So, I borrowed a friend’s copy of the seventh Harry Potter book. Read it in about six hours. Enjoyed it.
One thing worth a little commentary is the role of Severus Snape in the series. If, by some odd chance, someone besides myself is reading this, and that someone hasn’t read the book and will be offended by spoilers, this is your chance to stop reading.The HP series has had, in my mind, one big outstanding question in every single book. That question is “Is Snape a bad guy?”. Rowling has, intentionally, muddied the water at every turn. Snape is consistently nasty, ill-tempered, rude, and spiteful towards the sympathetic main characters of the book. He is openly gleeful when he catches Harry or one of the other students screwing up and can point out their errors. He is affiliated with House Slytherin, the bad-guy house at Hogwarts, and is revealed to be a former Death Eater. A number of major good guys openly distrust and despise him. At the same time, he goes to a lot of trouble at various points to aid and protect Harry and the other students. He is scrupulously professional in aiding some of the same good guys who he clearly loathes; see the example of Professor Lupin’s werewolfism-control potions.
The issue would seem to be pretty well resolved in book 6, when Snape kills Dumbledore, the then-champion of the forces of goodness. And yet, the argument continued. Snape, at that point, was working as an agent for both sides. He was giving the Death Eaters information on Hogwarts, Dumbledore, and Harry, and simultaneously giving the Order of the Phoenix information on the Death Eaters. The argument for Snape’s righteousness was that he was still a double agent, following Dumbledore’s orders, and that Dumbledore had been as good as dead already when Snape struck the killing blow; Snape’s actions only prevented another character from having to become a murderer. The counter argument is, of course, that good guys don’t go around casually killing their friends.
Book 7 has essentially proved that the first argument above was correct. Snape was working, rather thanklessly, to mitigate Voldemort’s and the Death Eaters’ damage to the student and staff of Hogwarts, and to enact Dumbledore’s plan for Harry to permanently defeat the Dark Lord. However, that argument interests me little. The question of whether Snape was evil or not still does interest me.
After book 6, I decided that Snape’s execution of Dumbledore proved he was a villain. I had a long discussion of this with one of my brothers. Book 7, I think, vindicates me on this point. I am not arguing that Snape was on the side of the Death Eaters; clearly he threw his lot in with the Order of the Phoenix. Rather, I’m arguing that morally he was a small and unheroic figure.
You see, in book 7, an extract of Snape’s memories, covering decades of time in the story. That’s the clincher of the thing. Cosistently, his motivation turns out to be that he loves Lily, Harry Potter’s deceased mother. Everything good he does hangs on that.
What you consistently see of Snape’s behavior is that he does the right thing, but he doesn’t believe in doing the right thing. He has no heroic impulse; the most charitable thing to call him is an anti-hero. He acts against his inclinations and has to be pushed into doing the right things.
Snape is on the side of right, and it’s a trumph of mind over instinct for him every time. He’s fundamentally the same guy who became a Death Eater in the first place, but determined to act like a good guy.
Fundamentally, Snape isn’t a hero. He’s a villain with a deep, self-destructive flaw, that being his love for Lily. I think that’s both cool and fitting.