Current mood:

furious

Harry Potter and the Deathly Plot-holes

[ETA:  I hadn't realized that this entry had been daily_snitched until very recently, so I wanted to apologize to anyone whom I may have inadvertantly offended with the language.  I curse like a sailor in RL, and this was written on a rather spur-of-the-moment basis.  In my own defense, however, I did warn for language in the cut tag, although that warning didn't get carried over to the daily_snitch.  So, again, sorry if I've offended anyone with my potty mouth.  ;-)]

Well.  Rowling was right about one thing:  many people loathe this book, myself included.  And it's not just because she killed Snape (although I've been crying all week over that).  I've said before that I could forgive her if she killed him, but not if she made him evil.  This load of garbage, however, is IMNSHO, Unforgivable (yes, with the capital "U").

There is so much to hate in this book that I hardly know where to begin.  The language, for starters.  I am ashamed — ashamed! — that I bought this book for my nephew.  Granted, he's 15 now, but I still squirm in embarrassment to think of the curse words he'll be reading on nearly every page, and I cringe at the thought of my brother calling to bawl me out for buying him this garbage.  I realize that the Trio are now adults and will now do more adult things (complete with drinking like fish, apparently), but before now I really admired how Rowling had tiptoed around the overwhelming majority of the bad language.  I will be the first to admit that I have characters using pretty harsh language in my fanfic, but not in anything with lower than an R rating.  With this book, however, Rowling chose to do what was easy rather than what was right, and it's sickening.

Not only that, but Molly Weasley has suddenly morphed into Sigourney Weaver ("GET AWAY FROM HER, YOU BITCH!"), and I really have trouble believing that someone who couldn't deal with a boggart, when third years could, would be able to take on a multiple murderer/pure sadist with such ease.  And if Ron can now speak Parseltongue because he heard Harry doing it, why couldn't Harry use Snape's musical countercurse to fix George's ear?  He's heard it once!  That should be enough.  :-P  Then there's Hermione Jean Granger.  For a woman who admits to having looked things up on the Lexicon to keep her facts straight, you'd think she could have taken two minutes to double-check Hermione's middle name.  Or her editor(s) could have.  Or maybe even her daughter could have reminded her.  Or she could have posted an anonymous question on any of a hundred fansites.  We would have been willing to help her.  Honestly!  And this is why I've never trusted interview "canon":  it's far too easy for Rowling to say one thing in an interview and then turn around and totally contradict it in the books.

Like, for instance, Rowling has said that there's no such thing as intentional wandless magic.  But Animagi contradict it (Sirius says in so many words that he couldn't drive the dementors away without a wand, but he could still turn into a dog), and Occlumency contradicts it (Voldemort would have been very suspicious if Snape had pulled his wand every time Voldie asked him a direct question), and Voldemort's childhood "experiments" contradict it (hurting animals and torturing other orphans), and I'm sure there are other pre-DH examples, but that's all I could think of off the top of my head.

As of DH, however, it appears that we can no longer trust Quidditch Through the Ages, either.  "No spell yet devised enables wizards to fly unaided in human form."  Except for adult Voldemort, and adult Snape, and nine-year-old Lily Sue.  Well, isn't that special?  *makes the Church Lady face*  Perhaps Voldemort and Snape have an excuse (i.e., one of them invented, and the other learned, the first flying spell).  And am I the only one who read "flying with triumph in his heart, without need of broomstick or thestral..." and thought, Voldemort can fly because he has a happy thought?  But there is no excuse whatsoever, at nine years old, for Lily Sue to be able to fly.  (I took three separate tests, and Lily scored well into the Mary Sue range for all of them, even reaching the "kill it dead" category on the last one, which is fitting, I suppose, since Lily is dead when the story starts.  Oh, and I double-checked to make sure I'd only done the categories that applied, so no — it wasn't a freakishly high score.  It was just a Lily Sue.)

