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'Harry Potter' Clue Suggests Severus Snape Was Less Evil Than We Thought

'Harry Potter' Clue Suggests Severus Snape Was Less Evil Than We Thought

Harry Potter's foe Severus Snape famously came good in the end. But was he good all along?

Ronan O'Shea

Ronan O'Shea

In the role that bridged generations, Die Hard's Alan Rickman played Severus Snape in no less than eight Harry Potter films, bringing his inimitable voice to the dark, skilful wizard between 2001 and 2011.

While Potter fans will know Snape as - SPOILER ALERT, although come on, the last movie came out seven years ago - a complex character who ultimately did the right thing, there's a little clue in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2 which suggests he might have been in on it all along.

While battling Maggie Smith's Professor McGonagall with wands and fire and magic, Snape appears to be getting merked.

However, if you look a little more closely, he deflects her wizardry (lots of hot fire) onto the Death Eaters behind him, Alecto and Amycus Carrow, doing Harry and his pals a solid and killing off another couple of baddies.

Snape was a mardy bastard, bullying Potter from the get-go in an act of tacit revenge to Potter's dad, who had bullied him.

Warner Bros.

But, as we all know, while Snape was drawn to the Dark Arts and Lord Voldemort, he ultimately came good, protecting Potter secretly throughout the series due to his love of Lily Evans, Harry's mam.

This new revelation is just another addition to the canon of Rickman awesomeness.

Critically acclaimed for his performance in the Harry Potter films, the Londonder came to prominence for his role as the dastardly (evil) Hans Gruber in 1988's Die Hard, a role he landed just two days after arriving in LA to make it big. Bad ass.

Rickman as Hans Gruber.
20th Century Fox

He went on to appear in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves as the evil Sheriff of Nottingham, yet again in the role of another badass baddie.

However, to modern audiences, he'll always be remembered as the deeply complex Snape, a seemingly evil man drawn towards the dark, but actually quite nice inside.

Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling described Snape as an antihero, based on a teacher she had disliked during her own childhood. She's said that he was one of her favourite characters to write.

Alan Rickman.
PA

Actor, genius and all-round lovely luvvie Stephen Fry also said he was one of the best characters in the series.

In 2003 he told an audience at London's Royal Albert Hall: "Most characters like Snape are hard to love but there is a sort of ambiguity - you can't quite decide - something sad about him- lonely and it's fascinating when you think he's going to be the evil one... then slowly you get this idea he's not so bad after all."

Featured Image Credit: Warner Bros.

Topics: Harry Potter, Movies, TV and Film