when he returned belatedly to the risen-Dark Lord’s side as a quadruple (hopefully, to be [mis-] taken by Tom for a triple) agent, when the Dark Lord started talking of his wand not working—why, Severus on those occasions was shown by JKR to be visibly white-faced and stammering.
Snape not only didn’t actively enjoy deadly peril, he couldn’t even convincingly simulate being properly indifferent to the prospect of his own demise!
Hence, Snape was a coward: he expressed fear in front of his enemies.
Of course, some of us feel that someone who’s terribly afraid, and does the right thing anyway, is more to be honored than someone who’s insensible to danger, or who is an adrenalin junkie who actively enjoys risk.
But there is no one else in Jo’s canon who overtly combines openly expressing fear with doing the right thing anyway.
Now, JKR does portray heroes who combine FEELING fear with doing heroic things anyway. Neville is clearly absolutely terrified of flying and/or falling, yet he flies to London on an invisible beast to support Harry’s rescue mission in OotP. We can infer that Hermione is scared there as well, and then later on the various occasions when she’s out of her depth in DH. Then, the books are written from Harry’s point of view, so we’re privy to all of the fears and misgivings that he doesn’t express aloud.
But none of Jo’s heroes is explicitly portrayed as being white and stammering, openly expressing their terror—they suck it up and pretend to their peers and enemies to be unmoved. (Neville, of course, does openly express fear in the early books—while he’s still largely a subject of disdain—but by the end he’s taking Harry as his role model.)
Indeed, I wrote, “Neville is clearly absolutely terrified of flying and/or falling,” but I’d be ashamed to tell you how many re-readings of OotP [and back-referencings to PS] it took me finally to register that “clear fact.” It’s there, absolutely, but it doesn’t slap you in the face the way Snape’s fear at facing HIS death does. You can read, and re-read, and still miss it entirely.
So the Gryff rule seems to be, a brave person doesn’t admit to fear. At least, not in front of enemies, or in front of an ally who might be demoralized by it. There are only a few circumstances in which one may legitimately express fear, or even misgivings. A child writing to his godfather, for instance. And even then, he should minimize his concern.
And by that rule, Snape simply isn’t brave. He cried out to Albus, “Don’t kill me!” He was white with terror when he returned to Voldemort’s side after that blessed absence of fourteen years. He was white again when he realized that Tom meant to kill him over the Elder wand.
He betrayed his fear to his enemies. How shameful!
But, Harry (and Jo) eventually tell us in the Epilogue, Albus Severus Potter was named for two headmasters. “One of them was a Slytherin and he was probably the bravest man I ever knew.”
But by then, of course, Harry had worked out that some of Snape’s display of fear had actually been used to mislead Tom. For so long as Tom was firmly convinced that Snape was a self-serving coward, Tom could never imagine that Severus was deliberately risking himself, sacrificing himself, for long years—first for Lily, then for Lily’s son, then for Lily’s son’s cause.
If Harry had fully registered that Snape’s displays of fear were entirely founded in the man’s real feelings, he might have been less lenient of them.
*
But there’s more to the reading Snape-was-really-a-coward than a stylistic preference for someone who never admits to feeling fear.
How much of the bravery we Snapefen impute to him was attested to in canon?
We infer that he faced death and horrific torture (and probably took some of the latter) in turning double-agent, but we don’t actually see it. “Anything,” he said to Dumbledore, but we don’t see him directly suffer to protect Lily (or later, Harry or other students). And his evident fear on the three occasions I cited above could be attributed to craven cowardice rather than to justified appreciation of what he faced.
(Indeed, anyone still thinking of Albus as utterly benevolent and mild could more easily read Snape’s obvious fear at approaching him as due to a guilty conscience projecting what Snape knew he deserved, than as a realistic apprehension of what a Death Eater confessing to an authority risked.)
*
We Snapefen tend to assume Sev’s great physical courage because we assume it as a given that his treason to Tom would have been horrifically punished if discovered. We’ve all read “Mood Music,” or “Missing in Action,” or “Ashen and Somber Skies,” or one of the other fanfics in which Tom discovered Severus’s true loyalties and subjected the traitor to protracted and unspeakable (if not unwritable) torture.
We believe that Snape risked truly awful retribution if his loyalties had been discovered by Tom. So that Snape’s facing such horrors, first to try to save Lily, and later to protect Harry, and finally to destroy Voldemort and protect his students, showed greater courage than, say, Tonks showed in joining the Order.
Greater risk implies greater courage in assuming the risk.
But in actuality, it is fanon that Severus faced anything worse than any other Voldemort opponent. Indeed, if you look, that particular fanon supposition is not actually well supported by canon.
It’s canon that Regulus was believed (by Sirius and Remus at least) to have been killed for defecting.
But Sirius never said that he’d heard Regulus had been tortured for days for that treason.
Similarly, we know that Karkaroff was hunted down and murdered for renouncing Tom and giving Death Eater names to Barty Senior. But we were never told that Igor’s death was any more horrific than, say, the Mackinnons’.
In the graveyard, Tom told his followers only that “the one who has left my service forever” would surely be killed.
But then, Tom also killed anyone who opposed him if he caught up to them. And anyone who happened to be innocently in his way. And his own loyal followers who brought him unwelcome news. And anyone randomly around (his devoted servants were most at risk here, by reason of proximity) whenever Tom happened to be in a bad mood.
Tom killed people.
Yawn. Dog bites man, old story.
So, betraying Tom put one at risk of being killed by him.
So did serving him.
Or attracting his attention for any other reason.
As a clever man could have, should have, observed, by the time Severus turned.
Being NOTICED by Tom put one at risk of death. And for any branded Death Eater, it was way too late to hope to go unnoticed.
So it’s not at all clear that betraying Tom would put one in worse danger than either joining him in the first place, or overtly opposing him, would have done.
Indeed, given that Tom feared death worse than anything, it might even be possible that Tom imagined that the worst possible punishment was a fast, inescapable death (since, as the fictions cited above amply demonstrate, a slow and lingering death left some possibility open for escape/rescue/rehabilitation, quite contrary to Tom’s intentions).
Tom, in canon, didn’t believe any fate to be worse than death. So he may not have had any threat-worse-than-death to hold over the heads of his followers (except insofar as they were weak enough to be moved by threats to loved ones).
Whereas a normal person fears agony as much or more than death. Quite a large number of normal people subjected to unremitting pain for a long period come to long for death as a release. We needn’t reference torture archives here, either: anyone who’s had a loved one die of cancer or some other chronic incurable degenerative disease can attest to this, We all know someone who’s said, enough, and refused further treatments that might have bought another ten minutes. Or even, perhaps, another two months.
Of pain.
But Tom wasn’t normal that way. As he recounted in the graveyard, he clung on to existence by his fingernails, in constant, unremitting agony, rather than accept oblivion.
For over ten years.
So, that Tom reserved a special hell-on-earth for those who’d double-crossed him is in fact a fannish invention. He might simply have killed them.
Which is what Tom does to anyone he notices negatively. Or at all. No special danger there.
Mind, this particular piece of fanon has a strong grip on my imagination. But there’s no direct canon support for it. So if some other fan decided that Snape’s position as a quadruple agent posed no greater risk (and therefore required no more courage and should be accorded no more credit) than just joining the Order in general…. Well, there’s really no canon to refute that position.
Indeed, there’s no canon to refute the argument that a nastily clear-headed (and single) Death Eater might have thought himself no more at risk by turning his cloak than by remaining obedient to Tom. Dead is dead, and if Tom was going about killing off his servants anyhow (either in fits of temper or by giving them impossible missions)….
And, in fact, our Nastily Clear-Headed Death Eater could reflect that, if he could get Dumbledore to vouch for him, turning his cloak would put him in a better position than his fellows.
If the Dark Lord won, as seemed likely, our NCHDE would claim he’d been deceiving Dumbledore. At worst, if he wasn’t believed, he’d be killed for treason, but his fellows were dropping like flies anyhow. But on the other hand, if the Dark Lord lost, all NCHDE’s crimes committed (as a Death Eater) would be forgiven him as the necessity imposed on a double agent to hide his true loyalty.
If Riddle was violent enough to his own followers (as he clearly was in DH), the trade-off would be clear: death, which was a risk anyhow, versus being altogether in the clear if Voldemort lost.
Until a reader got to The Prince’s Tale near the end of the seventh volume, it was perfectly possible to read Snape as a conniver of this sort, loyal to no one. And even afterwards, if that’s how one had previously been reading him, it was possible still to believe that such considerations had carried weight with him.
Taking a calculated risk in one’s own self-interest is something we don’t normally award the accolade of “courage” to, even though we recognize that it takes a coolness under pressure that many of us (waves hand vigorously!) could never emulate.
We give more brownie points for deliberately risking harm to stand up for the right than for doing so in the course of pursuing one’s self-interest.
Gandhi is admired for courting jail in civil disobedience against the British Empire’s Salt Tax.
A common salt smuggler of that time, not so much, even if s/he ended up in the very next cell for (on paper) the very same offense.
*
So, post The Prince’s Tale, to what extent must we give Severus credit for choosing his martyrdom? For reasons of principle or loyalty to others, rather than self-interest?
That’s where we must consider the reason Jo gave for Snape’s turning his coat: protecting Lily. To what extent should that be considered creditable?