Wasn't there supposed to be tons of snake lore in this book?  *waves hand in the air*  Please, Professor Rowling, I missed the bit on snake lore.  Could you go over it again?  Maybe it just got lost in the wandlore and all the deus ex machina bits.  And is it just me, or has Harry now become the Heir of Slytherin, after all?  If he inherited the Invisibility Cloak from one of the Peverell brothers, and Tom Riddle "inhereted" the Resurrection Stone from another, then both of them are descended from Salazar Slytherin, no?  (And I wouldn't be surprised to learn that James was a Parselmouth, too, but hid it from Lily.)

And Kreacher?  Has this amazing turn around because Harry shows him a little kindness.  What?  What?!?  What the fucking fuck?  First of all, Hermione had shown Kreacher nothing but kindness from the moment she met him (and good on her for it!), but Kreacher only dismissed her as a Mudblood.  It never even made a dent.  OK, so ... maybe it has to be the elf's rightful master, but you can't tell me that Dumbledore never showed Winky the slightest bit of kindness, can you?  (Well, maybe DH!Dumbledore, but not the Dumbledore I knew and loved before this.)  Winky is still hopelessly devoted to her dead master, however, rather than Dumbledore.  Kreacher is the last elf I would have expected to have such an amazing change of heart, and especially with so little build up.  It was emotionally hollow.  Completely.  In fact, "hollow" pretty much describes the entirety of the book for me.  The only death in the whole book that had any sort of emotional resonance for me (at the time) was that of a character I'd never heard of prior to opening the book.  It was poignant and heart-wrenching, and that first chapter as a whole made me cringe.  But of course, this could be because Rowling had originally intended to include the chapter at the end of HBP and her editors said she shouldn't.  (At least that's what I heard.  Not sure if it's accurate, but it would make more sense to me.)

Why on earth would Bill and Fleur name their child after Viktor Krum?  Of all the Tri-Wizard Champions, why not the one who died, or the one who saved her sister's life (in her words; Gabrielle was never in any real danger, as far as I can see)?  Granted, "Cedric" would be hard to feminize, but "'Arriet" eez a preety name, no?  And if goblins have such a jealous concept of ownership, why would they bother making objects for wizards in the first place?  I mean, if they're just going to sell them to wizards, and resent the fact that they've had to sell them to wizards for the life of the objects, why don't they simply refuse and find another way to support themselves — like, I don't know ... running the wizard bank, for instance?  ARGH!!!  'Cause as dumb as most wizards are, the goblins could be cheating them left and right and making a killing.  (Incidentally, why after all this time throw in a detailed description of Griphook that sounds so remarkably like Snape?  Is that supposed to be one last reminder that Snape is, in fact, ugly?  Yeah, we'd already figured that out, thanks.)

McGonagall casts Imperio on the Carrows to get them to walk over and hand her their wands?  Whatever happened to Expelliarmus?  When Lupin uses that spell in PoA, the Trio's wands fly toward him in a neat little arc, and he catches them.  Is McGonagall's arthritis so bad that she couldn't have caught them herself?  Or even used Accio or Stupefy?  Did she really need to use an Unforgivable to disarm them?  And it's gallant for Harry to Crucio someone?  Is this the same woman who said Dumbledore was too noble to use those powers Voldemort had?  How easily she sinks to Voldemort's level!  Oh, but I forgot:  It's fine and dandy for the good guys to do bad things; they're still good.  But even if the bad guys do good things (and I mean mainly Snape and Draco here), they will still never be good enough.

And Draco.  God!  I never liked Draco before HBP, but I thought she did a beautiful job of building up his (understandable) angst and desperation at having to try to kill Dumbledore to save his family.  It was probably the first crisis Draco had ever faced in his comfortable life, and it was a doozie.  What serving Lord Voldemort really means finally soaked in, and I ached for the poor boy throughout HBP, when I never really empathized with him fully before.  But then, Rowling threw it all away, turning Draco into a cardboard cutout of an aspiring Death Eater.  Oh, sure, she gives him a few flashes of things that could be considered insubordination if you squint, but nothing substantial.  Ball officially dropped, there.

