Dark Twins in Devotion: Severus and Bellatrix

[condwiramurs.livejournal.com]

Trying to finish this Indestructible project has set my mind going in so many different directions, I can’t even tell you. Have another tangent to chew on while I write up occlumency and the tower and cave.

One of the features of the HP books that becomes very noticeable once you start looking at them symbolically and examining the relationships between characters closely is how much the books are built on various kinds of pairings and reflections. It’s like Alice’s Looking-Glass in there: everything has a twin, an opposite, an echo, a (distorted) mirror-image. Sometimes things are absurdly literal, sometimes completely the opposite of what they seem. Or both at once.

Severus, of course, as the heart of the books and probably the single most complex character in them, has multiple pairings and twins of different sorts.

And it strikes me that Bellatrix is one of his most interesting reflections.


On the obvious level, of course, we have the opposition of the true supporter and the faithless traitor, the outspoken zealot and the double-talking opportunist. The Azkaban vet and Dumbledore’s pet.

Also the opposition of female and male, pureblood and halfblood. Etc.

On another level, however, they are less opposites than twins. They share – indeed, they both exemplify – a linked set of qualities that are at the heart of the books and their personal story arcs: bravery and devotion.

The key difference between them is the register in which they display these attributes, both of which can be fundamental to having a moral character but are not themselves pure virtues. Bravery can be had in the name of an evil cause, after all, just as one can be selflessly devoted to people and ideals that are not worthy of it or are harmful.

In Bellatrix, of course, we see morally-empty but overtly fearless bravery. Whereas in Severus we see moral courage driving one on in spite of open fear. Bravery on a higher level.

So also with their devotion. And here is one place where Severus’ own insistence on his driving love being kept secret shows itself as vital to his moral character.

No matter how true Bellatrix’s devotion to Tom is in itself, we readers, and those characters around Bellatrix, must always have a question in the back of our minds about the driving motivation behind it.

Because Bellatrix keeps insisting upon it, stridently. Upon, not only being devoted, but being seen as devoted, too. Sincere in her devotion itself, as far as we can tell, for she does suffer and sacrifice for it – suffer Azkaban, sacrifice her nephew and her life. But insistent upon having her devotion recognized.

Quite the opposite of Severus, no?

Bellatrix is in love with her own devotion. Severus is simply devoted. Out of love.

Also note a vital difference in the depth of their devotion, what it leads them to, quite separate even from their choice of object for their devotion.

Bellatrix is willing to die for her lord. To sacrifice any hypothetical sons she might ever have to him. She even, as she reminds us over and over, went to Azkaban and suffered the dementors for her lord’s sake:

"He'd have me!" said Bellatrix passionately. "I, who spent many years in Azkaban for him!"

"Yes, indeed, most admirable," said Snape in a bored voice. "Of course, you weren't a lot of use to him in prison, but the gesture was undoubtedly fine -"

"Gesture!" she shrieked; in her fury she looked slightly mad. "While I endured the dementors, you remained at Hogwarts, comfortably playing Dumbledore's pet!"

Profound devotion, indeed. Willing to see, not only the end of her own life, but of her line, her sanity, and her soul. For the sake of someone incapable of returning a fraction of her love.

Bellatrix is willing to destroy herself, physically and spiritually, in the name of her devotion. Utterly, and without apparent fear.

Severus?

Severus is willing to die for his love, of course. To endure any torment, to sacrifice any ambition, to face any fear. Without even glory as a reward.

He’s also willing to do something that is, for him, much harder than dying.

He's willing to live. To embrace a life that, at the moment he’s offered the clear choice, he has no desire whatsoever to keep enduring.

Indeed, to do more than live. To grow. To improve himself, not for his own sake but for others. To build himself up, spiritually, despite his fear and pain and self-hatred. For the sake of his devotion to another.