Let’s back up to HBP and consider how Jo depicted three Slytherins in operation: Bella, Cissy, and Snape.
Part of the problem, of course, is that we readers tend to like to reserve the accolade “brave” for people we actually approve of.
Consider Spinner’s End, and our observations of three Slytherins (and one Gryffindor). Bellatrix was the only one in that scene who might, on a surface reading, merit the term courageous. She had deliberately invited, and endured, more than a decade of torture and deprivation sufficient to kill most who suffered it for the sake of the cause and the leader she clearly believed in. That we abhor her cause and her leader is no reason for the reader to denigrate the courage she showed—though in practice we do. Few Potter fans cite Bellatrix as one of the greatest exemplars of courage in the series.
And, in this chapter, she capped her earlier displays of courage by stating nobly that she would sacrifice even her child to her cause and leader.
Her sister, in contrast, was plainly risking the Dark Lord’s displeasure by approaching Snape without her lord’s leave. Which means she was risking possible torture or death. But we readers don’t usually call Cissy courageous for doing this, but desperate.
It was to her credit that she valued her son’s life above her own, and we’d certainly have judged her harshly if she had not, if she had placed her safety above his, but we don’t call her brave for risking punishment for trying to protect his life. Any more than we call Xeno Lovegood brave for calling the Death Eaters to come capture Harry, even though we recognize that calling in the DE’s exposed Lovegood, as well as the trio, to Death Eater violence. (And in fact Xeno suffered their full displeasure; Harry and his friends, in the event, did not.)
We may sympathize with Xeno’s desperation to rescue his daughter, with Narcissa’s desperation to rescue her son, but we don’t call their consequent actions courageous.
And Snape, in the Spinner’s End scene, seemed on a surface reading to be the epitome of self-interest, cowardice, and do-nothingism. He seemed someone who would exert himself only to safeguard his own interests—double-dealing with both his masters, perhaps, to the extent he thought he could get away with it. Snape freely admitted that he never lifted a finger to try to restore the Dark Lord when he thought (hoped?) him finished; instead he accepted Dumbledore’s protection and acceded to Dumbledore’s rules. But now that the Dark Lord had returned to power, he was afraid to be seen as anything but his loyal servant.
Narcissa’s breaking down in utter despair at Draco’s implicit death sentence clearly made him uncomfortable, but he offered her only vague reassurances of maybe being able to “try to help” the boy, nothing substantive, until Bellatrix pinned him down by again questioning his commitment. Only Bella’s calling him out on his “usual empty promises, the usual slithering out of action” stampeded him into making that rash Vow to prove himself committed before the Dark Lord’s most loyal lieutenant.
No courage there, clearly.
That scene exemplified why many readers, prior to the release of DH, could credit Snape as having been loyal to no one and nothing but himself.
And we readers don’t count such a man as brave, even if he took calculated risks (or fell inadvertently into dangers) in pursuit of his own ends. Had Snape pretended to defect to Dumbledore at Tom’s behest, started actually following Dumbledore’s orders upon Tom’s (temporary) defeat, and then kept both masters on a string after Tom’s return, each thinking the other mistaken in believing Snape loyal, we might admit that returning to Tom’s side took a good deal of nerve, but we wouldn’t call him brave.
And we wouldn’t worry over whether Tom had punished Snape, or how, for his services to Albus during the interregnum. The self-serving bastard wouldn’t merit that concern.
And, of course, anyone who had adopted that view of Severus wouldn’t necessarily feel the need to modify it much even with the revelation that he had truly defected prior to Tom’s defeat. It was still the case that Severus benefited from having the leaders of both sides convinced he was their side’s secret agent; Dumbledore’s thinking so got Snape off the hook from the Ministry prosecuting him as a Death Eater. So to the extent he could still be seen as having benefitted from his quadruple agent role, he could still be viewed as self-serving. And thus to merit being called, perhaps, cool rather than courageous.
But then, even if we admit Snape did legitimately switch sides at some danger to himself, we return to another consideration—how much credit should we give him for that, given that he had no choice in that, if he hoped to save Lily?
We viewed the Malfoys as desperate, not brave, when they run through Hogwarts ignoring the battle to try to find their son. We viewed Narcissa as desperate, not brave, when she turned to Severus to appeal to him to save Draco from Tom’s schemes, and later when she lied to Tom about Harry’s being alive in order to gain immediate access to Hogwarts to search for her son. We viewed Xeno as desperate (and craven), not brave, when he changed the Quibbler editorial policy and called in Death Eaters to capture Harry.
It’s to the Malfoys’ slight credit that their love for their son trumped both their commitment to an evil cause and their interest in their own safety. However, we cannot credit them with much—had they seen a way to save Draco while serving Tom (and thus also saving themselves), they would surely have taken it. It’s only Tom’s making his service absolutely incompatible with saving their son that forced them finally to act against him.
And so too with Severus. It’s easy to believe that, had he trusted the Dark Lord to spare Lily’s life, he’d never have approached Dumbledore.
So. If the Malfoys did the right thing, but were neither particularly virtuous nor brave in their eventual abandonment of Tom’s cause to save their only child, so neither was Severus, when he defected to save his beloved.
Indeed, had any of them started on the “right” side initially, their actions in abandoning that side would have been read as the vilest treachery.
We don’t applaud Xeno for switching sides to try to save Luna, even though we consider Luna far more worth saving than Draco.
We have the Brave(™) Gryffindors here to guide us: Molly and Arthur were never once tempted to defect to save their children from the Death Eaters. James and Lily might have died trying to protect their baby, and might have, as mere shades, heroically held off Voldemort’s attack long enough to enable their son to escape from that graveyard. But when their wise leader, Dumbledore, finally revealed to their son that his death was required for their cause, those same parental shades escorted him lovingly and loyally to his suicide. (“Lily’s smile was the widest of all.” )
See, Bellatrix was right all along. If you have an only child, or an only beloved, you should be proud and happy to sacrifice their life, as well as your own, to your cause.
If you truly are dedicated to your cause.
So, see, Severus, Narcissa, and Lucius simply demonstrated that they lacked ultimate commitment to their original cause. They were willing enough to risk their own lives for said cause, but not, on sober consideration, also to sacrifice their best-beloveds to it.
Wimps!!!
(Imagine Bella’s mocking voice here: she never succumbed to that particular weakness.)
But in these three cases the cause, we biased readers believe, should not rightly have evoked that ultimate commitment.
So that these three Slytherins did in fact privilege their personal loyalties above their cause, stood to their final credit.
From our biased points of view.
But had they dedicated themselves to a cause we readers accepted as righteous, abandoning it for personal loyalties, however compelling, would have been craven.
An act of quite appalling cowardice.
So we might legitimately approve of Severus, Narcissa, and Lucius abandoning the Death Eater cause for the sake of those they loved. To try to save people that they valued above Tom and his goals.
But we can’t possibly call them “brave” for doing so.
Any more than we commend Xeno for his bravery in summoning Death Eaters to his very home to kill his daughter’s friends.
*
Finally, our reading of Snape, and our appreciation of his courage, depends in part on our reading of Albus Dumbledore.
To the extent that a reader retains Harry’s hero-worship of the man, to the extent that the reader still views Albus as benevolent, wise, and far-seeing, to that extent Snape’s credit must be diminished. Because Albus treated Severus abominably when Severus first turned to him, and for many years thereafter.
If Albus was right to treat Snape in such a manner, then Snape must have deserved that severity, and required such harsh treatment to be compelled to do anything at all worthwhile.
Which means Snape actually didn’t exactly turn to the right side—he was dragged there, kicking and screaming, by Albus. And if Albus did all the heavy lifting, to Albus should go the credit for any good Snape ended up doing.
Reread Albus canon’s treatment of Snape from the point of view that Albus truly cares for others (even those unworthy of his care), is committed to doing the right thing, and is as near to omniscient and prescient as any mortal well may be. And is (and should be) understood by his followers to be such. Assume further that Albus is always truthful and accurate in his comments and insinuations to and about Snape.
So for example, when Albus claimed to Harry in book one that Snape saved Harry’s life because he wanted to discharge his life-debt to James and be able to hate James’s memory in peace, Albus was being utterly accurate (if not exactly complete). Snape really was that petty and twisted, and Harry really was right to hold him in contempt even though owing Snape his life. Albus might have concealed Snape’s other (and more creditable reason) for protecting Harry, but he was telling the strict truth about the reason that he gave.
Moreover, if Albus were benevolent, there could not have been a third motive Albus might truthfully have adduced on Snape’s behalf to keep from betraying the sworn-secret Lily-motive. Such as, “Professor Snape takes the safety of his students very seriously, even the safety of students he doesn’t personally like.”
After all, any benevolent, generous-hearted man who wanted to encourage a prejudiced student to think the best of someone he’d hated who had saved his life would have said that on the professor’s behalf, if it were at all founded in fact.
But Albus IS benevolent, etc. Therefore the nice reading is not merited, is not true in the least. Therefore the only alternate motive to Snape’s honoring-Lily’s-sacrifice that Albus knew of and could honestly recount to Harry, was the discreditable, twisted one of Snape’s being determined to hate his savior-James in peace.
Similarly, when Albus twinkled at Snape’s incoherent rage at Sirius’s escape at the end of PoA.. Well. That would be unspeakably cruel if Albus thought for a moment that Snape sincerely believed at the time that Lily’s son had just helped Lily’s betrayer, Lily’s murderer, (and Harry and his friends’ attempted murderer) to escape the well-earned justice to which Snape had barely managed to drag the villain.
