Oh, please. You're so ridiculously shortsighted it's sad. It's clear that, when 16 years old, Snape was not on par with James Potter. And, yes, it is later revealed that (SHOCK!) James and Lily were very strong magically. They defied Voldemort 3 times, and surprise! it wasn't because of fool's luck, either. That in no way makes Snape an idiot; while we have no indication that he's a dueling master, he is definitely intelligent--by your own admission, even, if he were to be completely evil, he tricked Dumbledore, and no matter what your opinions on that, he did it for over a decade.

And there's no indication that none of the other teachers has less than the utmost respect for Snape! They may not LIKE him, but that doesn't mean that they think he's STUPID, or INCAPABLE. On the contrary, the teachers accept him as an equal. They may, on occasion, disapprove of his teaching methods, but never do they critique his intelligence. Mad-Eye Moody even regards him as an equal in the Order of the Pheonix--and he's the most uptight of the lot of them!

Obviously, you're not very good at paying attention to details. The interactions between characters are always multifaceted. There's always more than one way to interpret something. You can interpret Snape's actions as selfish and cruel, or the continued protrayal of his persona as a master spy. You can perceive him as petty and arrogant. You can completely disregard his past, and judge him only based on the limited knowledge you have of his actions, and not what motivates him. But, if you do that, if you don't delve deeper into the psyche of the man and the harsh realities of his past, then you're left with a shallow perception that really tells you nothing except what you want to hear, and what we want to hear isn't always the Truth.

 

Yeah, it's really hard fooling Dumbledore. It's not like 1 teacher got a complete personality change and got stuck with Voldemort in the back of his head without Dumbledore beeing any wiser.
Or one of Dumbledores close friends beeing impersinated right under his nose.

And they also don't hail him as a genius.

I'm sorry, but I must have missed the utmost respect for Snape. They tolerate him.

So to be a master spy means ridiculing students and dealing out punishments for pretty much nothing.

We don't know that much about Snapes past. We know that his parents argued once and that he cried. He and James pretty much hated eachother and took every oppertunity to curse eachother. And that he was an outsider in school. Well he wasn't a true outsider, he did hang with Bellatrix, Rudolphus and a few more.

So where exactly is his incredibly hard past?

 

Did you expect Voldemort to possess Quirrel? I can almost guarentee that Dumbledore didn't. And that's the sort of thing that you don't acknowldge as even really a possibility, especially when you're not even sure Voldemort's still alive at that time. Was he supposed to narrow his eyes suspiciously at Quirrel, and think, 'Hmm. He's acting strangely. He MUST be possessed by VOLDEMORT!!!'

Also, the whole Crouch thing wasn't just a spur of the moment decision. He spent two months before Hogwarts (from the World Cup to the beginning of the year) dedicating his time to impersonating the man, to learning his maneurisms and personality, becoming, essentially, a duplicate of the old Mad-Eye, who one would be the least expectant of anyone to have fallen to a former Death Eater at that point in his neurotic life.

You don't need to laud someone as a genius for it to be so. It's obvious that most of the people who work with Snape prefer not to have much to do with him. I don't blame them; and it doesn't speak to a lack of his genius that the others don't constantly comment on it.


Wow, you just can't stop thinking like Ron, can you? I can imagine Ron's refusal to accept any sort of reason why Snape could be a good guy because 'He's a bad guy!'. That's such good Weasley reasoning there. Snape has to maintain his persona as being completely anti-gryffindor because the gryffindors embody the resistance against the Dark Lord. Its main leaders are Gryffindors (Dumbledore and McGonnagall) as are all the children loosely affiliated with it (the Weasleys, Hermione and Harry). So, in order to maintain that persona in front of the Slytherins (who are clearly at least loosely affiliated with the Dark Lord), he must make life difficult for the Gryffindors. AGAIN, you have to read between the lines and think things out instead of just dismissing it all as 'He's just a snarky git' (And I am DEFINITELY quoting Ron there).