How did Voldie get his wand back from Godric's Hollow?  This is never explained.  Maybe Peter went to retrieve it before he fled, maybe not, but why not say so?  And why can people see the Potter's house at all?  The Secret-Keeper is still alive (at least before subjected to Voldemort's Silver Hand of B-Movie Doom)!  That house should still be hidden from everyone whom Peter didn't personally tell about the location.  It certainly shouldn't have some weird monument that any passing witch or wizard can make appear.  And why was the house destroyed?  AK didn't do that to the Riddle House.  Why did Moody use Snape's Langlock curse in 12 Grimmauld Place?  From Snape's 6th year Potions book?  How the hell would Moody know that curse in the first place?!?  And why, oh why, didn't anybody from the Order notice that Snape is now a Secret-Keeper as well and 12 Grimmauld Place wasn't crawling with Death Eaters?  If Hermione knew that little tidbit of info, you'd think all those older and wiser witches and wizards might have had at least the merest inkling.  *headdesk*  *headdesk*  *headdesk*

While we're on the subject of Snape ... he started teaching at Hogwarts in autumn of 1981 at the latest.  (According to OotP, he'd been teaching 14 years in the autumn of 1995).  Yet, he and Dumbledore meet atop some unnamed windy hill in the middle of the night to discuss protecting the Potters?  Why not meet in the Forbidden Forest?  There are no leaves on the trees, so the time of year has to be autumn or winter, and it can't be 1980, because Dumbledore wouldn't have waited nine months to a year to send the Potters into hiding, and he wouldn't have bothered "hiding" them without the Fidelius Charm, performed in late October.  (The year also can't be explained as 1980 by Dumbledore's giving James and Lily three chances to defy the Dark Lord prior to going into hiding, because they would have already done that before Harry was born in July.)  So, whether or not Snape applied to Hogwarts on Voldemort's orders (and that would make sense, since one of Voldie's aims in DH is to take over Hogwarts), Snape was simply meeting with his employer.  Why the secrecy?  (And if secrecy is your aim, meeting on a hilltop is not your best bet.  Even with the Silencing Charm, people can still see you from every angle.  I thought these men were supposed to be intelligent!)  Why the nervousness and "Don't kill me!"?  And why would Dumbledore assume, from merely meeting with his employee, that said employee is delivering a message from Lord Voldemort?  Oh, look!  Another Flint!  Although, as Flints go, this one's pretty fucking major.  I'm not overly surprised, though.  Continuity, thy name is not Rowling.

And there's also the very large problem with Dumbledore's and Trelawney's versions of Snape's eavesdropping: the stories still don't tally.  If Snape was ejected from the building halfway through, Trelawney would never have known he was there, since she's not exactly aware of what's going on when she's making a prophecy.  She wouldn't have known they were "interrupted" by Snape, and she definitely wouldn't have described him as a "pushing, thrusting young man".  That sounds very much to me like Snape was trying to get into the room (to tell Dumbledore something), not being overtaken while trying to listen unobtrusively at the door.  'Cause if that is Snape's idea of eavesdropping, he would make a pretty crappy spy.  I think Rowling meant to have much more to this matter than meets the eye, but it turned out to be too complex, so she decided to rewrite history to go with the "Snape loved Lily" angle instead.  This discrepancy, like many others in the ever-growing list of Things That Are Never Explained, unfortunately had to fall by the wayside.  (In fact, I think Lily was originally given the choice to be spared because she was meant to be Peter's reward for turning Harry over to Voldemort, but Rowling changed horses in midstream.)

