Um…so what? I’ve never heard of anyone “rooting” for Malfoy, but I can see people having concern about Snape. He is so truly human, even if he is a wizard. He (to me) is Shakespearian–don’t ask me which character, it’s Monday morning! Sympathy for Snape–my heart bleeds for him, even as I his failings and flaws.
And why not fan clubs for Voldy? There are fan clubs for Darth Vader etc. Personally, I think that Lucifer was on to something (heh).
I don’t see how people being interested in these characeters etc takes away from the either the “message” of the books or in any way detracts from the essential goodness of HP and Dumbly etc.
No, see, The Decipticons [URL=http://groups-beta.google.com/group/alt.toys.transformers/browse_thread/thread/4a235d8abd6cb61b/3d0c92d32dfb2e77?, they just have a diffrent standant of morallity.
Re: Malfoy being evil: Most Harry/Draco slash I read has Malfoy growing as a person, and becomming more likable, at least to Harry, while Harry’s friends find it unbelieveable.
Well, there’s nothing wrong with any interpretation. Rowling herself seems to really dislike these pro-Draco and pro-Snape crowd, and I worry that if Voldemort gets fans, she may throw in the towel before she gets to the last book
Seriously though, to each their own, but it would be a little bit creepy for me if suddenly there were thousands of children online who were idolizing a villain so heavily based on Adolf Hitler. Not saying they shouldn’t be allowed to, but still, I could understand Rowling’s dismay.
Snape’s a different issue, because Snape isn’t evil. So I’m not as creeped out by people idolizing him – he is one of the heroes, I suppose. Still, I don’t see him as particularly complex – he seems rather shallow, actually, and given what Rowling’s said about him, I suspect his motives for helping the heroes are rather selfish. I think most of his complexity is confined to fanfiction.
(I mean, what can you say about a character who’s seen people being murdered [Rowling hints at this on her website], and whose worst memory is having his underwear exposed to the school? That strikes me as a borderline-sociopathic lack of empathy, and I think that’s how we’re meant to see him.)
There’s an interesting theory over at Mugglenet that the memory Harry saw was an intentional leak on Snape’s part. (In other word’s, it’s Snape’s worst memory for Harry, since it shows the father that Harry had always idolized acting like a lout and a bully.)
To be fair, we don’t actually know yet what happened after Snape pulled Harry out of the Pensieve. I’m rather fond of the idea that he was rescued by the Rosier-Wilkes gang, who found him in the right frame of mind to start down the path of becoming a Death Eater…
The Pensieve sequence itself could just be plot-driven backstory, aimed at explaining why Snape hates James and Sirius so much, but I don’t think Rowling would have written in the scenes Harry glimpses when he hits Snape with the Shield Charm in one of the earlier Occlumency lessons if she weren’t trying to generate some sympathy for Snape.
True. And to be fair, we don’t have all the information.
But until I see otherwise, I’m going to take the chapter title at face value. Rowling seems pretty consistent in warning us not to have too much sympathy for him. I strongly suspect he’s just using Dumbledore and Harry to get rid of Voldemort, and then he’s going to turn on them.
Otherwise she has has something equally nasty in store for us with Snape – maybe some betrayal in the past, after he officially changed sides. Or maybe he’s personally killed someone close to one of the characters. Else why the warnings?
I hafta disagree with you that Snape is a shallow character.
I can see your point about “rooting” for Voldemort–kinda like wanting the James Bond villian to win!
But I think that kids being kids–it’s “fun” to root for the baddies. I highly doubt that kids really want Voldy to be triumphant.
Snape is complex–I think that he removed those particular memories (if I am remembering it correctly) in order to remove them from Harry’s “reach”. IMO, the Pensieve may act as a channel into past memories, but not random ones and not the most horrific or joyful, either. It may act a bit like a crystal ball–you never know just what you will see in it(except for the memories that you have placed there).
have I got it mixed? Did Snape NOT put the nasty James memory in the Pensieve and then HP snooped and experienced it? Sorry if I ahve-- the last book is the one I am least familiar with.
Anyhoo, Snape is tragic, IMO, because of his wasted abilities–he could be so great (as in Great), but he is limited and held back by his essentially immature emotions. I mean, get over it already!
But with Snape’s past–that is his biggest obstacle.
I’m wondering if Snape could be a metamorphmagus–that he makes himself look like one of the other death eaters, and that is what he goes to do when Dumbledore sends him off at the end of book 4. He might even be related to Tonks–and, therefore, Sirius.
The one who is too afraid to return, I took to be Karkarov, and Snape the one who will never return–but maybe those will surprise us. Maybe Snape went back, pretending to be Karkarov.