We know plenty about Snape's past. We have that memory of the fight with James, and also Sirius' account that that was how it was from the very beginning. So, he hung out with soon-to-be Death Eaters. As if they were all chummy and friendly! They were barely allies, and nothing more, and in constant competition for the favoritism of Voldemort. That doesn't really say to me that he had a strong support base and a group of friends to nurse his wounds and hurt pride.

 

Darksov, let's ask some questions for you.

Where is the canon evidence that Snape is a complex character? What is a complex character?

I would say that a complex character has mixed feelings about his actions. But Snape has never shown any mixed feelings in his life.

Where is the canon evidence that Snape will be redeemed?

Let me expand on this point a bit. You can't use what you think the next book will say for evidence on this!!!!! This is because if you did so, one would be forced to rely on abstract, subjective topics to analyze such as JKR's personality and the audience that HP is aimed at. These can be argued into infinity, with no resolution because of the differing views and infinite amount of subjects that can influence what the next book is about. Some of these have no true answers; Who among us really knows what JKR thinks? Attempts to find out, such as with interviews, have produced vague answers that don't really give out any information at all. Moreover, sometimes JKR lies or we misinterpret her answers. Let us all remember the snippet she gave out that we would find out something gigantically important about Lily in HBP. Maybe to her, Lily's potion-making skills were important. Not to us.

How many times has Harry been attacked due to negligence on Dumbledore's part?

Now, you can give all the excuses you want for Dumbledore's stupidity. They may even be valid. That doesn't matter. The sheer number and drastic nature of these mistakes precludes any thought of using Dumbledore's wisdom as a measuring stick for Snape's ability to lie or goodness.

If I commit homicide, and I say that I had a bad childhood, am I excused for my actions?

This is what you're saying for Snape. If you answer yes...then your moral standards are completely out of whack with everybody else. Even if "yes" is a correct moral answer, you still lose because you can't practically have that as an answer. Since the definition of a "bad" childhood is so vague and subjective, everybody could use that excuse to absolve them from being punished. In your world, crime would be rampant, there would be no responsibility, and chaos would be everywhere. Obviously, we don't want this, and therefore the answer ought to be no, since "no" creates a world without these problems.

Oh yes...And the ultimate question. What the fuck has Severus Snape ever done to help the Order?

 

So you are saying that the 1 person in the world that knows that Voldemort isn't dead, shouldn't suspect someone who happens to have a complete personality change the year Harry Potter arrives at school.

Ok, so he had two months. Don't you think Dumbledore and Mad-Eye would have talked abit. Something of old times would have popped up. And I doubt Crouch Jr. would know Mad-Eyes life story by that time.

Voldemort would hardly know the kids existed while they where in school. So why would they fight for favoritism? I'm sorry, but you must be reading a book that I haven't if you state those things.

So every line that containes Snape is just a persona and you need to read things that don't exist to find anything redeeming about him?
Says he is spying in the books, what has it brought?

Since you read between the lines, can you point me to a single thing that really shows a redeemed/good Snape?

 

Why did Snape save Harry in Book 1? There was no reason behind those actions if Snape is, indeed, evil. Had Harry fallen due to the hex, nothing would have pointed to him as the culprit. If Snape was indeed evil, then he wouldn't have cared about any sort of debt he owed James Potter for saving his life--especially as he still claims that James was in on it and merely chickened out at the end! If Snape was evil, then he would have even, secretly, revelled in the irony that the progeny of James Potter, one of the best fliers in the history of Hogwarts, were to fall to his death during a broom race! And, why is it that he never ONCE lorded the fact that he saved Harry's life over Harry? It can't be because he felt that he had simply repaid the life debt, because then, he would have had to acknowledge that the life debt MEANT something.

He barely knew who the kids were in school? Where did you get that? He spent his later school years collecting followers! I will go ahead and quote Wikipedia here, because of its convenience:

Many of the people he had known as Tom Riddle would become his death eaters, along with their sons and/or daughters. That clearly indicates at least a simple knowledge of the existence of these people. And, not one to allow such opportunity to leave him, Voldemort would do his utmost to gain a significant working knowledge of these children. Obviously, you never read Book 6.

