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(Including the Final, Definitive, Explanation of why Severus Snape couldn’t possibly be considered a Hero™)
Miss Manners once explained how a Perfect Lady can be a feminist. Someone had argued to the contrary on the grounds that a Perfect Lady always puts the needs of others first whereas a feminist asserts her own rights. “Ah,” said Miss Manners, “but of course a Perfect Lady must by definition be a feminist. Dear me, no, not to assert her own rights: to defend the rights of her fellow women.”
Harry receives revenge; he never takes it. But he does avenge others.
Revenge and self-defense are selfish, in the Potterverse, and only Bad People would stoop to them (or good people doing wrong temporarily). But if you’re defending or avenging someone else, anything goes. Anything.
Moreover a Good Person can tell instinctively who’s a Mean Person who deserves to be punished. And JKR sets it up so the reader (if not always the Good Person character) already knows the crimes for which the Mean Person is being punished, so we buy emotionally into the satisfaction of vengeance.
Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.
In the Potterverse, that translates to other characters giving Harry vengeance on those who’ve hurt him while he stays morally pure and keeps his hands clean. After his vengeance is complete and his enemies have suffered enough, Harry can then nobly extend his hand in forgiveness. To Dudley, to Draco, even to Snape.
Meanwhile Harry performs the same service for others. Harry can’t manage the Cruciatus against those who killed his godfather or his mentor—but he can do it to Amycus, who never harmed Harry. In the Potterverse, that’s called being gallant. (Note that the few times Harry DOES attack someone on his own behalf, he’s wrong, he knows it, and he suffers emotionally and usually physically over his actions: blowing up Aunt Marge, attacking Draco with Sectumsempra.)
Harry’s Cruciating Carrow in Book 7 is just the logical extension of Hagrid’s giving Dudley a pig’s tail in Book 1.
Look at the pattern.
Dudley bullied Harry when Harry was helpless. Harry gets to watch Hagrid, the twins, Dementors, and Dumbledore all hurt Dudley; Harry then nobly saved Dudley from worse than death and magnanimously accepted Big D’s farewell.
Petunia and Vernon Dursley bullied Harry. Harry gets to watch them be terrorized by the owls and Hagrid, helpless to defend their son, threatened by Moody, driven out of their home… none of it his doing. The ones who had abused their power over him made completely impotent. But he doesn’t hex them himself, oh no!
Quirrell, in trying to hurt Harry, kills himself.
Gilderoy attacked Harry and Ron. Gilderoy’s own spell backfires on him, and Harry and Ron get to observe that he never, ever, recovers.
Umbridge hurt Harry. To defend Harry, Hermione sends Umbridge to be gang-raped by a herd of centaurs. Harry gets to see her afterwards in the infirmary, too traumatized to speak.
Marietta betrayed Harry; Hermione mutilates her.
Draco is mean to Harry. Draco is turned into a ferret and slammed repeatedly into a stone floor; Draco and his family are tortured by the Dark Lord; Draco’s best friend is killed by his own spell, and then Harry rescues Draco from its lethal effects.
Snape is mean to Harry, repeatedly. Mean Snape! Whenever Harry tries to get revenge directly, he’s slapped down. But Harry is privileged to watch Snape’s worst humiliation and defeat at the Marauders’ hands. Harry can’t touch Snape when dueling him, but he watches Buckbeak hurt him, and at the end, Harry actually gets to be inside Voldemort while Voldie kills Snape. Then Harry nobly approaches his dying enemy and saves the day by accepting his memories.
Voldemort is mean to Harry. Voldemort, of course, kills himself because his curse rebounds off Harry’s nobility.
Look at Harry’s own cruelties. He hexes Filch, but Filch is a sadist who has threatened (mostly impotently) every student at Hogwarts. He hexes Slytherins “to general applause”, because they’re all bad and nasty. Goblins cheat other wizards; Harry cheats them. Amycus Cruciates other students, but not Harry, and spits on Minerva; Harry Cruciates him.
