Snape's Most Guarded Memory and Luck

So, I am "back in the saddle" for a bit here. Some hectic things in life here in the Bronx have made it difficult to get time to write - including pulling of a move. But also, when I can and can't write her at the security desk varies ... they have instituted a new position of a second person on night tour at the dispatch desk, but only 4 nights a week. When she is here, and thus 2 of us at the desk, I can't really write ... but her schedule is at variance with mine: I work the same 4 nights every week and she works 4 on-4 off. So this week the timing runs around to that my 4 nights on are exactly her 4 nights off so I will be sitting the desk by myself all 4 nights, so maybe I will get caught up on some of the things I want to say on Deathly Hallows (including some comments on other comments on the last few posts, so check back there and there is probably some follow up). This first one is pretty simple and doesn't even really require much text support (although I throw some things in to help out :) ) - the general plot revelations are prominent enough to stand on their own. It is that I think that the "Snape's worst Memory" chapter in OotP is intentionally misleading. I think Snape "front-loaded" the penseive with that memory to protect the ones he REALLY does not want Harry to see ... which are the ones we see in Deathly Hallows. It seems highly improbable that Snape would not put those later-revealed memories in the penseive, and I think that no matter what, Snape would be mad if Harry dived into his thoughts in the penseive ... and genuinely mad ... and genuinely does not want him to do so and genuinely tries to prevent it from happening. But I think that just on the odd chance that something comes up and Harry does go diving, especially as Snape has such a dim view of Harry's inheriting his father's arrogance, Snape protected the valuable memories with another that is "special" in a way I'll describe momentarily. In short, while I think Snape genuinely does not want Harry to go snooping and is genuinely angry, I don't think everything was exactly as it appeared. In a way he simultaneously protects the memories we find in DH, probably making sure that memory of the OWLs is a long one (and more on that in a mo') to give as much time as possible for Snape to return in the unfortunate event that Harry, well, that he does what he does, but he also sort of sets Harry up to "reap the rewards" of his arrogance if he does what he does. That memory is, I think, in Snape's mind, potentially a way of showing Harry "you think your father was so great? Here have a look at what he was really like, Potter!" Think about it ... was the section of the memory when they are actually in the test really something to be gaurded? And there is a pretty nice possible "cut-marker" there, when they leave the OWL and are outside for a time before to have shortened up the memory and made it less bulky for extraction if he had wanted. And the section before the actual attack on Snape? One question might be how those conversations between the marauder's was in Snape's memory if he was so intent on his test question (of course a possible answer is simply that this is, after all, magical revelation, and goes beyond the "normal scope of intentionality" - but I also think the answer I propose here is equally possible). I think teenage Snape was not as intent on his parchment as he seemed - that he was avidly listening to what he could over-hear of that conversation with loathing for the four-some, as well as glancing sidelong with loathing at Sirius' casual manner on the test (that same kicking back the chair on the back legs as he does in 3 12 Grimmauld Place when they are at each other as adults) ... and that, in addition to lengthening out the memory to give him more time to get back on the scene in the event the opportunity arises and Harry goes delving where he has no right, it also provides a chance to say "here, Potter, let me give you a REALLY full dose of whatyour father and his buddies were REALLY like! Just like you snooping around in my thoughts in the penseive." In short, Snape is a pretty crafty fellow and I think he sort of "booby-trapped" the pensieve in the event that Harry has opportunity to snoop and takes it (I'm not saying I think Harry is a snooping gossip etc, but you have to admit that that is the way Snape would see it given his history with James and Sirius and Harry's likeness to the former and affinity for the latter), in addition to giving himself some more time, in that event, to protect the really vital stuff. I'm not saying Snape had a good reason for ditching Harry 's lessons (and the following behavior in potions class is obviously a case of giving into vindictive attitude) ... but I also do think there is more at stake here than simply what we get the impression of when Dumbledore says "my word, Severus, that I shall never reveal the best of you?" (DH 679). If Harry had seen those memories he sees in DH, but back in book 5 before Voldy has become afraid of the connection, a lot could have been jeapordized ... both the mission AND Severus' life. He has put himself VERY much in harm's way and if Voldy gets access to those memories by them entering Harry's memory in the penseive ... well that is a fine thank you for risking so much to protect Harry (even given that fact that there is some variance in that motivation - that Snape's motivation is more to protect "Lily Potter's son" than to protect "Harry Potter" ... but as we see with Narcissa Malfoy, the desire to protect child is, even when "lopsided," by nature an intrinsically good desire and thus more open to working in concert with the "greater good" [when Narcissa helps Harry fake being dead, and thus undo Voldy, even though her question