Before I go on, let me interject a caveat:  I fear this is going to come off sounding like I just want to hate on the Snape/Lily, when really, nothing could be further from the truth.  I stopped caring about shipping as such a long time ago.  I write what I like, shippy or no, and read what I like, without fighting with others about who should hook up with whom.  I would have embraced, even loved, the idea of unrequited Snape/Lily if it had been done well.  But the simple fact is, it wasn't done well, and it quite frankly made me want to vomit.  So it's not the Snape/Lily I object to, but rather Rowling's clunky handling of the Snape/Lily.  Pity, too, because the build up to and subsequent break down of the Harry/Cho dynamic was very believable in my mind, so she can write realistic romance when she tries.  And that, I think, is my main problem with DH (and the "romance" in HBP):  she just stopped trying.

If Snape was so in love with Lily Sue, I can see now why he was so anxious for Sirius to get kissed by the dementors in PoA, and why he wanted to be the one to catch Sirius, but what I can't see is why he would be so easy on Peter after he learns the truth.  Even if Voldemort placed Peter in Spinner's End to spy on Snape, Peter was responsible for Lily Sue's death, but the worst Snape can think of to do to Peter is make him serve drinks and clean his house?  WTF?  You can't tell me that Snape is a good enough Occlumens to fool Voldemort about everything else, but he couldn't "accidentally" kill Peter and get away with it, or Crucio Peter on a regular basis and modify his memory, or something else even more nasty.  If he sacrificed his whole life to avenge Lily Sue's death and holds grudges the way he does, he would exact his revenge on Peter, some way or another.  I'm sorry, but he would.  As it is, however, it reads like Snape is only taking pleasure in making Peter's life miserable for egging James on in his bullying, and the Snape/Lily Sue angle was an afterthought.

And the doe Patronus is so stupid on so many levels.  First, I resent the implication that Lily was meant to be nothing more than James' mate, and that was the sum total of her importance.  *glares*  And if that's the case, since James' Patronus is a nose-biting teacup, wouldn't hers be a nose-biting teacup that wears lipstick?  (Because from this misogynistic viewpoint, Lily is the accessory, not James.)  Second, why would Lily's doe have been Snape's "protector" in the first place (which is what a Patronus is supposed to be), when she seems to have been anything but (more on this in a bit)?  Third, a doe to represent Lily has no significance whatsoever until Harry summons his first Patronus at 13.  And yet, Snape's Patronus has always been a doe.  Always.  Since before Harry was born.  The stupid, it burns!

And why would Snape have disagreed with Harry on the best way to fight dementors?  That's another item on the exceedingly long list of Things That Are Never Explained.  Nearly everyone assumed that Snape couldn't summon a Patronus because he didn't have enough happy thoughts (and if the miserable life Rowling has given him is any indication, he wouldn't have been.  For Snape, it has very much been "Life sucks, and then you die").  And excuse my ignorance, but when exactly did Harry see Lily summon a Patronus, to know that hers was a doe?  Did Snape not want to summon a Patronus in front of the other Death Eaters because supposedly doe = Lily and they'd know he was Dumbledore's man?  Puh-lease!

That's especially stupid considering that Voldemort knew of the Lily Love all along.  And if Snape and Voldemort "agreed" that there would be more women, with purer blood, who were more worthy of Snape, I have to ask:  When exactly did they agree on this?  When Voldemort was bodiless and hiding in Albania?  When he was hitching a ride in the back of Quirrell's head?  Did Snape have long talks with diary!Voldemort, who didn't even know he existed, much less Lily?  Or after he'd returned to his body and failed to kill Harry for the third time?  I have a great deal of trouble believing that after 14 years of being without a body and suspecting Snape of disloyalty, Voldemort's priorities included finding out whether or not Snape was getting laid.  Isn't it touching that Voldemort is such a kind and considerate evil overlord that he would ask about Snape's love life?  I never knew he cared!