Now look at the last battle: Bellatrix had destroyed Neville’s parents and Cruciated the boy… and Neville gets to watch Molly kill Bellatrix in defense of children. Dolohov had hurt Hermione; Flitwick kills him in front of her…. No one takes on a personal enemy (except maybe Hagrid going after Macnair, and even there Hagrid would be doing it for Buckbeak).
And Harry’s only vision of adulthood is to be an Auror: someone authorized and approved to use violence against others, not in self-defense, but to protect—anyone else.
How satisfying this is! As a Harry-identified reader, I get to have my cake and eat it too: I get full, physically-realized (usually described in sweet detail) vengeance against everyone who ever hurt me. I get to watch my enemies tormented physically and mentally, tortured, killed even. But my hands are clean: none of it is my fault.
Meanwhile nothing I/we do (hexing, permanently mutilating someone, setting up someone to be gang-raped, torturing, killing) besmirches us, because anything I/we are doing is in the gallant defense of others, and that can never count as bad.
Never. No matter what.
What a seductive version of morality.
It’s like that parable of Heaven and Hell: the tables in both are laden with delectable food, but the utensils are too long for anyone to feed themselves. So in Hell, everyone starves; in Heaven, everyone feeds the person across from them.
But in the Potterverse, the dish in “Heaven” is vengeance. Sauced with whatever degree of sheer cruelty one can stomach. Can you endure to perform Avada Kedavra and the Cruciatus? No? How about slipping a hungry, moronic child some Ton-Tongue Toffee? Pick the degree of pain and humiliation you’re willing to inflict, the degree you’re willing to witness, and enter the carnival where the people YOU hate are punished with no guilt to you! While you hex, torture, kill, people to whom you’re indifferent, also with no guilt for you. Because you’re doing it for others, not for yourself.
No one starves; no one goes without enjoying the torture-death of her enemies or the pleasures of sadism, as long as she accepts the basic rule: Feed one another!
How… nice.
Which of course is Severus’s problem. He’s not nice. He wants to take his revenge, not wait for another character to hand it to him and then make nice forgiving his enemy.
Which is why, per JKR, no one could possibly see Snape as a hero. He keeps wanting to settle his own accounts, whether with James or with Voldemort.
Just look at him at the end of POA, practically slavering at the thought of capturing Lily’s betrayer. Some might be misled by the fact that, unlike Sirius, Severus apprehends (who he thinks is) the traitor and turns him over to what passes in the WW for “justice” rather than trying to kill him directly. But if Severus were a hero™ like Harry, once he saw how much Sirius had suffered already in Azkaban he would have forgiven him and not gone after him.
Contrast Remus, who never went after Sirius and hid information that would have led to his capture, even while believing that Sirius was a traitor, a killer, and a present danger to Harry.
See, we thought that Remus was being irresponsible and weak, and putting saving face with Dumbledore above his responsibility to protect children; really he was showing how merciful he was. Sirius had already suffered, so a nice guy would forgive him. Severus may have been justified logically given what he knew, but the text conclusively proves that what Severus actually did was wrong.
(As Ann Rule said of Dickens, “Plot is the great moralizer.” JKR establishes that Severus was really wrong to pursue Sirius, Remus was right to shelter him, even though neither man could have known that on the facts they had at the time.)
Sirius and Remus show their true mettle by allowing Harry to persuade them to be merciful to Pettigrew (which in practice meant to substitute capturing for killing the traitor: what Severus was trying to do all along, but Severus was trying to do it to someone, Sirius, who had already been punished). And neither of them went after Pettigrew later, whereas Snape was mean™ to Wormtail when he had Wormy parked on him as a spy. He should have been nice to Wormtail and mean to someone else.
Moreover, in the Severus/Sirius hostility in OotP, Severus is motivated by his “schoolboy grudge”. Jeez Louise, being upset because someone tried to get you torn to bits by a werewolf and still asserts that you “deserved it” for the sin of wanting him to be expelled for the numerous crimes he had, in fact, been committing. How petty can some people be? Can’t you be satisfied by the fact that your enemy spent twelve years in Azkaban for an unrelated crime? Sirius, on the other hand, is equally eager to row with Snape—but he’s motivated by Snape’s mistreatment of Harry, so nothing he says or does is blamable. Got that straight, now?