“I wish…I wish I were dead…”

“And what use would that be to anyone?” said Dumbledore coldly. “If you loved Lily Evans, if you truly loved her, then your way forward is clear.”

Snape seemed to peer through a haze of pain…

In the end, Bellatrix truly was devoted unto death.

As devoted as Severus was unto life.

---

I'm editing this to add something that just struck me. It turns out that, even after writing this essay, I keep misremembering Dumbledore's line here. I always remember it as him saying, "And what good would that do for anyone?"

But that's not what he says, is it?

What use would Severus' death be to anyone, is what he actually asks. Implicitly contrasting: his life might have use to someone. To Dumbledore, we know, of course. And, well, that was true enough for Dumbledore to have been sincere there. In what he actually said.

But judging by his course and actions thereafter, Severus seems to have misheard the headmaster as badly as I did.

To his own credit, and to his own ultimate good fortune, according to what came to matter most to him.

In the end it was a mishearing that was, one might say, for his own good.

As well as for Harry's and everyone else's.

Comments

[melodyssister]

This is all really fascinating stuff. I am refreshing DTC every few hours to see if there is a new instalment from you, and I wanted to let you know that I've recced the Indestructible series on the One Bad Man comm - so your Alchemical Fiction site will hopefully get a few more hits.

[condwiramurs.livejournal.com]

Thanks! :) I'm glad you're enjoying it. And thanks for the rec- I appreciate it.

There's just so much going through my brain, wanting to be written down...

Today I even figured out how to make JKR's explanation for Sev joining the DEs "to impress Lily" maybe work.

Impressing Lily

[mary-j-59.livejournal.com]

I'll have more to say later; this is fascinating! But, as to impressing Lily, I think it was cardigrl who pointed out that James clearly impressed Lily, and he was a bullying (and arguably racist) wealthy pureblood. So it's conceivable that young Severus could have joined to be more like James. Honestly, though, I always thought Severus joined for the same reason he did almost everything else - to protect Lily. I'll certainly look forward to your ideas!

Re: Impressing Lily

[condwiramurs.livejournal.com]

Thank you. :D I'm glad it's interesting people and getting a response.

As far as impressing Lily: yeah, I originally went with that reading too, but it felt a tiny bit...off, to me. But yesterday I was working on my latest fic, and I had a brainwave, and everything turned upside-down about how to look at Sev's motives for joining and something clicked.

Wanting to protect her, yes. But not, perhaps, because he saw the danger of the DEs clearly. Rather, because he DIDN'T see them clearly. They didn't look the same to the public in the 70s as they do to the Order in the 90s, remember. And I suspect recruitment offers were an, er, individualized thing.

What if Sev decided to join, not DESPITE being halfblood, but in a way BECAUSE of it? Because of the experience of it. After getting an appropriate line on the 'truth' of the organization spun for him by his initial point of contact. (We all I think assume this to be Lucius?)

What if Sev, as part of his own internal conflict over being part-Muggle, part-magical, in a world that tells him pretty uniformly that this is bad, and seeing firsthand the cost to WIZARD kids in the MUGGLE world, thought/convinced himself he was joining up with a group of people who wanted to end Secrecy - the ultimate political hotwire NO MATTER the rationale - in order to make the world safe for those magical kids? ALL of them, halfblood and muggleborn alike. Because Secrecy and hypocrisy were having a cost to all the kids with magic out in the Muggle world, and wrecking any mixed W/M marriages that happened. And he and Lily were both firsthand observers of some of this.

And NOBODY in the WW actually takes Muggles and their rights seriously - eventually even Lily disdains her own sister. Violence against Muggles is required by law, while they have no legal standing at all - was it terri who pointed out that under an open supremacist regime Muggles might have slightly MORE rights than now, simply for logistical purposes? And all the factions in this conflict are clearly willing to use threats and violence when necessary, including against children. Some are simply more hypocritical than others about everything.

