Chapter 4 of Half-Blood Prince gives us our first glimpse of Horace Slughorn, and Rowling’s narrative misdirection is in high gear in this chapter. Slughorn is one of two new items in Book 6 that get set-up and paid off (using Janet Batchler’s schema) within this book’s narrative, with almost no consequence whatsoever for Book 7. (I’ll introduce the second item when we get to it; good luck guessing until then.)
This introducing set-ups in Book 6 that get paid off in Book 7 was in and of itself brilliant misdirection on Rowling’s part. Since we all believed, and to an extent rightly, that Book 6 was really just the first half of the Book 6-7 story, we were wondering how Slughorn would really turn out in Book 7. I recall that one of the first essays to appear at HogPro (back before it became a blog) post-Book 6 was speculation on EVIL!Slughorn.
There’s plenty in this chapter to lend itself to skepticism about Slughorn’s character. Rowling’s best misdirection moves in this chapter are two narrative pauses she employs when Slughorn is asked a question. After introducing the idea that the Death Eaters would be seeking out Slughorn to join them, Dumbledore asks, “Are you really telling me that they haven’t come recruiting yet?”
Rowling inserts just enough narrative delay before Slughorn’s answer to create an effective pause which causes us to think Slughorn is caught off-guard, and calculating a carefully-worded answer. She writes, “Slughorn eyed Dumbledore balefully for a moment, and then muttered, ‘I haven’t given them the chance.’” And he proceeds with his explanation of moving from place to place. “Baleful,” of course, means “evil” or “ominous.”
The second narrative pause comes a few pages later, when Slughorn is bragging about his connections and showing off their gifts to him. Rowling inserts a question from Harry, and then his thoughts:
“And all these people know where to find you, to send you stuff?” asked Harry, who could not help wondering why the Death Eaters had not yet tracked down Slughorn if hampers of sweets, Quidditch tickets, and visitors craving his opinions and advice could find him.
And then Slughorn’s reaction: “The smile slid from Slughorn’s face as quickly as the blood from his walls.” Then, Slughorn proceeds with his explanation that he’s been out of touch for a year. His reaction is explained quickly by Harry’s thoughts as a sudden surprise to Slughorn that he’d been disconnected for so long. But the alternative reading is possible – he was suddenly “caught” again, and had to calculate an answer.
Finally, after leaving the interview, Dumbledore debriefs with Harry, explaining that Slughorn likes his comforts and the company of the famous and powerful (slight resemblance to Wormtail’s weakness, who allied himself out of fear with whomever he thought most powerful), and that Harry should be on his guard. This is all just enough to make us suspicious.
Of course, the entire payoff with Slughorn turns out to be the memory, and we only see him at the very end of Deathly Hallows. Still, Rowling introduced an interesting enough character to produce a good amount of speculation about what Slughorn was really doing in Book 6.
One more interesting tidbit of information here: Dumbledore notes, when describing Horace’s weakness, that he makes connections that will be beneficial to himself, “whether a free box of his favorite crystallized pineapple or the chance to recommend the next junior member of the Goblin Liaison Office.” Note the italicized example. Dumbledore had not yet collected Slughorn’s distorted Horcrux memory, which is the key to Slughorn’s role in Book 6; but Rowling knew its contents, of course. You recall what young Tom Riddle gave to Slughorn in that memory?
It continually amazes me how Rowling managed even the tiniest of details.
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Ever wonder why JKR picked a fondness for crystallized pineapple as one of Slughorn’s two main weaknesses?
There are several literary antecedents. In Dorothy Sayers’ Strong Poison, the villain is undone by his liking for Turkish delight. More famously, Edmund Pevensie is bribed by the promise of endless supplies of Turkish Delight. A quick Google brings up a passage from Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers where Turkish delight and crystallized pineapple are paired:
Everybody had something gorgeous, and besides, there were pounds of unknown sweets: Turkish delight, crystallized pineapple, and such-like things which, the children thought, only the splendour of London could provide. And Paul boasted of these sweets among his friends. `Real pineapple, cut off in slices, and then turned into crystal–fair grand!
