Writing Harry Potter Seven (original) (raw)

I really don't know how we are going to solve the problem that there is no way to track down new community replies or something. Hm. Maybe a forum would have been better after all. Anyway, here's my first concrete idea of what a Harry-Snape confrontation might look like. Random bit, but perhaps interesting to discuss:

Snape, being good and all and knowing about Horcruxes (if we decide on it, otherwise learning about it through Harry somehow), will have to try and convince Voldemort, inconspicuously, that Harry isn't worth the killing. More precisely, he could be trying to give Voldemort a reason not to kill Harry straight away now that Dumbledore is dead. One way to do so would be to tell Voldemort that Harry is a Horcrux. Whether that is true or not, we can still decide. (It would be awesome, though, if we had this be a story made up by Snape when JK used it as an actual plot point.)
Voldemort then realises - he can't kill Harry, he can't Imperio him, he can't scare him into defeat.

Suppose then we use the "Crucio damages the caster" idea Mary had centuries ago. More precisely, say Crucio was capable of reducing empathy (which Harry doesn't possess in the first place, but hey - let's call it "love for others" and I think JK will argue that he has it). Suppose, Voldemort was trying to use this fact against Harry in order to bully him into submission. Possibly to reduce him to some kind of self-loathing sadist or something. Somehow to psychically wreck him, in any case. That'll give us Voldie's intention for the scene I am about to suggest, aka. get Harry to cast Crucio often enough.

So... we get this big fighty showdown thing between Snape and Harry, through whatever means (this'll not be easy to incorporate into a story, I'm telling you straight away), which, incidentally, is going to give us tons and tons of opportunity for drawing parallels to James scenes we've seen in previous books. Plus, a lovely duel: pretty. Snape will be trying to prevent Harry from using Unforgivables while, at the same time, trying to convince Voldie that he is aiming at the opposite. In such a situation we could either a) have Harry realise he is behaving exactly like James and develop the topic of bullying some more - Harry would then have to realise what he is doing and get away somehow, or we could b) have Harry use any kind of deadly Unforgivable (AK qualifies, but Crucio would serve my purpose more) on Snape and - hear me out! I am not going to kill Snape. Mwahaha. He's believed dead for the most part of the rest of the book (the confrontation will happen roughly in the middle, I picture) but at some point we'll find out that the entire scene did not happen in real life, but in a sort of triangle sub-reality, which only LV, Snape, and Harry had access to at the time. Which Snape created, perhaps, to avoid being AKed by Harry. Would be a good reason, no?

I know this sounds a little insane, but I would really like for us to use Legilimency as a means of storytelling and I believe it will be possible to write such a scene believable, if we built a good foundation for it. There are two things, which suggest the plot dealing with subjects like "what is real and what isn't". One is the Death Eaters'/Voldie's jeering at Harry for not knowing what is real and what isn't in case of Sirius, and the other is the large amount of space Legilimency has received in recent books. I have the feeling that a lot served for us to get to know Snape a little better, but I also think we can say with justification that mind-control-reality-or-not stuff has been sufficiently used in books 1 - 6 for us to use it now and make a sort of plot device out of it. No?

Last, but not least, we could then have a final encounter between Snape and Harry on slightly more friendly terms (final within the book, that is, not necessarily final final) in which Snape could finally get an apology for someone using illegal spells on him (aka. Harry, possibly apologising for something James has done in a similar encounter), which would be an interesting topic to explore for me as I have considerable problems with apologies in real life and I am sure many other people do, too. And it would be very good for Snape's self-confidence, I imagine.
Instead, though, if this is too much, I could imagine a scene where Harry shows his respect to Snape by voluntarily calling him "Professor Snape" - another thing, which has been built up so carefully and never been used to the full extent of its potential, I think.