Also if the Death Eaters did know that doe = Lily, then Lupin's security question in The Advance Guard in OotP is even more stupid, because all the Death Eaters would also know that stag = James, so any bloody one of them could have answered that question correctly (in addition to anyone who attended the Gryffindor/Ravenclaw Quidditch match in PoA).  And you can't tell me that Snape never sent Dumbledore a message, so that Dumbledore had to ask "After all this time?"  Mind going, old man?  Didn't he send you a doe Patronus laden with a message just last week?  Oh, and why didn't anybody ever taunt Snape about this unrequited love?  The list of people who would have done that is almost endless:  Bellatrix, for starters (and there's no excuse for her not to, since she could have called Lily "that Mudblood" and given very little away), Sirius, James, Peter, etc., etc., etc.  They couldn't all have been sworn to secrecy about it (especially not Sirius and Peter, who were in Azkaban and in hiding, respectively).  But no.  The only one who taunts Snape about it is Saint Dumbledore.  *gouges eyes out*

And why was Lily's letter to Sirius at 12 Grimmauld Place, when it should have been in his flat (the one he got after he ran away)?  For that matter, why was Lily writing Sirius, instead of James writing him?  And if the letter was there, why didn't Sirius show it to Harry in OotP?  I can understand Dumbledore keeping secrets and outright lying (especially this one, since he swore to), but I can't understand everyone else doing it for him.  In 17 years, no one let Snape and Lily's friendship slip?  Not even Hagrid?  I don't buy it.  For that matter, why didn't Snape let it slip?  Because he couldn't "bear" for Potter's son to know?  Bull!  Snarry writers aside, there's most definitely no love lost there.  I could easily see him shouting out — in a fit of anger — that Harry's mother was his best friend until that horrid James Potter poisoned her mind against him (even if that wasn't, strictly speaking, the truth, because he would have convinced himself that it was).  He would have loved to rub it in, wouldn't he?  That's how he operates.  He loves to disillusion Harry, especially with the "truth."  Well, at least that was how Snape operated before DH.

Rowling's choice to gloss over Snape's Worst Memory, I will admit, did not sit well with me.  But I realize now that she couldn't go into any detail without exposing DH as the glaring patchwork piece of stupid that it is, so she had to gloss over it, hoping that we'd forget and simply swallow the load of tripe she was trying to spoon feed us.  In my first re-read of The Prince's Tale, I pulled out OotP to place Snape's Worst Memory in its proper context.  And I was ... well, appalled, to put it mildly.  I seriously hope the Snape/Lily idea occurred to Rowling after writing OotP, because if it didn't, I really don't much care for her notion of friendship (and this would also explain why Lily's part was conveniently removed from Snape's Worst Memory in the OotP movie).  But let me explain.  First, Snape and Lily don't leave the Great Hall together.  That doesn't exactly scream "best friends" to me, especially compared to the other sets of "best friends" we know about:  Except for when Ron's jealousy gets the better of him, the Trio are inseparable, and even Madam Rosemerta said of James and Sirius that you never saw the one without the other.  That is how best friends act, not leaving the Great Hall so far removed from one another that the casual observer (Harry, in this case) wouldn't think they know each other.

Second, James makes sure that the scene is visible to the girls by the lake before he gets too far into tormenting Snape.  It wouldn't do to let all his effort go to waste, would it?  This would seem to indicate that James has no idea Snape and Lily are friends.  Oh, James knew they were "friends" on the Hogwarts Express their first year, and it was still a bit rocky then, because Lily blames Snape for Petunia's hating her, even though it wasn't exactly Snape's fault.  [Gee, that sounds familiar.  I guess Dumbledore was right:  Harry's deepest nature is more like his mother, huh?  I doubt Snape got the idea to go into Petunia's room all on his own, and it was still "we saw that letter from Dumbledore" (emphasis mine).  But it's all Snape's fault, isn't it?]  Since then, they have given no indication that they're close (and certainly not inseparable), so James apparently takes this to mean they've had a falling out.  How do I know this?  Because if James thought otherwise, he wouldn't think he was going to make points with Lily by attacking her best friend.  Think about it.  If this were Draco Malfoy, who harbored a secret crush on Hermione, do you think he'd imagine Hermione would consent to go out with him if he publicly humiliated Harry?  I'm thinking no.  ;-)