There’s also a passage from Edith Nesbit’s The Red House:
“I know,” she said; “but you must go up to Elmhurst and get things: tinned tongue–children always adore tongue–and candied pineapple and tangerine oranges in silver paper, and nuts, and bananas. Oh, I do think children are so nice!
In many ways, Slughorn reminds me of Hepzibah Smith, another avid collector. They are both greedy, and look upon people as objects to be possessed. But Slughorn’s collection may be a bit more innocent than Hepzibah’s and I think this is what the candied pineapple symbolizes: his childlike greed.
On the other hand, I have sometimes toyed with the idea that Slughorn’s interest in the promising young students at Hogwarts – his collection – is as basely motivated as Hepzibah’s interest in Tom.
Either way, Slughorn’s main interest for me was as an eye-opening introduction to Dumbledore’s manipulative side, using Harry as human bait to bring him onside.
I think it’s fair to say that Dumbledore knew Harry would be added incentive for Slughorn’s coming to Hogwarts – collecting “the chosen one.” It was a very clever move by Dumbledore. Slughorn was quite prepared not to listen to Albus at all, so the argument that Hogwarts is where Slughorn would be safest – which is the primary reason he decided to take the post – couldn’t come from him. Harry, of course, was the best candidate for the job.
Still, it remains that the draw of Harry alone wouldn’t have been enough to attract Slughorn to Hogwarts. Slughorn already knew Harry was at Hogwarts, and that Dumbledore wanted him for the job. It was the convincing argument that Hogwarts was the safest place that won Horace over in the end. Or, better, it was the combination of Harry explaining this to Horace that resulted in the draw toward Hogwarts.
So I think “human bait” might be just a little too strong (though perhaps not by much).
Of course Slughorn wouldn’t have come to Hogwarts if he felt he’d be unsafe there – his collector instincts would not have trumped his survivor instincts. But there were other places where he could be safe. What made Hogwarts especially attractive was the prospect of adding Harry to his collection. In the words of Dumbledore:
He will undoubtedly try to collect you, Harry. You would be the jewel of his collection: The Boy Who Lived … or, as they call you these days, the Chosen One.
Call it human bait, a hostess’ present, or a loot bag for consenting to the sales pitch. The principle is the same.
I love this chapter, btw. Dumbledore is finally dropping the benign Headmaster persona, and revealing the canny chessmaster who’s going for the endgame.
Yes, Dumbledore may be doing all that you say, Red Rocker. But look at what cinches the deal as it were with Slughorn. Lily.
Slughorn already knew Harry was at Hogwarts but seeing Harry in the flesh brings back to life for Slughorn the memory of Lily. And what moves Slughorn in the end to help Harry? Not the allure of Harry as a collectible item but the memory of Lily.
As long as Harry is merely an abstraction to Slughorn, the memory of Lily is muted. But seeing Lily’s eyes brings her to life again for Slughorn & brings out what is truly needed in him.
I think the combination of the memory of Lily, interest in Harry, and the possibility that Hogwarts may give him greater protection (and allow him to get his gift baskets delivered) is what clinches it rather than any one of those alone.
Very interesting comparison of crystallized pineapple and turkish delight, Red Rocker. I like idea of crystallized pineapple being the more innocent version of turkish delight, which has an evil connotation through its prior use by Lewis and Sayers. At the same time, note the parallel between the White Witch, who offers Edmund the (enchanted) Turkish delight to seduce him into becoming her spy, and Voldemort, who offers Slughorn the (ordinary) pineapple to seduce Slughorn into giving him banned information on horcruxes.
It’s not clear to me when Dumbledore extracted from Slughorn the memory Slughorn had tampered with. I had the impression it was before this scene occurred and now Dumbledore wants Slughorn at Hogwarts to try to get the real memory. If Dumbledore has already seen the altered memory, then he would know about the gift of pineapple when he mentions it to Harry.
Anyone else catch Slughorn frowning when he sees Riddle’s cracked ring on Dumbledore’s finger!
This scene also sets up two other important aspects of HBP. First, the whole business with the faked visit by the Death Eaters prepares us for seeing the Dark Mark for real at the end of the novel. The smashed “grandfather” clock whose pendulum is lying nearby like a “dropped sword” and the smashed piano with its scattered keys (i.e. bones) prepares us for Dumbledore’s death (and also is a reference to the death of Amelia Bones). The sword signifies both Dumbledore’s wand, which falls off the tower separately from Dumbledore, and the sword of Gryffindor, which (we find out near the end of DH) Dumbledore drops on the table after cracking open the ring and “dying” from the ring’s curse (with the death delayed a year by Snape’s stoppered death potion).
