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Severus Snape, romantic hero. Prior to reading Deathly Hallows, I didn’t care for the idea of Snape pining for Lily Evans. The potential J.K. Rowling might write him like this, and that moreover she might write him continuing to love her as Lily Potter and even after her death sounded repugnant. I thought, “She won’t do this. It’s corny, bad writing.” But she did, and I find myself liking this part of the narrative after all because she made it work. I’d already read the concept in fanfic and hated it. Not anymore. What I read as pathetic before I find poignant now.
I felt gypped after my first read because he occupied so little of this 759 page book and the revelations blew by so FAST, but the reread of his sections makes me weepy. The more I think about his actions and motives, the more I feel amazed by his ability to commit. He loves Lily for the duration of his life; he makes a pledge to Dumbledore he never forsakes; he protects Harry relentlessly, despite never liking him and in fact often loathing him; he hates the Marauders but works with the surviving two anyway as a member of the Order; he doesn’t waver as a double-agent; he never ceases to repent for Lily’s death; he never changes his mind about James Potter’s character, and he’s apparently celibate as a priest – we certainly never find any indication of dealings with other women after Lily’s death.
I’ve claimed Severus/Harry as my HP otp from the beginning of my interest in the fandom something like four years ago, but I don’t feel ready to don my slash goggles over this book yet because I want to bask in the Severus/Lily for a bit – especially in his devotion. I get that as an adult I should see him as pathetic. Certainly, he is. Snape never grows up, and in many ways he has the emotional range of a toddler. He clings to his ideal Lily and therefore never has to learn what a relationship with a flesh and blood woman feels like. He never has an adult romantic relationship. But I like the contrast between the ugliness of his real life and this beautiful girl/woman in his head.
The way he watches her on the playground while wearing – what? – not even hand me downs, but his parents’ clothes. I think about the implications of the huge jacket and, if we read this literally, of his mother’s blouse. I want to read it literally. I don’t see it as male wizarding attire because we know his father for a muggle. He wears his mother’s blouse. Why? Because of poverty? Because of his parents’ neglect? Because of his father’s desire to humiliate him? Because of his father’s abuse? I think we can even see sexual abuse there if we want to, but I appreciate Rowling allows it as reader’s choice. Good for her. It’s a mind blowing detail.
He obviously clings to this ideal of Lily out of necessity in the same way Tom Riddle clings to his ideals of wizarding superiority and pure blood and Harry clings to the ideals of family and magic. Rowling points out Tom, Severus and Harry all share status as cast-offs – as children without real homes until they reach Hogwarts. I get how much Severus needs Lily to make his horrific life bearable, and since his life never really gets better, she’s everything to him, always. Hogwarts might give him joy if he doesn’t sort Slytherin, but he does and that’s that. He’s marked an outcast. He won’t find redemption in anything but his love for her.
Of course Lily Potter resists her position on this pedestal of his. I think she’s too self-aware not to get that he loves her. She strikes me as too much the realist to tolerate playing goddess for him, and in fact she walks away when he refuses to acknowledge the evil in his Death Eater friends. I like her strength and her willingness to hold her ground, that she befriends him for a time, but that she knows enough to keep him at arm’s length. But I also like that he asks too much. Lapsing into my first fandom, she’s Clark to his Lex. I never understood Clark’s insistence he couldn’t make himself Lex’s ideal because he will become Superman – everyone’s ideal and a role he willingly dons for the world but not for this one person who from our point of view needs him most, Lex – but Lily can’t do this for Severus because he needs to learn to love the real person rather than the imagined in order to achieve something like the “normal” life for which he pines – whether he realizes that’s what she represents to him or not. She won’t become Severus’s safety, especially after he calls her “mudblood.” As long as he runs with the Death Eaters, he exposes himself to their attitudes, and she won’t allow him to cast her both as his ideal and as his abused. He does not get to determine her identity. Only she can do that for herself, and maybe in James she finds someone who appreciates the real, self-defined Lily.
