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< Personae ~ Severus Snape and the Misunderstood Prophecy |
| Alison |
 Posted: Thu Feb 22, 2007 8:13 am |
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Joined: 22 Feb 2007
Posts: 1
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Severus Snape and the Misunderstood Prophecy
Alison Venugoban
(Author’s note: all references quoted are from the UK edition of the Harry Potter books.)
‘The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches … born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies … and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not … and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives … the one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies … ’
( Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, page 741.)
The above is Sybil Trelawney’s prophecy in full, the one which changed Harry Potter’s life forever once Voldemort heard it. And of course it refers to Harry Potter, doesn’t it?
Well, I’ve been thinking a lot about it and decided that no, perhaps not. Professor Dumbledore told Harry it meant ‘the person who has the only chance of conquering Lord Voldemort for good was born at the end of July, nearly sixteen years ago ... ’ (OotP, page 741 UK edition), qualifying that on the next page by admitting that it could also have meant Neville Longbottom, born in the same month as Harry Potter. He then goes on the say that Voldemort marked Harry with the famous scar on his forehead which showed that Harry Potter was indeed the one whom the prophecy meant, not Neville.
However, reading Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince has changed my opinion as to who Trelawney’s prophecy meant. I believe that Harry Potter may be an unwitting decoy, deployed with full knowledge by Dumbledore to give Voldemort somebody to
worry about and scheme against, giving the real “Chosen One” a good chance of getting close and finishing the Dark Lord off.
I believe the prophecy referred to Severus Snape, and I’ll give my reasons here.
Firstly, how could it be Snape? As most HP fans know, he was born in January, not the end of July. And this leads directly to something else that worried me: why was Dumbledore so convinced that Snape was loyal to him? He never gave a satisfactory explanation, in my opinion.
I believe the scenario went something like this: Snape had begun working as Potions teacher at Hogwarts. Snape reported the prophecy he had heard to Voldemort, without realizing to whom it referred. Of course, Snape had no love for James Potter, but I, like many fans, believe that he nurtured an unrequited love for Lily (nee Evans) Potter. When he found out that his report of the prophecy had led to her death, he must have been devastated with guilt and the realization of what being a Death Eater truly meant.
My reading of this character leads me to think that he may have seen suicide as the only way out of the despair and anguish of what he had done.
I doubt that wizards would use anything so crude as a razor to open their veins; they would undoubtedly use magic to kill themselves. I imagine Snape’s ‘Sectumsempra’ spell would be a very effective suicide method, and he probably used that on himself, perhaps within a day or two of learning of the murders.
If Dumbledore suspected Snape of being a Death Eater, as I think he probably did, he was most likely keeping a close eye on him, either by using one of the magic portraits to report what he was doing, or by some other magical means. He would have got wind of Snape’s suicide attempt and reached him in time to save his life.
This very sincere display of remorse would be what caused Dumbledore to trust Snape so completely. Dumbledore never believed for a moment that Voldemort was gone for good; he knew it was only a matter of time before the evil wizard found a way of reclaiming his body. So Dumbledore offered Snape a way to atone for what he had done by offering the skilled Occlumens a job as spy, to begin operating once the Dark Lord returned. I also think it highly likely that Snape made an Unbreakable Vow with Dumbledore to protect Harry Potter’s life, since he does save him so often (and so far, unthanked!) throughout the books.
I can just hear all the HP fans saying: ‘Yes, but Lily wasn’t killed in July.’ This is true. On page 10 of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, UK edition, the Dursleys are listening to the news on the television and hear the weatherman say, ‘…viewers as far apart as Kent, Yorkshire and Dundee have been phoning in to tell me that instead of the rain I promised yesterday, they’ve had a downpour of shooting stars! Perhaps people have been celebrating Bonfire Night early – it’s not until next week, folks!’
As Bonfire Night in the UK is celebrated on 5th November, then Harry’s parents must have been murdered one week before, in October. How does that tally with the prophecy?
We know that Harry is very like his father James in appearance, apart from his eyes. From my reading of the books, however, I believe he may be more like his mother in temperament. We are never given Lily’s birthday, but it could be that she was born in July, making her a Leo, like Harry.
Leo’s good points are that they are strong-minded, self-confident leaders who tend to protect others they see as weaker than themselves, all traits which Lily displayed in her confrontation with James and Sirius when they were tormenting the teenage Snape in ‘Snape’s Worst Memory’ in OotP. These attributes are also something which Hermione comments on in OotP when Harry is determined to save Sirius from Voldemort. On page 646 she says, “But you do … sort of … I mean – don’t you think you’ve got a bit of a – a – saving people thing?’
This is why I believe that Snape would have been ‘born as the seventh month dies’ – Lily represents the seventh month and her death leads him to make an attempt on his own life. Dumbledore intervenes, believes that Snape still has some good in him, and offers him the chance to atone: to be reborn morally. Death Eater Snape died on that fateful night in late October, to become secret agent of the Order of the Phoenix , ‘born to those who have thrice defied’ Voldemort.