Second, the way in which Dumbledore and Slughorn clean up, waving their wands in an arc so that everything flies back together, rips vanish, walls repair themselves etc. is like a movie run in reverse. The time turner worked the same way, where everything seems to happen backwards at high speed as Hermione and Harry go back three hours. There are no time turners in HBP but the repeated diving into the memories in the Pensieve performs the same function. Dumbledore and Harry repeatedly go back in time and relive parts of Voldemort’s life. Slughorn’s main function is to give them the most important of these time traveling memories and Harry gets it from Slughorn in part by making Slughorn himself go back into his own memory, to remember Lily and how much he loved her (seemed almost to have a crush on her but I’ll be charitable and say it was grandfatherly affection). Slughorn’s affection for Lily and his ability to be brave in memory of her shows a similarity to Snape and I think it is no accident that Slughorn is compared to a spider so soon after the Spinner’s End scene.
I mentioned this in the discussion of Spinner’s End, but I’ll note again that the Weasley’s tiny, spidery broomstick shed, “a space a little smaller than the average cupboard,” is reminiscent of Harry’s spidery cupboard under the stairs at the Dursleys. There the Dursleys locked him away. Now Harry realizes he can’t shut himself away. This is a fresh start if you will, a new phase in his life and education from the previous books . . . Newt level, lessons with Dumbledore, no more scar pains and nightmares (for a year), majorly popular instead of a hated outsider, falling in love, etc. This time, instead of leaving Harry to be abused by the Dursleys, Dumbledore leaves him to be pampered by the Weasleys.
One more interesting point in this scene is that Harry says he won’t be seeing much of Snape this year because Snape won’t let him continue with Potions because he won’t get the required OWL grade. Note that Dumbledore does not take this opportunity to explain that Slughorn will be the potions master and Snape will teach DADA; he just says don’t count your OWLs before they arrive. It’s possible that Dumbledore doesn’t want to spoil Harry’s summer with the info, but more likely is that he doesn’t want to have a direct confrontation with Harry about it for fear Harry will start figuring things out.
My candidate for the second item which is “set-up and paid off (using Janet Batchler’s schema) within this book’s narrative, with almost no consequence whatsoever for Book 7.” :
The Half-Blood Prince’s potions book, which carries a lot of the narrative for book 6, but is entirely unnecessary for the plot of book 7.
Red Rocker, not what I was thinking of, but we can call that a third item. When that was hidden in the Room of Requirement, I suspected there’d be a need to go back for it. Of course, that little set-up turned out to be the plot device for finding the last Horcrux, so the hiding of it turned out to be essential. But I definitely suspected that the book itself would be relevant in some way to Book 7.
Romilda Vane is set up and paid off in book 6, a plot device to have Ron accidentally ingest the love potion and then the poisoned mead, leading to his and Hermione’s reconciliation. She makes no appearance at all in book 7. Ditto Felix Felicis.
Yes, very true!
To clarify, I’m thinking of plot devices that I expected to see more of in Book 7, though. I certainly didn’t expect anything further from Romilda in Book 7.
Nor from MacLaggen either. He served his purpose in book 6 & we got his payoff there.
The non-verbal spells got a big build-up in book 6, without any payoff (that I can remember) in book 7.
Slughorn always seemed to me to compare to Dumbledore as Wormtail to Snape. Two older professors, both of whom are strongly tempted toward power (though in rather different ways); yet opposites in the area of courage as well as in house of origin.
Both have a rather sketchy past (which both have hidden from public knowledge); Dumbledore held back from handling the Grindelwald problem, to the detriment of the world, and Slughorn’s withholding the information of Riddle’s multiple-horcrux fascination may have cost anyone the chance to finish Voldemort sooner. Dumbledore later chose to avoid being tempted to misuse his power as much as possible, whereas Slughorn indulged himself.