His death. I don’t even know how to express what I feel reading and rereading that scene. He tries everything he can think of to induce Voldemort to send him to Harry. He’s the head of Slytherin house, a longtime double-agent, but he can’t find a cunning way to extract himself from Voldemort’s presence, and finally the king of Slytherin dies of a snake bite inflicted from behind. It hurts to watch him die this way. I love Severus Snape, and this death, while it works narratively, just really hurts because it’s not the epic gesture on the battlefield so many of us expected. It’s not Severus turning on Voldemort at the last possible moment to save Harry in view of the whole wizarding world. He nearly dies alone without anyone knowing he worked for the side of the light all along. It’s tragic. It’s wonderful.
“Look … at…me” he whispered.
He dies looking for Lily’s eyes in Harry’s. That moment annihilates me.
His deer patronus gets to me when he demonstrates he still loves Lily after all these years upon hearing Dumbledore’s despicable plan for Harry’s death.
“After all this time?”
“Always,” said Snape.
And his tears over Lily’s letter. And taking half of her photograph. God. It’s like what I waited for with Clark and Lex but never got. I feel like Rowling delivers on her canon promises, and I never even shipped this pairing. We knew he had a damned good reason for everything he did.
Why don’t I find any of this cheap? I think because she uses a deft touch. It’s not like we knew we watched a pining Severus through seven books, but we did. It’s not like we ever saw him cry before, or look anguished over anything or anyone. He’s held so much back that when Rowling finally reveals these missing moments, they work. I find him both in character and believable.
Harry witnesses his death, and Harry makes his way to Severus despite all his animosity. Severus surrenders the memories he withheld from Harry all along. We learn his motives. We learn of the “greedy” way he watched Lily in his youth, and we see him grieve as deeply for her toward the end of his life as he did the night she died. I love this character whose passions, however irrational we might find his reasoning, dwarf those of all others in the series. No one loves like Severus Snape. He’s operatic in his intensity.
And Harry redeems him in the final battle. He lets the whole of the wizarding world know the part Snape played. He leads everyone including Voldemort to understand that he will die in part because of the actions of Severus Snape. He doesn’t conceal Snape’s love for his mother, doesn’t feel ashamed of it, and doesn’t delude himself into thinking Snape did anything on Harry’s behalf. He knows Snape did all for Lily. Nineteen years later, he tells his son, Albus Severus, that Snape was “probably the bravest man I ever knew.”
Harry’s validation means everything because I want both the wizarding world and wizarding posterity to appreciate the character I think suffered best in these books. He suffered beautifully.
I started writing this tonight after finishing the book this afternoon. I haven’t read LJ in a week to avoid spoilers, and I’ve stayed away from the Yahoo main page, CNN and all evening news. I haven’t read any book reviews yet. I write my first impressions without reading anyone else’s take on the story. I’m probably repeating what others have said much better. Or I’m probably misinterpreting, but if I misinterpret, I’ll at least float in this angsty paradise a bit longer.
I felt gypped after my first read because he occupied so little of this 759 page book and the revelations blew by so FAST, but the reread of his sections makes me weepy. The more I think about his actions and motives, the more I feel amazed by his ability to commit. He loves Lily for the duration of his life; he makes a pledge to Dumbledore he never forsakes; he protects Harry relentlessly, despite never liking him and in fact often loathing him; he hates the Marauders but works with the surviving two anyway as a member of the Order; he doesn’t waver as a double-agent; he never ceases to repent for Lily’s death; he never changes his mind about James Potter’s character, and he’s apparently celibate as a priest – we certainly never find any indication of dealings with other women after Lily’s death.
I’ve claimed Severus/Harry as my HP otp from the beginning of my interest in the fandom something like four years ago, but I don’t feel ready to don my slash goggles over this book yet because I want to bask in the Severus/Lily for a bit – especially in his devotion. I get that as an adult I should see him as pathetic. Certainly, he is. Snape never grows up, and in many ways he has the emotional range of a toddler. He clings to his ideal Lily and therefore never has to learn what a relationship with a flesh and blood woman feels like. He never has an adult romantic relationship. But I like the contrast between the ugliness of his real life and this beautiful girl/woman in his head.
