Half-Blood Prince, part 2

Okay...Snape. Again: I've done a lousy job at predicting her red herrings, even when I got in trouble for reading the books when I was 3/5 of the way through Prisoner of Azkaban, and had 18 months to guess the ending. My grand prediction was that Sirius was trying to kill Lupin. Ha!

Here goes nothing; spoilery stuff galore below.

Basic Option 1: Snape is good. (Sort of).
This was my initial reaction. Rowling is pulling her favorite red herring again, and working really hard to make us fall for it this time. But it's still a red herring.

I can't exactly say that Snape is good. He's not. He's a bitter, cruel, vicious, messed up man, with a history of terrible acts...who somehow managed to come up on the right side of things. Probably only because of Dumbledore's friendship.

When has Dumbledore ever been this drastically wrong about a person's character? He may screw up in some things (like going after a locket that isn't there, like not telling Harry the prophecy, like underestimating Draco's ability to get Death Eaters into Hogwarts), but when it comes down to seeing a person's heart, he's always judged rightly. I'm with Lupin. If Dumbledore trusts him, I do too.

The Unbreakable Vow caused a lot of problems. Snape agreed to it, probably because he was on the spot, had to make a split-second decision, and goofed up. Bellatrix was calling his bluff. Narcissa was pleading with him to save her son. And perhaps Snape wasn't expecting the third clause of the Vow. Though it's possible that he had already talked to Dumbledore about Voldemort's plan, and they'd agreed that Snape should kill him (Dumbledore) if Voldemort demanded it.

Anyhow -- once the Vow was in place, it's only a matter of time. Once it was evident that Draco would not be able to kill Dumbledore, someone had to die. If Snape refused, then Snape would die. If Snape fulfilled the vow, then Dumbledore would die. Moreover -- and I may be wrong on this -- I'm pretty sure that if Draco failed and another Death Eater killed Dumbledore, then Snape would die. It's a no-win situation. Once the Vow was in place, the best anyone could do was postpone the time of confrontation with Draco. (The necklace and gin, I believe, did not have enough "Draco is going to fail"-ness to them to force the situation. The confrontation in the tower, on the other hand, did).

I don't know if Snape told Dumbledore the whole story of the Vow. My first thought was that he did, and that Dumbledore made a pragmatic command decision about who had to die. The argument between Snape and Dumbledore arose because Snape didn't like Dumbledore's call on this matter. Then up in the tower, Dumbledore pleaded with Snape not to mess up the plan. However, it's not clear at all from the book that Snape informed Dumbledore about the depth of the mess he was in. I rather like the idea of things getting out of hand in the tower -- of Dumbledore underestimating Draco, not expecting Death Eaters, not knowing the extent of Snape's dilemma. I can't see him making the promises to Draco that he did, unless he expected to survive a bit longer.

Now...there's "revulsion and hatred" on Snape's face as he kills Dumbledore. Interesting choice of words:

Hating himself, repulsed by what he was doing, Harry forced the goblet back toward Dumbledore's mouth and tipped it, so that Dumbledore drank the remainder of the potion inside (571).

Snape gazed for a moment at Dumbledore, and there was revulsion and hatred etched in the harsh lines of his face" (595).

All in all...people made some big mistakes. Bad things happened. Sacrifices had to be made. But all this is setting the stage for Voldemort's defeat. First, we have the classic mentor-death, showing Harry that he has to learn to battle and survive on his own. Secondly, the good guys now have a person deep within Voldemort's trust and councils. We're looking at the first part of a longer story. HP6 is putting the pieces in place, setting us up for something like a "Snape is good" twist in HP7, just like the first half of HP1 set us up for the "Snape is good" twist in its second half.

A final consideration: Rowling's world would lose a whole lot of subtlety, and a whole lot of gray, if every guy that Harry thought was evil was actually evil. Or if every guy who looked evil was pure evil. I stayed with the series because, in book 1, Snape turned out to be the "good guy."

Basic Option 2: Snape is evil.
I need to go back and read the series from this perspective. Because, by golly, it just might be right. At first I thought, "No way! Rowling's world doesn't work like that! Dumbledore wouldn't be that incompetent! He's freaking demi-omniscient! He always manages to fix things, and he always knows what to do!"