See, what Severus should have been doing was be nice to Sirius (since Sirius had already suffered™) and taken out his temper by throwing Unforgivables at someone else’s enemies. Hermione’s, maybe, that would work. Filius’s, at a pinch. Because it’s not what you do, not what actions you commit that matter, it’s whether you’re doing it on your own behalf or unselfishly for others.
Now too we can understand why Lily and James put up such a spirited defense when Voldemort came calling. JKR had to avoid any slightest appearance that they might be defending themselves. Sure, James comes off as a feckless idiot, and Lily as exhibiting the “learned helplessness” typical of a long-term abuse victim, but what we’re meant to take from their behavior is that they are True Heroes™: they will do nothing whatsoever to save themselves but anything to save another, like throwing themselves ineffectually in the way of the danger.
(So in the movie version of POA, that visually dramatic scene of Snape throwing himself in front of the children—instead of doing something useful like, say, grabbing Hermione’s wand and blasting the wolf—is meant to show us that the director did want us to see Snape as a hero™.)
Now we come to JKR’s final indictment of Snape. Unlike James and Lily in Godric’s Hollow and Harry in the Forest, when Voldemort attacked him, Snape raised his wand in self-defense.
What more proof could we need that Snape was never a hero? No wonder the poor author is confused by all the Snape-philes out here!
You forgot one, though: in PoA Cedric Diggory caught the Snitch and won the game, instead of forfeiting to Harry as he should have done. This sort of self-aggrandizing, inconsiderate behaviour is just asking for a horrid premature death in the next book, wouldn't you agree?
Now we come to JKR’s final indictment of Snape. Unlike James and Lily in Godric’s Hollow and Harry in the Forest, when Voldemort attacked him, Snape raised his wand in self-defense.
Because there was no-one around to blast Voldemort for him.
Clearly, it was his own fault because he was operating by himself - and if anyone argues that Snape IS the logical culmination of the series' "scapegoat" philosophy, the loading of collective guilt onto a single individual who is then sent off to suffer in isolation whilst everyone else keeps their hands clean, well, you're just JEALOUS because Harry's so cool. So there.
Because there was no-one around to blast Voldemort for him.
Oh I dunno, maybe, like, Harry? (Not that that necessarily would have been a wise move, but I'm jus' sayin'...)
Cedric too
You point out several very important things, but I think you absolutely nailed it by uncovering the pattern for not only the clean-handed receiving of vengeance but also the sweet unpunished violence on those you're indifferent to. That's really... It really makes me worry about the mental states the kids reading the series are nudged into identifying with, because a normal person would generally feel icky about torturing other people, even if those victims have wronged others (though not others close enough to you that the wronging is personal, like Lily is to Snape) and therefore are thought to "deserve it" (TM).
That's why we were so shocked at Harry cruciating Amycus, seemingly so casually and without due legitimization. I mean, in a perfect world torturing other people is bad, period, obviously, but you'd at least understand and sympathize with him if he had done it to save his own neck, or in retaliation to him cruciating Hermione. Heck, if he had succeeded in this spell right after Bella killed Sirius, or Snape killed Dumbledore, I wouldn't have questioned JKR's claim that the cruciatus just shows you "Harry is only human." But it's just creepy that a 17-year-old boy is cruciating a man without any strategic necessity or personal rage / self-preservation instinct, and this should be lauded on as a sign of his "gallantness" (whatever that is) and explained as "he's just an ordinary guy." That's not an ordinary-guy reaction (at least, not the kind of ordinary guy who fails to cruciate a man who murdered his favorite mentor in front of his frozen eyes) and asking readers to enjoy it is an invitation to enjoy torture just because it's torture. Ewww...