The way he watches her on the playground while wearing – what? – not even hand me downs, but his parents’ clothes. I think about the implications of the huge jacket and, if we read this literally, of his mother’s blouse. I want to read it literally. I don’t see it as male wizarding attire because we know his father for a muggle. He wears his mother’s blouse. Why? Because of poverty? Because of his parents’ neglect? Because of his father’s desire to humiliate him? Because of his father’s abuse? I think we can even see sexual abuse there if we want to, but I appreciate Rowling allows it as reader’s choice. Good for her. It’s a mind blowing detail.
He obviously clings to this ideal of Lily out of necessity in the same way Tom Riddle clings to his ideals of wizarding superiority and pure blood and Harry clings to the ideals of family and magic. Rowling points out Tom, Severus and Harry all share status as cast-offs – as children without real homes until they reach Hogwarts. I get how much Severus needs Lily to make his horrific life bearable, and since his life never really gets better, she’s everything to him, always. Hogwarts might give him joy if he doesn’t sort Slytherin, but he does and that’s that. He’s marked an outcast. He won’t find redemption in anything but his love for her.
Of course Lily Potter resists her position on this pedestal of his. I think she’s too self-aware not to get that he loves her. She strikes me as too much the realist to tolerate playing goddess for him, and in fact she walks away when he refuses to acknowledge the evil in his Death Eater friends. I like her strength and her willingness to hold her ground, that she befriends him for a time, but that she knows enough to keep him at arm’s length. But I also like that he asks too much. Lapsing into my first fandom, she’s Clark to his Lex. I never understood Clark’s insistence he couldn’t make himself Lex’s ideal because he will become Superman – everyone’s ideal and a role he willingly dons for the world but not for this one person who from our point of view needs him most, Lex – but Lily can’t do this for Severus because he needs to learn to love the real person rather than the imagined in order to achieve something like the “normal” life for which he pines – whether he realizes that’s what she represents to him or not. She won’t become Severus’s safety, especially after he calls her “mudblood.” As long as he runs with the Death Eaters, he exposes himself to their attitudes, and she won’t allow him to cast her both as his ideal and as his abused. He does not get to determine her identity. Only she can do that for herself, and maybe in James she finds someone who appreciates the real, self-defined Lily.
His death. I don’t even know how to express what I feel reading and rereading that scene. He tries everything he can think of to induce Voldemort to send him to Harry. He’s the head of Slytherin house, a longtime double-agent, but he can’t find a cunning way to extract himself from Voldemort’s presence, and finally the king of Slytherin dies of a snake bite inflicted from behind. It hurts to watch him die this way. I love Severus Snape, and this death, while it works narratively, just really hurts because it’s not the epic gesture on the battlefield so many of us expected. It’s not Severus turning on Voldemort at the last possible moment to save Harry in view of the whole wizarding world. He nearly dies alone without anyone knowing he worked for the side of the light all along. It’s tragic. It’s wonderful.
“Look … at…me” he whispered.
He dies looking for Lily’s eyes in Harry’s. That moment annihilates me.
His deer patronus gets to me when he demonstrates he still loves Lily after all these years upon hearing Dumbledore’s despicable plan for Harry’s death.
“After all this time?”
“Always,” said Snape.
And his tears over Lily’s letter. And taking half of her photograph. God. It’s like what I waited for with Clark and Lex but never got. I feel like Rowling delivers on her canon promises, and I never even shipped this pairing. We knew he had a damned good reason for everything he did.
Why don’t I find any of this cheap? I think because she uses a deft touch. It’s not like we knew we watched a pining Severus through seven books, but we did. It’s not like we ever saw him cry before, or look anguished over anything or anyone. He’s held so much back that when Rowling finally reveals these missing moments, they work. I find him both in character and believable.
Harry witnesses his death, and Harry makes his way to Severus despite all his animosity. Severus surrenders the memories he withheld from Harry all along. We learn his motives. We learn of the “greedy” way he watched Lily in his youth, and we see him grieve as deeply for her toward the end of his life as he did the night she died. I love this character whose passions, however irrational we might find his reasoning, dwarf those of all others in the series. No one loves like Severus Snape. He’s operatic in his intensity.