So an angry, conflicted, but sharp and observant half-Muggle kid could conceivably spin to himself that ending Secrecy, by force if necessary, and working out some (left-carefully-undefined) actual power structure overtly involving everyone might be a clear moral as well as logistical improvement over the current unsustainable situation, which nobody in power wants to do anything meaningful about. Add in some fascination with powerful types of magic that seem to be fundamental to the WW's heritage, but that the current hypocritical regime outwardly distorts and condemns, while still quietly allowing those in the know - purebloods - to practice (so affecting mostly muggle-raised kids), and an only-belated realization that he and Lily were essentially speaking different languages about all of this when they argued... Different languages created and sustained by the hypocritical attitude of denial of the current power structure, the one that is still hurting wizarding kids out there while claiming to be fighting for them.

Re: Impressing Lily

[condwiramurs.livejournal.com]

Well, might he not have hoped, initially, to impress her by getting an inside seat, committing (he thought) to do his part to fix the fundamental problems of the WW that he saw as having hurt them BOTH and led to their falling out, and then finding a chance to properly explain it all to her until they're speaking the same language again?

I'm trying to PROTECT us, BOTH of us, Lily! And other kids like us! You've got it all backward, because Dumbledore and Potter and the Ministry and people like them are distorting everything and lying to you, to keep you from upsetting their power and learning the really important magic. They want people in ignorance. I want us all to be free! For all the wizard kids to have their full birthright. And we're not doing anything worse than they are. The Ministry use dementors! This will all be able to STOP once we get rid of Secrecy and can all be honest... I'd risk anything - I AM risking anything - to keep kids like us safe. The rest of it is just old dying families grasping at straws to still feel important, my Mum's family was just like that remember, it doesn't MEAN anything. I'm sorry about all the confusion and how I hurt you, please just think about things... Potter and them don't actually care about you. About people like us. That's their big lie.

Wouldn't that, or something like it, be a seductive picture for him? Rather quickly shattered, of course. But easy enough to convince himself of long enough to get inextricably snared. And then, of course, it all gets so much worse. Fortuna's wretched joke on him.

I think to Severus personally the question of 'blood' was never so much the importance of how many generations of magical ancestry you can claim, but do you have magic or not? (And the related cultural-preservation-and-security question of, who are you connected to and what knowledge and assumptions are you passing on?) That's the dividing line in practice for the whole WW, including eventually Lily; it's the one that most directly impacted his life from the beginning; and it's the one we most consistently see him express. His disdain for Petunia was genuine; his hesitation to Lily was the knowledge that to SOME it might matter, even if not to HIM. I think his Pensieve comment to Lily was specifically chosen to hurt HER because he felt betrayed - which does not lessen the wrong, and indicates the milieu he was willing to inhabit if necessary for himself at that point; but I don't think it's reflective of the *angle* from which he approached the issue overall.

[sweettalkeress.livejournal.com]

"Bellatrix is willing to destroy herself, physically and spiritually, in the name of her devotion. Utterly, and without apparent fear."

I find this extremely interesting because it reminds me of a Ferretbrain essay I read awhile back about what "sacrifice" actually means in a fictional context, and how the biggest question that one needs to be asking of a Hero is not what they would do to accomplish their goals but what they wouldn't do. The idea was that anyone (in fiction, anyway) can sacrifice their life or their own for some cause larger than themselves, whereas a True Hero would have some sort of moral line that they would be unwilling to cross, even if it meant giving up their ultimate goal. The way they put it was, "dying for [your goal] is a small step, giving it up is what takes real moral courage."

So I guess one question that follows from this is, does Severus ever display willingness to give up his ultimate goal, out of any sort of moral compunction?

[condwiramurs.livejournal.com]

I think you're talking about Hemmens' Acts of Sacrifice, right? It's an interesting article that I keep going back to and asking what I think about it. I never have a solid answer. Possibly because of the WAY he frames the question - I have to think about it more.

As to your question: well, I think yes?