This idea also gives an interesting new interpretation to the first sentence in the prophecy: ‘The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches … ’ In the context of Snape as the Chosen One, this may simply mean that he is physically nearby, behind the door listening in to Trelawney’s prophecy!
That fulfils the first part of the prophecy, but what about the next bit: ‘And the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not’?
Dumbledore has Harry convinced that the ‘mark’ refers to the scar on his forehead and the ‘power’ is love. I have an alternative.
Firstly, the mark. Snape’s background is strikingly similar to Voldemort’s: a half-blood, born of a witch mother and a muggle father, fascinated with the Dark Arts and with something of a disadvantaged childhood. We know that Snape was from a poor family because he was using his mother’s old spell books, as evidenced by Harry’s discovery and use of the Potions textbook. Similarly, the youth Tom Riddle had an impoverished background in a Muggle orphanage, and was forced to buy everything second-hand. Also, the prophecy does not give a time frame as to exactly when the Dark Lord ‘marks him as his equal’. But in HBP, Snape has killed Dumbledore, the one wizard Voldemort feared most, the one he hadn’t managed to kill himself. It could be that Snape is now marked as Voldemort’s equal in the Dark Lord’s opinion, rather than anything physical.
As to the ‘power’, I believe that must be Occlumency. It seems many in the Order of the Phoenix know that Snape is a ‘superb Occlumens’ as Lupin told Harry (OotP, page 465), but strangely this information never seems to have filtered to the Death Eaters’ side. Even Snape himself, on page 11 of HBP, said when referring to Voldemort’s trust in him, ‘You think he is mistaken? Or that I have somehow hoodwinked him? Fooled the Dark Lord, the greatest wizard, the most accomplished Legilimens the world has ever seen?’
I think that is precisely what he did do, although I must admit I would be extremely uneasy to have such power common knowledge if my life depended upon it.
The third part of the prophecy is the part that saddens me most as a Snape fan, but which I feel is the most unambiguous sentence of the whole prophecy: ‘And either must die at the hand of the other, for neither can live while the other survives.’ I think that we can take this statement to mean exactly what it says. Voldemort and his nemesis, who I believe to be Severus Snape, will be the ones who face off in the final battle.
This doesn’t mean that Harry Potter will not be intimately involved with proceedings. It is after all Harry’s story, told (mostly) from his point of view. I believe Dumbledore planned all along that Harry’s job would be to find and destroy all of Voldemort’s Horcruxes so that once his physical body is destroyed, he can never return, while incidentally giving Voldemort a ‘red herring’ to follow, leaving Snape as a trusted servant with a free hand to strike when he is ready. And thanks to Dumbledore’s death, Voldemort will totally trust that Snape is loyal to him.
I believe Snape killed Albus in HBP on Dumbledore’s orders, because I believe the curse that withered the Headmaster’s hand was gradually eating away at the rest of his body, and he only had a short time remaining to him. Both he and Snape, who had saved his life following the curse, knew it. If Snape was really on Voldemort’s side, he would not have bothered saving Dumbledore; he could easily have said, ‘This is beyond my powers,’ and let Albus die. The fact that he did not, and that neither did he report to Voldemort that Dumbledore had found and destroyed one of his precious Horcruxes, seems to me indicative of Snape being on the side of the Order.
I would like now to add a comment on my thoughts regarding the Horcruxes, as I feel they will be a very important feature in the last book as Harry searches and destroys them. Harry says on page 474 of HBP, ‘the diary’s gone, the ring’s gone. The cup, the locket and the snake are still intact and you think there might be a Horcrux that was once Ravenclaw’s or Gryffindor’s?’ Dumbledore had previously mentioned much the same thing on page 472, then added, ‘I am confident, however, that the only known relic of Gryffindor remains safe,’ by which he meant Godric Gryffindor’s sword. The only relic left would belong therefore to Rowena Ravenclaw.
I wonder if Rowena Ravenclaw was once the owner of the phoenix, Fawkes? Phoenixes are, after all, immortal, reborn from their own ashes, and it is therefore conceivable that he has been passed down by many headmasters since the Founding Four. We already know that Harry’s wand and Voldemort’s wand both have a phoenix tail feather as their core, and what’s more a tail feather from the same bird. It would indeed be interesting if the final Horcrux is Voldemort’s wand, something which he keeps with him at all times and which somebody (Peter Pettigrew, perhaps?) retrieved from Godric’s Hollow and kept safe to return to Voldemort when he regained his body.
If the wand contains the final piece of Voldemort’s soul, destroying it will be the dramatic conclusion to the series. For now, I can only wait amongst the legion of other fans for the publication of ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows’, crossing my fingers and hoping that my favourite characters make it through alive! |
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| Yukimor |
| Posted: Mon Feb 22, 2010 11:08 pm |
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Joined: 18 Feb 2010
Posts: 14
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This is... this is a very good, very thorough theory. I only wish it had been correct, since we now know, unfortunately, that it actually was referring to Harry. >.<
However, I believe I have just seen a plot bunny hop by... *runs after plot bunny* GET BACK HERE! |
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