And Harry redeems him in the final battle. He lets the whole of the wizarding world know the part Snape played. He leads everyone including Voldemort to understand that he will die in part because of the actions of Severus Snape. He doesn’t conceal Snape’s love for his mother, doesn’t feel ashamed of it, and doesn’t delude himself into thinking Snape did anything on Harry’s behalf. He knows Snape did all for Lily. Nineteen years later, he tells his son, Albus Severus, that Snape was “probably the bravest man I ever knew.”
Harry’s validation means everything because I want both the wizarding world and wizarding posterity to appreciate the character I think suffered best in these books. He suffered beautifully.
I started writing this tonight after finishing the book this afternoon. I haven’t read LJ in a week to avoid spoilers, and I’ve stayed away from the Yahoo main page, CNN and all evening news. I haven’t read any book reviews yet. I write my first impressions without reading anyone else’s take on the story. I’m probably repeating what others have said much better. Or I’m probably misinterpreting, but if I misinterpret, I’ll at least float in this angsty paradise a bit longer.
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From:
no subject
Thank you. Everything I wanted to say but couldn't fumble into sentences - well put.
From:
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Lots of the criticism touches on her only providing glimpses of Snape in the last book, but after some thinking I find the choice appropriate. He's private, not sharing his real thoughts with anyone but Lily and Dumbledore during the whole of his life. This choice sounds right to me. He'd find it beneath him to confide in students, Death Eaters, and he considered key members of the Order enemies. Who else would he tell?
Someone felt cheated by his not conversing with Harry, but that conversation would look entirely ooc. He doesn't talk. He snipes. I think providing Harry with pensieve memories cost him, but he needed to make Harry understand he could trust him so Harry would have the information necessary to defeat Voldemort.
I'm okay with Snape's end. If she could have given us more of him, of course I'd feel grateful. Scenes of him as headmaster would make me squee. Scenes of him with Neville during that time would send me into orbit. Wow. But fanfic writers will fill those gaps.
I like the book.
From:
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From:
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That's right. He hoards his love. It's too special for anyone else to see, and in fact their seeing it might tarnish it.
From:
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I said, look in GoF, when he rolls up his sleeve and shows his Mark. That is the Snape I am writing, that burning flame of a man. That moment is why I never thought him anything but acting on Dumbledore's orders when he killed Dumbledore, why I clung to my hopes about him, because I couldn't get that moment out of my head.
Part of what I loved about the post-death reveal was seeing...all those moments of incandescence. How he loved, how he hated -- with such intensity.
From:
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From:
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What I am wondering is if the paralyzing feeling of being horribly jossed will pass away and I'll finally be able to finish up all my HP wips. *glares at them* I don't think I've written any HP since OOTP came out!
From:
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My kids are playing Wizards, which they tell me is a Harry Potter game which has nothing to do with Harry Potter. Their characters appear to be discussing every-flavored jelly beans right now.
The series appeals on many levels, doesn't it?
From:
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Snape's one of those rare characters with whom I fall in love. Of course I'd only feel this way about him in book form. Confronted with someone like him in real life, I'd find him as repulsive as any of the characters in the book find him. Verbal abuse doesn't appeal. Who was the last character with whom you fell in love?
From:
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Whom to replace him with? I fell in love with Snape from the first, and that was years ago now. So your question about the last character with whom I fell in love has opened up chasms. I have to do some deep soul-searching. Am I still capable of falling in love with a character? I don't know. I need to be swept off my feet, and I've gained so much weight over time, both physically and emotionally, that I'm not sure it's possible anymore.
From:
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And possibly because Snape is a big girl's blouse? *g* I wouldn't put it past JKR: she can be very cheeky in some of her details. But, as you say, that wouldn't negate all the other more serious and intriguing meanings you read there.
Severus surrenders the memories he withheld from Harry all along.
DH was so full of reincorporations and narrative echoes, and that was one of the ones I found really compelling--the contrast between it and the Occlumency/Snape's Worst Memory sequence, with all its secrecy and violation and mistrust between Harry and Snape.
From:
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As to the narrative echoes, initially I felt disappointed Snape didn't get to perform a last bit of occlumency before he died, but I like the pensieve memories better. They're a way for him to give up the information without having to watch Harry react. He never really had any patience for Harry, after all.