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Do I run rare? You've changed some
I am still sorting some of my reactions to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, which I started last night around two in the morning and finished this afternoon at a quarter to one. (Yes, I slept in between.) I think that for the most part J.K. Rowling managed to draw together most of the wildly free-floating plot strands that had accumulated over the course of the series and bring them to a fitting resting point; where the story ends is as it should. I found it much more of a piece than its predecessor. And if she made decisions that did not so much please me, for either tonal or personal reasons—it was not my story, and her decisions are hers. I may write more about this tomorrow, or I may simply go back to proofreading Cavafy. But given my previously disclosed interest in Snape, I might as well mention him here.
I will confess straight off that J.K. Rowling did with Snape exactly what I had been fearing for the last several books: had him die confirmed on the side of Light, redeemed by his love for Lily Evans. Unless very well-earned, I tend to find character death a device for sidestepping complex relationships. I had no particular future blocked out, except insofar as I had vaguely been hoping to see Snape as Headmaster of Hogwarts in twenty years' time, but mostly I would have liked for him and Harry to have had to deal with one another and their whole weight of oddly complementary, not quite congruent past. They are refractions of one another, in the same way that Harry and Voldemort are darkly mirrored, and in some perverse way Snape has been standing as a father to Harry, his feelings for Lily undiminished by her marriage to his schoolyard nemesis and only confirmed by her murder in which he had an unthinking hand—if Harry is the last remaining trace of the woman he loved, then Snape will do everything in his power to preserve the boy, even if his simple existence is a reminder of how much Snape lost. Harry as himself never becomes quite real for Snape, I think. In his green eyes or his wayward dark hair, Snape is always seeing ghosts. And I know that in life we are not always offered the opportunity to work out such knots, but I also know that it's safer to think kindly of people when they're gone, and who in memory can become "probably the bravest man I ever knew" would in fact still have been the bitter bastard who never quite elbowed his way out of adolescence.
But if this was the route Rowling was going to take, then I have to be impressed that she pulled it off. Primarily because of the nature of Snape and Lily's relationship, I think, which turned out to be nicely complicated indeed. She was not, as might have been surmised from Order of the Phoenix, his unattainable adolescent crush turned unrequited obsession; she's his oldest and in some ways his only friend, whom he needs too hungrily to realize how he's turning himself into something she will never want. "But you call everyone of my birth 'Mudblood,' Severus. Why should I be any different?" The disintegration of their friendship is like the proverbial car crash in slow motion, where there's no question about the outcome and you still can't look away. Nor was Snape's the pure and selfless love that would have flattened him into melodrama in a minute—there's an uncomfortable element from the beginning, a skinny, dirty-haired stray in secondhand clothes watching from behind the bushes as a red-haired girl on a swingset soars higher than the laws of gravity should allow and shows her sister how she can make a picked flower beat like a heart. "You've got loads of magic. I saw that. All the time I was watching you . . ." He practically builds a hero-cult around her in the years after her death, when she comes to represent everything that he might have cared for in his sorry life; and I am not so sure that Dumbledore does not play on that guilt and grief in order to keep Harry Potter safe. Perhaps it's not redemption by love after all. Perhaps it's only the same kaleidoscope bits of dark and light we've been seeing all along. And so it is that despite the aftermath of the wizarding war, the deaths and the epilogue, the scene that I find most poignant of everything in the book is from the childhood of these two characters:
The scene dissolved, and before Harry knew it, re-formed around him. He was now in a small thicket of trees. He could see a sunlit river glittering through their trunks. The shadows cast by the trees made a basin of cool green shade. Two children sat facing each other, cross-legged on the ground. Snape had removed his coat now; his odd smock looked less peculiar in the half light.
". . . and the Ministry can punish you if you do magic outside school, you get letters."
"But I have done magic outside school!"
"We're all right. We haven't got wands yet. They let you off when you're a kid and you can't help it. But once you're eleven," he nodded importantly, "and they start training you, then you've got to go careful."
There was a little silence. Lily had picked up a fallen twig and twirled it in the air, and Harry knew that she was imagining sparks trailing from it. Then she dropped the twig, leaned in toward the boy, and said, "It is real, isn't it? It's not a joke? Petunia says you're lying to me. Petunia says there isn't a Hogwarts. It is real, isn't it?"