But Dumbledore couldn’t be that cruel. He couldn’t look “as though he was quite enjoying himself” at Snape’s being “beside himself” with rage and pain if he thought for a moment that Snape’s turmoil was caused by such justifiable grief and horror.
Albus certainly wouldn’t have previously withheld the answer to Snape’s desperate question, “You surely don’t believe a word of Black’s story?” (before the escape, so the answer might have helped to reconcile Severus to what Dumbledore knew was shortly going to happen), if he thought the question sincere.
No, the only way such cavalier treatment of Severus could possibly be justified, was if Albus knew full well that Snape had verified (to Snape’s own satisfaction) that Black really had been guiltless of willing the Potters’ death. And that Snape had subsequently schemed to get Black Kissed anyway out of that “schoolboy grudge” against an innocent man—and possibly out of that Slytherin-ambitious desire to collect an utterly undeserved Order of Merlin.
In that case, yes, Snape would deserve to have his dastardly plans foiled, and moreover to have his uncontrolled anger lead him to make a fool of himself in front of the Minister. Snape’s out-of-control fury would then truly be funny; he deserved to suffer, in full, the “severe disappointment” of such unworthy schemes.
So since Albus DID clearly find Severus’s “severe disappointment” funny, that must have been (in Albus’s opinion, which must become our own) Snape’s true reason for being upset at Black’s escape.
NOT that Snape still believed (however incorrectly) that Black had been culpable in the Potters’ deaths. Because the latter explanation of Snape’s distress and outrage couldn’t have seemed in the least bit funny to anyone maintaining any pretensions at all to being, “well—noble.”
(Let’s define that last term a trifle, shall we: not actively malicious, and possessed of at least the sensibility and ethics of the average , say, amoeba. One wouldn’t want to set the bar too high in the Potterverse.)
See how easy it all is to explain, if you just put trusting Albus first, ahead of any other consideration of consistency, characterization, or logic?
*
Indeed, the first time in canon we see Albus treat Severus with respect, without twinkling while thwarting or contradicting him, is when he sends Snape off to be, perhaps, killed by Tom. “Severus… you know what I must ask you to do. If you are ready… if you are prepared…”
“I am,” said Snape.
He looked slightly paler than usual, and his cold, black eyes glittered strangely.
“Then good luck,” said Dumbledore, and he watched, with a trace of apprehension on his face, as Snape swept wordlessly after Sirius.
But then, even Harry had a moment of approaching-respect the one time (at the Leaving Feast a few weeks later) that he let himself consider what Snape might have been facing: “He looked as sour and unpleasant as ever. Harry continued to watch him, long after Snape had looked away. What was it Snape had done on Dumbledore’s orders, the night that Voldemort had returned. And why… why… was Dumbledore so convinced that Snape was truly on their side? He had been their spy; Dumbledore had said so in the Pensieve. Snape had tuned spy against Voldemort, “at great personal risk.” Was that the job he had taken up again?”
In TPT, the first compliment or validation we ever see Albus offer his penitent is that “You are a braver man by far than Igor Karkaroff. You know, I sometimes think we Sort too soon….”
If that’s the first time Albus ever offered Snape a compliment, why then … it must be the first time Snape’s ever earned one. That he would stay and face Voldemort, take the risk of trying once more to spy for Dumbledore, must be the first actually good or courageous action Snape’s ever volunteered to perform.
So then Snape’s “Don’t kill me!” on that hillside must have shown, not his justified fear of surrendering himself to a mortal enemy and concomitant courage in doing so to give warning of another’s peril, but his wrong-headed projection onto Albus of how Tom and the Death Eaters operated. Of what he himself, in fact, might be expected to do if an enemy showed up asking for a parley.
Similarly, Albus’s suggestion that Severus, in asking Tom to spare Lily, had tried to “exchange” the life of the mother for that of the son must have been a justified accusation, not a “have you stopped beating your wife?” verbal trap.
As must have been Albus’s insinuation (“They can die, as long as you have what you want?” ) that Snape had tried to persuade Tom, not just to spare Lily, but to give Lily to him.
If Albus’s contempt and disgust of Severus were entirely justified and his insinuations all well-founded, we could infer that what Snape had done was to argue that Tom should kill James and Harry, take Lily prisoner, and toss her to Snape as a sex-slave as Snape’s reward for turning the family in. (Further, perhaps even that Snape might have originally turned over the Prophecy to Tom anticipating such an outcome….)
And that if Snape had been satisfied that Tom would indeed do just that, he’d never have turned to Albus.
But his master had, presumably, made the promised reward contingent on Snape’s further good service, and Snape was afraid he couldn’t perform well enough to earn the bonus.
And so, in desperation, he turned to Albus to get Lily extra protection. (As long as she survived somehow he could still hope to get his paws on her later.) Only to be brought up short by Albus’s showing him exactly how despicable his hopes were.
And then, when Snape finally admitted that Lily’s life, even if she were still unavailable to him, still married to James and the mother of James’s heir, was itself worth something to him, he was brought up short again by Albus driving a bargain with him: “And what will you give me in return, Severus?”
Of course the reader understands that beneficent Albus would indeed do all in his power to protect his loyal followers ANYWAY. That Snape took the demand seriously, that he imagined for a moment that he had to bargain with Albus for Lily’s protection, just showed how degraded Snape was. Severus was guilty of judging Albus by the Death Eaters. By himself.
So Albus first shamed the young man into trading his selfish, greedy dream of enslaving a widowed Lily for one of keeping her and her loved ones alive, and then tricked Severus into believing that he needed to change sides to effect even that.
By this reading Snape, left to his own devices absent Albus’s machinations, might well have delivered his warning and returned to being a good little Death Eater, torturing and killing helpless Muggleborns (other than Lily), Muggles, and enemies of his cause without a moment’s compunction. And probably still hoping to advance himself enough in the Death Eater ranks to collect Lily as his eventual reward when the Dark Lord won.
So all the credit for Severus’s turning sides goes here to Albus, who saw within Snape’s greedy obsession over Lily the tiny spark of actual love, and who fanned that spark and used it to shame and terrorize the young man into giving himself into Albus’s guidance.
And who later, laboriously, propelled the young, half-repentant sinner to further efforts. Who extorted a promise from the grief-torn man to protect Lily’s son. And grimly held him to it, against the young man’s twisted hatred of James Potter, which flared up again when Snape saw the lookalike son.
And finally, finally, after a decade and a half of forcing the young man to act on a virtue and bravery he didn’t actually possess, Albus was rewarded by seeing the tiny spark he’d spent so long fanning burst into an actual flame of courage. Snape, after so long guarding a true Gryffindor, after so long guided by his wise mentor, had become almost good enough, almost daring enough, to be Gryffindor himself.
But any virtue and courage we see Snape eventually display, is all due, really to Albus’s pushing.
If we but start from the premise (and refuse ever to abandon it) that Albus is all-good, and his treatment of Severus merited and meritorious.
Partly, as we discussed, it’s the difference in how one faces danger: Jo uses her authorial voice to privilege Gryffindorish “courage” (which Joanna Russ, in her novel The Female Man, neatly epigrammed as manly men being “slaves to the fear of showing fear”).
So Sirius died laughing, relishing the risk he faced, and Harry, offering himself to Tom, was nearly as afraid of disgracing himself by showing fear before Tom and the Death Eaters as he was of his impending death itself. He displayed Gryffindor “courage” —being terrified of being seen (by his enemies) to experience (even merited) fear.
Whereas Severus, when he (as a known-to-Albus Death Eater, legally subject to Unforgiveables) approached Albus to beg for Lily’s life, when he returned belatedly to the risen-Dark Lord’s side as a quadruple (hopefully, to be [mis-] taken by Tom for a triple) agent, when the Dark Lord started talking of his wand not working—why, Severus on those occasions was shown by JKR to be visibly white-faced and stammering.
Snape not only didn’t actively enjoy deadly peril, he couldn’t even convincingly simulate being properly indifferent to the prospect of his own demise!
Hence, Snape was a coward: he expressed fear in front of his enemies.
Of course, some of us feel that someone who’s terribly afraid, and does the right thing anyway, is more to be honored than someone who’s insensible to danger, or who is an adrenalin junkie who actively enjoys risk.
But there is no one else in Jo’s canon who overtly combines openly expressing fear with doing the right thing anyway.
Now, JKR does portray heroes who combine FEELING fear with doing heroic things anyway. Neville is clearly absolutely terrified of flying and/or falling, yet he flies to London on an invisible beast to support Harry’s rescue mission in OotP. We can infer that Hermione is scared there as well, and then later on the various occasions when she’s out of her depth in DH. Then, the books are written from Harry’s point of view, so we’re privy to all of the fears and misgivings that he doesn’t express aloud.
But none of Jo’s heroes is explicitly portrayed as being white and stammering, openly expressing their terror—they suck it up and pretend to their peers and enemies to be unmoved. (Neville, of course, does openly express fear in the early books—while he’s still largely a subject of disdain—but by the end he’s taking Harry as his role model.)
Indeed, I wrote, “Neville is clearly absolutely terrified of flying and/or falling,” but I’d be ashamed to tell you how many re-readings of OotP [and back-referencings to PS] it took me finally to register that “clear fact.” It’s there, absolutely, but it doesn’t slap you in the face the way Snape’s fear at facing HIS death does. You can read, and re-read, and still miss it entirely.