Just a few minor points--
You might say Quirrell was killed by Dumbledore. Who, of course, couldn't have done the logical thing and kicked him out (either physically or metaphorically) when the criminal was plotting to come after his philosopher stone. Oh, no, can't have that. That wouldn't be gallant. But once he's threatening ickle Harry's life (which is a situation he allowed -- or really, more or less staged -- but whatever) well now he's gloriously justified in jumping into the ring and doing whatever damaged to what's left of Quirrell's body.
And I don't really think Sirius rates much higher than Snape on this warped morality scale of the Potterverse. Especially not in PoA: he was coming after Peter with personal vengeance, exactly as Snape was after him for Lily's sake, but that vengeance never gets carried out -- in a sense because Harry talked him out of it, yes, but they don't even succeed in handing Peter over to the so-called justice system. Whereupon Peter would have suffered. But he escapes. Which I think goes to support your theory here that avenging yourself or your own loved ones is never allowed in HP as a good thing.
And then in OotP Sirius jumps into the fray when Harry and co. get cornered by Death Eaters. Along with all the rest of the Order members who arrived -- including Dumbledore -- but only Sirius dies because he was throwing murderous hexes around at the people who had threatened to hurt his own godson. All the rest of them were with less personal reasons and they all survive -- even Remus. The instant Sirius dies Harry goes half mad, but Remus is capable of keeping his head and holding him back. Coincidence? I'm sure it is. But in this series there's a structured pattern to all the coincidences that are allowed to happen.
This is so, so creepy. And you're right, the scariest thing of it is that the whole tale fits this single pattern, from PS/SS all the way to the end of DH.
But there is another thing. We don't know that Harry couldn't have tortured Snape, because Snape blocked the curse. We do know he couldn't torture Bellatrix effectively, but we don't actually know that Harry couldn't torture Snape, because the boy never gets the chance to try. What we learn in that scene - what I learned, anyway - is that Snape is an awe-inspiring fighter with tremendous self-control. And I'm sure that's not the lesson Rowling intended to impart. Thus the corrective above, because, as I said, in the end Snape must not be allowed to be right about anything. Ugh!
But you, and Terri, are absolutely right about the consistent pattern here. It's very strange - a combination of vindictiveness and passivity that make both almost more repellent, IMHO.
Sirius
I don't think Quirrell's death can be clearly assigned to Dumbledore; I thought that it was physically touching Harry (with intent to harm, activating Lily's protection) that did it.
I mean it. You've nailed Rowling-think down pat.
I really got nothing to add or remark... Except the memory I have of one Twilight Zone episode (I think) I saw, 25 years ago or so.
This episode showed a young couple who were struggling finacially. A salesman approaches them, and tries to 'sell' them a box with a button. If they press the button, he says, their lives will change dramatically. They will be succesful, and rich and whatever they want in life. The act of pressing the button has also another effect; it will kill another person. Somebody who they don't know and will never meet. The salesman says he will return in a week's time, leaves the box with the couple and they argue what to do. The woman says, "what do I care about people I don't know", and presses the button. Lo and behold, the couple gets succes after succes. They win the lottery, they get succesfull, etc, etc. The guilt is starting to eat at them a little though. They look at the box, and its just an empty box, so they almost convince themselves that their luck is just that, luck, and their action will have no consequenses.
Then the salesman returns and takes the box with him. They ask what he is going to do with it, and he says, "Oh, I will travel a bit and find another person, somebody who doesn't know you, and who will never meet you, and offer him the same choice. And eventually, somebody will press the button, just as you did, and just as the person before you did."
Doomdoomdoomdoom...
Why does your essay remind me of this episode of Twilight Zone? Because the message of that episode is the mirror image of Rowlings message. Rowlings message is 'if you are mindlessly cruel or harmful to somebody who never did anything to you, you will be rewarded by other people doing cruel and harmful things to people you dislike, and this way you keep your hands clean', the TZ ep's message was 'if you do deliberately harm to somebody who never hurt you, you set yourself up to be harmed by somebody you've never heard from before', or to keep it simple, 'don't do unto others you don't want others do to you', 'sow a wind, reap a hurricane' and 'we are all responsible for our own actions; no matter how clean we think our hands to be, wishing harm unto strangers isn't innocent'.
