An Unrealized and Heartbreaking Relationship.

Not long ago, I finished the Harry Potter books and I think one of the things that stuck with me was the lost relationship between Snape and Harry.

For years, Harry believed that Snape hated him, but it wasn’t true. Snape was acting on the orders of Dumbledore, well, multiple orders of the Headmaster. One, was that Snape had to always be at the ready to be a spy for the Order of the Phoenix if and when Voldemort came back. The second was that he had be aloof from the boy to protect the secret of his relationship with Lily, Harry’s mother, who he was friends (and in love) with as children. I think that’s part of the reason that Snape was determined to believe that Harry was more like his father (a bully in his Hogwarts days); if he allowed himself to see Lily in the boy he could never pretend to be cruel to him.

In Goblet of Fire, Snape attempts to teach Harry occlumency, which is a way of protecting your mind from another wizard breaking into it. During this time, both of them realized that they had far more in common than they thought. I feel like this really had to break Snape, not only because such horrible things happened to Lily’s son, but because Snape saw himself in Harry. The awkward child who never quite fit in, who got picked on unfairly. You learn in Deathly Hallows, when Harry sees Snape’s memories how similar they were. Unlike Harry, though, Snape never was able to find his way, eventually falling in with the Death Eaters because of it.

In Deathly Hallows the veil is finally lifted on who Snape is. Just a misunderstood and love-struck teenager who grew into a broken man. I think, in some ways, an unfairly broken man. Yes, it was his fault that Lily and James Potter died or at least were hunted, but he tried to redeem himself, he was a loyal soldier to Dumbledore and, as if often the case, Dumbledore used him. Aberforth was right about his brother. He often cared more about the ends, then how it affected the means.

As a writer myself, it’s hard to not think about how great the relationship between Harry and Snape could have been. I also think it was a tragedy that Snape died, perhaps even a mistake. Snape didn’t deserve what happened to him and I feel like after everything Harry deserved to have something at the end of the tunnel. In opportunity to get to know Snape, and Lily through Snape’s eyes, I think would have made healing after the war better.

My main issue with Rowling is that I don’t think she has a grasp of the mental damage that occurs due to, well, everything that she puts her characters through. Harry, in particular. I really can’t imagine that after the war (despite her awkward seventeen years later epilogue) that he didn’t suffer some serious PTSD and that wouldn’t have affected his ability to have a relationship. She killed off virtually every male father figure Harry had, except for Arthur Weasley, who is probably the one man who wouldn’t be able to understand fully what Harry has gone through. Even Remus would have been better.

Snape, though. It feels not only like a lost opportunity to heal past rifts (his tumultuous relationship with Harry’s father and his friends), but also to help Harry heal effectively. Snape being a part of Harry’s life after everything would have made a resounding ending, giving it much more life than just the hamstring war is over, let’s make babies thing, Rowling went with. Granted, yes, Harry and his friends being married, having kids and being happy is great, but it’s entirely unrealistic. It is one-in-a-million chance that you stay with the person you were with as a teenager. But let’s not get into that in this post (let’s just say her pairings are more than a little irksome).

Snape would have given Harry a chance to understand what Dumbledore put him through by way of someone who actually knew him. Snape wouldn’t have sugar coated it for Harry, he would have been the only person Harry could talk to about these extremely dark things. In the books, you could not say anything about Dumbledore without people (minus Aberforth) being like “No, Dumbledore is great, don’t doubt Dumbledore!!!”. Only Harry knew that things weren’t that clear and that the headmaster made some pretty big mistakes. Not to mention, Snape would have also had a very clear understanding of Voldemort as well.