"It's real for us," said Snape. "Not for her. But we'll get the letter, you and me."
"Really?" whispered Lily.
"Definitely," said Snape, and even with his poorly cut hair and his odd clothes, he struck an oddly impressive figure sprawled in front of her, brimful of confidence in his destiny.
"And will it really come by owl?"
"Normally," said Snape. "But you're Muggle-born, so someone from the school will have to come and explain to your parents."
"Does it make a difference, being Muggle-born?"
Snape hesitated. His black eyes, eager in the greenish gloom, moved over the pale face, the dark red hair.
"No," he said. "It doesn't make any difference."
It's not a lasting idyll. It's not even an alternate history; by this point in the novel, Snape himself is dead, Lily has been dead for seventeen years, and not even the observing presence of Harry can ripple out changes from dead memory. What might have been is an abstraction / Remaining a perpetual possibility / Only in a world of speculation. / What might have been and what has been / Point to one end, which is always present. But in this moment, they are each for the other a way into a different world—for Severus, an escape from his disastrous family; for Lily, a glimpse into the dangers and wonders of the wizarding life—and forever ten years old, daydreaming in the speckled light, neither of them has any idea what's coming. That stays with me. Ave atque vale, magister.
I will confess straight off that J.K. Rowling did with Snape exactly what I had been fearing for the last several books: had him die confirmed on the side of Light, redeemed by his love for Lily Evans. Unless very well-earned, I tend to find character death a device for sidestepping complex relationships. I had no particular future blocked out, except insofar as I had vaguely been hoping to see Snape as Headmaster of Hogwarts in twenty years' time, but mostly I would have liked for him and Harry to have had to deal with one another and their whole weight of oddly complementary, not quite congruent past. They are refractions of one another, in the same way that Harry and Voldemort are darkly mirrored, and in some perverse way Snape has been standing as a father to Harry, his feelings for Lily undiminished by her marriage to his schoolyard nemesis and only confirmed by her murder in which he had an unthinking hand—if Harry is the last remaining trace of the woman he loved, then Snape will do everything in his power to preserve the boy, even if his simple existence is a reminder of how much Snape lost. Harry as himself never becomes quite real for Snape, I think. In his green eyes or his wayward dark hair, Snape is always seeing ghosts. And I know that in life we are not always offered the opportunity to work out such knots, but I also know that it's safer to think kindly of people when they're gone, and who in memory can become "probably the bravest man I ever knew" would in fact still have been the bitter bastard who never quite elbowed his way out of adolescence.
But if this was the route Rowling was going to take, then I have to be impressed that she pulled it off. Primarily because of the nature of Snape and Lily's relationship, I think, which turned out to be nicely complicated indeed. She was not, as might have been surmised from Order of the Phoenix, his unattainable adolescent crush turned unrequited obsession; she's his oldest and in some ways his only friend, whom he needs too hungrily to realize how he's turning himself into something she will never want. "But you call everyone of my birth 'Mudblood,' Severus. Why should I be any different?" The disintegration of their friendship is like the proverbial car crash in slow motion, where there's no question about the outcome and you still can't look away. Nor was Snape's the pure and selfless love that would have flattened him into melodrama in a minute—there's an uncomfortable element from the beginning, a skinny, dirty-haired stray in secondhand clothes watching from behind the bushes as a red-haired girl on a swingset soars higher than the laws of gravity should allow and shows her sister how she can make a picked flower beat like a heart. "You've got loads of magic. I saw that. All the time I was watching you . . ." He practically builds a hero-cult around her in the years after her death, when she comes to represent everything that he might have cared for in his sorry life; and I am not so sure that Dumbledore does not play on that guilt and grief in order to keep Harry Potter safe. Perhaps it's not redemption by love after all. Perhaps it's only the same kaleidoscope bits of dark and light we've been seeing all along. And so it is that despite the aftermath of the wizarding war, the deaths and the epilogue, the scene that I find most poignant of everything in the book is from the childhood of these two characters:
The scene dissolved, and before Harry knew it, re-formed around him. He was now in a small thicket of trees. He could see a sunlit river glittering through their trunks. The shadows cast by the trees made a basin of cool green shade. Two children sat facing each other, cross-legged on the ground. Snape had removed his coat now; his odd smock looked less peculiar in the half light.
