LOLLIPOPS strikes back! & Timeline

[ftah3]

No: HPFGUIDX 34851

cindysphynx wrote:
> This also strikes me as compelling because it helps explain the 
kind 
> of risk Snape faced.  Snape is pretending to look for the Potters, 
> claiming he is going to kill them when he finds them.  Voldemort is 
> buying this.  Should Voldemort locate the Potters and should Snape 
> refuse to pull the trigger, Snape would be instantly killed 
himself.  
> So he really was in a great deal of danger by participating in this 
> ruse.  

Question, and I probably just need a memory refresh as I haven't been 
back through the books in a little while: Do we know that he did any 
more than simply give a heads-up when anything came down the pike? 
And do we know that his spying had anything at all to do with the 
Potters, or that Voldemort ever directed Snape to do something 
personally against the Potters?  (And as for that last question, I 
don't recall anything specified in terms of his interaction with 
Voldemort concerning the Potters at all, and I wonder if the 
popularity of that theory has barred the way against other simpler or 
more interesting possibilities.)  

As for danger, do we know he actually faced *great* danger?  
Certainly, when it comes to betraying a powerful megalomaniac like 
Voldy, any little thing could cost Snape his life.  But if Voldy, at 
the end of GoF, *was* referring to Snape when he mentioned the 
follower who had left the fold never to return and therefore would be 
killed.  ...that doesn't sound like Voldy is feeling a sense of high 
treason, does it?  It seems to me that if Snape had really done more 
of significance in his spying than turn over other DEs (which, in the 
end, others did in order to cover their own butts, and yet were 
accepted back into the fold), such as *not* follow through on some 
plan to kill the Potters (which led to Voldy's downfall), or even 
pass other significant information to the Good Guys, Voldy wouldn't 
be essentially shrugging off Snape's apparently unarguable exit from 
the DEs.

Right, I'm now going to stop and recognize that one possiblity is 
that Voldy doesn't know the extent of Snape's betrayal.  For some 
reason, I just want to say fie on that.  I think that Voldy views 
Snape as a little fish because at least in the past he *was* a little 
fish.  Mainly because I think that if Snape had done some huge grand 
thing to try to save the Potters, it would have come up by now. In 
the Shrieking Shack, Snape would have had *more* history with which 
to berate Harry than simply 'you're just as inconsiderate as your 
father, who tried to kill me in high school.'  And if it hasn't come 
up because it's a big secret and Dumbledore et al didn't want to let 
it out in case Voldy came back or Snape was called upon again to do 
some spying, why on earth *didn't* Snape respond to the dark mark 
call at the end of GoF?  If he *didn't* want the Death Eaters/Voldy 
to clue in that he was firmly entwined, either by sensibility or by 
having perpetrated worse betrayal in the past, with the Good Guys, he 
should have gone, imho.

As for changing sides back in the Death Eater days, why does he need 
to have had some enormous revelation requiring something like 
unrequited love/attachment to Lily Potter?  Why not...'you know, 
racist freaks who murder Muggles and wizards and are plotting World 
Domination really ain't my kinda people.  I think I'll defect.'  
Imho, it says more for Snape's being a good man at his core that he 
would make a moral decision of that sort without needing to justify 
by selfish motives.  Petty and mean he may be on an everyday basis, 
but when it comes to the *big* stuff, you don't have to bribe him 
with the object of his obsession to do the right thing, you know?  
(Which is, other than the whole 'trite!' complaint, my main reason 
for not caring for the lollipop theory.)

> As for the post GoF world, Snape's mission is to return to 
Voldemort 
> as Dumbledore's spy and pretend to finish the job of killing 
Harry.  
> This explains the long look Snape gives Harry at the end of GoF.  
> Snape is *really* in danger now, because as a Hogwarts professor, 
> Snape has to think up all kinds of plausible reasons why he can't 
> deliver Harry to Voldemort.

If Snape's mission is to reinfiltrate Voldy's group, then he's in 
danger simply by appearing to have left the group by not coming when 
called.  How do you explain to a guy who brooks absolutely no dissent 
and expects immediate action when he says 'jump!' that you thought it 
would be safer, or smarter, or sneakier, etc. to not come when 
called?  Basically, you explain and then wonder if your sentence will 
be just pain, or death.

And if Snape would likely be expected to deliver Harry asap, and it 
was something he'd failed to do before, *and* it could be reasonably 
assumed that Snape has incurred Voldy's suspicion by not appearing at 
the dark mark call, I would think that sending Snape back in now 
would be the *last* thing Dumby would do, because it would be 
tantamount to a death sentence.

>I can't make it work (yet) because I can't think 
> of any plausible way Snape knows that Peter is a Death Eater, 
doesn't 
> tell Dumbledore, and lets James, Lily and Sirius switch to Peter.  
> The only thing that comes to mind is that Snape doesn't want to 
admit 
> to Dumbledore his role in recruiting Peter (much the way Lupin 
> refuses to admit the werewolf adventures to Dumbledore), but I'm 
not 
> sold.

Not sold over here, either, simply because I don't think Snape is 
that much of an ingrate, and because I doubt that Dumbledore would 
have overlooked such a *huge* selfishly-motivated lapse.  

Marinafrants:
> >Which is too bad,
> > 'cause otherwise I might get George to go for Cindy's suggestion 
> that
> > it was the threat to *James* that led Snape to turn, because of 
the
> > life-debt between them.

I don't think it was James, I don't think it was Lily.  I think it 
was Snape.  A Snape who can be ill-tempered, nasty, and narrow-
minded, but who in the end has a strong enough moral core to see the 
error in aligning himself with murdering, racist jerks, and enough 
strength of will to risk his life for nothing more than simple moral 
principle by defecting and spying for the good guys.

Loving the interpretive character analysis,
Mahoney