So the Gryff rule seems to be, a brave person doesn’t admit to fear. At least, not in front of enemies, or in front of an ally who might be demoralized by it. There are only a few circumstances in which one may legitimately express fear, or even misgivings. A child writing to his godfather, for instance. And even then, he should minimize his concern.
And by that rule, Snape simply isn’t brave. He cried out to Albus, “Don’t kill me!” He was white with terror when he returned to Voldemort’s side after that blessed absence of fourteen years. He was white again when he realized that Tom meant to kill him over the Elder wand.
He betrayed his fear to his enemies. How shameful!
But, Harry (and Jo) eventually tell us in the Epilogue, Albus Severus Potter was named for two headmasters. “One of them was a Slytherin and he was probably the bravest man I ever knew.”
But by then, of course, Harry had worked out that some of Snape’s display of fear had actually been used to mislead Tom. For so long as Tom was firmly convinced that Snape was a self-serving coward, Tom could never imagine that Severus was deliberately risking himself, sacrificing himself, for long years—first for Lily, then for Lily’s son, then for Lily’s son’s cause.
If Harry had fully registered that Snape’s displays of fear were entirely founded in the man’s real feelings, he might have been less lenient of them.
*
But there’s more to the reading Snape-was-really-a-coward than a stylistic preference for someone who never admits to feeling fear.
How much of the bravery we Snapefen impute to him was attested to in canon?
We infer that he faced death and horrific torture (and probably took some of the latter) in turning double-agent, but we don’t actually see it. “Anything,” he said to Dumbledore, but we don’t see him directly suffer to protect Lily (or later, Harry or other students). And his evident fear on the three occasions I cited above could be attributed to craven cowardice rather than to justified appreciation of what he faced.
(Indeed, anyone still thinking of Albus as utterly benevolent and mild could more easily read Snape’s obvious fear at approaching him as due to a guilty conscience projecting what Snape knew he deserved, than as a realistic apprehension of what a Death Eater confessing to an authority risked.)
*
We Snapefen tend to assume Sev’s great physical courage because we assume it as a given that his treason to Tom would have been horrifically punished if discovered. We’ve all read “Mood Music,” or “Missing in Action,” or “Ashen and Somber Skies,” or one of the other fanfics in which Tom discovered Severus’s true loyalties and subjected the traitor to protracted and unspeakable (if not unwritable) torture.
We believe that Snape risked truly awful retribution if his loyalties had been discovered by Tom. So that Snape’s facing such horrors, first to try to save Lily, and later to protect Harry, and finally to destroy Voldemort and protect his students, showed greater courage than, say, Tonks showed in joining the Order.
Greater risk implies greater courage in assuming the risk.
But in actuality, it is fanon that Severus faced anything worse than any other Voldemort opponent. Indeed, if you look, that particular fanon supposition is not actually well supported by canon.
It’s canon that Regulus was believed (by Sirius and Remus at least) to have been killed for defecting.
But Sirius never said that he’d heard Regulus had been tortured for days for that treason.
Similarly, we know that Karkaroff was hunted down and murdered for renouncing Tom and giving Death Eater names to Barty Senior. But we were never told that Igor’s death was any more horrific than, say, the Mackinnons’.
In the graveyard, Tom told his followers only that “the one who has left my service forever” would surely be killed.
But then, Tom also killed anyone who opposed him if he caught up to them. And anyone who happened to be innocently in his way. And his own loyal followers who brought him unwelcome news. And anyone randomly around (his devoted servants were most at risk here, by reason of proximity) whenever Tom happened to be in a bad mood.
Tom killed people.
Yawn. Dog bites man, old story.
So, betraying Tom put one at risk of being killed by him.
So did serving him.
Or attracting his attention for any other reason.
As a clever man could have, should have, observed, by the time Severus turned.
Being NOTICED by Tom put one at risk of death. And for any branded Death Eater, it was way too late to hope to go unnoticed.
So it’s not at all clear that betraying Tom would put one in worse danger than either joining him in the first place, or overtly opposing him, would have done.
Indeed, given that Tom feared death worse than anything, it might even be possible that Tom imagined that the worst possible punishment was a fast, inescapable death (since, as the fictions cited above amply demonstrate, a slow and lingering death left some possibility open for escape/rescue/rehabilitation, quite contrary to Tom’s intentions).
Tom, in canon, didn’t believe any fate to be worse than death. So he may not have had any threat-worse-than-death to hold over the heads of his followers (except insofar as they were weak enough to be moved by threats to loved ones).
Whereas a normal person fears agony as much or more than death. Quite a large number of normal people subjected to unremitting pain for a long period come to long for death as a release. We needn’t reference torture archives here, either: anyone who’s had a loved one die of cancer or some other chronic incurable degenerative disease can attest to this, We all know someone who’s said, enough, and refused further treatments that might have bought another ten minutes. Or even, perhaps, another two months.
Of pain.
But Tom wasn’t normal that way. As he recounted in the graveyard, he clung on to existence by his fingernails, in constant, unremitting agony, rather than accept oblivion.
For over ten years.
So, that Tom reserved a special hell-on-earth for those who’d double-crossed him is in fact a fannish invention. He might simply have killed them.
Which is what Tom does to anyone he notices negatively. Or at all. No special danger there.
Mind, this particular piece of fanon has a strong grip on my imagination. But there’s no direct canon support for it. So if some other fan decided that Snape’s position as a quadruple agent posed no greater risk (and therefore required no more courage and should be accorded no more credit) than just joining the Order in general…. Well, there’s really no canon to refute that position.
Indeed, there’s no canon to refute the argument that a nastily clear-headed (and single) Death Eater might have thought himself no more at risk by turning his cloak than by remaining obedient to Tom. Dead is dead, and if Tom was going about killing off his servants anyhow (either in fits of temper or by giving them impossible missions)….
And, in fact, our Nastily Clear-Headed Death Eater could reflect that, if he could get Dumbledore to vouch for him, turning his cloak would put him in a better position than his fellows.
If the Dark Lord won, as seemed likely, our NCHDE would claim he’d been deceiving Dumbledore. At worst, if he wasn’t believed, he’d be killed for treason, but his fellows were dropping like flies anyhow. But on the other hand, if the Dark Lord lost, all NCHDE’s crimes committed (as a Death Eater) would be forgiven him as the necessity imposed on a double agent to hide his true loyalty.
If Riddle was violent enough to his own followers (as he clearly was in DH), the trade-off would be clear: death, which was a risk anyhow, versus being altogether in the clear if Voldemort lost.
Until a reader got to The Prince’s Tale near the end of the seventh volume, it was perfectly possible to read Snape as a conniver of this sort, loyal to no one. And even afterwards, if that’s how one had previously been reading him, it was possible still to believe that such considerations had carried weight with him.
Taking a calculated risk in one’s own self-interest is something we don’t normally award the accolade of “courage” to, even though we recognize that it takes a coolness under pressure that many of us (waves hand vigorously!) could never emulate.
We give more brownie points for deliberately risking harm to stand up for the right than for doing so in the course of pursuing one’s self-interest.
Gandhi is admired for courting jail in civil disobedience against the British Empire’s Salt Tax.
A common salt smuggler of that time, not so much, even if s/he ended up in the very next cell for (on paper) the very same offense.
*
So, post The Prince’s Tale, to what extent must we give Severus credit for choosing his martyrdom? For reasons of principle or loyalty to others, rather than self-interest?
That’s where we must consider the reason Jo gave for Snape’s turning his coat: protecting Lily. To what extent should that be considered creditable?
Let’s back up to HBP and consider how Jo depicted three Slytherins in operation: Bella, Cissy, and Snape.
Part of the problem, of course, is that we readers tend to like to reserve the accolade “brave” for people we actually approve of.
Consider Spinner’s End, and our observations of three Slytherins (and one Gryffindor). Bellatrix was the only one in that scene who might, on a surface reading, merit the term courageous. She had deliberately invited, and endured, more than a decade of torture and deprivation sufficient to kill most who suffered it for the sake of the cause and the leader she clearly believed in. That we abhor her cause and her leader is no reason for the reader to denigrate the courage she showed—though in practice we do. Few Potter fans cite Bellatrix as one of the greatest exemplars of courage in the series.
And, in this chapter, she capped her earlier displays of courage by stating nobly that she would sacrifice even her child to her cause and leader.
Her sister, in contrast, was plainly risking the Dark Lord’s displeasure by approaching Snape without her lord’s leave. Which means she was risking possible torture or death. But we readers don’t usually call Cissy courageous for doing this, but desperate.
It was to her credit that she valued her son’s life above her own, and we’d certainly have judged her harshly if she had not, if she had placed her safety above his, but we don’t call her brave for risking punishment for trying to protect his life. Any more than we call Xeno Lovegood brave for calling the Death Eaters to come capture Harry, even though we recognize that calling in the DE’s exposed Lovegood, as well as the trio, to Death Eater violence. (And in fact Xeno suffered their full displeasure; Harry and his friends, in the event, did not.)
We may sympathize with Xeno’s desperation to rescue his daughter, with Narcissa’s desperation to rescue her son, but we don’t call their consequent actions courageous.
