Mugglenet.com's Harry Potter Should Have Died - Emerson Spartz [46]
Imagine you’re J.K.R. riding on a train when the idea for Harry Potter comes to you. All the sudden, you get a flash of inspiration—the greatest story ever told. You’re so excited you can hardly stand it. Yes—you’re going to write a story. It’s about a boy whose life completely sucks. And then he dies.
And besides all that—what would the fans think if Harry died? Most of them would be grief-stricken and horrified. The message that evil could triumph over love would make everyone feel cheated. If readers cried after the deaths of Hedwig and Dobby, just imagine if they could see no future for Harry, who was much too young to die. Would fans today want to encourage their future children to read such a long series only to be disappointed? Also, that $300 million theme park in Orlando, Florida, would be kind of depressing if Harry died. “Hey, let’s go walk around this guy’s grave!”
Verdict
Harry is able to dodge death and become The Man Who Lived. Is this an ending that cheats readers who expect Harry to be the sacrificial Man Who Died? The blood protection and Elder Wand both save Harry, and fans love that Harry becomes the Man Who Kinda Lived Twice. The complexity of that is better than if Voldemort had merely killed him dead. Verdict: No—the series would not be stronger if Harry had been killed.
Is Severus Snape a hero?
No!
There can only be one true hero in the seven-part series, and that is Harry Potter because he always tries to do the right thing. Snape can never be a hero because he has too many flaws and is always nasty and mostly out for himself. According to Dumbledore in HBP, Snape is the reason Harry’s parents are hunted down and killed in the first place, because Snape overhears a prophecy about the birth of a child who will be the Dark Lord’s equal. Snape can’t wait to run to tell Voldemort, and he doesn’t mind that it is all about killing a baby until he finds out it is the child of his old friend Lily Potter. His so-called love for Lily is creepy and obsessive, since she is already married to James. What Snape really wants is for Voldemort to get rid of James so Snape can have Lily to himself! That’s despicable and proves that he can never be a hero. Sure, he puts on a show for Dumbledore about trying to save Harry for Lily’s sake, but Snape never cares about Harry at all as a person. And it’s self-serving that Snape gets a cushy job at Hogwarts in return for pretending to care.
Snape is put in the right house because he is a true Slytherin just like Voldemort—not some noble character. Look at his teaching style, which is sadistic—there is nothing brave about bullying young children for fun or punishing them for their parents’ perceived misdeeds. It demonstrates a lack of emotional maturity. There is no heroism in making Neville and Harry feel stupid, as Snape does from the first day of Potions class in SS. No good guy would taunt Hermione—a passionate, dedicated student—about her overgrown teeth when she is already crying, as dear Professor Snape does in GoF.
Snape cares little for the consequences of what he says and does. Snape taunts Sirius Black in OotP about hiding from Voldemort just enough to push his buttons, and Snape knowingly sends him to his death at the Department of Mysteries. And in PoA, he despicably outs Lupin as a werewolf so Lupin loses the only good job he ever had, his teaching job at Hogwarts. Then Lupin turns into a social outcast. In HBP, after Snape knows that Dumbledore is already weakened and has only a year to live, he lets Narcissa make an Unbreakable Vow with him that forces him to kill Dumbledore. And all along, Snape barely does enough to help Harry and is always malicious and petty. He is insulting and impatient when he tries to teach Occlumency in OotP, so Harry never learns to do it properly, which puts his life in danger. In DH, Snape takes the Sword