[HPforGrownups] Re: How does Snape get away with it?

[Kagome Shikon Seeker]

No: HPFGUIDX 83301

From: evil_sushi2003 [mailto:evil_sushi2003 at hotmail.com]

But your point brings up a question, why is Voldy keeping Snape on,
when we are led to believe in GoF that he is aware of losing Snape?

I think that Snape is definitely the one who V is referring to here,
as I don't think JK would have put that in for the sake of it.

Kagome:

No, but we don't ~know~ that it's Snape he's referring to.  He simply says,
"One I have lost forever, and one who is too cowardly to return."  But
although you assume (at least, I did for a long time) that the one "lost" is
Snape, and the cowardly one is Karkaroff, it might not be so.  We figured
out later that the loyal one was Crouch Jr., although at the time I read it,
I had assumed he had meant Snape.

What if the one "lost" is Karkaroff, and the cowardly one is Bagman?
(Ironically, this is what I had assumed when first reading that passage,
before I knew that Snape was NOT the loyal one at Hogwarts.)  Or what if one
of those refers to someone else, someone maybe hinted at earlier, but never
confirmed?  Snape ~could~ be one of the many DE's hidden under cowls who
never speaks and whose face we never see, since LV doesn't refer to each of
them individually.  We don't really know for certain.  Especially since JKR
specifically had LV skip over many of the DE's and say nothing to them,
which gives us plenty of leeway.

I don't believe LV's statement here is a red herring, but I do think it is
meant to fool us.