The Spying Game and the Shrieking Shack

[porphyria_ash]

No: HPFGUIDX 39685

Pip wrote in a lovely post: 

> ***The Premises***:

> Snape is working to some extent undercover.
> Snape wants Harry, not himself, to take control of the events in The 
> Shrieking Shack.
> 
> Snape and Dumbledore know all about Pettigrew being the Secret Keeper.
> Snape and Dumbledore already know Peter Pettigrew is Scabbers.
> They intend to let Pettigrew escape. But after Harry has saved his 
> life.
> 
> Dumbledore has *no* idea whether Sirius Black is a  Voldemort 
> supporter or not. Snape is certain Black is guilty, hates him, and is 
> very suspicious of Lupin.
> 
> Snape's genuine concussion was a (nearly disastrous) accident.
> 
> Dumbledore cannot afford to have Black's innocence publicly declared.

OK, I am impressed by this argument and for the time being I think I'm willing to believe 
it. I like anything involving HighlyCompetent!Snape. :-) And thank you for pointing out 
that he can manage an Accio with no words, no wand, and his left hand. 

If I think of better objections I'll add them later but for now I just have some questions 
about the purpose of what you call Snape's "those darn kids" performance at the end of 
the night. If his only goal was to convince Harry that he hated him, wasn't it a little 
excessive? Snape usually does a perfectly good job of convincing Harry that he hates 
him with a whispered threat; he doesn't need to get utterly hysterical about it. 

I think you might have suggested that he does it for Fudge's benefit. How does this help 
anyone? I agree that at the beginning of the infirmary scene Snape does a lovely job of 
convincing Fudge that Harry is maybe reckless (and ought to be punished) but basically 
good (i.e. not really colluding with Black, just Confunded). So why screw that up by a) 
making Fudge think Snape is unbalanced and b) putting the idea in Fudge's head that 
Harry might be working for the bad guys? It certainly doesn't help matters at the end of 
GoF when Dumbledore sincerely seeks Fudge's cooperation and Fudge is by now 
convinced that Snape is a freak, that Harry might be sinister after all (he's a 
Parseltongue for goodness sake, not to mention those hallucinations), and that 
Dumbledore is nuts to keep people like Snape on staff and suppress big, ugly secrets 
about Harry. I would say that even if convincing Fudge that Snape hates Harry is part of 
the plan (and I don't quite understand why it has to be), I still think Snape and 
Dumbledore could have come up with a less risky way of getting that across.

Of course your story preserves the idea that Snape really does hate Sirius and really 
didn't want him to go free in the end, so maybe part of his 'act' might still be genuine. 
But you point out that Dumbledore laughs at this, which brings me back to my original 
impression that Dumbledore is actually quite sadistic towards Snape at this point, 
mocking him here and cruelly throwing his past in his face shortly prior to this ("my 
memory is as good as it ever was"). Which seems like strange behavior for two people 
supposedly in cahoots. But you seem to have more ideas than I do about what the point 
of his breakdown might be, and I'd love to hear them. 

~Porphyria, who wishes to apologize in advance if this post has the same sort of 
formatting atrocities as my last one