Rowlings viciousness and her have your cake and eat it to 'morals' are anathema to me.
You're the best, terri.
Thanks!
Real morality vs. Jo's version.
Consequences: what always returns.
I have yet to read Beedle, but now I am curious if this attitude pervades that work as well.
Thank you for your explanation!
And, of course, the ultimate proof of Snape's nastiness? As you point out, he is mean TM to people on his own behalf. But in addition, he is nice to people who were nasty to Harry (ie, Narcissa) when he let slide a chance to stick a knife in her and twist it on Harry's behalf.
It certainly shines a spot-light on JKR's psyche. It would have been instructive to have been a fly on the wall during her school years: although she once said she resembled Hermione, I can't help thinking she may have been a Peter Pettigrew, hanging about on the outskirts of the "cool" kids group, allowed to be there so long as she was a sycophant.
Perhaps she convinced herself that the casual cruelties inflicted on others by the group she admired was somehow "justified" and that others deserved it for whatever reason for their own actions in fighting back. That sort of thing can truly warp a child's view of the world, and I believe this may be one of the reasons she wrote the HP series, as a means of exorcising her own demons.
Thanks for such a well-written and logical examination of the characters actions. Like everybody else who questions JKR and defends Snape, I had a lot of trouble digesting the meal JKR was trying to feed me with her long spoon!
Alison
I do wonder if Rowling actually meant this?
(The one thing I think she did mean is that Snape was no hero because he raised his wand to defend himself. As MaryH 1000 said all those months ago, these books are most likely "Christian" in Rowling's view because "He who would save his life will lose it." And Voldemort, with his quest for continued existence, is the epitome of the one who wants to save his own life - therefore, trying to save one's own life is by definition evil. But what does it mean that Severus never wand to defend himself? That, as my co-panelist said at Terminus, he definitely made a choice to give Harry essential information rather than trying to stop his own bleeding? How, then, is he not a hero even by Rowling's strange definition?)
I don't think Snape is a hero, yet I also think anyone arguing to apply or to withhold over generalized concepts like 'heroness' to people, fiction or not, will always fail. First you have to define the term in question then show how it is relevant to the facts cited, which wasn't really done in this case.
Anyway. Kind of hard to follow essay. Interesting but needs to be better constructed.
Twins/Montague
Unfortunately, as I wrote it up I realized that the excuse the Twins gave was that Montague was going to take points, which then puts the suffering on other Gryffindors (whereas pushing him into the cabinet to avoid detention would have been protecting only themselves).
So, even in that particular case (which I had hoped to show as an exception) follows the pattern. -- Hwyla
Ramble (Pt. 1 of 2)
To some extent, I think it's a "Justice Being Served" thing, which is fine. It's the way JKR takes it to such ludicrous extremes (Gallant Crucio!) that's the disturbing part. I keep making jokes about how, if Aberforth had spat on Albus, Gellert Grindelwald would have been a Total Gryffindor Hero for Cruciating him, but I didn't quite grasp HOW far that went. This... really is a pattern, isn't it?
Hm. This also explains Aberforth, come to think of it (noooo, darn it, I want Aberforth to be FREE of this). He gets to complain about Albus so that the vengance-chain is satisfied, and so Harry can forgive Albus when they meet again. (Of course, because he's also doing it for himself, Harry gets to act all indignant and Albus-loving...) So it really is consistent - note also the similarities between Ariana and Harry, both the ones Harry mentions (getting kept in the house for quite a while for being, erm, unusual, to put it mildly), and the ones he DOESN'T mention for some odd reason (permanent psychological damage from abuse by Muggles, inability to "help" certain misbehavior, mistreatment by Albus, etc.). Thus, when Aberforth complains that he loved Ariana but Albus neglected her, and protests that she couldn't help her, em, issues or inability to assist in defense of her loved ones [during the three-way duel], he's, in a way, getting Harry's complaints about the boy's own abuse by Albus and Muggles and incompetence out of the way for him. Generous man, in a meta sense. (The more I think about Ariana and Harry, the more I wonder if JKR is snarking on herself, consciously or unconsciously. The non-surface similarities are disturbing... But that's a whole 'nother ramble, and one which I subject my friends-list to unfortunately frequently. :P)
He keeps wanting to settle his own accounts, whether with James or with Voldemort.