And Snape, in the Spinner’s End scene, seemed on a surface reading to be the epitome of self-interest, cowardice, and do-nothingism. He seemed someone who would exert himself only to safeguard his own interests—double-dealing with both his masters, perhaps, to the extent he thought he could get away with it. Snape freely admitted that he never lifted a finger to try to restore the Dark Lord when he thought (hoped?) him finished; instead he accepted Dumbledore’s protection and acceded to Dumbledore’s rules. But now that the Dark Lord had returned to power, he was afraid to be seen as anything but his loyal servant.
Narcissa’s breaking down in utter despair at Draco’s implicit death sentence clearly made him uncomfortable, but he offered her only vague reassurances of maybe being able to “try to help” the boy, nothing substantive, until Bellatrix pinned him down by again questioning his commitment. Only Bella’s calling him out on his “usual empty promises, the usual slithering out of action” stampeded him into making that rash Vow to prove himself committed before the Dark Lord’s most loyal lieutenant.
No courage there, clearly.
That scene exemplified why many readers, prior to the release of DH, could credit Snape as having been loyal to no one and nothing but himself.
And we readers don’t count such a man as brave, even if he took calculated risks (or fell inadvertently into dangers) in pursuit of his own ends. Had Snape pretended to defect to Dumbledore at Tom’s behest, started actually following Dumbledore’s orders upon Tom’s (temporary) defeat, and then kept both masters on a string after Tom’s return, each thinking the other mistaken in believing Snape loyal, we might admit that returning to Tom’s side took a good deal of nerve, but we wouldn’t call him brave.
And we wouldn’t worry over whether Tom had punished Snape, or how, for his services to Albus during the interregnum. The self-serving bastard wouldn’t merit that concern.
And, of course, anyone who had adopted that view of Severus wouldn’t necessarily feel the need to modify it much even with the revelation that he had truly defected prior to Tom’s defeat. It was still the case that Severus benefited from having the leaders of both sides convinced he was their side’s secret agent; Dumbledore’s thinking so got Snape off the hook from the Ministry prosecuting him as a Death Eater. So to the extent he could still be seen as having benefitted from his quadruple agent role, he could still be viewed as self-serving. And thus to merit being called, perhaps, cool rather than courageous.
But then, even if we admit Snape did legitimately switch sides at some danger to himself, we return to another consideration—how much credit should we give him for that, given that he had no choice in that, if he hoped to save Lily?
We viewed the Malfoys as desperate, not brave, when they run through Hogwarts ignoring the battle to try to find their son. We viewed Narcissa as desperate, not brave, when she turned to Severus to appeal to him to save Draco from Tom’s schemes, and later when she lied to Tom about Harry’s being alive in order to gain immediate access to Hogwarts to search for her son. We viewed Xeno as desperate (and craven), not brave, when he changed the Quibbler editorial policy and called in Death Eaters to capture Harry.
It’s to the Malfoys’ slight credit that their love for their son trumped both their commitment to an evil cause and their interest in their own safety. However, we cannot credit them with much—had they seen a way to save Draco while serving Tom (and thus also saving themselves), they would surely have taken it. It’s only Tom’s making his service absolutely incompatible with saving their son that forced them finally to act against him.
And so too with Severus. It’s easy to believe that, had he trusted the Dark Lord to spare Lily’s life, he’d never have approached Dumbledore.
So. If the Malfoys did the right thing, but were neither particularly virtuous nor brave in their eventual abandonment of Tom’s cause to save their only child, so neither was Severus, when he defected to save his beloved.
Indeed, had any of them started on the “right” side initially, their actions in abandoning that side would have been read as the vilest treachery.
We don’t applaud Xeno for switching sides to try to save Luna, even though we consider Luna far more worth saving than Draco.
We have the Brave(™) Gryffindors here to guide us: Molly and Arthur were never once tempted to defect to save their children from the Death Eaters. James and Lily might have died trying to protect their baby, and might have, as mere shades, heroically held off Voldemort’s attack long enough to enable their son to escape from that graveyard. But when their wise leader, Dumbledore, finally revealed to their son that his death was required for their cause, those same parental shades escorted him lovingly and loyally to his suicide. (“Lily’s smile was the widest of all.” )
See, Bellatrix was right all along. If you have an only child, or an only beloved, you should be proud and happy to sacrifice their life, as well as your own, to your cause.
If you truly are dedicated to your cause.
So, see, Severus, Narcissa, and Lucius simply demonstrated that they lacked ultimate commitment to their original cause. They were willing enough to risk their own lives for said cause, but not, on sober consideration, also to sacrifice their best-beloveds to it.
Wimps!!!
(Imagine Bella’s mocking voice here: she never succumbed to that particular weakness.)
But in these three cases the cause, we biased readers believe, should not rightly have evoked that ultimate commitment.
So that these three Slytherins did in fact privilege their personal loyalties above their cause, stood to their final credit.
From our biased points of view.
But had they dedicated themselves to a cause we readers accepted as righteous, abandoning it for personal loyalties, however compelling, would have been craven.
An act of quite appalling cowardice.
So we might legitimately approve of Severus, Narcissa, and Lucius abandoning the Death Eater cause for the sake of those they loved. To try to save people that they valued above Tom and his goals.
But we can’t possibly call them “brave” for doing so.
Any more than we commend Xeno for his bravery in summoning Death Eaters to his very home to kill his daughter’s friends.
*
Finally, our reading of Snape, and our appreciation of his courage, depends in part on our reading of Albus Dumbledore.
To the extent that a reader retains Harry’s hero-worship of the man, to the extent that the reader still views Albus as benevolent, wise, and far-seeing, to that extent Snape’s credit must be diminished. Because Albus treated Severus abominably when Severus first turned to him, and for many years thereafter.
If Albus was right to treat Snape in such a manner, then Snape must have deserved that severity, and required such harsh treatment to be compelled to do anything at all worthwhile.
Which means Snape actually didn’t exactly turn to the right side—he was dragged there, kicking and screaming, by Albus. And if Albus did all the heavy lifting, to Albus should go the credit for any good Snape ended up doing.
Reread Albus canon’s treatment of Snape from the point of view that Albus truly cares for others (even those unworthy of his care), is committed to doing the right thing, and is as near to omniscient and prescient as any mortal well may be. And is (and should be) understood by his followers to be such. Assume further that Albus is always truthful and accurate in his comments and insinuations to and about Snape.
So for example, when Albus claimed to Harry in book one that Snape saved Harry’s life because he wanted to discharge his life-debt to James and be able to hate James’s memory in peace, Albus was being utterly accurate (if not exactly complete). Snape really was that petty and twisted, and Harry really was right to hold him in contempt even though owing Snape his life. Albus might have concealed Snape’s other (and more creditable reason) for protecting Harry, but he was telling the strict truth about the reason that he gave.
Moreover, if Albus were benevolent, there could not have been a third motive Albus might truthfully have adduced on Snape’s behalf to keep from betraying the sworn-secret Lily-motive. Such as, “Professor Snape takes the safety of his students very seriously, even the safety of students he doesn’t personally like.”
After all, any benevolent, generous-hearted man who wanted to encourage a prejudiced student to think the best of someone he’d hated who had saved his life would have said that on the professor’s behalf, if it were at all founded in fact.
But Albus IS benevolent, etc. Therefore the nice reading is not merited, is not true in the least. Therefore the only alternate motive to Snape’s honoring-Lily’s-sacrifice that Albus knew of and could honestly recount to Harry, was the discreditable, twisted one of Snape’s being determined to hate his savior-James in peace.
Similarly, when Albus twinkled at Snape’s incoherent rage at Sirius’s escape at the end of PoA.. Well. That would be unspeakably cruel if Albus thought for a moment that Snape sincerely believed at the time that Lily’s son had just helped Lily’s betrayer, Lily’s murderer, (and Harry and his friends’ attempted murderer) to escape the well-earned justice to which Snape had barely managed to drag the villain.
But Dumbledore couldn’t be that cruel. He couldn’t look “as though he was quite enjoying himself” at Snape’s being “beside himself” with rage and pain if he thought for a moment that Snape’s turmoil was caused by such justifiable grief and horror.
Albus certainly wouldn’t have previously withheld the answer to Snape’s desperate question, “You surely don’t believe a word of Black’s story?” (before the escape, so the answer might have helped to reconcile Severus to what Dumbledore knew was shortly going to happen), if he thought the question sincere.
No, the only way such cavalier treatment of Severus could possibly be justified, was if Albus knew full well that Snape had verified (to Snape’s own satisfaction) that Black really had been guiltless of willing the Potters’ death. And that Snape had subsequently schemed to get Black Kissed anyway out of that “schoolboy grudge” against an innocent man—and possibly out of that Slytherin-ambitious desire to collect an utterly undeserved Order of Merlin.
In that case, yes, Snape would deserve to have his dastardly plans foiled, and moreover to have his uncontrolled anger lead him to make a fool of himself in front of the Minister. Snape’s out-of-control fury would then truly be funny; he deserved to suffer, in full, the “severe disappointment” of such unworthy schemes.
So since Albus DID clearly find Severus’s “severe disappointment” funny, that must have been (in Albus’s opinion, which must become our own) Snape’s true reason for being upset at Black’s escape.
NOT that Snape still believed (however incorrectly) that Black had been culpable in the Potters’ deaths. Because the latter explanation of Snape’s distress and outrage couldn’t have seemed in the least bit funny to anyone maintaining any pretensions at all to being, “well—noble.”
