TBAY: SoulsuckedSaboteur!Snape(WAS Assasin!Snape Meets Saboteur!Snape)

[susannahlm]

No: HPFGUIDX 46951

This is some party. 

Now that all the Snape theorists have a room to themselves, any 
lingering reluctance about disturbing the peace has completely 
vanished. The drinks are coming faster, the theories are getting 
wilder, and Cindy is standing on the table with Cabaret!Snape, 
singing _Les Miserables_. 

Derannimer is standing with her drink, a yellow flag (George was kind 
enough to set some out) tucked neatly away in case of future need, 
talking to Charis Julia. Or trying to anyway. It's getting pretty 
loud in here. 

>"Deal with the Devil," Charis Julia is saying, in reply to 
>Derannimer's suggestion. "Oooh, yes, this is sooo right! That's why 
>Dumbledore "must" ask Snape to do this. . . that's why Snape's the 
>only one who could ever take on this job, the only hope Dumbledore's 
>side has of ridding Azkaban of it's present guards without Fudge's 
>consent."

Derannimer thinks about this for a minute. She *had* actually 
considered this point, briefly. It *would* be simpler to deal with 
Dementors if you weren't affected by them in the usual way. Her own 
theory actually fits with Charis Julia's quite nicely. Which is odd, 
really, because. . . 

"Um, Charis Julia," she says, hesitating slightly. "I mean, you've 
been so nice and everything--" Derannimer waves her drink in 
explanation--"but. . . I'm not quite sure about Saboteur!Snape.    

"But I'm ready to be convinced," she adds quickly.     

"Hang on a minute," says Charis Julia. She disappears into the crowd. 
A minute later she is back, with a refill. If she has to defend this 
theory *again*, she's certainly going to need one. 

"Right, well," Charis Julia begins. "Saboteur!Snape. Well, first of 
all, we *really* do need an alternative to Snape the Spy. 
>Even if I could consider it possible that 
>Voldemort would ever take back Snape no matter what Snape did to 
>prove his loyalty (which I don't), I still wouldn't like this as a 
>plot twist. It's way less than simple. It's obvious. After all, even 
>the most elementary, ordinary, non—obsessive readers will have 
>automatically picked up on that one." 

"It's even worse than that," Derannimer interrupts. "*Harry* has 
picked up on that one. GOF, p. 721 'Snape had turned spy against 
Voldemort, "at great personal risk." Was that the job he had taken up 
again?'

"Nah." Derannimer shakes her head. "Although I do find Double-O-Sevi 
a deeply *attractive* idea, the fact that Harry actually thinks of it 
also renders it deeply *unlikely*. If Snape was really going back as 
a spy, JKR would never have let Harry ponder the notion, and 
certainly not so prominently. I'm all with you here; Snape the Spy is 
a red herring. So we *do* need another theory. But I'm not so sure 
that Saboteur!Snape is--" 

"But what about the parallelism?" Charis Julia resumes. "The Dementor 
mission is explicitly linked to the Giant mission. We've seen 
Dumbledore step to take care of the one; what if he's also taken 
moves to address the other." 

"Oh I know," says Derannimer. "I agree with everything you've been 
saying about Saboteur!Snape--we need a new theory, it's got 
parallelism, Dumbledore would never send Snape out to assassinate 
somebody--I agree with all that. But I've got a couple of other 
problems with it. 

"The first is, and I kind of hate to say this, but it's hard to make 
it Bang. No--" Derannimer hastily cuts off Charis Julia's angry 
exclamation-- "No, I'm not echoing Cindy's 'conjugal visits for the 
Lestranges'; I simply mean that it's hard to make a scene Bang when 
you can't *see* it. In the case of Snape the Spy, that's easy enough 
to arrange; Harry could see the Death Eaters with his scar (scar 
visions may grow more frequent anyway, now that Voldemort's back); or 
he could get captured by the DE's and Snape could have to torture 
and/or free him from prison, or whatever. But if Snape's sans 
Voldemort, in Azkaban, it gets really quite hard to work that out. 
And I don't see how you can have Bang from a distance, second-hand 
Bang, so to speak."   

"Hmmm. . . yeah," replied Charis Julia. "It is hard to get Harry to 
witness what's going on in Azka--"

"HOLD IT!" Derannimer shouts. "I've just had a flash of blinding 
inspiration!" 

Charis Julia looks at her somewhat skeptically. 

Derannimer blushes. "I've just had an idea, at any rate. I don't--" 
she looks around somewhat guiltily-- "I don't actually know if this 
sort of thing is *allowed* here, but. . . 

"JKR has said in intreviews that in OOP, Harry will 'go into a whole 
new area, physically, an area you've never seen before, a magical 
world.' Now the quote is somewhat ambiguous; does she mean a new kind 
of magical world (EmbracedbytheLight!Harry?) or a new *area* of the 
WW that we already know? The wording may also be iffy--but I got that 
quote from the Lexicon, so it's probably pretty accurate. 

"But anyway, JKR has said that Harry's going to go somewhere he 
hasn't been yet. 

"And he sure hasn't gone to Azkaban yet. 

"What do you think?"  

Charis Julia blinks for a minute. "I'm not entirely sure," she 
confesses. "I'll have to think about it."  

"Oh, sure," says Derannimer. "But at any rate, if Harry somehow got 
there, then he could see Snape. And as long as we can see Saboteur!
Snape at work, then I don't have a problem with the Bang at all.  

"Not that I'm an expert," she adds, glancing at Cindy, now dancing on 
the table.  

Derannimer (who did have a second objection, but may save it for 
another post)