And, I never claim that Snape's childhood is an excuse for murder--I'm saying that, a), his childhood explains his current personality, and, b), that Dumbledore was asking Snape to kill him--which, by the way, I'm counting as either euthenasia or Dumbledore sacrificing himself, and both of those would make it not really a murder.

AGAIN. Snape is a double agent. He has trained himself to be a master of emotions, as any master occlumens must be. We don't actually know if occlumency is a simple barrier against penetration, or mask to cover the reality of the thoughts, or the ability to create new, believable thoughts to convince anyone of one's loyalty. All I can do is quote him, and how occlumency is supposed to help Harry against the Dark Lord from page 536 of OotP:

Snape's very survival as a spy amongst the Dark Lord's forces is reliant on his ability to control his emotions at ALL TIMES. This includes in front of the Slytherin students, who, were he to falter in his persona, would no doubt report such a failure immediately. He can, under no circumstances, allow anyone to suspect that he is anything but a trusted agent. And, as the one who defeated Voldemort, he cannot let up in his actions towards Harry or his friends. If you stopped to think it through, instead of jumping to the most obvious conclusion, you'd understand the importance of all this. We are not privy to the actions within the Order, so we don't know what he has brought, but as all the order members trust his word, it's obvious that he's bringing something useful.

YES! He is a double-agent, and he must put on a front believable enough so that the slytherins who will become death eaters will believe that he is on their side; anything else, and they will report his duplicity and he will be killed, at least.

 

Life debts are powerful, that we got from the mouth of Dumbledore. It doesn't mather if he want to acknowledge the life debt or not, it still existed.

I doubt he would go into to much trouble over the children at school. Only time he has shown interest in a student is Malfoy and that was because he needed him at school.

Or you know the order like alot of other in the wizarding world trust Dumbledores word.

So you read double-agent then just ignore everything else about him?

Meh, will stop here since I very much doubt we will convice eachother to change our oppinions.

 

DarkSov, Amberion, you're both idiots.

With Snape we have three possibly courses:

1.) He is a spy for Dumbledore and has successfully been tricking Voldemort.
2.) He is a spy for Voldemort and has successfully been tricking Dumbledore.
3.) He is playing both sides and has successfully tricked Dumbledore and Voldemort.

Any of these mean he is a clever chap, after all Voldemort and Dumbledore are both masters of Legilimancy.

Dumbledore is not an idoit, or at least JKR doesn't mean to portray him as one. While he makes a lot of silly mistakes, if he didn't the books wouldn't be half as fun. We must except that JKR doesn't write Dumbledore with intentions of making him look like a retard. He is the only one Voldemort has ever feared, and in the opening Scene of book 1 Minerva points out that the only reason Dumbledore does not surpass Voldemort in power is that there are some things Dumbledore is not willing to do.

Snape has either tricked Dumbledore, Voldemort, or both. To do this he must be fucking brilliant.

He is also and asshole. If you need me to give examples to prove that you have either not read the books or you are an excilent candidate for a post-natal abortion.

Now given the fact that this thread has now reached 4 pages, we must assume that dear Severus is at least somewhat interesting.

We now know why JKR has inserted Snape as a character. He is a multiphaseted chap about whom one can have any number of opinions. He is quite simply fasinating.

Now you two stop bitching at each other and hopefully and admin will lock this thread in the near future.

 

Oh, and let's not forget Savagely Powerful! Sagely Wise!Quickly Redeemed!Irresistable-to-Hermione! Snape who has to mentor Vengeaful!Clueless!But-Must-Fulfill-the-Prophecy! Harry, who becomes the universally acknowledged leader of the Order of the Phoenix, and who actually is as powerful as Voldemort Himself (although reluctantly bowing to the inevitable fact that only Harry can truly defeat Voldemort) but now only can exhibit his full spectrum of power during the Final Battle.

Ah, Snape as Gary-Stu!