Exactly! Now, imagine if Snape still hated Harry because of his resemblance to James, but Snape had hated James because, say, he had bullied Mulciber and Avery. Now, wouldn't that be GallantTM of him? And his suspicions re: Harry=James-clone probably would have been borne out, too.
(Also, methinks that if Severus had not been a bigoted idiot and called Lily a Mudblood, and Severus/Lily had replaced James/Lily, James the Transfiguration Professor would have bullied Harry just as much as Snape bullied James's son, and probably set the Weasley twins on him to boot. Yet, in JKR's world, that probably would have been ~*justified*~ due to James supposedly hating Snape due to Snape's Dark Arts knowledge, and thus just doing his Gryffindor duty by both galloping off to preemptively defend against the Dark wizard and, later, to defend against the son. Ignoring that this would likely as not push the son into Dark Arts as a means of self-defense, but anyway.)
Then Harry nobly approaches his dying enemy and saves the day by accepting his memories.
And FORGIVES him! That shows what an especially good boy he is, yes? (Ignoring that he's conveniently forgiving a corpse...)
Devil's advocate
1) Since Snape avenging Lily is taken as "personal" and Hagrid and the twins torturing Dudley is called "non-personal" in your post, there needs to be an explainable distinction between who counts as being within the circle of "personal" friends and who doesn't.
Personally I get the feeling that the trio and his parents would count as Harry's "personal" friends, along with Sirius and maybe Dumbledore. That's judged solely from the perspective of who gets to avenge whom without being punished for it by the narrative, which invites the criticism of picking the categories to make the data fit the theory, but I think if you looked at the examples in canon from a strictly data-driven perspective like this, you would still successfully uncover the same disturbing pattern of "allowed revenge = more detached friends / disallowed revenge = more personal friends."
The only problem there would be James supposedly dying for Lily and Harry, and Lily dying for Harry being heroic (TM). But you know what? Since this is about cruelty, those aren't cases supporting an argument against your claim at all. Frighteningly, it's actually James' *lack* of a wand (something that would have allowed him to make an attack against Voldemort in defense of his personal loved ones) that makes his act of just up and dying then and there *heroic* in this universe. He didn't avenge his family for being targeted and persecuted by Voldemort. Nor did Lily avenge her now-dead husband when Voldemort came up to her and Harry. Nor did she lift a finger to inflict so much as a pinprick of pain on Vodlemort's person. The enemy is coming to attack her personal loved one, and instead of trying to actively fight him and stop it she just ups and dies. Ergo she is a hero and her loved one is magically protected for the foreseeable future.
2) It seems to me there are some cases going directly against your argument, and looking at them it seems like there's a consistent ingredient there:
-Hermione hurting Marietta
(She had directly betrayed not only Harry but also Hermione, who had suffered as badly from the DA getting canceled, so you can't really say this revenge was 100% altruistic. Plus, you'd think Harry is as personally close to Hermione as Remus was to James, and we *do* see Harry and Ron doing nothing to physically hurt Hermione's torturers during their struggle to escape Malfoy Manor.)
-Hermione setting centaurs on Umbridge
(Again, if it's for Harry's sake -- the detentions etc. -- it's for a pretty close personal friend, and she's doing this to escape Umbridge's clutch herself as much as she is to free Harry and Ron.)
-Hermione caging Rita Skeeter
(Again with the personal friend thing, plus in GoF Skeeter has been writing vicious gossip about Harry *and* Hermione.)
-Molly killing Bellatrix
(Yes, she had tortured Neville's parents and killed Harry's godfather, but nonetheless Molly is starting this duel in direct retaliation to Bella having made an attempt on Ginny's life. If that's not personal vengeance I don't know what is.)
