The Life and Lies of Severus Snape
Posted in feebility, mundaneity
If you're a Harry Potter junkie like me, you'll get this post. If you're not, then you won't. And if you're a devoted Twilight fan, screw you. Your kind is not welcome here.
Just kidding. Well, maybe.
Today is Harry Potter's fictional birthday. The fact that Harry Potter himself is a fictional character has not stopped fans of author JK Rowling's celebrated protagonist from throwing him birthday parties. He never shows up at any of the parties though, and if he does he would either be hunched underneath his cloak, or disguised as the mailman or a neighbor's cousin with the help of polyjuice potion.
But I'm not here to talk about Potter or Rowling. Months before the final two installments of the Harry Potter film series come out, I was reading up on book 7 and I remembered how I felt about one of the the series' most popular yet most morally ambiguous antagonists - Severus Snape.
In the early parts of the series Professor Snape had always been a vile and malicious character, taking every opportunity to make life difficult for Harry and the Gryffindors in general. I hated Snape for a good part of books 1 to 6. In book 7, however, it was revealed that the mysterious doe patronus, which had guided Ron and Harry to the location of Godric Gryffindor's sword, was none other than Snape's. As interesting as this back story is, nothing compared to how Rowling made the stunning revelation in her book:
Hands down, this part of the book turned me from being one of Snape's biggest detractors into one of his most avid fans. You see, Lily Potter's patronus was also a doe, and apparently Snape's patronus is his way of remembering her. Incidentally, Severus Snape was the only Death Eater that was even capable of producing a patronus. His undying affection for Lily Potter had gone far beyond good and evil, and had transcended the boundaries of life and death. It just goes to show that even in the darkest of souls, love and kindness can exist.
Man that was cheesy. Blech.
Page screenshot courtesy of Ron, author of Time. Truth. Hearts. Okay so I grabbed it off his Facebook page, happy!?