reveals that she is primarily interested in in Draco's well being ... that whole fingernails in the chest thing, RIGHT over the heart, is a VERY interesting characterization moment on Narcissa, which is one of the reason's I love Rowling's work so much - the way she draws her characters, here the converse to the slightest haughty disdain we see in the third sister's face when Harry mistakes her for Bellatrix at first glance early on]). But here is one final consideration ... as I discussed in another post, Occlumency never winds up working - at least as it is supposed to do (as Draco is able to do it in HBP) - and winds up, in the end, not being the answer. Harry himself learns his own path of shutting out those visions when he need sto concentrate, when he needs to be in the moment of his here and now ("Harry's scar burned in the silence, but he made a supreme effort to keep himself present, not to slip into Voldemort's mind." [DH 452]; "He was gliding around the high walls of the black fortress - No, he was Harry, tied up and wandless, in grave danger." [DH 453]) while at other times utilizing them. But even before this he winds up not only with the link operating full force, but fully possessed by Voldy, at the end of OotP ... and his love is powerful enough that voldy cannot bear it. And here in DH many many times the connection and the visions help them to progress in an informed way rather than quite so blindly. So, if snape had succeeded in teaching Harry proper occlumency, things might have been much different. We cannot, of course say that this was intentional wisdom on snape's part, but it was ... lucky. I once heard Jospeh Pearce speak on Tolkien and he addressed the question of why, if Tolkien was such a profound Christian writer, was there no "God" in Lord of the Rings. Pearce answered that while there is no "God" character in the LOTR (although we know there is in the Silmarillion), there IS a distinctly strong sense of providence. Now, I do not pretend that this element is present in Rowling's work in anywhere near as concrete a way as in Tolkien's. But I do think that there is some sense of a transcendant benevolence in the world, if one is willing to cooperate with it. In a lot of other works I would tend to say that luck is just luck, maybe even in some cases evidence of chaos theory - but not here in Rowling's work. Quite simply put she has spent too much time developing the theme ... most notedly in the "Felix Felicis" material in HBP. But even here, in DH, you can get a sense of the general tendency towards benevolence that luck has (towards what is truly good for a person, beyond just what a person wants, although when a person has a strong will for evil and uses something like felix felicis I think they can bend luck to their service, but it is more like an enslavement of luck rather than it's true nature) in how much voldy detests it: "I have been careless, and so have been thwarted by luck and chance, those wreckers of all but the best laid plans" (DH 7). In a way, at the very least, the "happy side of chaos theory" is that luck and chance are the great levelers of the uneven odds that people like Voldy build up for themselves. In a way they are, in a work like the Potter series, the objective world's mirror of free will in the subjective world of acting persons ... the refusal to be enslaved (and in the Christian world-view, God is not interested in slaves but in children ... of course the inter-play between free will and the fact that we need Grace to choose the good remains, as it it ever has been in our world, a mystery). I think that the fact that Snape's actions have a "lucky" outcome is a point in his favor, even if he has been quite the heel and much less than charitable at certain points. Structure Just a final note on structure in the series, in light of all the time I have spent on this site developing the concepts of ancient literature stucturing devices such as chiasm. It seems an apt place to do so here because I am tying together book 5 and book 7 material. there are a lot of common elements between the two books that maybe at some point I will try to catalog 9or as they say in fancy academic terms "compose a taxonomy of"). For here I just want to propose that while I still fully subscribe to chiasm as the primary meta-structure of the series (although, who knows, rowling may well heartily disagree with me on its primacy :) ), I think this is one of those structures that operates alongside/within it (like the books 3 and 7 connection of the shrieking shack, which I will here freely admit Red Hen nailed really nicely, and my Peevesish hat is off to RH in true admiration ... although it was more the pente-ulitimate and I must admit that I was quite happy that my theory of the GOF "graveyard lift" being repeated fit so nicely the death in the woods and then the elevation to a battle on a new plane or plateau, in the castle/great hall, with, interstingly, Narcissa's love of Draco acting a little bit like the phoenix song does in the GOF graveyard scene, not so much causing it, I guess, but definitely enabling it ... and then you have the nice use of our Rebudo character, Hagrid, as the "Paul Bearer" of sorts for the "taking it to the next level"). I do not think books 5 and 7 are the outer limits of a distinct chiasm, but I do think that with book 6 as a center point they form a distinctly discrete inclusio/ring-structure of the final 3 books, in the 4 book -3 book structure that I have described elswhere operating alongside the 7 element chiasm (4 cardinal virtues, 3 theological virtues etc and other numerological siginificances in 7 as the most magically powerful number). so there you have it ... some more of my rambling thoughs on DH in hopefully not too awefully rambling style. Merlin the Meandering