Snapedom

(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!