Third, from the second Lily arrives on the scene to when she finally gets her wand out is nearly a page and a half, and then she only tells James to take the curse off Snape himself.  She doesn't even raise her wand to cast Finite Incantatum, although both James and Sirius eye her wand warily, so she's obviously a powerful witch.  Meanwhile, her supposed "best friend" is immobile on the ground, choking on soap bubbles.  Nice.  She could have stopped it herself, but she apparently chose not to.  She seems far too concerned with putting James Potter in his place and not nearly concerned enough about the fact that her "best friend" can't bloody breathe!  And then, when James hauls Snape into the air to show off his undies, Lily tries not to smile.  She tries not to smile.  At her "best friend's" public humiliation.  And all this is before Snape ever calls her a Mudblood.  I simply cannot imagine Hermione allowing Harry to go through this much torment before casting some spell — any spell — to put a stop to it, and I certainly can't imagine Hermione's "furious" expression transforming so quickly into trying not to smile.  I'm not so sure if I'd been in Snape's place that I wouldn't call her a Mudblood, too.  I mean, with "friends" like that, he really doesn't need enemies.

Despite her reassurances to the contrary in the previous memory, Lily doesn't seem to consider Snape her "best friend."  In fact, she appears to be a little ashamed to admit she knows him in public, and is amused by his predicament, regardless of her pretense of trying to protect him.  In the memory immediately before this one, in which Lily makes the declaration that she and Snape are best friends (sorry — she and Sev), the two are conspicuously alone.  Taken together, this doesn't sound like two friends who have grown apart over the years.  It sounds like a pretty, popular girl deciding she can do better than the geeky hanger-on she picked up in childhood, and the two are not the same thing.  Not hardly!  Add to that the "cheeky answers" she gave Slughorn when he said she should have been in Slytherin.  That says Lily was putting down her supposed "best friend's" House on an almost daily basis, within earshot.  Blech.  Some "best friend."  Along with the other Prince's Tale memories, I'm not getting too flattering a picture of Lily — especially since she ignores Petunia's absolute terror at the moving flower.  No, it wasn't hurting her physically, Lils, but your sister was obviously scared out of her mind, and you dismiss it.  Not too great a sister, either, were you?  No wonder Petunia hated magic so much.

I have the impression that Lily was all too eager to pump Snape for information before they went to school (after all, he was her only link to the magical world she would soon be entering), and she didn't know anyone there yet.  Once she arrived at school, however, she quickly became popular and had less and less time for Snape.  I'm sure she still talked to him during school holidays, if only to annoy Petunia, but the Mudblood comment appears to have merely given her the excuse to end a friendship she no longer wanted to maintain anyway.  And while we're on the subject ... Snape was willing to sleep outside the Fat Lady's portrait until Lily came out to talk to him, which is pretty gutsy on his part, considering what James and Sirius would have done if they'd come upon him unawares.  Clearly, he still values their "friendship," even if it is entirely one-sided (as it certainly appears to be).  Yet Lily refuses to listen to him.  She has spoken to him about his other friends before, and he defended them (or at least deflected the blame, because they, at least, didn't mind being seen with him), so I can understand that she might be miffed.

But here's the thing:  when she accuses Snape of wanting to become a Death Eater, Rowling again glosses over the fact that Snape is speechless.  Or, more importantly, why he's speechless.  There's absolutely no indication of Snape's expression at this point (and this being a third-person Pensieve memory, there's really no reason for that).  Lily just plows on in lecturing him.  Did it never occur to her that maybe, just maybe, her words were finally soaking in?  Maybe that Snape might have realized she had a point, and all the racist talk his friends were spouting wasn't just talk?  That it might spell real danger for someone he cared about immensely?  Because I'm sure his friends' talk wasn't confined to flinging slurs, but rather had a violent undercurrent that he had tried to laugh off before then.  Instead of pressing a possible advantage, however, and bringing her supposed "friend" back from the brink, Lily chooses — both literally and figuratively — to turn her back on Snape.