I, also, am extemely curious about why Dumbledore trusts him. I thought about him being in love with Lily, but since Voldemort was essentially gone after he killed Lily, Snape reforming at that point doesn’t have much value.
Harry and Ginny–but I agree that it may only be suggested at the end of book 7, not actually happen.
Ron will become Quidditch captain. Hermione wants to do something important, (her words), not teach–the elves have got to play an important role somewhere.
Nope. You have it right. I’m going by the chapter title – assuming that Rowling designated that (rather than some as-yet-unforeseen memory) as “Snape’s Worst Memory.”
We’ll have to agree to disagree. I consider Snape “not complex” because he seems to have a very singleminded approach – his own gain. Any tender side Snape has so far exists only in fanfiction, and I tend to look at it the way I see Fridwulfa being “Queen of the Giants” (a fanfiction idea so ingrained, half the people I talk about this with are certain it’s somewhere in the books). We haven’t seen any evidence of a crisis of conscience on his part, so I’m guessing his side-switching involved a purely selfish motive.
YM, of course, MV, and we won’t know for sure until the next book, or maybe the last.
Oh, Harry/Ginny is definitely going to happen, sooner or later. She hasn’t gotten over him, she’s just gotten more pragmatic in her approach (with help from her mom and Hermione). And what Ginny wants, Ginny gets.
Likewise, while I’m pretty sure that Hermione ends up as Head Girl in book 7, I’m absolutely convinced that it’s Ginny the next year.
More speculation concerning Ginny: It’s pretty clear that Neville fancies her: He asked her to the Yule Ball, and he only got involved in the fight in Phoenix to protect her (and, in fact, is inspired to his best performance yet). But this sets up a triangle with Harry. Meanwhile, Neville and Harry both have a score to settle with Bellatrix (Neville for his parents, Harry for Sirius). So, I predict that Bellatrix attempts to kill Ginny, but that Neville dies saving her, possibly in the same way that Lily saved Harry (perhaps with some noble last words to the effect of “I’m not going to let you hurt anyone else I love”). This gives Neville a heroic death, redeeming him from his bumbling incompetence in the earlier books, and frees Harry and Ginny to be together. I would imagine that Neville’s death occurs in Half-Blood, while the Harry/Ginny relationship doesn’t develop until 7, to give them some time to recover from his death.
And I don’t think that Ron/Hermione counts as a “prediction” any more. He gave her perfume for Christmas, fercryingoutloud. Unless British society is a lot more different from American than I realize, a guy doesn’t give a girl perfume unless he’s interested in her, and Hermione already (indirectly) indicated her interest in him (else why the resentment at the Yule Ball?).
I like your speculation about Neville dying to save Ginny from Bellatrix, but if I remember correctly, he asks her to the Yule Ball only after Hermione turns him down. I suspect Neville has a crush on Hermione - she helps him find Trevor on the first day on the train, she keeps trying to keep him one step away from disaster in Potions class (which, considering that Neville’s Boggart turns into Snape, must have him hugely grateful), and she’s the one Gryffindor student who notices Neville’s traumatized reaction to the Cruciatus curse demonstration in class. Even Hermione’s having Petrified him in first year probably wouldn’t be enough to overcome that … He probably isn’t going to do anything about his crush, because he has been watching Hermione and Ron bicker like an old married couple since first year …
Don’t waste your pixels on these folks; I mentioned in one of the first OOTP threads about the perfume, and they shouted me down with “But it was a really crappy scent!” As though that’s supposed to prove anything other than that Ron is really thick.
I’m too lazy to look for the quotes, but Rowling has said that Harry and Hermione are more “platonic,” and there was a bit more chemistry between her and Ron.
The hilarious thing, if you wade too deeply in Potter fandom, you’ll find Harry/Hermione shippers passionately debating the meaning of “platonic” since Plato. One thing you can say for shipping, it turns people into quite the little Greek scholars
I’m just going to quote a friend of mine, and I agree with her whole-heartedly–“I like my trio platonic.” I’ve seen the romance developing between Hermoine and Ron, and frankly it’s driving me nuts. I’m kind of hoping they don’t get together–for one I feel it would ruin the chemistry between the three of them. I don’t think a relationship between any two of them would work out well, especially after the thing with the prefect choices. (That’s also the reason why if Ron gets chosen for the quidditch captian, as has been suggested, I think it would create a lot of tension between him and Harry.) The way things are going, I see a major upset for the trio in the next couple books, which has actually already started with OotP.
I don’t think Voldemort has any idea that Snape is anything other than a Death Eater in good faith – otherwise, he’d be dead by now. Karkaroff’s trial, where the information about Snape being Dumbledore’s spy came out, doesn’t seem to have been open to the public, and, apparently, neither was Snape’s own trial. (Note that Sirius, who clearly takes an interest in such matters, has no idea that Snape has even been accused of being a Death Eater in GoF.)