-In Snape's memory, Petunia hurt Lily's feelings by hating her and calling her a freak. In later years, Lily reportedly torments Petunia (all in good fun, I'm sure) by turning tea cups into mice and making them chase after the middle-class-life-obsessed Petunia.
-In HBP, Hermione physically attacks Ron by setting transfigured birds on him, in jealousy over Ron kissing Lavender. This is supposed to be permissible and cute. I fail to understand why.
So female action-takers seem to be exempt from your patterning structure -- at least when their victims of personal vengeance are other females, or their own love interests. Something tells me, though, that Lily is probably still disallowed from attacking Voldemort in revenge of getting her husband killed, or in retaliation to him coming to hurt Harry... Don't ask me why, but a female attacking a male (unless it's *in spite of* her inner love for him) just *feels* disallowed in the Potterverse. I'd be very happy if somebody could disprove me on this point.
Other cases (1)
Barty Crouch Jr. disguised as Moody. Sends Harry to Voldemort to be hurt and worse, and gets demented (against the good guys' wishes) by the Ministry people.
Barty's revenge on his father, OTOH, for cruelly incarcerating his own son, gets narratively condemned *and* directly punished, as this whole crime of his eventually gets brought to light and accounted for.
Voldemort also hated his father for leaving him (and for leaving his mother to die, which caused him to grow up in a Muggle orphanage). He murders him by his own hands, which is described as the abominable sin that started the whole process of this monster turning into a literal monster (split-soul).
When Draco gets punished, all the other innocent people he's hurt (Neville who got bullied all the time, Hermione who got called mudblood, Katy who got cursed by his necklace, Ron who got poisoned, etc.) also get their revenge. We see clearly that none of these individuals have a hand in his punishment. Neville doesn't even encounter him in DH.
Neville also doesn't encounter Snape, his worst terror and verbal tormentor through all those years, during the final fight in DH. He did form a resistance against him, but those kids never physically attacked him that we know of, and nothing they did actually hurt Snape's feelings (as he was on their side; he only ever got agitated, worrying about the kids' own fates). The only time they tried to do something *to* Snape, something that could have actually hurt him, was when they tried to steal the Gryffindor Sword and that attempt was unsuccessful. When Snape gets attacked by first McGonnagal and then Voldemort, Neville isn't even there, his hands as clean as those of Harry, who mutely watches without aiding either side. All Neville ever does about Snape is magnanimously (though unwittingly) kill the snake that bit him to death.
Mundungus Fletcher. Stole Sirius' possessions (now Harry's) and sold them, to Harry's rage, in HBP. Harry confronts him and tries to make him stop, physically attacking him in the process (Hermione screams "Harry, no!"), but this leads nowhere as Fletcher defeats him and escapes. Then when Harry has him captured by Kreacher in DH, he magnanimously refrains from lifting a finger to hurt him, detachedly disarming him and interrogating him about the locket. Kreacher meanwhile is genetically driven to defend his master, the Black family, and bangs him over his head with a saucepan to general amusement.
A huge blond Death Eater was seen causing "the most damage" to the good guys near the end of HBP. He also dueled Hagrid and tried to burn his dog alive. The trio encounter the same blond guy in DH and Harry stuns him unconscious.
Dean was seeing Ginny in HBP, when Harry really wanted her for his own girlfriend. Despite this, the magnanimous Harry doesn't lift a finger to hurt him, nor is he ever mean to him, naturally. In DH we find Dean persecuted for his perceived blood status, hunted from society and on the run in the wilderness. Then Harry finds him captive in the Malfoy Manor, and generously frees him in the course of freeing himself.
Pettigrew tries to kill Harry and Ron; his own life-debted hand chokes him to death, carrying out the punishment of Voldemort. Harry and Ron forgivingly try to save him, but of course he suffers and dies. Obviously, Harry couldn't have been anything *but* kind to him, unlike to the Carrows, seeing as Pettigrew is also the betrayer of his parents. Right? Er, right...
