Snape Puts a Stopper on Death

Drenched in sweat when I got back from a grocery run, I was taking a shower when my mind drifted toward Severus Snape. Why not? I'd been thinking of evil people all week--Dick Cheney, Ann Coulter, and a couple of others. Why not think about fictional evil as well?

Like a lot of people, I wonder what J. K. Rowling is going to do with Snape in the final book of the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Originally, I thought Snape was going to be a straight villain, but I've gradually come to think that Snape will be some kind of ally to Harry by the end. Snape is just too powerful to fit comfortably in Voldemort's camp anymore. Like the Malfoys (because of their love for Draco) and Peter Pettigrew (because it was foreshadowed at the end of The Prisoner of Azkaban), Snape will end up as a source of instability for Voldemort and eventually leave to form a tension-filled alliance with Harry. It's like David Addington leaving Dick Cheney's side to join the Obama campaign.

Actually, Snape might be the hinge that gets the story moving toward Harry's final showdown with Voldemort. The key here is that Snape announced to his first-year class in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone that knowledge of potions allows a person to put a "stopper on death." Rowling doesn't follow up this reference in the following five books. Why would she? The only person who knows this way to escape death seems to be Severus Snape and he hasn't faced death yet. So, there was no need for Rowling to go into the chemistry of stopping death. In Deathly Hallows, however, I think there's a good chance that Snape's ability to escape death will be a significant plot device. I can imagine Snape escaping death at the hands of Voldemort, joining up with Harry, and teaching Harry to do the same. In this sense, Harry could "die" and come back to life. More impressively, Harry's access to potions knowledge could give him an access to immortality that could trump Voldemort's horcruxes and add some drama to the end of the book.

Snape could also be the vehicle through which Harry figures out how to use legilimency to break into Voldemort's mind and find and destroy Voldemort's horcruxes. I've argued in previous posts that legilimency will be Harry Potter's most important weapon against Voldemort. In fact, legilimency is one of the dormant powers revealed in The Sorcerer's Stone (apparition and metamorphing being the others) that Harry is not yet practiced in. Harry has already broken into Voldemort's mind many times without consciously employing his powers. Given that Snape is such an accomplished legimilens, he might be the person who lets Harry know fully of Voldemort's vulnerability on this score and teaches Harry how to mobilize his own superior powers. In fact, Harry has a stronger mind than Voldemort, this was shown by the struggle to move the beads of light at the end of The Goblet of Fire. It may turn out that Harry needs to be taught how to use his mind in a disciplined way in order to finally defeat Voldemort. This could be another place where Severus Snape is a big help.