Snape not saying "Voldy"

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 109320

SSSusan wrote:
> These ideas are helpful in understanding why Snape might not be 
> willing to say "Voldemort" and why he isn't comfortable with others 
> around him doing so.
> 
> I still have a question, though.  If we agree that, for whatever 
> reason, Snape won't say "Voldemort," why does he still continue to 
> use the term "Dark Lord" instead of "He Who Must Not Be Named" 
> or "You Know Who"?  Doesn't "The Dark Lord" imply more respect or 
> reverence for Voldy than we'd like to see Snape offering up?

Carol responds:
For once I have a short answer. :-) "He Who Must Not Be Named" is
pompous and cumbersome, whereas "The Dark Lord" is short and to the
point, conveying a sense that Voldemort is dangerous, which I think
Snape wants Harry and the other students need to realize more fully.
(Harry has defeated LV so often that he seems to have lost that
necessary sense of what the resurrected Voldemort, with his plans
fully formed and all his armies and weapons in place, might be able to
accomplish. His saying the name must seem to Snape an act of foolish
arrogance worthy of James.)

Second, the term "Dark Lord" suits Snape's rather sinister (and I
think carefully cultivated) image. Can you imagine him saying "You
Know Who"? I can't. And besides, if he's communicating with Lucius
Malfoy as we suspect, he can't slip up and use a term that, say,
McGonagall might use. He has to sound like an ally of the DEs--in
fact, still one of them despite being "stuck" at Hogwarts--and not an
enemy. Above all, IMO, he has to fool his own students, most notably
Draco Malfoy, who would report his suspicions to "Father" in a moment
if he had any. Or would have done so before Lucius got hauled off to
Azkaban.

Carol