". . . and the Ministry can punish you if you do magic outside school, you get letters."
"But I have done magic outside school!"
"We're all right. We haven't got wands yet. They let you off when you're a kid and you can't help it. But once you're eleven," he nodded importantly, "and they start training you, then you've got to go careful."
There was a little silence. Lily had picked up a fallen twig and twirled it in the air, and Harry knew that she was imagining sparks trailing from it. Then she dropped the twig, leaned in toward the boy, and said, "It is real, isn't it? It's not a joke? Petunia says you're lying to me. Petunia says there isn't a Hogwarts. It is real, isn't it?"
"It's real for us," said Snape. "Not for her. But we'll get the letter, you and me."
"Really?" whispered Lily.
"Definitely," said Snape, and even with his poorly cut hair and his odd clothes, he struck an oddly impressive figure sprawled in front of her, brimful of confidence in his destiny.
"And will it really come by owl?"
"Normally," said Snape. "But you're Muggle-born, so someone from the school will have to come and explain to your parents."
"Does it make a difference, being Muggle-born?"
Snape hesitated. His black eyes, eager in the greenish gloom, moved over the pale face, the dark red hair.
"No," he said. "It doesn't make any difference."
It's not a lasting idyll. It's not even an alternate history; by this point in the novel, Snape himself is dead, Lily has been dead for seventeen years, and not even the observing presence of Harry can ripple out changes from dead memory. What might have been is an abstraction / Remaining a perpetual possibility / Only in a world of speculation. / What might have been and what has been / Point to one end, which is always present. But in this moment, they are each for the other a way into a different world—for Severus, an escape from his disastrous family; for Lily, a glimpse into the dangers and wonders of the wizarding life—and forever ten years old, daydreaming in the speckled light, neither of them has any idea what's coming. That stays with me. Ave atque vale, magister.
no subject
As I've said elsewhere, the lack of this discussion is my primary problem with the series, and the one I have the hardest time getting past to enjoy the books. I just can't agree that ambition is a bad thing, even if it is one's foremost characteristic. It all depends on what you do with it.
no subject
Yes. She consistently set up fascinating situations—like opening out the wizarding world to include non-British schools, or the working relationship of the Prime Minister with the Minister for Magic—and then rarely ever explored them in the necessary depth. I consider Snape one of the rare examples where she seems to have thought the implications of a character through.
no subject
...that said, there are still all of these bits of worldbuilding that could have been so fantastic.
no subject
Yes. The scene that just came into focus for me is the finale of Prizoner of Azkaban, where Sirius Black escapes and Snape goes completely spare. At the time, this seems to point to Snape's general instability and unpleasantness, that he'd fly off the handle so violently just because his least favorite student has outwitted him again and one of his boyhood rivals is again at large. It's even a little funny, if you dislike the character enough. But if Snape genuinely believed that Sirius, not Peter Pettigrew, was the man who had betrayed James and Lily Potter to Voldemort—after Snape had promised his loyalty to Dumbledore in exchange for their protection—then it's not funny at all, and it's not for the sake of some petty public-school grudge that Snape wants Sirius back behind bars, and in fact he has a right to wonder what in the hell is Harry playing at, because as far as anyone knows this newfound godfather is the same man directly responsible for his parents' murder. That scene always bothered me, because it seemed so out of character. Now it doesn't. It's not a personal affront; it's old pain raked up again.
And there are so many layers. I don't doubt it's true, what Dumbledore tells Harry at the end of the first book: "Your father did something Snape could never forgive. He saved his life. Funny, the way people's minds work, isn't it? Professor Snape couldn't bear being in your father's debt." Needing James Potter to save his skin from a prank of Sirius Black's? I imagine Snape resented it to the end of his days. But to imply that any protection Harry might receive from Snape is simply paying off that old debt— The truth is the best misdirection.
...that said, there are still all of these bits of worldbuilding that could have been so fantastic.
There's a lot of extraneous snogging.