Lily Luna pointed out the several spider references in the chapter, which certainly struck me. (By the way, great catch about Slughorn eyeing Riddle’s ring, Lily Luna!) As one of the spider references described Slughorn and another was a spider crawling down Dumbledore’s hat, my mind made the connection. Of course, CoS is the primary spider story, and the acromantulas in that book–however horrible themselves–have a common enemy, which is the great snake.
Perhaps Slughorn is a character who could have “gone either way.” He seems, in a Wormtail-ish way, more interested in being safe than being good until given an ultimatum by McGonagall at the Battle of Hogwarts in DH. At the end he, like Wormtail, thwarts Voldemort. But he does it more fully and winds up a lot more lucky.
Mostly I see Slughorn as a well-drawn, very human character, just another proof of Rowling’s ability to place real people–not just saints and demons–in her great good-versus-evil story.
I see Slughorn as a typical non-Death Eater Slytherin indulging his creature comforts and his desire to play power-broker for others. He summons courage at the end of book 7 to come back and battle Voldemort personally alongside McGonagall and Kingsley when he realizes that Voldemort has killed not only his favorite student Lily, but his second favorite student Harry as well (so he believes). Thus he becomes part of the alchemical convergence of Gryffinor and Slytherin.
That’s a very good point, Library Lily, about the common enemy of the spiders being the great snake. That really unifies the usage of spiders across the series. The only reference that doesn’t quite fit are those occassions when Voldemort’s fingers are compared to spiders when Harry sees them in his visions and even then they could signify the spider within Voldemort (i.e., Harry).
Oops; guess I didn’t do the bolding correctly; sorry.
I think Harry is using non-verbal spells under his cloak in the very final battle scene up until right after Molly kills Bellatrix.
Two things:
Lily Luna: yes, the frown! I meant to mention that in the post as well, and completely forgot. Thanks for bringing it up. Another misdirection.
Matthew guessed it right – nonverbal spells was the other thing on my mind. The only real “payoff” for nonverbals was Harry’s ability to refill the bottle in order to get Slughorn drunk enough to give up the memory. Felix helped him out on that one.
But Rowling definitely set it up like nonverbals were going to have a big payoff in Book 7, because of Snape’s final words to Harry about how he’d be blocked again and again until he could close his mind and keep his mouth shut. Some of us who believed Snape was on Harry’s side and giving him one final lesson in preparation for the final battle with Voldemort thought this was a tip that nonverbals might matter at lot in the end. They didn’t.
Is the frown a misdirection in that it makes you think that Slughorn is not pleased with the crack in the ring? I’d never paid attention to the frown, but when Lily Luna mentioned it, all it indicated to me was that Slughorn was realizing that the ring looked familiar. Either way, that was a pretty nice trick of Rowling’s.
SchoolMarm, no, not really, especially when you give it a moment’s thought – Dumbledore clearly knew that Horace would recognize the ring, since he made that move with “the other hand.” It is never answered what Slughorn knew about that ring in particular, though – should we assume he recognized it as something that once belonged to young Riddle?
It’s a mysterious frown, because it’s never explained, but it’s not a hint that he might have been evil.
I took the frown to mean either it looked familiar but he wasn’t sure why or he recognized it as Riddle’s and wondered how Dumbledore got ahold of it.
I do think Snape was trying to give Harry one final lesson about closing his mind at the end of HBP and after Kings Cross he has learned the lesson. He is able to shoot jinxes and hexes at every death eater he sees while under his cloak and they crumple not knowing what hits them. Clearly he is using non-verbal spells and is aiming consistently accurately, a big improvement in his fighting skills, so I disagree that there is no payoff in book 7.
Alright, I’ll say it this way – there’s no payoff equal to the set-up. Or maybe the set-up was bigger in my mind than it was in others’.
I was more inclined to think of it this way. Snape thought the only way Harry would be able to combat Voldemort in the end would be to practice occlumency (get control of those emotions!) and learn nonverbals. Nonverbals, of course, had nothing to do with his defeat of Voldemort. And neither did Snape’s version of occlumency. Harry didn’t learn occlumency until he did the exact opposite of what Snape told him to do – he opened his heart fully to grief at Dobby’s death.
In other words, I took what Rowling did with Snape’s last lesson to mean, “Snape was wrong. Dumbledore was right.”
