forget saving the wizarding world, naming his firstborn after them, heading the auror office, etc., I would love to see the reunion/conversation in which dead Harry tries to explain to his dad and godfather that he named his other son after snape
#he saved me dad #he sold you out to fucking voldemort son #he loved mum dad #so did our cat you wanna name a kid after him harry #he spied for dumbledore dad #he participated in mass murder and only switched sides because he felt guilty for causing your mum’s death son #he was the bravest man i ever knew dad #that is because you didn’t know me you tosser (via prongsmydeer)
Harry: Where’s Sirius? I thought he’d want to see me?
James: he’s crying Harry. look at what you’ve done
Harry: He saved me, dad
James: He sold you out to fucking Voldemort, son
Harry: Actually, he reported a fragment of a prophecy he overheard to a man who had him on a magical fucking leash, and when he found out that Voldemort was going to kill me and my family because of it, he RISKED HIS LIFE to try and save my Mum (the woman you love, as well, so I thought you might appreciate someone risking their life to save her, you know, like you did), and on realising that, yeah, that probably wasn’t even going to work, he RISKED HIS LIFE AGAIN to go to Dumbledore and actively betray the massively cruel and vindictive wizard who has him on a magical leash, swore himself to the service of another wizard just for the promise that Dumbledore would try to protect us. Protect us ALL, as it happens. All because he realised that, hey, the people he loved - all one of them, because no one else had ever given him the time of day because he was poor and clever - were more important than anything else, including his own life. He did all that because he loved her.
James: So did our cat. You wanna name a kid after him, Harry?
Harry: Our cat didn’t have any meaningful impact on my life, unlike Snape, who saved my life repeatedly even though he didn’t like me to honour my mother’s memory. I thought one of the hallmarks of being a hero was being willing to stick your neck out for the safety of people you don’t even like? He saw that my mum cared about someone he hated and he decided to value her wishes over his own. -pointed stare- My mum’s husband can’t manage that, never mind her cat.
James: -splutters- That- That’s not the same! I was a kid-
Harry: That’s bullshit, and you know it. I called you and Sirius out on that being bullshit in canon. When I was your age, I wasn’t going around ambushing Malfoy just because I was bored and he exists because I wasn’t an entitled little shit.
James: I know I was- I was a bit stupid when I was fifteen, but I grew up, Harry-
Harry: Except you never stopped, did you? Sirius actually told me that. You just stopped where she could see you. Did Snape stop giving a shit about my life once my mum was dead? No. He picked himself up despite having nothing left to live for, personally, and went on to do a job he hated, to risk his life, to spy on a madman who’s an expert in reading people’s minds, and all to honour my mother’s wishes.
James: Except he also participated in mass-murder and only switched sides because he felt guilty for causing your mum’s death, son
Harry: I thought you literally just used the defence of ‘I was young and stupid’ yourself to explain why you tormented a kid for no other reason than ‘he exists’. Double-standards much?
James: A bit of schoolyard bullying is not the same as joining a group dedicated to the eradication of muggles and muggleborns.
Harry: Okay, the magnitude is different, I will grant. Even though there are a lot of people out there who would argue that sexual assault of a minor is worse than murder, but okay. Let’s pretend ‘boys will be boys’ and ‘it’s only a bit of schoolyard bullying’ are actually valid excuses for the deliberate public sexual humiliation of a minor, and that Snape couldn’t possibly have had any motivations other than ‘I loathe muggleborns and want to exterminate them, mwuahahaha’ (despite word-of-god directly contradicting this). The magnitude of what he did to atone is pretty different too. You never actually showed me that you’d changed all that much. Yeah, you fought on the right side of the war, but Churchill was on the ‘right side’, too, and he was a fucking racist. You sacrificed your life to save your family, yeah, but that doesn’t mean you weren’t an asshole. Did you do that because you genuinely loved us? Maybe you did, I’d really like to think so, but I don’t know that. Some people risk their lives to protect their property, too, and a hell of a lot of men view their family as their property. You already proved you thought it was okay to blackmail a woman into dating you, and to blame her for ‘making you’ hurt her. But, still let’s assume for a minute you’re right, and you did change from your asshole-sixteen-year-old self, that’s still only two counts of heroic acts to make up for your childhood reign of terror on another student. Snape risked his life to save my mum, then risked his life to save all of us, vowed to do anything Dumbledore asked of him to save us, did everything he could and got maimed keeping Voldemort away from the Philosopher’s Stone, brewed the mandrake restorative for all of the muggleborns petrified by the basilisk (and if that isn’t proof that no matter what he might have believed in his teenage years - which, by the way, we have no proof that he joined the Death Eaters because he actively agreed with their more radical philosophies - he categorically doesn’t believe it now, then I don’t know what you want), brewed the wolfsbane potion for one of his childhood bullies every month without fail, went to spy on the megalomaniac who can read people’s minds without hesitation, gave Umbridge false veritaserum when she wanted to interrogate me about Sirius (which, by the way, probably saved him from going back to Azkaban), checked on Sirius’s wellbeing when I told him Voldemort had kidnapped him, rallied the Order when it became clear I’d been an idiot and gone rushing off into a trap, saved Dumebldore’s life when he was a reckless idiot over a Hallow, worked tirelessly to protect yet another stupid teenager in over his head who got more or less drafted into Voldemort’s army and forced into a suicidal mission just because of who he happened to care about, obeyed Dumbledore’s order to kill him so that said stupid teenager wouldn’t mar his soul with murder, risked revealing himself in an attempt to save Remus’s life which unfortunately backfired, worked tirelessly for a year to protect an entire school of stupid teenagers, delivered Gryffindor’s sword to me so that I could kill the remaining horcruxes, gave me his memories with his dying breath so that I would know how to defeat Voldemort even though that went directly against what he’d been working for the whole time, went against what he’d wanted to achieve for the sake of the woman he loved, but would save the most people in the end. Hmm… that’s… sixteen counts of brave actions done to mitigate and atone for the damage he did as a stupid teenager. And I bet I’m forgetting some.
James: Um…
Harry: He was literally the bravest man I ever knew.
James: That’s because you didn’t know me, you tosser.
Harry: Maybe. I mean, frankly, I doubt it, because four-on-one odds aren’t very brave of anyone in the ‘four’, but I will grant that confronting Voldemort without a wand was brave. Stupid, but very brave. (About the same stupid-but brave ratio as, say, going to a megalomaniac bent on murdering muggles and muggleborns and asking him to spare a muggleborn witch who also happens to be the mother of the child that’s prophesised to defeat him. You know. Real stupid, but fucking brave as all hell.) And you did notice that I named my first son after you and Sirius, right? Even though neither of you did as much to protect me as Snape did. But okay, maybe part of that was that you didn’t get the chance. And maybe part of the responsibility for that lies on Snape’s shoulders. But personally, I’d much rather lay the blame at the feet of the man who actually went out to murder us for power and the man who sold us out to that man because he wanted power, rather than the guy who hadn’t thought out the consequences of his actions, and did everything he could to save us once he realised what he’d done.
James: I-
Harry: Have you got any more fucking problems with my son’s name?
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Bravo.
A bit louder for those in the back
Snapedom comin @ antis like