Yes, it's "Of Debts and Debt Collection" by TimeTurnerForSale.




http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2587454/1/http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2587454/1/

 

Why does everyone think that I like Snape? I don't quite understand this.

I'm just defending the position that he's one of the good guys, albeit an asshole. I never said that he wasn't.

His own followers, by the time he came back from his travels, would be in their late 40's to 50's--not really the ideal base to create an army from. Youth are very easily manipulated by the forces around them, and if you're gonna argue that then i suggest you turn on the news. It's far easier to create a completely loyal follower who would follow to hell and back (which some of them did, by the way) out of a hormonal teenager whose mind is overflowing with ideas on the injustices of the world (and, god, am I sick of those people). That's how the terrorists do it.

 

Hmm. If I understood correctly you say that his nasty behaviour is simply to maintain his position in Voldemort's circle.

But if he truly did not enjoy being cruel to Harry and others then could he not have acted better and justified his "nice" behaviour to Voldemort in many ways.

He could have said that being a cruel bully to the students could threaten his position in both Hogwarts and possibly alienate Dumbledore. And that even though he was acting nice to Harry and gryffindors it was all just a cunning ruse to maintain power and that in reality he hates all the "mudbloods".

Or he could have said that he was trying to gain Harry's trust so that he would be in a position to find out any plans Harry might make and also able to betray him at just the right point. This would also have made it easier to feed false intelligence to Voldemort if Snape really is loyal to the Order.

The point is that in my view atleast Snape could easily have been a fair and decent teacher without risking his job as a spy. There is also the fact that in the first book Voldemort was mostly dead and Snape was still acting like a monster. I would have expected that after a decade of hearing nothing of Voldemort he would have given up any kind of ruse long ago.

I don't know if he is truly opposed to Voldemort but he certainly seems to be a horrible teacher and a monster who enjoys inflicting humiliation and pain on helpless children.

 

That's the part I've never quite understood. Voldemort's return was not a guaranteed possibility until after the events of the Philosopher's Stone (and even then, Dumbledore was certain he was still a disembodied spirit sulking in Albania - and confirms this in the Chamber of Secrets), and was only made clear to Dumbledore (in at least a vague sense) when Harry started complaining of strange dreams showing Voldemort - and this was FOURTH year.

So the question is, did Snape REALLY have to act like a complete bullying git to Gryffindors (Fred and George establish this precedent, saying that he takes loads of points off Gryffindor - and not all of that can be due to F & G's natural tendency to mischievousness) after 1981?

Now it could be argued that the second chapter of HBP explains some of why Snape behaves the way he does - Bellatrix's suspicions regarding Snape's loyalties have to have been shared at least somewhat by Lucius Malfoy. To counter this, Snape would have to establish some bona fides by being partisan towards Slytherin House. Fair enough.

But I think he carried it too far, justifying his turnabout bullying on any number of self-serving grounds, secure in the knowledge that Dumbledore's main weakness is his willingness to overlook a lot of character flaws in the name of redemption and second chances.

On the other hand, it could be argued that few Death Eaters at the time had any reason to be suspicious of Snape becoming buddy-buddy with Dumbledore, believing that without money to bribe the Ministry, he took the only way out offered to him - and being Slytherins generally they'd understand his motives. In that case, rationalizing his behavior as establishing "bona fides" is pointless because he didn't have to do so.

The question also arises - just how much writing home DO Slytherin children do regarding Snape's behavior? While children can be pretty observant of adults they're also uniquely self-absorbed. Especially eleven and twelve year olds. I know when I was twelve I barely understood most 'adult' issues, and had I been at Hogwarts I wouldn't have known a thing about what to write home about except the cool new spell that Flitwick showed the other day, or some equally inane rot like that.

Maybe the older students, but what? "Dear Mum, today Professor Snape took only five points off Gryffindor instead of ten. Do you think that's suspicious?"

God, nobody's under a microscope THAT much, even in an insular and self-contained community of three to twenty thousand people (depending on whose math you use)!