A writer might lay out multiple interesting plot or character strands, each with its own set of intriguing ramifications. And later on find out that only some – or one, or even none – actually fit the overall pattern and direction of the eventual story. This could be a major disadvantage of writing a series of books over time. I see it as a necessary disadvantage. If JKR limited herself only to concepts she’d laid out in book 1, the series as a whole would have been poorer.
Personallyl, I found the idea of unspoken spells interesting in and of itself. It’s sort of like reading. We teach children to read out loud first, sounding out the letters, and then silently, processing whole words. Ultimately we read very differently from how we started; we no longer read word by word, but in phrases or clusters of words, filling in words that aren’t there.
I thought JKR was going to explore the idea that magic is not contained in spells, and charms or even potions, but in the mind of the witch or wizard, that all the cauldrons and spell books and even wands are just the outer trappings of what is really going on when a witch or wizard casts a spell. And I still suspect that JKR was going to go there, but by the time she came to book 7, there were more interesting threads which caught her attention. Or perhaps she ran out of time to explore all the interesting ideas she’d started earlier.
My other thought is this. Sometimes a writer may introduce a concept or even a plot thread not because it’s essential to the story, but because it provides a platform for some character revelation or further plot development. I think JKR had two reasons for having Snape give Harry occulmency lessons. First, she wanted Harry to learn about Snape’s past from some first hand experience. So the purpose of the occulmency lessons was actually for Harry to have the opportunity to do some legilmency on Snape. The second reason was to keep Snape in the foreground, close to the action, close to Harry. Because otherwise he was going to get lost amongst the other plot threads, much like he’s gotten lost in the movies. In other words, there was really nothing Harry had to learn from Snape as a teacher – although there was a lot he had to learn from his as a man.
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I take your point, Travis, but Harry does learn control of his emotions or, more accurately, is ABLE to control his emotions after Kings Cross when he no longer has the Voldysoul attached to him riling him up. Voldemort flings one hurtful thing after another at Harry when they’re circling each other, jeering that Dumbledore fell from the tower and broke like an old waxwork, that he stamped out Harry’s mudblood mother like a cockroach, that Dumbledore is dead, that he killed Snape and none of it affects Harry. He remains calm and focused. That is what Snape was trying to teach him. Meanwhile Voldemort is the one falling to pieces and laughing insanely.
It’s true Harry learns to close his mind to Voldemort while digging Dobby’s grave, that “grief” or love drove Voldemort out. However, he has not yet learned to control his anger or hate. When he sees Snape in the hallway at Hogwarts, “Hatred boiled up in Harry at the sight of him: He had forgotten the details of Snape’s appearance in the magnitude of his crimes, . . .” and Snape can sense his presence. (We do see a nice use of non-verbal spells by the teachers in this scene.)
I think Harry missed a huge opportunity in terms of what he could learn from Snape as a teacher. Some of this is Snape’s own fault in being so obnoxious to Harry. Harry learns plenty of potions and assorted spells from Snape once Snapetheobnoxiousteacher is removed from the equation and Harry doesn’t know his “friend and guide” is Snape. But more relevant is that Snape has a lot of knowledge to share about Defense Against the Dark Arts and he seems to be a good DADA teacher; his bullying seems to slide away except with respect to Harry and even there there seems to be less malice. Harry is the one who develops a block about nonverbal spells, who can’t get beyond Snape’s needling. I get the impression he doesn’t learn as much from his sixth year DADA as he should. This story wouldn’t be the story it is if the two of them could have reconciled before Snape’s death, but if they had there is a lot of advanced knowledge Snape could have taught Harry if there had been the opportunity.
Lily Luna, very good points, and I’ve had many of same thoughts about Snape as teacher before. I think it’s fascinating to see what Harry can learn from Snape when he doesn’t think it’s Snape.
But I’d want to add this to the discussion: Snape only learns to control his hate, and that not all the time. Harry learns not to hate, not just to control it.
So I still maintain that Snape’s way of handling emotions isn’t the ideal, and that Harry far surpasses him even before King’s Cross, and even further surpasses him after.
