deathtocapslock | Indestructible

Indestructible – Intermezzo

I have portions of a couple more bits of the series written out and ready to post, but in order for them to really make sense there’s other stuff that I think I need to lay out first. I’ve been thinking very hard about all of this and it’s ridiculously complex to put into words at moments, even leaving aside my latest revelation that, from a certain perspective, these books are all about Severus Snape and the alchemical process from start to finish – as seen through a glass darkly – through a Mirror – by someone who does not understand at all what she is writing, what Harry is seeing without comprehending.

But that’s a bit of a tangent from my original focus for this series, so I’ll leave that aside for the most part until I get through discussing my main topic, which is the nature of Severus Snape’s character and moral journey, particularly during the last years of the war.

But alchemy is a key symbolic language to remember here, to understand what I think it’s possible to read as happening in the deep background of these books, beyond Harry’s conscious awareness. Severus is an alchemist of some kind, whether figuratively or literally. And some of the images we got in that first book – the Philosopher’s Stone in the Mirror, the murdered unicorn giving half-life, Severus as the dark and confusing but demanding and knowledgeable teacher – are clues to remember.

And keep in mind that in every book we’re dealing with a return of echoes from the past in one form or another: in each book, Severus, like Harry, is confronting an echo of an earlier time, building on each other in waves. Particularly in regard to his relationship with Voldemort – the big piece of the puzzle we still have to explore to understand Sev’s journey here.

I’m also going to throw some other symbolic and metaphorical languages at you though (sorry, it’s just the way my brain works, figuring all of this out). In particular, I’m going to have to pull out a little geometry and a brief discussion of orbital mechanics. I’m finding pictures to illustrate – that’ll help make it clear, I think. I just find geometry and astrophysics to be very useful metaphors for talking about moral concepts and interactions, for some reason.

I’m tempted to toss a whole boatload of literary and pop cultural references in too, because they keep springing up on me, but I’ll try to keep it down to a minimum so as not to get too distracted. XD

Instead, I’ll just put a list of a bunch of things that are pinging me up in a post later, to keep track of them, and if people are interested they can look.

As for a soundtrack for this project: I’ve been going with Fleet Foxes, Leonard Cohen, and some classic oldies. Let’s start with young Severus’ Helplessness Blues and the rest of that album; toss In My Secret Life, I’m Your Man, and You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away on there for spy Severus in the war years; The Future can give us a taste of Headmaster Severus’ despair, while he’s Waiting for the Miracle; and round everything off with Turn! Turn! Turn! as something of a theme song for the whole.

But for Severus’ own anthem, I think the one by Leonard Cohen fitting:

I can't run no more with that lawless crowd
While the killers in high places say their prayers out loud
But they've summoned, they've summoned up a thundercloud
And they're going to hear from me

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in

- “Anthem”

I’ll be building, as usual, from the general picture we’ve already been putting together about Sev and company with input from terri and swythyv, marionros, oneandthetruth, mary, jodel, and so on. Especially terri’s Greater Love, Dark Devices, The Unbreakable Vow Revisited, The Dark Mark, all the Dumbledore stuff…

I do think Severus did deliberately set up that Vow with Narcissa. And also that, after the Harrycrux revelation, he might have regretted making that particular move for a bit – he’d forced himself into a corner without having all the information, and now all the categories he’d been using to orient himself were suddenly sliding, changing places. (Things are going to slide, slide in all directions / Won’t be nothing / Nothing you can measure anymore...)

But in the end it did force him into motion. Which is, I suspect, something Severus needs to be his very best self: to be in motion.

But more on that later. First I have to lay out my big metaphors for talking about all this: orbital mechanics, circles, and asymptotes. The wheels of heaven, to borrow Cohen’s phrase.

We’re talking about bodies in motion here: both physical and moral, spiritual motion. And in order to understand their natures and journeys, we need to trace the patterns they weave between them over time. Especially between the major players here: Voldemort and Albus, Severus, Harry, Draco…

And I’ll need to explain a little orbital maneuver known as a gravity assist, and its implications, and what it has to do with alchemy.

Because I think there are two major ways to read Severus’ spiritual journey during HBP and DH. One is the straightforward one, in which he is a very brave man and is or becomes a very good man.

I do like this reading, a lot. It’s my default reading of the series, and I can’t bring myself to come down on one side or the other and pick one reading over the other. And for me to accord Severus the honor of calling him unreservedly “a good man,” when I generally prefer to avoid speaking simplistically in terms of “good people” and “bad people” in favor of good and bad actions and commitments, should tell you how much I genuinely do believe he is fundamentally inclined toward the good.

But. There’s another reading (very much in the shadows and speculative, but still), in which Severus is a very brave and ultimately very great man, after a particular fashion. A man who embraces the alchemical work completely, and whose journey I think may only be just beginning. (I did say I think Severus Lives, didn’t I? ;) ) But if he was indeed at a place after OotP such that Albus’ series of betrayals forced him to resort to a gravity assist, he was in mortal peril indeed.

It worked. We know that, because we saw him at the end and we saw Harry return and Voldemort vanquished because of him. He pulled it off in the end. But it was a damned risky move, and Albus’ impenetrable little game with the Deathstick very nearly cost Severus – and everyone depending on him – everything.

It’s a good thing that, in addition to being clever and brave and resourceful and loving, Severus is also quite graceful. Once you get him going. And that Harry is so very, very lucky.

This second reading is certainly not necessitated by the text; it’s quite in the background and is mostly implicit and highly speculative. But it does clear up a few of those irritating little points we keep running up against in the text, that seem to be there only for purposes of shoddy storytelling. Such as why it might be important for Severus and Voldemort to be the two wizards we hear of mastering the art of unsupported flight. And why Voldemort inexplicably chose to use Nagini to attack Severus after a pattern of AKs, at just the one moment that his using a proxy for the murder would seem the least likely thing. There’s Harry’s luck, yes. But even with the double-sacrifice theory, relying on that luck to explain everything starts to get old – and his luck was already being used in his being at the scene at all.

So. Why not jump down the rabbit hole and see where it goes, hey?