800-word prologue: James and Sirius aren't attacking the Death Eaters coming after them to hurt them; they're just running away at top speed, showing off how cool they are on the amazing flying motorbike. They talk insultingly to the Muggle policemen who never did anything to hurt them, and damage their property (FLUMP - BANG - CRUNCH) scaring them out of their pants. The bad guys come crashing into said Muggle property and get what they deserve.
Other cases (2)
The twins went around pranking and sometimes seriously hurting random kids at Hogwarts. They usually don't get condemned for their crimes either factually *or* narratively, yet despite this, their victims are eventually avenged, even Montague, because in DH one of the twins gets his ear cut off by Snape (who was among the few people at Hogwats that they were never able to prank) and the other gets killed by some Death Eater or another (whom they'd never pranked in their lives, I'm sure).
Similarly, James and Sirius both get what's coming to them in the form of murder by Voldemort and Bella, respectively. No matter that their "pranks" on other kids at school (such as Snape), including the murder attempt on Snape, are condoned and glorified by the narrative as well as all the teachers. Snape hated James for what he did to him, but was unable to do anything about it, and then a third party went and killed him off in his stead (not that Snape gets to *enjoy* this murder, unlike the "good guys" who always get to enjoy their vengeance in sweet blood-licking detail). He hated Sirius for the murder attempt and the perceived betrayal of Lily, and while he's actively pursuing his revenge he only gets punished (as Sirius slips away in PoA). But when he stops doing anything to try and harm the man, when he restricts himself to taunts and snarks that don't really *hurt* Sirius so much as just irritate him and enrage him... now *then* fate rewards him with his revenge, as Sirius gets killed by Bella. It's funny that Snape should exaggerate his hand in Sirius' murder to Bella in HBP, when you think about how, by refraining from doing anything of the sort that he describes, he may actually have had a hand in it in a narrative meta sense.
And then, of course, we have the house elves. A race of happily enslaved sentient beings who are genetically programed to brutally punish themselves whenever they disobey their masters' orders. That's JKR's vision of the mouth-wateringly "gallant" enslavement of another species: the master's hands are completely clean, while their slave is forced into obeying their orders by means of torture. Thus it's *okay* for Harry to ask Kreacher for a sandwich or ten, at the end of their battle. He deserves them, you see, while Kreacher *deserves* to be driven to either shut up and make some or poke himself with a hot poker.
Yes, I was complicit in the twisted morality at first. I enjoyed it when Hagrid terrorized the Dursleys and gave Dudley a pig's tail. That sort of thing. But I started to get uncomfortable during POA. And as the books proceeded, I kept waiting for Harry to start taking some responsibility, or at least start doing his homework, but it never happened. And by the end of DH, I found that I'd grown to dislike Harry. I squirmed when Harry tried to rip off Griphook, and I felt sick after he cruciated Amycus. Torture is okay when it's the Good Guys who are doing it?
Snape, in contrast, recognized his mistakes, bad as they were. He regretted them, took responsibility for them, and tired to make amends. He was doing pretty well, too. He saved those whom he could save, healed those whom he could heal, and killed (painlessly) those whom he had to kill, but he didn't cruciate anybody, and he got the job done. He was the only character that showed any serious moral development, even though (or maybe because) he was the only character who had to get his hands dirty.
Meanwhile, Harry was apparently going downhill. It's pretty weird when, by the end of the series, one of your supposed villains appears to have higher moral standards than your supposed hero. But in the eyes of many fans, Snape will always remain unforgiven because he was mean™ to Harry. Well, by the end of DH, I think maybe Harry deserved it.
Spot-on
I'm also thinking of translating it at some point, once I find a venue to post it... Would you give me the permission?
The Seven Potters Battle
See, in modern British English the primary meaning of the word "hero" is "role model". It seems certain, from the arguments which JK produced against Snape being a hero, that she thought she was being asked whether he was a good role model - which you could argue either way, really - and not whether his beh aviour was heroic.