Or rather, as terri points out in one of her latest essays, Severus is asked over and over again to sacrifice what he has worked toward in the name of a larger moral good, rather than preserving his original goal. It's just that the way Severus' choices are structured is such that he more and more has to actively CHOOSE that moral goal and work TOWARD it specifically, instead of simply risking or GIVING UP what he had been working for in favor of not crossing a line. Active moral compunction and choice, not simply reaching a line and staying on one side of it.

First of course he has to sacrifice his own desires and ambitions, to save Lily even if she'll never be his. And he does.

But then he has to be willing to sacrifice her life in favor of her own moral agency, her choice to save her son. He could have acted to protect her by force, or by telling Voldemort not to let her sacrifice herself, if he thought of it (see Greater Love), but he put HER desires above his own.

And then he wants to die out of guilt, but gives up his own selfish death in favor of (he thinks) the larger moral good of preserving her son.

Then he has to sacrifice her son too, sacrifice the goal of protecting Harry. Not in favor of what ALBUS sees as winning the war, the same strategic choice that Albus himself made for another external goal, but in favor of GIVING HARRY A MORAL CHOICE to make himself, allowing him to be a moral agent just as he'd allowed Lily to be one. Which is a higher moral good than merely preserving another's physical life.

It's the difference between overpowering Harry and delivering him to Voldemort to die or just killing him, or Albus' suicide stone trap, and telling Harry what the situation is knowing that he'll likely choose to die but letting HIM be the one to make a FREE choice. Same outcome physically, but morally a world of difference.

And what we see Severus do is in fact just that: neither preserve Harry against his own moral agency, nor force/trick him to the needed outcome of winning the war against Tom, but telling him the TRUTH and letting him CHOOSE. Even though it means the boy that Severus would die for will, instead, himself die just as surely as if Severus bound him and delivered him to Tom by force.

Because at that point Severus' ultimate goal had been to preserve Harry's life, and then it seems to move to winning the war. Which is ALBUS'S stated goal, certainly.

But Severus is willing to risk both (either) of those external goals in favor of letting Harry make a choice himself. And I think if he had gotten to go find Harry and talk to him, he would have done the same thing as he did with his memories: neither persuade nor compel Harry either to die or live, but offer him enough information and the freedom to choose. Even knowing what his choice will likely be anyway.

So yes, Severus is ultimately willing to sacrifice his 'goal' in favor of not crossing a moral line, if you want to put it that way. The other way of putting it, the way I'm approaching it in my Indestructible series, is that Severus comes to have the ultimate goal of MORAL ACTION itself. Of, not making a specific outcome happen, but of acting rightly to his best ability under whatever circumstances are there. And that includes allowing other people to be independent moral agents, who might sacrifice themselves of their own choice. Something Albus NEVER grasped.

[condwiramurs.livejournal.com]

To make what I mean a little clearer: I'm currently writing a fanfic I mean to post soon, a rewrite of the Shack scene in which Severus breaks under the pressure and DOESN'T manage to hang onto that goal of moral choice itself, but chooses one of his external goals (preserving Harry's life) instead.

For the best of reasons, out of love for the boy and the sheer strain of Albus' betrayal. But it's still a moral failure, isn't it? No matter the motivation, no matter the hope of exiling Tom again and waiting Harry's life out that he might use an excuse to himself, say. To preserve Harry's life by force, knowing that the boy would likely want to choose different, taking the choice away from him. No matter how much he loves the boy himself.

That would be an example of Severus failing Hemmens' test, yes? Just as Severus taking the opposite tack, ALBUS's, and tricking or forcing the boy to die for the Greater Good. Even if he himself is willing to die, taking the choice away from Harry would be crossing the moral line.

Because it's not the external outcome that matters. It's never the outward cause itself that is the highest good. It's the honoring of INDEPENDENT MORAL CHOICE ITSELF, and other people's moral agency.