(Let’s define that last term a trifle, shall we: not actively malicious, and possessed of at least the sensibility and ethics of the average , say, amoeba. One wouldn’t want to set the bar too high in the Potterverse.)
See how easy it all is to explain, if you just put trusting Albus first, ahead of any other consideration of consistency, characterization, or logic?
*
Indeed, the first time in canon we see Albus treat Severus with respect, without twinkling while thwarting or contradicting him, is when he sends Snape off to be, perhaps, killed by Tom. “Severus… you know what I must ask you to do. If you are ready… if you are prepared…”
“I am,” said Snape.
He looked slightly paler than usual, and his cold, black eyes glittered strangely.
“Then good luck,” said Dumbledore, and he watched, with a trace of apprehension on his face, as Snape swept wordlessly after Sirius.
But then, even Harry had a moment of approaching-respect the one time (at the Leaving Feast a few weeks later) that he let himself consider what Snape might have been facing: “He looked as sour and unpleasant as ever. Harry continued to watch him, long after Snape had looked away. What was it Snape had done on Dumbledore’s orders, the night that Voldemort had returned. And why… why… was Dumbledore so convinced that Snape was truly on their side? He had been their spy; Dumbledore had said so in the Pensieve. Snape had tuned spy against Voldemort, “at great personal risk.” Was that the job he had taken up again?”
In TPT, the first compliment or validation we ever see Albus offer his penitent is that “You are a braver man by far than Igor Karkaroff. You know, I sometimes think we Sort too soon….”
If that’s the first time Albus ever offered Snape a compliment, why then … it must be the first time Snape’s ever earned one. That he would stay and face Voldemort, take the risk of trying once more to spy for Dumbledore, must be the first actually good or courageous action Snape’s ever volunteered to perform.
So then Snape’s “Don’t kill me!” on that hillside must have shown, not his justified fear of surrendering himself to a mortal enemy and concomitant courage in doing so to give warning of another’s peril, but his wrong-headed projection onto Albus of how Tom and the Death Eaters operated. Of what he himself, in fact, might be expected to do if an enemy showed up asking for a parley.
Similarly, Albus’s suggestion that Severus, in asking Tom to spare Lily, had tried to “exchange” the life of the mother for that of the son must have been a justified accusation, not a “have you stopped beating your wife?” verbal trap.
As must have been Albus’s insinuation (“They can die, as long as you have what you want?” ) that Snape had tried to persuade Tom, not just to spare Lily, but to give Lily to him.
If Albus’s contempt and disgust of Severus were entirely justified and his insinuations all well-founded, we could infer that what Snape had done was to argue that Tom should kill James and Harry, take Lily prisoner, and toss her to Snape as a sex-slave as Snape’s reward for turning the family in. (Further, perhaps even that Snape might have originally turned over the Prophecy to Tom anticipating such an outcome….)
And that if Snape had been satisfied that Tom would indeed do just that, he’d never have turned to Albus.
But his master had, presumably, made the promised reward contingent on Snape’s further good service, and Snape was afraid he couldn’t perform well enough to earn the bonus.
And so, in desperation, he turned to Albus to get Lily extra protection. (As long as she survived somehow he could still hope to get his paws on her later.) Only to be brought up short by Albus’s showing him exactly how despicable his hopes were.
And then, when Snape finally admitted that Lily’s life, even if she were still unavailable to him, still married to James and the mother of James’s heir, was itself worth something to him, he was brought up short again by Albus driving a bargain with him: “And what will you give me in return, Severus?”
Of course the reader understands that beneficent Albus would indeed do all in his power to protect his loyal followers ANYWAY. That Snape took the demand seriously, that he imagined for a moment that he had to bargain with Albus for Lily’s protection, just showed how degraded Snape was. Severus was guilty of judging Albus by the Death Eaters. By himself.
So Albus first shamed the young man into trading his selfish, greedy dream of enslaving a widowed Lily for one of keeping her and her loved ones alive, and then tricked Severus into believing that he needed to change sides to effect even that.
By this reading Snape, left to his own devices absent Albus’s machinations, might well have delivered his warning and returned to being a good little Death Eater, torturing and killing helpless Muggleborns (other than Lily), Muggles, and enemies of his cause without a moment’s compunction. And probably still hoping to advance himself enough in the Death Eater ranks to collect Lily as his eventual reward when the Dark Lord won.
So all the credit for Severus’s turning sides goes here to Albus, who saw within Snape’s greedy obsession over Lily the tiny spark of actual love, and who fanned that spark and used it to shame and terrorize the young man into giving himself into Albus’s guidance.
And who later, laboriously, propelled the young, half-repentant sinner to further efforts. Who extorted a promise from the grief-torn man to protect Lily’s son. And grimly held him to it, against the young man’s twisted hatred of James Potter, which flared up again when Snape saw the lookalike son.
And finally, finally, after a decade and a half of forcing the young man to act on a virtue and bravery he didn’t actually possess, Albus was rewarded by seeing the tiny spark he’d spent so long fanning burst into an actual flame of courage. Snape, after so long guarding a true Gryffindor, after so long guided by his wise mentor, had become almost good enough, almost daring enough, to be Gryffindor himself.
But any virtue and courage we see Snape eventually display, is all due, really to Albus’s pushing.
If we but start from the premise (and refuse ever to abandon it) that Albus is all-good, and his treatment of Severus merited and meritorious.
brilliant!
1. I"ve got a problem, first of all, with equating personal/emotional and selfish. You'd know that, of course, from my own writing! People who take risks for the sake of loved ones are being human, not evil or selfish. And, much as I generally disagree with the messages in these books, I do think Rowling expects us to see his parents' love for Draco as a good thing -- perhaps the only good thing about them, and the thing that may, in the end, redeem them.
2. My second problem can be summed up in two words: Occan's razor. Yes, a reader can interpret Snape and Dumbledore this way. But it's such an ugly, convoluted reading! It seems simpler and more elegant to read them as conflicted and imperfect human beings with mixed motives. Dumbledore, in particular, doesn't seem at all the "eptiome of goodness". He lies, he manipulates, he boasts, he callously ignores the safety of fully half his students (the troll incident) - and on it goes. You really have to twist your ideas in knots to see him as perfectly, unambiguously good. And, if you can't manage to do it, you can't see Snape as shallow and wicked, either.
3. And, even if you did -- even if it were true that Dumbledore, by his continuing harshness, spurred the young man to growth -- it's still Snape, not Dumbledore, who did the work. Therefore, it's still Snape who should get the credit for managing to become "almost a Gryffindor".*
Just my first thoughts on this - I will have to reread and come up with a more coherent response later.
*I'm being reminded of Dan Hemmens's "J.K. Rowling and the Doctrine of the Calvinists" here. He pretty much explains that, if Rowling truly understood that doctrine, and if Dumbledore truly represented God, we would all be Snapes! Because every one of us is too wicked to deserve redemption, and we can never earn it. We must therefore be grateful for God's grace, and humbly accept his punishments. Just a thought!
Re: brilliant!
WRT 1), I re-posted my fic "Betrayals" on AO3, and got a very disconcerting review to chapter one (before c2 was posted): someone praised it for its IC protrayal of an obsessive Snape who'd do anything to possess Lily (apparently overlooking the ending where he decides against acting on his fantasies). If that IS how someone reads Sev's attachment to Lily, it's not very creditable that he'd do "anything" to save her if he didn't trust the DL to spare her. I mean, Heathcliff was torn up by Cathy's death, but that didn't make him a good person. And, y'know, "good" and "brave" are a bit conflated in the Potterverse. Like i said, Bellatrix is never singled out as the series' great exemplar of unstinting personal courage and devotion, though arguably she is....
WRT 2), well, Occam's Razor.... we're re-readers, and in my case at least someone who drastically altered my opinions of characters upon re-reading. You, if I remember earlier comments, was one of those who altered your impressions of Snape in book 3, when you figured out he loved Lily. And marionros, if I recall, had Dumbledore's number from that first Hallowe'en, when Twinkles blithely sent off half the children in his care to the dungeons where a troll was said to be lurking. Me, I went along accepting Harry's view of Snape until SWM, and his view of Dumbledore until well after DH (note that my first fic, TDAIMP, presents Dumbledore as Snape's benevolent and wise mentor, both in Severus's estimation and in the narrative).
So... it takes work to revise one's estimation--first impressions last, unless one has reason and makes the effort to change. And really, it's very hard to keep one's good opinion of Albus once one gains a good opinion of Snape--at least, I found it impossible! (Re-reading the end of PoA, in particular, and Albus relishing Severus's rage and pain.... GRR! One is impelled to capslock.)
But simply holding to one's first impressions generally, but adding an "oh, it turns out Snape was partly redeemed by his love for Lily"--that is, really, an easier reading than turning around and reviewing everything one thought one knew about Severus and Albus.