Now, I'm not trying to minimize Snape's responsibility in becoming a Death Eater, because ultimately he chose to take the Dark Mark.  But if Rowling intended to paint Lily and Snape as best friends all along, and especially in OotP, she did a lousy job of it.  And if Lily was supposed to be Snape's best friend, I can only imagine what he must have been thinking (since, you know, he was choking and couldn't talk):  She's supposed to be my friend, but she's much more interested in telling Potter off than helping me.  Oh, but helping him herself would have betrayed that she really did consider him a friend, and James and Sirius might have teased her about fancying him, like the "Oooooo" on the Hogwarts Express.  Lily couldn't have risked anything that might make people think she really liked Snape.  It would ruin her reputation.  (And don't say that Lily has been "making excuses" for Snape for years.  I know that's what she claims, but we don't see it, so I don't believe it, any more than I believe she considered Snape her "best friend."  If anything, she's probably been making excuses to herself, out of guilt, as to why she shouldn't cut him loose, and most likely not to her friends.)  And you can't tell me that petty, vindictive Snape would continue to worship Lily for twenty years after her death, when she married his nemesis.  When love turns to hate, it is a terrible thing to behold.  Snape would, I think, hate Lily even more than he hated James after that, and the Mudblood comment may have just been the beginnings of that.  I certainly don't see him pining for her and doe Patronusing for her 20 years later.  *shrug*  But maybe that's just me.

Furthermore, if Snape spent all his time as a child stalking watching Lily, when would he have had time to learn/invent all those curses that half the 7th years didn't know, not to mention all the potion experimentation?  And, if Snape was "famous" for his fascination with the Dark Arts at school, then why the reprimand about Snape's friends using the Dark Arts?  Why wasn't Lily getting onto Snape for using them?  Apparently, he'd been using them all along!  She didn't seem to have trouble standing up to him otherwise, did she?  Oh, and the assertion that while James and Sirius weren't all that great, they still didn't use the Dark Arts?  Patently false.  They use Dark Arts spells they stole from Snape on him while Lily watches (and does relatively little), in addition to using a relatively harmless spell (Scorgify) to choke Snape (which is Dark in intention).  Plus, the "illegal hex" James and Sirius used on Bertram Aubrey sounds a lot like Dark Arts to me, and James "hexing anyone who annoys [him] just because [he] can" makes it sound like a fairly common occurrence.  But, of course, we are told (not shown) that James is good, so what he actually does is irrelevant.

Forget that rubbish about our choices defining us.  The only choice that ever matters is the one the Sorting Hat makes.

And that crack Dumbledore makes about sorting too soon ... "Yeah, Severus — you're almost brave enough to have been a Gryffindor (and therefore, worthy)."  On the eve of Snape's having to go back to Voldemort and beg forgiveness for not showing up earlier, knowing full well that his tardiness might get him killed, that is a particularly stinging slap in the face.  At least Rowling had the sense to make Snape look stricken.  Because his potential sacrifice then, on that night, was just as monumental as Harry's:  facing death in order to save others.  And not just to save his friends, as Harry does, but for people who loathe him, as well.  In fact, Snape has been fighting against his friends, on the side of people who despise him, all along.

I've seen a few people groping in vain to try and find some meaning in Snape's seemingly meaningless death, but I'm pretty sure I know what the meaning behind this tripe is:

DH was Rowling's final "Fuck you!" to all the Snape fans.

She warned us not to like the "bad boys."  Never mind that Sirius Black — whom she adored — had a flying fucking motorcycle.  If that doesn't scream "Bad Boy Syndrome," I don't know what possibly could.  It's a testament to her lack of skill as a writer:  The harder she tried to make us hate Snape, the more we loved him, and it apparently bugged the crap out of her, so she decided to kill him in the most ridiculous, useless way possible.  Well, I suppose it could have been more ridiculous if he'd tripped on his robes and stabbed his wand into his own brain (with Harry instinctively knowing that he had to pull the wand out to extract the memories), but that's not much worse than what actually happened.

