Snape's not evil. For serious.
Sep. 8th, 2005 02:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gmonkey42I saw a link in a friend's post to someone else's "Snape is evil" post in some community and I can't be bothered to look it up but you'll probably know the one I'm talking about.
About OotP:
A big deal was made about the gap of possibly several hours between Snape figuring out that Harry and the others had gone to the Ministry and Snape alerting the Order.
I have two problems with this:
1) JKR does not put as much thought into this as we do. I seriously doubt she looked up the exact times of sunrise and sunset in Scotland in early June and planned her timeline accordingly. Sunrise and sunset are often employed by authors more to set the mood for a scene. It's not so much plot as imagery. If it were Tom Clancy, I might think differently but I don't think we're supposed to draw anything from it except that a night has passed.
2) It's likely that a few hours passed between Snape initiating contact with the Order and the Order arriving at the Ministry. He can't exactly text them all on their cell phones. JKR had told us they had a cool way of communicating with each other that's way better than cell phones or internet. Except it's not. It's patronuses. Patronuses (patroni?) have to be cast individually and they clearly travel slower than sound because Harry can see them going and make out a general shape. The Order members who wound up at the Ministry, if I remember correctly, were Sirius, Remus, Tonks, Moody, Kingsley and Dumbledore. Were Bill or Charlie there too? I don't remember but that's, at minimum, five patroni to send out, assuming one for Remus and Sirius together (because obviously they'd be sleeping in the same bed). Furthermore, patroni travel quite slowly relative to electronic signals as I mentioned and Snape's had to travel across hundreds of miles, in the case of Remus and Sirius definitely and probably Tonks and Kingley as well, since they work in the Ministry and are likely to live in London. Even getting the message out to everybody would have taken a good chunk of time (having no idea of the average velocity of a patronus, I'm not going to speculate exactly how long).
Once they got Snape's message, they'd have to coordinate with each other. They all showed up at the same time and this had to have been planned. No matter how worried about Harry they were, it would've been suicide for them to arrive separately.
JKR has lived in the north of England (I think) and knows how short the nights are in Scotland in summer. I'm sure it didn't occur to her that some of us (living at lower latitudes) would assume Snape had deliberately delayed the arrival of help for Harry and the others.
Nope, Snape's not evil. Just badass. Like in my icon.
About OotP:
A big deal was made about the gap of possibly several hours between Snape figuring out that Harry and the others had gone to the Ministry and Snape alerting the Order.
I have two problems with this:
1) JKR does not put as much thought into this as we do. I seriously doubt she looked up the exact times of sunrise and sunset in Scotland in early June and planned her timeline accordingly. Sunrise and sunset are often employed by authors more to set the mood for a scene. It's not so much plot as imagery. If it were Tom Clancy, I might think differently but I don't think we're supposed to draw anything from it except that a night has passed.
2) It's likely that a few hours passed between Snape initiating contact with the Order and the Order arriving at the Ministry. He can't exactly text them all on their cell phones. JKR had told us they had a cool way of communicating with each other that's way better than cell phones or internet. Except it's not. It's patronuses. Patronuses (patroni?) have to be cast individually and they clearly travel slower than sound because Harry can see them going and make out a general shape. The Order members who wound up at the Ministry, if I remember correctly, were Sirius, Remus, Tonks, Moody, Kingsley and Dumbledore. Were Bill or Charlie there too? I don't remember but that's, at minimum, five patroni to send out, assuming one for Remus and Sirius together (because obviously they'd be sleeping in the same bed). Furthermore, patroni travel quite slowly relative to electronic signals as I mentioned and Snape's had to travel across hundreds of miles, in the case of Remus and Sirius definitely and probably Tonks and Kingley as well, since they work in the Ministry and are likely to live in London. Even getting the message out to everybody would have taken a good chunk of time (having no idea of the average velocity of a patronus, I'm not going to speculate exactly how long).
Once they got Snape's message, they'd have to coordinate with each other. They all showed up at the same time and this had to have been planned. No matter how worried about Harry they were, it would've been suicide for them to arrive separately.
JKR has lived in the north of England (I think) and knows how short the nights are in Scotland in summer. I'm sure it didn't occur to her that some of us (living at lower latitudes) would assume Snape had deliberately delayed the arrival of help for Harry and the others.
Nope, Snape's not evil. Just badass. Like in my icon.