I mean, how else could Jo write, and readers accept, "Albus Severus" as Harry's second son's name?
obsessive
Obsession: "NOUN
[MASS NOUN]
1The state of being obsessed with someone or something:
she cared for him with a devotion bordering on obsession
1.1 [COUNT NOUN] An idea or thought that continually preoccupies or intrudes on a person’s mind:
he was in the grip of an obsession he was powerless to resist
SYNONYMS
fixation, ruling/consuming passion, passion, mania, idée fixe, compulsion, preoccupation, enthusiasm, infatuation, addiction, fetish, craze, hobby horse; phobia, complex, neurosis
INFORMAL bee in one's bonnet, hang-up, thing, bug"
(http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/defin
The dictionary definition of "obsession" does not distinguish between "true love" and obsession/infatuation. In the popular mind, the distinction seems to be drawn according to whether one's love is returned, but a more appropriate distinction is whether love-feelings are selfish or unselfish, ie whether one's own comfort/interests are placed above or below the loved one's comfort/interests. The medical/psychological distinction is defined according to whether love-feelings prompt one to healthy or unhealthy relationship behaviour:
"The difference between healthy and obsessive love is that with the latter, those feelings of infatuation become extreme, expanding to the point of becoming obsessions...
Aside from delusional jealousy, obsessive love can be differentiated from a healthy love relationship by having addictive qualities. For example, the person who suffers from obsessive love tends to want to spend excessive time with their love object, such that they think excessively about and engage in behaviors that put them in touch with their love object to an extreme degree. They may limit how much they engage in recreational activities or other social relationships, even becoming incapacitated to the point of being unable to work. A person who obsessively loves may engage in tools of psychological control, or other forms of control, in an effort to keep their love object close. Examples of that include controlling money or food and in extreme cases, stalking or using violence. The individual who is obsessively in love, as well as the object of that love, may be dependent and codependent on each other, respectively. The person who loves obsessively may behave as if addicted to their love object. In turn, the object of obsessive love may have difficulty setting clear limits and boundaries on the obsessive behaviors...
Warning signs that someone is suffering from obsessive love may include the following:
Low self-esteem/a tendency of needing excessive reassurance
Obsessively talking about their loved object
Making repeated calls, texts, and/or faxes to the love object
Unwanted intensive attention to the love object
A tendency to have extremely good or bad (not balanced) feelings about someone
A tendency to focus on only the positive or the negative aspects of their loved one
Trouble focusing on work, recreation, socializing, or other aspects of their lives outside of the object of their affection
Attempts to monitor or otherwise control their love object's life and activities
Excessive joy, to the point of relief, when able to get in touch with or be with their love object"
(http://www.medicinenet.com/confusing_lo
Heathcliff fails. His "love" is selfish, cruel, controlling and malevolent. But Snape's is not. He is not the controller in the love/friendship relationship with Lily: she is. His loathing of James is not a product of his feelings for Lily; it stems from James's own malevolent behaviour towards him. And when put to the test, he doesn't try to destroy Lily's loved ones; he tries to save them. He doesn't put his own benefit or interests first, but hers.
duj
Re: obsessive
Is his love obsessive? Well, he is certainly devoted. It rules his life, and he spends entirely too much time thinking about her and regretting their breakup, separation of ways and his unintended part in her death. Canon gives little evidence on the extent to which it affects his social/recreational life. He may or may not have other relationships (the "other women more worthy" mentioned by Voldemort), but his deepest feelings remain Lily's (his Patronus).
But there is absolutely no canon evidence that he controls her during their relationship or stalks her afterwards, and he isn't incapacitated from working and being a productive member of the community.
Even if Snape's love is characterised as obsessive rather than true, what matters about it, and what expresses his character, is what it prompts him to do, which, in the text, are only good deeds:
1) He begs Voldemort for her life (could be selfish or unselfish)
2) He turns himself in to Dumbledore to save her, knowing that this means both risking his life and saving James and Harry alongside her (and therefore it's clearly an unselfish deed, for *her* benefit rather than his)
3) He bonds himself to Dumbledore's service with his promise of "Anything" - again, this is purely unselfish
4) He dedicates his life to saving Harry in the future - unselfish
5) He extends this protective urge to cover anyone he can save without ditching his primary task of saving Harry - unselfish
6) He gives his reputation, his primary task and even his *soul* towards defeating Voldemort, in her name - unselfish
7) He gives up his life for the same cause.
A litany of unselfish acts. That is not what most people mean when they call a love obsessive.
Outside the text, JK has said that he became a Death Eater to impress Lily, and also that she finds the idea of him loving someone "deeply horrible". How much weight one gives those remarks depends on one's view of what constitutes canon. For those who do consider authorial comment equal to canon, I point out that impressing Lily is a very different motive than forcing Lily or wanting to kill/hurt/harm. It suggests ambition, but also ignorance of the Death Eaters' real aims. He thinks Lily will *choose* him, not that she will be forced to accept him.
Ambition is not an evil in and of itself. Ambition to become a Death Eater is an evil ambition, but Snape's motive as described by JK is an innocent one. In real life, wishing to impress a loved one into returning that love is not inherently evil. (That canon suggests otherwise is a flaw in JK's thinking.) The text gives Snape pre-dispositions (such as pre-existing fascination with Dark Arts) and circumstances (Marauder bullies who isolate him socially and even attempt his life, non-intervention by staff, including Dumbledore's brush-off after the Shack and subsequent appointment of head bully as Head Boy and recruitment of entire gang into the Order, all of which push him into the DE's arms) which are separate from his feelings for Lily and which determine how his ambition will be expressed. If there is evil in his ambition, it is not related to his capacity for love in general or his love of Lily in particular.
(As for "deeply horrible", to my mind that is another flw in JK's thinking. The love that the text portrays as deeply horrible is James's (his stalking of Lily and bullying of her friend), and Dumbledore's (which doesn't stop him from raising the supposed object as a lamb to the slaughter).
duj
Re: brilliant!
I'm not saying her actions were right, but there's no reason to think they were driven by sadism at that point either - she tortured two people who she had reason to think were either torturers themselves or willing to tuirn a blind eye to torture, in order to save soemone she loved from being tortured.
Whitehound/Borolin
Re: brilliant!
whitehound/Borolin
disagree
TBH, I didn't find benevolent-Dumbledore viable by OotP, unless the last two books pulled a rabbit out of their hat.) Convicted by his own mouth:
"What did I care if numbers of faceless and nameless people and creatures were slaughtered in the vague future..." True, he goes on to say "if in the here and now you were alive, and well, and happy."
Well, it had to be "in the here and now", didn't it, because Dumbledore never wavered from his plan of raising Harry as a pig for slaughter. And he didn't start expecting Harry to survive until that moment at the end of GoF when Harry is debriefing after the third task. No remorse for having sent baby-Harry to a place where he knew he'd be abused, either: "You had suffered. I knew you would. I knew I was condemning you to ten dark and difficult years." Let's just live in the here and now, why don't we, so we don't have to admit that his *reason* for doing so was "to keep you alive" until he needed you to die.)
And less of this "we", thanks. Saving the people you love is just as brave as saving randoms: what makes it courage is if you carry it through, despite the risk to yourself. Bellatrix wasn't brave in VW2 because she put her own welfare over Voldemort's when she saw the Sword. I think her bravery in VW1 is also questionable because *she* sees the risk-benefit ratio to herself oppositely than we do. She could brave Azkaban because "the Dark Lord will come back for me" (words to that effect. I don't have time to double-check.) But Narcissa and Xenophilius and Snape put someone else's - in Snape's case, many someone elses, because "that's what "lately, only those I couldn't save" means - life ahead of theirs.
It wasn't till DH that Voldemort started randomly killing followers regardless of their loyalty, so Snape's defection put him at risk of death. Facing death for another/others is courage in its own right; torture doesn't need to come into the picture. Facing Dumbledore as a Death Eater, when he knew that Dumbledore had defeated Grindelwald/fought DEs and had already shown in school that he had no regard for Snape's life whatsoever, only to save Lily; saying "Don't kill me" (because then I won't be able to warn you and save Lily, duh) and then "Anything"; those are courageous acts. Lily's life meant more to him than his own. Letting her die required nothing of him but inaction. If he was a coward, he'd have let it happen.
Wish I had time to pursue this further but it's Shavuot tonight and I have 4 kg of flour to turn into Challah, then cooking, cooking, cooking...
duj
Re: disagree
When Dumbledore asked Severus if he was ready to take up his spying activities again and Severus’ face was white that is a normal reaction in my opinion. Severus hadn’t shown up in the cemetery and was considered a traitor. Voldermort even commented on missing Death Eaters. Anyone in their right mind would be scared. When he left to go to Voldemort he had no idea what was going to happen and more than likely Voldermort might have killed him before he could even open his mouth and explain why he wasn’t there. Being fearful and still acting is courageous.
And finally about Voldermort and torture vs just killing. This was the dialogue between Harry and Severus at the start of the occlumency lessons.
Harry: "You mean if he knows about it, he will be able to read my mind?"
Severus: "Read it, control it, unhinge it. In the past it was often the Dark Lord's pleasure to invade the minds of his victims, creating visions designed to torture them into madness. Only after extracting the last exquisite ounce of agony, only when he had them literally begging for death would he finally....kill them."
