New Rowling interview

[pegkerr]

There's a new J.K. Rowling interview which offers quite a bit more information about the fates of various characters after the end of Deathly Hallows, beyond what is provided in the epilogue. Including, apparently, hints that a ship that she had previously rejected she is now rethinking as being possible.

Spoilers, obviously.

Comments

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

I didn't like the way Snape died it does feel like he got cheated.

I don't know whether you saw the two essays I'd linked to earlier. The first one here agrees with you that Snape got a pretty raw deal. But the second one, here, points out something that that I hadn't quite seen clearly until I read it, that Snape's death led directly to Voldemort's downfall. Which, since it was his greatest goal for years, was probably what that dour Potions Master would have wished.

That being said, I thought Snape's death scene was one of the best in the book, if not the series. Ruthless and heartbreaking.

[mizzlaurajean.livejournal.com]

I certianly think the timing and reason Voldemort killed him are crucial but the way he died I thought was kind of dumb.

[bohemianspirit.livejournal.com]

I thought Snape's death scene was one of the best in the book, if not the series. Ruthless and heartbreaking.

Same here. It was shocking, precisely because it was so ignoble and callous a way for Snape to die: nothing heroic or dramatic or obviously beneficial to The Cause.

Yet it was totally in keeping with Snape's role in the struggle to defeat Voldemort. I think he knew that he was living on borrowed time, and part of his crankiness undoubtedly came from that continual sense of living on the razor's edge. Voldemort was no more loyal to his "friends" than to his enemies, as we saw repeatedly throughout the series, and so while we might be shocked, we really couldn't be surprised.

And I don't think Snape was, either, just horrified at the sensation of a huge snake lunging for his throat, BUT ESPECIALLY at the horror that he was going to die without passing on Dumbledore's words to Harry.

I think the choice of Snape's death was brilliant precisely because it runs counter to the cause-effect "heroic/redemptive sacrifice" mold. Snape's whole adult life, post-Death Eater time in early adulthood, was one ongoing act of heroism, and his death was simply a logical outcome of that life of heroic risk. In that sense, alone, it was not in vain.