 

Quoting myself:

"Rowling has made it plain that Snape *hates* Harry because of James' cruelty. What is there to explain? Professor Snape has encouraged his Slytherin students to attack and verbally assault those of the other houses. Really, there is no explanation for that except spite. He shields "his" students from reprisal, and he consciously permits abuse of the points system to influence other students to blame (and shun) the children he has chosen as targets. This is a petty sort of harassment, but he Never Lets Up.

Saying something like, "Snape is ugly to Gryffindors so no one will suspect him of not being loyal to Voldemort" is illogical. Objective professionalism would be a much better cover. If Dumbledore wasn't actively shielding Snape from reprisal, he would have been sacked a decade ago. I bet there are literally hundreds of complaints filed against Snape by outraged parents. In the real world, that an abusive teacher hasn't been fired or at least faced a review board, means that someone is blatantly covering him. Voldemort should be suspicious, in fact. "

Snape does jerk things in jerk ways for jerk reasons. YOU categorize him.

 

The point I was trying to make (as I dislike Snape myself for a number of reasons) is that it's fanon among the pro-Snape contingent that the man is under a microscope and has been since the end of 1981. I doubt this myself, as a misanthropic bastard like him probably automatically makes people not want to be around him for any length of time. For him to go further to the point of acting out his petty dislikes on Gryffindors who didn't even know he existed until they got to Hogwarts, is, in my view, unnecessary to establish bona fides.

But for all we know, JKR will say it was necessary. Go figure.

 

Darksov, Why is Snape a double-agent?

You keep on saying this, but you never give any proof. Give me some. Remember to make sure it's canon; I've already said why.

That's not a reason Snape is a complex character. You're just saying Snape is complex because people think he is. It doesn't prove anything.

So...Why is Snape so fascinating, so complex? Give a reason.

 

The best evidence I can think of is Dumbledore's words with Snape near the end of GoF, Snape's behavior in OotP, and his words witb Lestrange in HBP. The first two indicate that he IS spying in some sort of capacity for Dumbledore. The latter indicates that he likely is doing the same for Voldemort. However there is no firm evidence that he is a double-agent in the classic sense of spying for both sides but with a primary loyalty to one and not the other.

JKR has made Snape ambiguous as far back as the Philosopher's Stone, where the Harry filter makes it look like (at first) Snape is threatening Quirrell in order to get the Stone, but on re-reading you can see what he's doing is warn off Quirrell by being none-too-subtle about what will happen.

But for most of the next few books he's just a bitter misanthrope with a particular dislike for Gryffindors and particularly one named Potter. I've noticed that nobody has yet touched on the fact, in any detail, anywhere, that as soon as Snape saw Pettigrew in Voldemort's service, he had to have known he was ready, in PoA, to send an innocent man to a Dementor's Kiss because of an ongoing grudge over events that happened nearly twenty years before the events of PoA. Did he feel at all foolish for being so dogmatically willing to refuse to see the possibility that Sirius Black was innocent, or did he just continue on in his self-righteous vein?

The interesting thing about some of the pro-Snape it-was-his-environment people is that they're political conservatives who pooh-pooh explanations for peoples' actions that depend on factors outside of purely individual motivations, yet when it comes to Snape they're ready to excuse anything he did as the product of - guess what - factors outside of individual motivations!

Before the half-blood Snape evidence of HBP, many a fic had "his-father-made-him-become-a-DE" lines of argumentation. Even after HBP came out, dozens of fics have come out which blame everybody from Lucius Malfoy to James Potter, depending on which one you read.

 

Does JKR say how long Pettigrew was in Voldemort's service before he betrayed the Potters? That's always bothered me - that Snape never saw Wormtail before or after Voldemort was vanquished the first time. It's barely possible that Tom kept Wormtail completely hidden, especially if he ran his organization on a cell network. If Snape was a middle-ranked DE in the first War, he might not have seen everyone. I find it hard to believe that security NEVER slipped, not once, even when everyone thought Vodemort was deceased. Still, I guess it's possible.