But if Dumbledore is more fallible than we assumed, it's gloriously, tragically inevitable. The whole series has been leading up to a moment like this -- a moment when Dumbledore for once bets wrong. When Harry realizes that not even Dumbledore had everything under control, or had all the answers, or was without a major failing. Snape's evilness works. It's an inescapable necessity. It's a foreshadowed tragedy. It makes an awesome-cool story.

Dumbledore, who usually gets this sort of thing right, eventually makes a misjudgment of a person's character. There have been foreshadowings of his fallibility (see above; see Order of the Phoenix; etc). Other teachers mention that he can be too trusting -- that it has always been his weakness. Dumbledore acknowledges his potential to make catastrophic mistakes.

"But as I have already proven to you, I make mistakes like the next man. In fact, being -- forgive me -- rather cleverer than most men, my mistakes tend to be correspondingly huger" (197).

And he does make a huge one, which costs him his life, and that of several other people, too (the murders at the beginning of the book, at the very least).

HP6 isn't meant to be a set-up for book 7, any more than 5 was a set-up for 6. This volume has reached an end and a resolution. The mystery has been solved; the answer had been revealed. This page of the drama -- a tragic one -- has been completed. It's time to move on, making the best of the new situation.

This is the way the books have always ended...a twist that has a ring of finality. The final chapters are always a revelation of the true nature of things. In Philosopher's Stone we realize that Quirrel is evil, and that Snape is innocent (at least of that particular crime). In Chamber of Secrets, we realize that Riddle is evil, and that Hagrid is innocent. In Prisoner of Azkaban, we realize that it's actually Pettigrew who is evil, and that Sirius is innocent. In Goblet of Fire, we realize that Crouch the evil and guilty man. In Order of the Phoenix, there's no 'villain' to find, per se. But there is the matter of Sirius's death. Despite some ambiguity, it was evidently real and final, just like Dumbledore & Co. said. There's no loose ends; he's not coming back. (His non-return is what convinced me of the finality of Rowling's conclusions. Even if there seems be wiggle room, there actually isn't). So happens in Half-Blood Prince? It is revealed that 1) Snape is actually evil, and 2)Dumbledore is dead. Given the finality of each of the previous book's revelations, we should assume that these things are what they appear to be.

I don't like it. I don't want Harry to be right about Snape. But if HP6 follows the pattern of books 1 - 5, Evil!Snape is the way Rowling wants her world to be. I can be OK with that (if not overly thrilled); a Dumbledore-tragedy plot arc is still quite cool. Moreover, while I may mourn the state of the series as a whole, Evil!Snape sure makes book 6 a lot more gripping and chilling than Good!Snape.

Final consideration for this side: Voldemort is "the most accomplished Legilimens the world has ever seen." Snape might be very powerful in Occlumency...but I have a lot of trouble believing he's that powerful.

In Conclusion...
Basically (QuickSummary!): If this is a book complete in itself, following the pattern of books 1-5, then Snape is evil. If this book is "part 1 of 2," then Snape is probably good.

I'm aware there's probably an Option 3: "Snape is on his own side." I'll have to think about it, but I don't find this too plausible. Everyone is pretty much ends up either helping Voldemort ("evil") or not helping him ("good"). Snape is now either a Death Eater or Fake Death Eater. I'm sure plenty of DE's are allied with Voldemort for their own ulterior purposes or their own survival...and that doesn't make them merely "on their own side."

My bet is currently on Good!Snape...after I wrote this, I found that Rowling said she considers this book a "part 1 of 2." However, Evil!Snape makes book 6 a lot more interesting, and should be a pretty fun framework to use when re-reading the series. Also, I’ll probably read book 7 using the Evil!Snape template. Gleefully going along with a red herring can be fun. 1) If he’s good, I’ll be pleasantly surprised. 2) If he’s evil, then he’s evil. 3) If he’s evil and I’m betting on good, it’ll be a bit of a letdown and disappointment. Sort of like realizing that Sirius’s death was a settled issue.