What Backstory Would You Have Wanted for Snape?

[reinalobelia.livejournal.com]

Hi, first time poster, long (long, long, long) time lurker. I almost want to apologize for making this post, as it's about one of the most (and yet not enough?!) oft-repeated complaints surrounding DH, namely the handling of the motivations behind one Severus Snape.

A tl;dr background of myself: I read the first six books some time in 2006-7 and become absolutely consumed by the series. And then DH broke my heart to pieces with its release. I spent the next 5 years recovering those pieces and healing, and thankfully I was still able to find fans whose opinions still jived with mine up until 2012, when I woke up one morning and finally threw the series away in disgust and through weariness. For reasons unknown to me, I've started dabbling with fandom again recently - I suspect I'm probably in that stage where I need a new hobby but have nothing new to fall back on so I'm nostalgic. Because I was a fan for so short a time before the series concluded, I've always almost felt like I was never a "true" fan since I wasn't part of most of the discourse pre-DH. And yet I consider myself as being from "that generation of HP fans", and not the newer generation made up of so many Snape-haters I see on more currently relevant social media platforms like Reddit and Tumblr. I hope that doesn't make me sound elitist but, well, fuck it, lol (we can swear, right??).

And that brings me to why I'm here: it's amazing how the general sentiment in fandom has shifted so drastically from the loudest voices pre-DH saying how much they love Snape to the present post-DH era, where he's reduced to a friend-zoned, incel, Nice Guy {insert whatever other labels anti-Snape fans attach to him}. The point I'm really trying to make is: I feel almost completely out of touch with most places discussing Snape on the Internet except for DTCL. I truly want to thank you all for still being around, from the bottom of my heart. I hope this is okay, but I particularly want to thank torchedsong for making her post also talking about how Snape was flattened as a character - it made me realize there are still people around in the fandom who remembered the potential he used to have.

And now to come to the title of the post. I want to wholeheartedly reject the "Lily as end-all, be-all" motivation. So I was wondering:

- What would YOU have liked for Snape's motivation to have been for becoming Dumbledore's man?
- What kind of scenario do you imagine led him to make the change?
- Prior to the release of DH, what were you /hoping/ for his motivation to be?

I have to admit that I struggle with these questions myself. For example, a number of slash fans played with with idea of Snape's motivation to have been Regulus Black. And honestly, while this would have been less of a character-destroying reveal (not that JKR would ever actually go down this route), it would make the matter of Snape's opinions regarding blood politics and his moral development more complicated. So an additional question:

- What kind of motivation/catalyst would you have liked for Snape to realize that not just violence but any kind of discrimination based on blood is wrong? (Unless you would have been fine for him to just have a personal, selfish motive behind betraying Voldemort, that's fine too).

Thank you ♡

Comments

[sunnyskywalker]

It's always puzzled me why anyone would take Snape's request to Voldemort at face value. "Please, my lord, spare my friend (who isn't speaking to me) because you respect the Power of Love" is not going to fly; of course he'd tell Voldemort it was about revenge or lust or pride etc. Things Voldemort could understand--and, crucially, things that wouldn't make him decide, "Hey, it sounds like she'd be a great hostage for Sevvie's good behavior. The sap really cares." Regardless, Snape obviously didn't think there was much chance of Voldemort honoring the request, so it was probably insurance rather than his Plan A. That is, I think he asked Voldemort because even a slim chance of Voldemort sparing Lily was better than none if all else failed. Whether he'd gotten as far as deciding that "all else" meant going to Dumbledore rather than some other plan, I'm not sure, but it's not like there were many options besides going to Dumbledore.

I'd have liked his motivation to be multi-faceted. Which canon doesn't rule out, but doesn't do a lot to support either. It could have been a combination of any of the following:

• Losing first his best friend and then realizing he's endangered her life because of his DE affiliation
  
• Finding out horrible things Mulciber has done and wishing he'd listened when Lily warned him Mulciber was evil
  
• Hearing that his leader has (supposedly) murdered a schoolkid like Regulus
  
• Wondering whether Regulus really died because of "cold feet" or whether he knew too much--and if so, what could be horrible enough to turn a dedicated fanboy like that
  
• The DEs ramping up the violence and targeting undeniably innocent people
  
• Being given a suicide mission (get Hogwarts job > assassinate Dumbledore) and realizing he's a disposable dupe, not a valued member of the group
  
• Finding out how much crossover there is in membership between the DEs, the Order, and the Ministry, and wondering how much of this is actually old men using kids to do their fighting (over power rather than strictly ideology, at that)
  
• Realizing just how likely any attempt to conquer the Muggle world is to end up nuclear war, or at least a new round of witch hunts which will probably destroy the magical population
  
• Wondering whether maybe that's Voldemort's real plan (easy to be the most powerful wizard in Britain if you're the only wizard, just for starters)
  
• Fenrir Greyback--no way can your boss be a good guy if he employs someone like that
  
• Somehow finding out about the Dark Lord's childhood and realizing that torturing fellow orphans into probable insanity is a really, really bad sign

And probably a few more possibilities I'm forgetting. If the other motivations were fleshed out, I'd be fine with Lily's peril being the final straw. He could also have more mixed feelings--being more hurt and angry about her cheerfully dating a vicious bully while claiming to disapprove of such people, but also having some fond memories and being horrified at the idea of her dying because of something he did. It would help a lot if we found out that Snape and Lily were childhood friends at the end of HBP (at the latest). Then we'd have time for the information to sink in, maybe to find out more details throughout DH instead of in a single infodump at the end, and there would be room to include more nuance. Maybe the Prince's Tale could have included a memory or two of Snape being horrified at something the DEs and/or Voldemort did if we got more of the Lily info earlier somehow.

As for the discrimination part, that's tough, because even the "good" wizards treat Muggles poorly. (I'm not sure whether he ever had any deep convictions about Muggle-borns rather than just deciding that his housemates were a little obsessed, but whatever, people say stupid stuff, it's just words, and look at the decent things they do... So that would be a matter of realizing that his friends did mean it and those "just words" really can be dangerous. Which his friends' actions during the war might well have accomplished.) So what could convince him that discriminating against Muggles is wrong? I think this would be a longer process. I'll have to think more.