That means there are only two ways Snape’s cover could have been blown: either Voldemort had a spy on the Wizengamot way back when, or Moody or Crouch, Senior revealed the truth while under Imperius. The first is unlikely, since Dumbledore wouldn’t risk a valuable spy’s life if he had doubts about the trustworthiness of anyone present. The second is possible, but it’s just as likely that nobody thought to ask the right questions, or that Moody and Crouch were in no condition to answer them. In any case, Snape still seems to be carrying on as a spy a year later, and it’s astonishing that Voldemort wouldn’t have done something with this knowledge if he had it.
So I’m pretty sure the “one too cowardly to return” who “will pay” is Bagman, and Karkaroff is the “one who has left me forever.” (Karkaroff, of course, DOES know that Snape is a spy – unless the Aurors had the presence of mind to wipe his memory after his trial – and he’s the sort of man who would use this information as a bargaining chip in a heartbeat. Once the rest of the DEs catch up with him, it’s probably curtains for Snape.)
Perhaps, but he could just as easily be the ultimate traitor that left Voldy’s service for good.
Snape had to have switched sides before Sirius was locked up, so that certainly suggests that his double-role was a secret from some of the good guys some of the time. But since Sirius was locked up and out of it pretty much the day after Voldy was sent packing by Harry and his mom, its not suprising that he wouldn’t be on the up and up with everything that happened after that.
But the idea that something that was announced several times in open court has not yet reached Voldy’s ears still seems hard to believe. There wasn’t a single covert DE sitting in the audience? Especially when the court was having such a hard time tracking down who was who and even let many truew DEs get away scott free?
The real problem with the Snape’s cover being blown are the Malfoys. They clearly still respect Snape, and I can’t imagine how that could be if the Death Eaters knew he was a turncoat. They would despise him. Instead, Lucius still speaks highly of him even as late as OotP. So either Voldy just hasn’t told the Malfoys, Lucius is playing dumb to trap Snape, or Voldy still doesn’t know.
On the other hand, the real problem with Snape’s cover NOT being blown is that it means he either must have shown up in the cemetary to Voldy’s all points bulletin, or he didn’t show and for some reason Voldy didn’t comment on him (which would be a very odd trick for Rowling to pull: normally she at lesat references important things, even if coyly). Obviously there is the problem of him not being able to disapperate on Hogwarts grounds, but we don’t really know his whereabouts at the crucial time. And if he did go, then Snape’s behavior right after Harry returns is most bizarre. There is no indication that he went: all the information Harry relates is presented as if it were new to everyone. If he did, he does not seem to have informed Dumbledore, or if he did, Dumbledore acted very carefully to conceal that from us as well.
We don’t really know what Snape is up to, only that it’s dangerous. It might be known to involve trying to appeal to former DEs, but do we really know that for certain from the books (seriously, I can’t recall: anyone got chapter and verse)? And Snape can’t be THAT in on the DE’s plans, because otherwise Dumbledore would have known way in advance about the attempt to trick Harry into the Department of Mysteries.
We don’t know for sure that Bagman was an actual full-fledged DE. He doesn’t report anything about the mark coming back, and his role for what we know of it did seem limited to passing information to Rookwood. There were clearly many people who tacitly helped Voldy’s rise to power without actually donning the hood.
Of course, we also don’t know for sure that Karkaroff really fled as Crouch claims. Crouch doesn’t know who went to Voldy’s side: for all we know, Karkaroff could have been there in the graveyard.
All and all, this is a very veyr vexing question that Book 6 will probably reveal some major portions of.
I agree. Since these books will finish when the Trio are just finishing high school , while it is fun to speculate on which characters ultimately walk up the aisle together, unless JKR decides to write further sequels, we will not have a canon answer. (So much more fun for the shippers that way.)
Wartime conditions are great for romance; wartime conditions are hell on romance. Even for hormonally-supercharged adolescents.
Actually, I think she’s said the last chapter will be an epilogue that details what happens to everybody after they leave school, so she might end up telling us everything about who married whom. (I’m hoping not, since I don’t really want to see the entire graduating class neatly partnered up with people they met when they were teenagers, but it would sound incredibly stupid to have an epilogue full of pairings that hadn’t been foreshadowed: “And then Harry went to New Zealand as an Exchange Professor of Defense Against the Dark Arts, and he married a nice Kiwi witch named Susie, and Dean met a Muggle girl at this art exhibition, and Lavender Brown, oddly enough, hooked up with Piers Polkiss when they were thirty …”)
