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Is his complete repentance enough for you as a reader to disregard anything, however cruel, he may have done in his dark period,
No.
or would the thought that this was a man who may have been capable of such horrors disturb you enough to feel you cannot forgive him completely?
No.
Do you think a man who had commited such actions is capable of abandoning them for good or would he always be at risk of backsliding?
The latter.
Now, having said that... The issue to me is not which horrors he actually committed. I've said before, and I know some disagree with me, that the Death Eaters were a terrorist organization. I've read some of the fanfics you describe and, while I don't necessarily believe the worst of them (which I think are just bizarre), I do think that Snape was more culpable than just a needy teenager who fell with the wrong crowd but never did anything wrong himself. Snape may not have realized exactly what he was getting into, but you can bet he thought it was more than tea and strawberries at Wimbledon.
But for me, the path to forgiveness is a 3-step process: 1. recognizing that some action is wrong; 2. acknowledging that you did wrong and accepting responsibility for your own actions; and 3. taking affirmative steps not only to right your wrongs, but to change yourself so that you do not do wrong in the future.
I am able to forgive canon Snape just about anything, not because he repented, but because he repented and strove to put those things behind himself and become a person who would not do those things again. Throughout the series, we saw instances of Snape's having done that. After the Harry-Draco Sectumsempra incident, I think we also saw Snape's hamhanded and overbearing (and therefore totally ineffective) attempt to get Harry to see that about Harry. DH hit us over the head with the fact that Snape had changed himself.
The question of just how much he changed, or how far a journey he had to get there, is to me what your question raises. Yet his starting point is not the deciding factor; it's the ending point that matters. And we saw his ending point and know that he traveled however far it was necessary to go.
Some will disagree because he was "mean" to Harry or a "bad teacher" or a "mean teacher". I just don't buy that. First, the equivalence Rowling wants us to draw between "nice" and "good" is a load of hooey, to put it politely. Second, Snape just was not that bad. Reading back through the books, there are so many places where Snape could have been completely and totally horrible, and yet was not. For all the whining about how terrible Snape was to Harry, remember that this is the teacher who stood there and did not discipline Harry for repeatedly screaming "shut up!" at him. How mean, huh?!
No.
or would the thought that this was a man who may have been capable of such horrors disturb you enough to feel you cannot forgive him completely?
No.
Do you think a man who had commited such actions is capable of abandoning them for good or would he always be at risk of backsliding?
The latter.
Now, having said that... The issue to me is not which horrors he actually committed. I've said before, and I know some disagree with me, that the Death Eaters were a terrorist organization. I've read some of the fanfics you describe and, while I don't necessarily believe the worst of them (which I think are just bizarre), I do think that Snape was more culpable than just a needy teenager who fell with the wrong crowd but never did anything wrong himself. Snape may not have realized exactly what he was getting into, but you can bet he thought it was more than tea and strawberries at Wimbledon.
But for me, the path to forgiveness is a 3-step process: 1. recognizing that some action is wrong; 2. acknowledging that you did wrong and accepting responsibility for your own actions; and 3. taking affirmative steps not only to right your wrongs, but to change yourself so that you do not do wrong in the future.
I am able to forgive canon Snape just about anything, not because he repented, but because he repented and strove to put those things behind himself and become a person who would not do those things again. Throughout the series, we saw instances of Snape's having done that. After the Harry-Draco Sectumsempra incident, I think we also saw Snape's hamhanded and overbearing (and therefore totally ineffective) attempt to get Harry to see that about Harry. DH hit us over the head with the fact that Snape had changed himself.
The question of just how much he changed, or how far a journey he had to get there, is to me what your question raises. Yet his starting point is not the deciding factor; it's the ending point that matters. And we saw his ending point and know that he traveled however far it was necessary to go.
Some will disagree because he was "mean" to Harry or a "bad teacher" or a "mean teacher". I just don't buy that. First, the equivalence Rowling wants us to draw between "nice" and "good" is a load of hooey, to put it politely. Second, Snape just was not that bad. Reading back through the books, there are so many places where Snape could have been completely and totally horrible, and yet was not. For all the whining about how terrible Snape was to Harry, remember that this is the teacher who stood there and did not discipline Harry for repeatedly screaming "shut up!" at him. How mean, huh?!