Okay. Snape’s way of handling emotions is far from ideal. In fact, taking your point even further, what Snape controls and hides deep within him is his love, not his hate. He had to in order to protect himself from Voldemort. Harry does the opposite in allowing the love to drive out the hate and this is what allows him to remain calm and protects him from Voldemort.
Lily Luna good stuff, and it raises lots of interesting questions. Is Snape’s outward hate and overall surliness the result of the air he’s had to assume in order to keep himself in Voldemort’s confidence? I’m inclined to think he’s a bitter, hating man anyway, and that serves him well in the role. But there is the possibility that he’s not quite as nasty as I think, and that much of his nastiness and bullying is about maintaining his spy role. There are moments of the Softer Side of Snape, such as when he tells Dumbledore that he’s only watched die those he could not save.
Well, I think that’s where the definition of “anti-hero” comes in. An anti-hero lacks the qualities traditionally associated with a “hero”: to wit, a sunny and generous disposition, friendliness, noble demeanour and appearance (broad shoulders, flowing locks, white teeth, good breath, and so on), noble motives, kind to animals and small children. With the exception of the noble motives, everything that Snape is not.
And we love him for it.
Me, I’m not so taken by the glimpses of “Soft Snape”. I like him nasty and bullying and bitter, fighting for the good despite himself, helpless to do evil not because like Anthony Burgess’ Alex he’s had the evil scourged out of him, but because he has fallen inalterably in love with a good person.
Lily could not have been “best friends” with Snape for 6 years were he not a good and kind person (at least to Lily) at that time. But he also carries a dark background – abusive father, sullen Slytherin mother, entered Hogwarts knowing more curses than most sixth years (did his mother teach him? did he learn it from the books lining the walls of the sitting room at Spinners End?). When he goes to Hogwarts he’s separated from Lily, surrounded by evil, creepy Slytherin Death Eater children and wannabes, and bullied mercilessly by James and Sirius. He’s a brilliant student and yet even Slughorn, head of Slytherin and his potions teacher, doesn’t mention him when talking about how wonderful Lily was, so even she overshadows him. Lily’s refusal to continue being friends with Snape, abandoning him to his Death Eater friends, is obviously a severe shock to him and combined with everything else seems to push him over the edge, to deaden him to love and compassion. I know we’re ignoring stuff Rowling says in interviews, but I’ll mention anyway that she says Snape joins the Death Eaters thinking that being part of something big and powerful will impress Lily. Obviously, he couldn’t have been more misguided. I also think there was more to it than that. He probably saw it as the only path left to him, too immature to contemplate losing both the Death Eaters and Lily. He was extremely angry with the Gryffindors/OOTP and wanted revenge. I find it interesting that in the Prince’s Tale there is a big gap in time between Lily refusing to forgive Snape and Snape going to Dumbledore to warn him and ask him to protect Lily. Nowhere in the series do we learn any specifics about what happens during that gap except that 1) during sixth and seventh year he tries to curse James every chance he gets and James curses him back, 2) he becomes a Death Eater, 3) he watches people die (how many? does he kill himself or only watch others kill?), 4) he spies for Voldemort at the Hog’s Head while waiting his turn to interview for a job on Voldemort’s orders, and 5) he relays to Voldemort the portion of the prophecy he overhears and, when Voldemort decides it means Harry, asks him to spare Lily. We never learn just how bad a Death Eater he was, but the gap makes me suspect he is too ashamed of what he did to confess the details. The bullying he suffered that seemed to go unpunished combined with his Death Eater stint turns him into that which he was not before, a bully in his own right, malicious, sneering, with cold, dead eyes. All that’s left to him for a long time is his memory of Lily, of how what he did led to her death, and the spectre of the possible return of Voldemort at some unknown time in the future when he will have to return to a group he now loathes, lie to them, be a part of atrocities he doesn’t want any part of, and spy for Dumbledore. And all this to protect someone he can only think of as “Potter’s son,” not Lily’s son. No wonder he’s bitter. And after all his efforts for Dumbledore, including saving his life, and all his efforts to show he’s not who he once was, Dumbledore insults him by asking him to kill him and implying that to Snape it should be no biggie, that Snape’s soul isn’t worth much. No wonder he looked at Dumbledore with such loathing when he killed him. The kind person Snape once was has either been destroyed or has been buried so deep we never see it except for a glimmer in his concern about Dumbledore’s arm and his anger that Dumbledore didn’t come to him sooner, in his attempt to save Lupin’s life during the aerial chase, and in what I hypothesize was his intervention to get Luna sent to Malfoy Manor instead of Azkaban.
