This is a question I’ve been asking myself since I turned the last page in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince when it first came out, and in recent days I’ve found myself asking that question even more so. I was browsing MSN earlier today when I stumbled upon this article: Is Potter’s foe, Severus Snape, good or evil? It revolves around my favorite character so naturally I clicked to read. While the article didn’t give me much in way of juicy hints or spoilers, like I was hoping, it did get me to thinking about Severus Snape a bit more.

When it comes to Snape there are generally two camps, one believes he’s evil as sin and the other group believes he’s firmly on the side of the light. Their arguments can generally be summed up with these points:

Good Guy Camp

• Multiple opportunities in the past 6 years to kill Harry and hasn’t done so
• has protected Harry multiple times and even taught him necessary skills
• Spied on behalf of Dumbledore and risked his life after Voldemort’s return to join back up
• Dumbledore trusted him so there must have been a prearranged agreement between them. The conversation Hagrid eavesdrop on supports this.

Bad Guy Camp

• He’s a Death Eater!
• Long standing grudge against the Marauders and no reason to protect or help Harry.
• Horrible person
• He’s a slimeball!
• He killed Dumbledore!

For the most part I’ve been firmly in the first camp. I highly suspect that he’s a good guy because as anyone knows and as JKR has striven to prove time after time is that appearances can be deceiving. Up until Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix the majority of readers firmly believed that, aside from a few pranks and that one “out of control” time where Snape almost got served to werewolf-Remus by Black, that the Marauders were the good guys and Snape must have been a horribly cruel and evil child to warrant the treatment he garnered.

She turned many reader’s worlds upside down when it was revealed that Severus Snape was the victim of cruelty by the hero’s own father and friends! He didn’t do anything to deserve the attention he got, he was just picked on and bullied much like Harry himself was when he was living with the Dursleys and going to school with Duddley.

It’s easy enough for me to believe that he’s a good guy, and inf act I want to believe that, but one person commented here awhile back that Severus’ character reminded them of the character of a bat, and since JKR has been known to base characters and events off of events and to allude to the mythical with sly hints it’s highly probably that his story will be similar to a bat’s.

Now I don’t know about you, but the only “bat stories” I know of involve heroes in capes and blood sucking creatures in the night. Since JKR has described his appearance as a bat on numerous occasions I thought this person’s suggestion held quite a bit of merit so I went scouring the net for bat mythology. Among many Native American tribes there is a myth that the animals and birds were playing a game/having an argument. Some tribes have it told that the bat is granted teeth by the animals and he fights/plays on their side and wins the game for them. Other versions claim he is granted wings by the birds and goes on to fight and win for them.

However the one fable I found that I think best describes Severus in this instance is the Aesop fable that is shared, with slight variations, amongst tribes in southern Nigeria, Australian aboriginals, and the ancient Romans:

The basic scenario is that, in a battle between the beasts and birds, the bat repeatedly changes allegiance so as to be on the side that appears to be winning. When a truce is declared, the bat is rejected by both sides because of this deceitful behavior. (source)

To be honest I think this is exactly Severus’ fate. He’s been so badly abused by the “good guys” and used by the “bad guys” that he owes no allegiance to either side. Sirius Black noted that his closest friends were Evan Rosier and Wilkes, both of which were killed in the war and were Death Eaters. I find it highly possible that he joined the Death Eaters because the only people he considered friends were Death Eaters, whether he believed in Voldemort’s ideal or not. After their death he had no reason to stay with the Death Eaters, maybe even blamed them for their death, and sought to find a way to ensure he survived the war.

Ultimately I think it’s going to be revealed that Severus is looking out for number one. Considering his past, can you really blame him for not being able to side with either camp? Ultimately I fear that this duplicity is going to cost him his life or that he is going to be shunned by Wizarding society, maybe stripped of his wand like Hagrid was or Kissed?

I really fear to see what his fate will be but I will continue to love and adore this character no matter what his fate will be.

I might not be so forgiving of JKR though.

What do you think will happen to Severus Snape? What mysteries lie in store for us in Book 7?

[edit] I just stumbled upon some spoilers, quite by accident for once and now I want to cry!!!! I saw who dies and it makes me sad. Below, in white font, are the spoilers I found that are apparently accurate. Highlight them to read them or just comment and ignore.

**since the book is already out I don’t see a need to hide these spoilers anymore, which were the correct ones too by the way.

Hedwig dies pg56
Mad-Eye dies pg78
Scrimgeour dies pg159
Wormtail dies pg471
Dobby dies pg476
Voldemort kills Snape pg658
Snape was good, loved Lily – entire Chapter 33
Colin, Crabbe, Bellatrix, Fred, Tonks, Lupin, Ted Tonks, Scrimgeour all die

Hagrid, Malfoy, Neville survive.

Ron marries Hermione
Harry marries Ginny
Their children attend Hogwarts together

The final two sentences are: “The scar had not pained Harry for eighteen years. All was well.”