This book was also crying out for another confrontation between Harry and Snape, in which Snape inexplicably didn't hurt Harry, again, and didn't take him to Voldemort, planting a seed of doubt that would have made the memory regurgitation reversal of everything Harry had ever thought about Snape more palatable.  But too complex, so it didn't happen.  *sigh*  Instead we get the silver doe.  I mean, how hard would it have been to have Snape and the Trio meet up in the tunnel, silently raising their wands, when Voldemort calls to Snape from the Shack.  Then Snape hisses at the Trio to be quiet and keep the cloak on, and he heads up the tunnel.  The Trio follow and see the scene as it unfolds, and voila!  Harry is more inclined to believe the memories (and it would also mirror PoA well).  But as it is, Harry, who has hated Snape with a fevered passion for years, looks at Snape's memories and suddenly decides — without a moment's doubt or introspection — that Snape was good because he wuved Lily Sue?  "Right.  He loved my mum.  He must've been a bloody hero, then!"  That didn't even convince me, and I've thought Snape was good — not even ambiguous — all along!

The death itself:  still pointless.  Dumbledore warned Snape about the Nagini thing a year before, but he didn't see fit to warn Snape that Voldemort might try to kill him because of the Elder Wand?  He'd suspected it since GoF, but he didn't think that was a useful bit of information for Snape to have?  Poor Severus, my arse!  Poor Rowling, more like, having a character she didn't like garner so much attention (that should have rightfully been Harry's).  *growls*  But even that isn't as horrid as how Snape is treated in death:  No portrait.  Even if Voldemort made him Headmaster, Snape did everything he could to serve that school and protect the students.  No posthumous Order of Merlin, even though Peter got one, and as far as we know, it was never revoked.  Not even a proper burial.  Even Voldemort's body was moved to a separate location to keep it away from the "good" corpses, while Snape's is left in the Shrieking Shack to rot?  How fitting to leave him in the tunnel where Rowling probably wished (now) that she'd let him die as a teenager!  I can't even wrap my head around the disrespect there, it is so unbelievably massive.  At least she had the decency to have Harry shout out in front of hundreds of witnesses that Snape was a Good Guy.  But, of course, it wasn't for Snape.  At all.  It was only to demoralize Voldemort.  *tears hair out*  But at least the Boy Who Lived (yet again) and Always Hated Snape used Snape's name as the middle name for his middle child.  What a tribute.  Whoop-di-fucking-do.

And after all the lengths Voldemort went to ensure his immortality, he ends up killing himself?  *blinks*  *shakes head*  *blinks again*  The mind.  It boggles.  But we couldn't have sweet, innocent, wonderful Harry sully his hands by killing even the most evil wizard who ever lived.  He's not even avenging his parents' deaths, this way.  It's a complete and utter gip!  And it's not like his hands remained lily (pardon the pun) white throughout the book.  He's already casting Unforgivables.  Why not AK, too?

Now, for the crapilogue:  Is it just me, or does the crapilogue take place in 2017 (19 years after 1998)?  Is this just another demonstration of Rowling's inability to do arithmetic?  Although I have to ask, if the most she can tell us about their lives is who got married and popped out babies, why did they wait so long?  James appears to be at least a second year, which would mean he was born when Harry was 25, but he's 17 at the end of DH.  If Ginny is soooooo perfect for him, and itching to get back together with him, why did they wait 8 years to get hitched and breed?  And then there's the utter creepiness of naming brother-and-sister after husband-and-wife.  *shudders*  But I shouldn't be surprised, since Ginny is just the Oedipus complex made flesh.

This hasn't been "researched," as such, except for looking up Snape's Worst Memory for comparison.  It's not my intention here to argue the finer points of canon, because that would require re-reading DH, and I am most certainly not up for that (and probably won't be any time soon).  Therefore I'm sure a number of my conclusions are erroneous.  But frankly, I don't care.  I'm angry, and I wanted to get it out of my system, so that I can hopefully (someday) let it go.  And now I'm going to go do something more productive than rant.  ;-)