There had to be a reason Dumbledore trusted Severus. There just had to be. That's what we were all saying after Half-Blood Prince. It was at this time that I was writing my thesis on Christian love and Harry Potter and beginning to think about what was to come.
"Severus... please."
There were no adjectives or other markers of tone assigned to the phrase. It was oddly, simply there. And it could mean... well, basically anything. Clearly, we were meant to believe that Dumbledore was pleading with an evil Snape bent on showing his true colors. That's what Harry thought; that's what all the characters thought. In fact, that's about the only logical conclusion you could come to if HBP was the only book in the series.
But there were those nagging questions borne out of six years of character development. Dumbledore trusted him, and he was always right (as far as we knew) concerning peoples' true character. I found myself asking time and again: What is really going on?
Then, I had a guess. What if Dumbledore was pleading for Snape to kill him... what if this was somehow part of the plan? It didn't make sense, but then again perhaps it did. What if something bigger was going on behind the scenes?
Here's an excerpt from my 2007 undergraduate thesis, preserved now for posterity: "[Dumbledore's] final words, 'Severus... please...' are easily taken as a plea for life, but those who know Dumbledore’s life should realize that something much deeper is going on here. Although the seventh and final book is yet to be published, it seems most likely that Dumbledore was not pleading for his life to be spared but for Severus Snape to finish what he needed to do (kill Dumbledore in order to save himself)."
Pretty close. And a cliff-hanger of epic proportions.
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