Every time I see a post about Snape I get ANGRY okay.
'OMG my Prince he was such a misunderstood sweetheart look at him loving Lily forever and always and making sure Harry stayed alive he's so romantic'
'I don't care that he loved Lily actually it's creepy and there's no excuse for the way he treated Harry and Neville'
Everyone sit the fuck down.
He’s much more complicated than all of that.
Abused by his Muggle father and witnessing Petunia’s treatment of Lily it’s easy to see how, after his sorting, he fell into the gang of future Death Eaters. Of course he bloody well hates Muggles, the upbringing he’s had, and when he’s sorted into Slytherin, he finds himself surrounded by people who agree with him. Apart from Lily, they’re probably the only people in his life to ever not treat him like scum, and so he swallows their ideologies and lets himself fall into that group because for the first time in his life he has found somewhere he fits in. It’s not an excuse for doing so, but it’s more than the simple blind hatred that is displayed by Lucius or Bellatrix.
And speaking of Lily, can we stop claiming that he’s playing the “Nice Guy” card? Because yes, he has some awful personality traits, but that is not one of them. Is there ever any hint of an expectation that Lily should be with him? Does he, at any point, blame Lily for marrying James and not him? No. He knows that he isn’t good enough for her, he knows that he’s said things that are inexcusable, he knows that by being a Death Eater he revokes all right to call her a friend, let alone anything more. And he’s right, the things he’s said and the way he’s behaved are inexcusable, even if they are, to an extent, understandable.
It is a testament either to the strength of his love or the weakness of his belief that he so easily renounced Voldemort when he found out that Lily was in danger. Personally I believe that it was a mixture of the two, and that the weakness of belief was at least in part due to the love he had for Lily. And I don’t think that love is something that should be disregarded as creepy and obsessive. It was certainly unhealthy, but I do believe it was pure - to go on protecting Harry when he knows that he will get literally NO recognition from ANYONE is testament to that. This is a man willing to kill his only friend in the world to go on protecting Harry.
Now that doesn’t mean it’s in any way okay for him to be a total dick to Harry (let alone Neville) for six years, It’s not okay that he behaved like that - he let his bitterness and his hatred of James and the other Marauders consume him to the point where he bullied Harry and caused Remus to lose his job.
But we would also do well not to hold him to the impossible standards that our Gryffindor heroes are setting: he’s had a really shit life and he’s not Harry, he’s not Remus, he doesn’t have this stoic kindness (or, for that matter, the positive support) that either of them have. He’s let his bitterness cause him to do some awful things but *gasp* other characters in the series have done awful things too.
I mean come on, this is the fandom who adores Sirius - who, as a teenager literally tried to murder Snape. This is the fandom who loves Dumbledore who, as a teenager, made a plan to subjugate the Muggles. And don’t get me wrong, I love Sirius and Dumbledore; I think they are a pair of brilliantly complex characters who have both done terrible things despite their inherent goodness.
Somehow, this is the same fandom who forgets that Snape put his life on the line every day to keep Harry safe, who spent years trying to atone for the wrongs he committed without wanting or expecting anyone to make him a hero for it. Dam fucking straight he was the bravest man Harry ever knew - he wasn’t always good, he was rarely ever nice, but he was certainly brave.
He’s not your romantic hero.
He’s not there for you to villainise.
He’s Severus Snape and, if nothing else, he deserves some basic acknowledgement as one of Rowling’s best and most ambiguous characters.
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