The good/bad Snape debate and Harry's unfreezing

[snorkackcatcher]

A brief thought -- probably not original, so I would be interested to hear from any Snapecast listeners or the like -- sparked by travisprinzi's essay on The Great Snape Debate book in which the following comment was made:

I still have a hard time believing that Dumbledore would command the use of an unforgivable curse. This is why some version of Stoppered Death needs to be added into the theory; otherwise, you get terrible character inconsistency with Dumbledore.

At first I read this as it being a very bad reflection on Snape if he would be able to successfully cast the Killing Curse on Dumbledore (although on reflection I think 'Stoppered Death' here is the theory that Dumbledore was already dying painfully from the cave potion, which was the one Snape mentioned back in Book 1, and therefore Snape using the AK wasn't outright murder). That would be a fair point.

However, assume for a moment that the AK can almost-but-not-quite work in the same way as Harry's failed Crucio on Bellatrix -- a possible interpretation, given her statement that you have to mean the Unforgivables for them to work properly, and Fake!Moody's 'nosebleed' comment. Is there any evidence that Snape's curse on Dumbledore could have failed in this way? Possibly, yes. The wording of the end of ch.27 and beginning of ch.28 of HBP is suggestive:

A jet of green light shot from the end of Snape's wand and hit Dumbledore squarely in the chest. Harry's scream of horror never left him; silent and unmoving, he was forced to watch as Dumbledore was blasted into the air: for a split second he seemed to hang suspended beneath the shining skull, and then he fell slowly backwards, like a great rag doll, over the battlements and out of sight.

-----

Harry felt as though he, too, were hurtling through space; it had not happened ... it could not have happened ...

'Out of here, quickly,' said Snape.

He seized Malfoy by the scruff of the neck and forced him through the door ahead of the rest; Greyback and the squat brother and sister followed, the latter both panting excitedly. As they vanished through the door Harry realised he could move again; what was now holding him paralysed against the wall was not magic, but horror and shock. He threw the Invisibility Cloak aside as the brutal-faced Death Eater, last to leave the Tower top, was disappearing through the door. [emphasis mine]

If the curse itself didn't kill Dumbledore, then it was presumably the fall from the Astronomy Tower that did so, yes? In which case, the point at which Harry realises he can move again may be significant. The passage is written in such a way as to suggest that he could have moved at any time from when the AK hit -- but it doesn't actually say that, and could it be that it's literally at this point when the curse lifts? In other words, that it happens when Dumbledore hits the ground?

ETA: On taking another look at the passage, it struck me that Harry not being able to scream, and being forced to watch "silent and unmoving" as Dumbledore is blasted over the wall, is actually another point that supports the idea. It's speculative, admittedly, but the sort of long shot worth a small wager. :)

Comments

[pasi.livejournal.com]

I haven't read the essay or the book, but I've sometimes wondered whether AK is necessarily an all-or-nothing spell. You can go half-way with Cruciatus, as Harry did with Bella, and you can mess up every other spell you try, as the kids do in classes throughout the books. Why should AK be different?

I have seen people argue, though, that otherwise there would be plenty of people besides Harry around who had survived it. But maybe his scar shows that the AK that hit Harry was a true and effective Killing Curse? (Not to mention that if anybody has the nerve and skill to cast a good Killing Curse, it's LV.)

[snorkackcatcher]

Yeah, that's what I've wondered too. I think the scar is more likely to show it failed, actually -- usually it doesn't seem to leave a mark, but Hagrid does say that the scar is what you get when a "powerful evil curse touches yeh", which suggests that there's experience of this happening with people who've survived such curses?

[pennswoods.livejournal.com]

Oh wow! On the one hand, it's an intriguing idea to think that Snape himself could not cast a fully successful unforgivable against Dumbledore. On the other hand, I'm horrified by the thought that Dumbledore was alive and perhaps conscious during the plummet to the ground that eventually killed him.

An AK almost seems more humane than dying from the impact of the fall.

[snorkackcatcher]

The 'rag doll' bit suggests that the curse at least knocked him unconscious, even if it didn't succeed in killing him. Actually, looking at that passage again, I've just noticed that Harry seems to have tried to scream in horror, but failed to do so, remaining 'silent and unmoving' as Dumbledore went over the wall. Given that a scream in those circumstances would likely be a fairly involuntary action, if he couldn't manage it that's actually another small point in support of the idea? It's sheer speculation, but the sort of speculation that might come off. :)

[masterofmystery.livejournal.com]

I understand what you're trying to say, but what if it took for them to leave for Harry to realise that the spell had been lifted off of him? I mean, he was in so much shock from the actually spell hitting Dumbledore and the subsequent fall that he didn't realise it had been lifted from him right when the AK was done? I can see that it could be interpreted that way, but I think it's merely speculation. After all, if you're that shocked when you see something big happen, sometimes it takes a bit to actually be aware of yourself, right?