We know from this exchange between Severus and Harry that Voldermort at least tortured some of his victims mentally. Severus seems to say that Voldermort gets pleasure from the pain and agony he can inflict on victims and even if he doesn’t torture physically, mental pain is torture too. So it doesn't seem farfetched to me that he would torture prisoners physically. Number 1 it gives his blood-thirsty Death Eaters pleasure and Number 2 it shows the same Death Eaters what can happen when you don't perform, show results and displease your Master. I see him doing this as a form of control no matter what his personal feelings about death. Seeing torture with your own eyes is a great way to keep the troops in line. Since Severus is in his inner circle and highly trusted I would think that he would have a special torture for someone who had made a fool out of him and had given him false information. Therefore to me Severus was brave to keep going back to Voldermort because had he been found out he may have been used as a teaching tool to show fellow death eaters why you don’t want to betray your Lord. A horrific death would have done that. Finally when Voldermort killed Severus he didn’t kill him with the killing curse but he let Nagini kill him in a horrible, bloody, suffering way. Another reason I don’t think Voldermort would just use the killing curse on all his prisoners.
SM
Severus: "Read it, control it, unhinge it.
Only in the film, though. The closest equivalent passage in the book is this:
There might be passages elsewhere which do demonstrate that Voldemort used mental torture, but not this one.
So it doesn't seem farfetched to me that he would torture prisoners physically.
He certainly uses the Cruciatus on his own followers at various points. We hear of some various people being "tortured into madness", e.g. Neville's parents by Bellatrix, but it's unclear whether this was solely by an extended duration of Cruciatus or whether other curses were involved as well, or Legilimency for that matter.
Re: disagree
If you accept interviews as canon then it's canon that Snape was a fairly tepid DE all along, because JK said that he joined in part because he thought it might impress Lily, and that as a DE he would have witnessed "things" - no suggestion he had committed atrocities himself.
I would say that even for the saint!Albus faction, it's difficult to construe Sev as other than brave, because even if Albus had been wholly good (instead of the ambiguous character JK herself says he's meant to be) there's no reason to think Snape knew that in advance, and yet he defected at a time when the nominally "good" side were authorised to use Unforgiveables on suspects, and were in the habit of sending prisoners to a brutal concentration camp for life, without trial. We can see how brutal the Aurors were from the fact that Moody is meant to be one of the ebst of them, and yet when false!Moody punishes a child by slamming him repeatedly against a stone floor as he screams in pain, it doesn't ring any alarm bells that he might not be who he claims to be.
Having seen how bad some of the Aurors were, even someone who was meant to be one of the best of them, we're told that Crouch and his Aurors were as bad as many on the DE side, which suggests that at least some of the DEs were even worse. And we do see Tom giving Draco torture lessons.
It's not actually true that Sev is the only character who shows visible fear, btw - Hermione is very openly scared of riding Buckbeak when they go to rescue Sirius (chanting "I really don't like this" over and over) and Ron is openly scared of Aragog. Draco is openly scared of going into the Forbidden Forest. Viktor Krum is openly scared of being left alone with Barty Snr. And Albus admits that emotional cowardice held him back from challenging Grindelwald, thus allowing him to continue to commit mass murder.
Whitehound/Borolin
Re: disagree
JK did actually say in an interview that Slytherins were brave but more practical than Gryffindors. This was an odd bit of business: somebody asked her what her favourite scene in DH was and she said it was when the Slytherins left the school, and then came back with reinfoircements to fight against Voldemort, showing that they were brave in a practical way. That scene doesn't exist - either she didn't write it or it got cut - but she evidently envisioned not just Slughorn but many of the Slytherin students rallying to the school's defence, once they had acquired enough force to do some good.
Whitehound/Borolin
Re: disagree
Dd is a rather dodgy, devious person and it's clear from JK's comments that he's meant to be, but I do believe that he's basically good, or at least that he tries to be. My opinion, which has never really wavered, is that like many very tall, very intelligent people Albus is mildly autistic and so has great difficulty reading normal social cues. Most of the time he compensates by using low-level Legilimency to assess how his behaviour is making the other person feel, but when confronted by somebody whose mind he can't rummage through - Harry in 5th year, and Snape the Occlumens *all the time* - then he doesn't know how to behave towards them and so is clumsy, tactless or outright cruel, without meaning to be.
I see his occasional bouts of full-bore emotional abuse of Snape as him projecting his own guilt about Ariana onto Snape and assuming Snape's motives had been similar to his own, because he's unable to read him. He himself hadn't wanted to think about Ariana (understandably, since she'd just killed their mother) and so had neglected her, and he'd been driven at least in part by a desire for political power, so he assumes Snape threw Lily over for the sake of power. He doesn't understand that Lily was Snape's primary cause and that he had joined the DEs in the hopes of impressing her (not nearly as stupid as it sounds - Snape's own mother married a bully and he can see Lily falling for James, so it's perfectly reasonable for him to think that becoming a swaggering thug would make him more attractive to her).
I also suspect that when Dd made that comment about sorting too soon he was thinking of himself, as well as Snape - he thinks that he should have been the Slytherin and Snape the Gryffindor.
whitehound/Borolin
Re: disagree
We do know the Marauders continued to persecute Snape, but since they were able to use the Map to ensure that there were no teachers in the vicinity, there's every reason to think that the staff didn't know what they were up to. Lily evidently didn't, in 6th year, even though she was close to James.
Indeed, it could be argued that the reason that James, a known trouble-maker and gang-leader, became Head Boy was because the staff valued young Sev's life so much that the fact that James had saved his life was enough to outweigh all the other things James had done. The idea of Sev as this totally isolated and scorned waif is also fanon - canon quite strongly supports the idea that he was a valued member of the Slug Club and was unpopular with other students in part because he was perceived as a Teacher's Pet.
Whitehound/Borolin
Re: disagree
Whitehound/Borolin
to the extent
Benevolent: well meaning and kindly, kind, kind-hearted, warm-hearted, tender-hearted, big-hearted, good-natured, good, gracious, tolerant, benign, compassionate, caring, sympathetic, considerate, thoughtful, obliging, accommodating, helpful, decent, neighbourly, public-spirited, charitable, altruistic, humane, humanitarian, philanthropic...
Wise: 1. Having the ability to discern or judge what is true, right, or lasting; sagacious
2a. Exhibiting common sense; prudent: a wise decision.
b. Shrewd; crafty.
3. Having great learning; erudite.
4. Provided with information; informed.
To see Dumbledore as benevolent, now that his actions are fully-known, is to twist the meaning of the term to the opposite. His behaviour is consistently uncaring and unkind. Wise is also questionable, except in the senses of erudite and well-informed. His strategies are sometimes downright ridiculous (Polyjuice chase, anyone?) and he acknowledges in DH that important choices have been based largely on guesswork.
How can it be benevolent to dump a toddler on a doorstep overnight, to place him deliberately where he'll be mistreated, to take no palliative action during the entire space of his childhood? To raise him as a pig to the slaughter, to groom him to be a child-soldier, to encourage him to throw himself into danger? To bring a villain/Voldemort-magnet into the school, to guard it with a Cerberus behind a door a firstie can open? To send half the students to the dungeons where a troll has allegedly just been sighted? (Perhaps he thought that wherever Quirrell claimed to have spotted it was the least likely place to find it? But still, why risk sending the kids out of the Hall at all?) To steal the house cup from the students that had earned it just at the moment when it would give them the greatest shame and distress? To keep the school open when the Chamber of Secrets has been opened? To hire a crazed mass-murderer's best-buddy the year of his escape? (And if he hired him as a favour, why wait till then?) To hire charlatans to teach DADA? To hire *anyone* to a job that's been cursed?...
I look through canon and struggle to find any time that he has ever been kind or helpful to anyone without some gain in mind. His supposed-charity is rather narrowly-focused. He collects the disadvantaged or maligned that can be useful to him thereafter, but there are plenty of disadvantaged and maligned students that he completely ignores. Not just Slytherins. What about Neville? What about Luna? Beneath his notice?
Some points can be argued away as "for the greater good" - to defeat Voldemort - but only some. (It's not an argument that I accept, because I believe that the good of the community is a sum of the collected good of the individuals that make it up.) That leaves a huge weight of evidence against his supposed benevolence, because he is as careless with the lives and welfare of his students and his followers as if they were indeed mere chess-pieces on a wizarding-board.
duj
from Very Small Prophet
From the Shorter OED:
Courage: The quality of character which shows itself in facing danger undaunted or in acting despite fear or lack of confidence.
From Webster’s New World:
Courage: An attitude of facing and dealing with anything recognized as dangerous, difficult, or painful, instead of withdrawing from it.
Going over Niagara Falls in a barrel takes courage, but there’s nothing particularly selfless about it. Being a cat burglar takes courage—climbing up and down buildings, etc.—and unless you’re playing Robin Hood, it’s not selfless. On the other hand, giving money to a charity is (setting aside the issue of tax deductions) a selfless action that does not put one in personal danger or necessarily involve difficulty or pain.
I have come to find the conflation of courage with goodness in the Potterverse quite annoying. Godric asks for only one characteristic from his students, yet Gryffindors are often credited with virtues that have nothing to do with courage. It’s true the Sorting Hat does (once) mention chivalry as a Gryffindor trait along with courage, but chivalry is a narrow and ambiguous virtue, and very much class-based. Knights and nobles were expected to show chivalry to each other, but not to peasants (Hufflepuff), merchants (Slytherin), or clergy (Ravenclaw). Back when chivalry was something genuinely important, chivalrous behavior or attitudes were not considered chivalrous unless they involved people of the correct class. No slimy, hook-nosed merchant could possibly be chivalrous, no matter what “choices” he made in his life. On the other hand, the legitimate son of nobility or gentry, even if his mother was no more than a respectable bourgeois girl, can’t help but be chivalrous, no matter what his actual behavior.