* reminding myself: the books were for kids *

 

I said he was interesting, not complex.

Snape is interesting because he causes debate. People really aren't sure what to think of him. They seem to have troulbe reaching a middle ground in their ideas. The main reason I find him interesting is that I'm really not sure if he is a friend or a foe, and I really never have been.

 

I'm with Belerdorhan on this. Snape is a greasy git... pure and simple and people that are all "JKR will REDEEM him in the final book" are simply being unrealistic.

If she does, she does... but it'd flat outright contradict everything that we know of his character.

Is Snape some "special" brilliant person? No... he's got a talent for potions and that's about it. But at every turn he was shown being outdone by sirus, James, and the rest in other aspects... so if he's some fucking brilliant prodigy, then those other characters are prodigies among prodigies. Thus, I'm going for the most logical explanation and saying that the current batch of kids are just plain not being taught like they should have been taught... That Dumbledore has been deliberately dumbing down the curriculum that students have been being taught... because even Hermione in all her know it all glory hasn't shown any spell innovation whatsoever.

Next, as to Dumbledore believing in him being a reason for why Snape "Must" be good... Fuck that. That's the single most fucked up arguement of all time. Let's take a good hard look at how great old Dumble's track record has been in regards to making good judgement calls.
Philosophers stone- 0 for 1 (Didn't spot Quirrel, sets up defenses that even a group of 3 1st year students can just waltz through (much less stop a dark lord hellbent on returning), fucks with the point totals in the end of the story in such a capricious manner that it only reinforces the Slytherins opinions that everyone hates them and further alienates them from everyone else)
Chamber of secrets: 0 for 2 (Another bad choice for DoDA teacher, this time a useless git. Allows flat outright untruths to go unquestioned in the school, Let's Hagrid get carted off to be tortured by the dementors of Azkaban for something he knows to be untrue (what a leader of the light he is.), Can't draw the connection between a hoard of paralyzed people and the last time the chamber of secrets was opened and people died (for a supposedly great wizard, you'd think he'd be able to figure something out that a 2nd year could get in no time)

And the beat just kept going on .... poor choices after poor choices, stupid mistakes after stupid mistakes. Right up to the moment of his death. Fuck he even turned out to have been a loser in regards to the Horcruxes as well. One fucking burnt his hand into a ruin and the other turned out to be a fucking fake. No... If you're counting on Dumbledore's "wisdom" as being the reason for Snape to be redeemed... then you're counting on a broken clock to tell the right time. It may be right for 2 seconds out of a day...but for the other 14,398 seconds, it's dead wrong.

Also... Avada Kadavera requires that you hate the target. Think about that for a minute. Think long and hard. You might try and tell yourself "He hated that Dumbledore was asking him to kill him... that he knew he was dead already but was putting that burden on him" but that's bullshit.
You have to have genuine hatred... just like Bela said about the cruciatus curse, that rightous anger isn't enough...

That said, why didn't Snape kill Harry as Harry was tossing curses at him at the end of HBP? Well... I'd say it's first and foremost likely he's under a wizards oath to protect him... that and possibly the life debt he owed James Potter.

No, all the rationales that have been listed just don't hold up if you examine the facts surrounding them.
Dumbledore makes nothing but bad decisions throughtout all the books... and leaves Harry with cleaning up after each and every one of them.
Snape is not anything special, except for a talent at potions and a bad personality.
Not one of the bad characters in the book have been portrayed as being anything other than bad.... and the good as nothing but good. Snape has been left as an enigma for a long time... a character that acted bad... but was supposedly trusted as being on the good side. The half baked plot simply cleared up any ambiguity for all but the most delusional of readers.

 

I must ask, can you back that up from cannon? I know that it is common fannon beliefe that you must want to kill to cast that curse, but I don't recall seeing anything about it in the actuall books.

Crutch/Moody does say that it takes a tremendous amount of power, but not what type. I don't think it is fair to lump Avada in with little ole' Crusio.