Snape – Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2
Rarely has there been a better villain in a children’s series than Severus Snape. He is malicious, cold, unpleasant and sarcastic. He loathes Harry from the start, tormenting and thwarting him at any opportunity. He is relentlessly unkind and contemptuous to all students except a very select few. He forces Lupin out of work and goads Sirius into the battle that kills him. He is openly passionate about the Dark Arts and finally confirms all suspicions that he is in fact one of Voldemort’s most trusted Death Eaters. It was Snape who was responsible for telling Voldemort of the prophecy that led to the death of Harry’s parents – and finally, it was Snape who killed Dumbledore. Short of turning out to be the hunter that shot Bambi’s mother, he could not be guilty of a worse crime.
Along with Alan Rickman’s wonderfully lugubrious and incredibly sinister incarnation, Snape is probably the most convincingly corrupt character of all our entries. But if Rickman is an excellent actor, he is nothing compared to Snape himself. Quite literally at the eleventh hour, we find out along with Harry that absolutely nothing but nothing could have been possible without him; every last step of the journey, from Harry’s survival of Voldemort’s original attack to the final Battle for Hogwarts, has rested almost wholly on Snape’s extraordinary skill, commitment and courage. The double (and re-double) agent to end all double-agents, he could not have been any more immersed in the criminal world – yet this very fact was a direct result of his unfaltering loyalty. He may have exuded hatred from the moment that we met him – it is possibly the only genuine characteristic of Snape that we ever see – but his one and only motivation for doing everything that he did was steadfast, enduring love.
It is difficult to describe the depth of this revelation about who Snape really was. Once we’ve discovered it, reading/watching the series becomes a whole new experience as we appreciate for the first time the magnitude of what he had to do, and the strength that it required. In the end, no one can possibly express it any better than Harry himself, when he quietly and simply declares Severus Snape to have been ‘the bravest man’ he ever knew.
