cambreypayne:

tonksnymphdora:

what she says: i’m fine

what she means: the fact that harry potter forgives snape in deathly hallows and sees him now as a hero can be damaging to abuse victims and abuse survivors. It reinforces this notion that “oh well snape did one good thing so i guess we can excuse the abuse he gave to a handful of children for years on end” it’s toxic and gross. Abusers do good things but that doesn’t mean they’re still not fucking awful people. It completely dismisses how he treated those children in the 7 books how he tormented mocked and threatened them weekly for doing nothing, how neville’s bogart was snape. His worst fear of all time was snape? does that not ring alarm bells for people?? Furthermore lots of people have shitty childhoods and having one doesn’t give you an excuse to be an asshole later in life and damage the emotional well-being of literal children and naming albus after him dismisses all of that and puts him as this god like hero (often ignoring his abuse) and perpetuates the notion to readers that bc your abuser did a good thing for you they can be forgiven and their abuse had “reason” when in fact snape was just bitter old man who caused unreasonable grief to innocent children. This doesn’t even cover the fact he willingly took part in a racist organisation that aimed to obliterate muggle borns.

I hope OP doesn’t mind me adding: Also the hero-worshipping of Albus Dumbledore that happened after his death, wiping out the manipulative and awful crap he did (to Harry and others) while he was alive, was just as shitty. “Two bravest men” - maybe they were brave, but they were also really shitty men and I wish that complicated mess had been acknowledged instead of wiped out in that god-awful epilogue. What about Remus Lupin? What about Alastor Moody? What about Dean Thomas, or Colin Creevey, or fucking Dobby, or the dozens of other “brave men” (not to mention the myriad of awesomely brave women) in those books? JK thought the two who were among the cruelest to Harry deserved his respect in the end? Aargh!

Like sure, it’s important to allow victims to decide for themselves whether or not they forgive their abusers, but given most victims feel pressured to forgive when we don’t want to, JK could have given us a really powerful example in Harry holding Snape and Dumbers accountable in spite of their “good” actions. There’s double pressure to forgive and stay silent after an abuser has died, and I really wish JK had given us something different with Harry. Instead we got the most stereotypical “if you’re a good person you’ll forgive” and “never speak ill of the dead” bullshit and as much as I love these books, I will never get over how shitty that is.

maakomori:

and people forget that harry was a lonely child who lived in an abusive and neglectful household and somehow he managed to be cordial if not kind to people who looked up to him and needed him

he had less than snape coming into hogwarts he didn’t know about hogwarts, he didn’t know there were people like him, he didn’t even have A friend but he was still a basically good person

“can you imagine how much pain snape must have been in when he saw harry” so?

harry is a traumatised child who has been told all his life that he was worthless, that he was trash like his parents, that his parents must have done something to deserve their death, that the abuse rained daily upon him was kindness because he should not expect to be taken care of

he was an eleven year old child i don’t care how much he reminds you of someone you hated you don’t hurt eleven year old children as an adult, as a teacher, especially not ones who have had terrible childhoods to begin with.