While I can appreciate his sneering side in the Spinner’s End chapter I can’t say I find it an endearing part of his character.
A couple of additional speculations. First, I suspect some of his bullying of non-Slytherins and special treatment of Slytherins is on Dumbledore’s orders, to set him up for that time in the unknown future when he has to pretend to be a Death Eater again. He does seem especially malicious towards Neville and Harry. With Neville, I suspect it’s because he knows Voldemort could have chosen to go after him instead of Harry and unreasonably resents Neville for not being the chosen one. With Harry, he can’t get past his physical resemblance to James and unreasonably takes his vengeance on James’ (innocent) child. Dumbledore may have ordered him to seem to dislike Harry, but Snape takes it to an extreme.
Second, I wondered at the end of HBP whether there was going to turn out to be some connection between Eileen Prince and Voldemort since by my calculation she would have started at Hogwarts when Riddle was an upperclassman, but that was a non-starter (maybe the reference to the HBP’s book being fifty years old was just to make us wonder if it was Riddle’s).
Third, when and why does Snape learn to mend the sectumsempra wounds as he does Draco’s? Did he ever try to secretly save people when he was a death eater the first time? No evidence he did that, except for the lack of explanation for how he knew how to heal the wounds.
I know Snape’s death is the big redemption scene looking into Lily’s green eyes etc etc, but I think it would have been interesting to see what he could have been like if he had survived and been allowed to reconcile with Harry and lead a life that didn’t involve fighting or preparing to fight Voldemort.
Lily Luna, very interesting. I thought I had a good memory for detail, but you are impressive.
Snape has never been my favorite character or even the most interesting to me, but I do have a bit of a soft spot for him, thanks to Lily and Harry. Red Rocker, I found your comment interesting, though I personally prefer the repentant Snape.
It seems to me that loving for reals means more than just a change of action, but to some degree a change of heart. The glimpses of “soft Snape” are, to my mind, part of a progression, a purgatorial sort of journey, that Snape never completed in life.
I assumed Snape had some knowledge of mending the Sectumsempra wounds because he wrote the spell in the first place. It was written in the margins of the Potions book.
Also, I’ve tended to think that the loathing in Snape’s face, when he went to AK Dumbledore, was disgust at what he was about to do (though there might well have been some natural bitterness there.) After all, Snape continued to trust Dumbledore and act on his “plan” to the end, and I don’t recall him showing any serious hostility to the portrait in the headmaster’s office.
It would have been intriguing for sure to see Severus live, though I think a life in this world, stripped of his previous reasons for existing and behaving the way he did, would have been quite the challenge for him. Death seemed something of a setting free for him. Along those lines: though I’m not a fan of fan fiction, I love this one enough to treat it almost as canon in my own mind.
Library Lily, love the fanfic you linked to. Thanks for that! I was really hoping for some sort of post-death moment between Snape and Harry, which I figured we might get in the headmaster’s office. Ah, well… Best left to our imagination, I suppose.
I wonder if Harry’s reflection upon Slughorn as a giant spider could be foreshadowing of the fact that Slughorn’s most important moment in the book will come during the funeral for a giant spider? He is an interesting character. I think I mostly thought he was all right, albeit rather wimpy and self-serving. Still a very good teacher – like Lupin, an ally with a strong personal connection to Lily, though his relationship to Harry is never developed to that strong an extent. On the other hand, there’s a bit of the Lockhart-ish silliness about him, except that Slughorn, for all his excesses, is at least still competent in his subject.
One thing that was an immense relief to me in book 6 was Harry’s personality. He was so volatile in the fifth book, I feared Sirius’s death might just send him completely over the edge, but like Dobby’s it seems instead to have inspired in him a clearer state of mind.
Good point, Erin, about Harry’s comparison of Slughorn to a spider foreshadowing Slughorn’s giving Harry the memory after being placated with the opportunity to collect valuable spider venom, etc.