[snorkackcatcher]

Oh sure, it's entirely speculation -- shock was the way I always interpreted it, the way the text suggests it should be interpreted, and probably the right way to interpret it. On the other hand, I thought that this was an interesting speculation and one that could work, given that JKR is rather good at the sort of literary sleight-of-hand that uses Harry's interpretation to conceal what was actually going on (my favourite is the description of Winky running at the campsite in GoF).

[kate885.livejournal.com]

Here via HT- The Harry unfreezing thing is pure genius, and it seems like something JK would absolutely do. It may be just speculation, but it's a very good speculation. This is the sort of thing that seems obvious in retrospect, but somehow slips right under the radar- so props to you for noticing!

I've been nurturing a bit of a crack theory that posits Snape casting the AK verbally while non-verbally casting something else, and while I admit that I am probably crazy, the possibility of Harry being frozen after the incantation of the AK actually gives me hope that something fishy really is going on. The Stoppered Death theory is more plausible, and your "nosebleed" theory is more plausible still, but I keep thinking that Jo hammered us with the whole non-verbal thing too much for it to not come up sometime. Hey, a girl can dream :)More was going on that night on the tower than meets the eye, that's for sure.

[snorkackcatcher]

Yeah ... I'd rather like the AK to be capable of misfiring sometimes, it would fit with a couple of fics I wrote. :) I suspect that the significance of the non-verbal spells is that it's something Harry needs to learn (in the scene where Snape faces off with Harry outside Hagrid's hut, he seems to be giving him hints in that direction). On balance, I'm pretty much on the side of the Good!Snape theory (where "Good" means "actively working for Voldemort's defeat" and "Bad" means "actively working for Voldemort's victory" -- Snape's not a nice person whatever he does).

Other AK examples--not too helpful, but I like your reading.

[caerglas.livejournal.com]

So, we kinda see AK twice in cannon; I figured it'd be good to look at them too.

The first one is Cedric in GoF, and then Sirius in OoTP.

GoF:
"From far away, above his head, he heard a high, cold voice say, "Kill the spare."
A swishing noise and a second voice, which screeched the words to the night: "Avada Kedavra!"
A blast of green light blazed through Harry's eyelids, and he heard something heavy fall to the ground beside him; the pain in his scar reached such a pitch that he retched, and then it diminished; terrefied of what he was about to see, he opened his stinging eyes.
Cedric was lying spread-eagled on the ground beside him. He was dead." btw, Cedric's mouth was "half-open...which looked slightly surprised."

In OotP:
"The second jet of light hit him squarely on the chest.
The laughter had not quite died from his face, but his eyes widened in shock.
Harry released Neville, though he was unaware of doing so. He was jumping down the steps again, pulling out his wand, as Dumbledore turned to the dias too.
It seemed to take Sirius an age to fall. His body curved in a graceful arc as he sank backward through the ragged veil hanging from the arch...
And Harry saw the look of mingled fear and surprise on his god-father's wasted, once-handsome face as he fell through the ancient doorway and disappeared behind the veil, which fluttered for a moment as though in a high wind and then fell back into place."

In GoF, Harry isn't watching as Cedric gets killed--his eyes are closed, so we don't know how instantaneous the death is. In OoTP, a sequence of events is described--but really the only one that matters is Sirius' actions, cause his death could have been instantaneous or not...
It's unclear to me if 'his eyes widened in shock' is the "look of mingled fear and surprise", or if there's more facial movement that Sirius does while dying.

Maybe the strength of the victim effects how long they hold on? So, Cedric as a young teen dies almost instantly, with only enough time to look slightly surprised, and Sirius as a stronger man/wizard taking longer to die, long enough to widen the eyes and then register fear and surprise. Dumbledore, then, could have taken a few seconds to die, through the fall...

But man, it's taking forever then for Dumbledore to fall. Snape gets off a whole sentence, grabs Malfoy, and everybody leaves the tower room before Dumbledore hits bottom. Or at least, before he dies... Or maybe it takes a second for a dead man's spell to dissipate.

But I still like your reading, and I hope we get an answer on it. If we don't, I'll probably just assume your reading's accurate, cause I like it better.

Re: Other AK examples--not too helpful, but I like your reading.

[snorkackcatcher]

I've never been sure what the Sirius spell was -- the one that misses him is red, and I kind of assumed it was the actual falling through the veil part that killed him. We did see an effective AK from Moody on the spider too -- in fact, the ones we've seen take effect up to the point of Cedric being killed all had the wave of green light and rushing sound. But then, the ones that Voldemort was casting in the fight against Dumbledore were just described as jets of green light, so there's a little inconsistency there.