Secret Agent!Snape [Was "a question"]

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 91166

> Jim:
> >> Voldemort doesn't impress as the kind of mastermind that 
> lets himself  be talked out of much.  Snape, even though he has 
> Occlumency,  wouldn't be accepted unless he lowered the 
> barriers so that Voldemort could look directly into his mind.<<
> 
Pippin:
> I don't think Occlumency works like that. From what Snape says, 
> the  barriers erected by  the skilled Occlumens are 
> undetectable...all the legilimens sees is a sort of mental 
> Potemkin village. Voldemort can poke around all he wants and 
> never learn anything Snape doesn't want him to know. 
> 
Carol:
I agree. Occlumency doesn't block access to all memories--that would
be too obvious. It just block memories that would contradict the lie
the Occlumens is telling or that, for whatever reason, the occlumens
doesn't want the legilimens to see. So if Snape is dealing directly
with LV, occlumency would protect him. (I happen to think that Snape
walks around with the windows to his mind habitually closed so that no
one could guess his thought--that's why his eyes look lie a dark,
empty passageway, but that wouldn't work with LV. He'd have to allow
LV inside his mind, to "poke around," as Pippin puts it, but with
specific memories hidden. Snape needs his own pensieve to make the job
less dangerous still.)

IMO, however, LV did think Snape was working against him with Quirrell
because LV doesn't trust anybody and he who is not with me is against
me, in his view. He would also have suspected Snape's loyalty because
he wasn't in the graveyard. However, Snape could have convinced Lucius
that he didn't know LV was in Quirrell's head and he was only trying
to stop Quirrell himself and given plausible explanations for his
absence from the graveyard. If Lucius (not an occlumens that we know
of) went to LV believing Snape's story, LV would see that Lucius
wasn't lying and would, possibly, believe it, too. Once that had
happened, Snape could get his news of the DEs directly from LV (he
would know when a meeting was planned because his dark mark was
planned) as well as indirectly from Lucius, and he would have the
excuse of having to be at Hogwarts and being unable to apparate for
not attending those meetings during the school year. (He would have
had to present a similar false story about the Sirius/Pettigrew
situation, but knowing Snape, he could do it.)

 Jim: 
 >> In the Muggle world of espionage, Snape is completely 
 "blown," and  would never be able to "go operational" again.  
 Snape's work is done some other way. Nothing he gleaned 
 directly from LV could be trusted, given the high probablity it's 
 disinformation designed to trap the Good Guys and smoke out 
 Snape himself. <snip> Someone suggested he may have a relationship
with someone like  Narcissa Malfoy <<
> 
Pippin:
Umm,  all that buildup at the end of GoF, Dumbledore's 
apprehension, Snape's pale face and glittering eyes, "if you are 
prepared" was about Snape going to confront Narcissa or something?

Carol:
I have to agree. He was either going to the DEs, probably Lucius, or
to LV himself. I think Lucius in this case, but that's only my
feeling, not a point I can support with evidence.

Pippin: 
If Snape is the "one who I believe has left me forever...he will be 
killed" then he had little to lose by going to Voldemort directly. 
You can't retire from the Death Eaters. If he didn't manage to 
convince Voldemort that he'd never left the fold, it'd only mean 
dying a little sooner than he would have anyway.
 
As for how Snape can conceal where his loyalties lie, this is the 
wizarding world. An entire civilization has kept itself secret for 
350 years. The wizards are *good* at keeping people from 
finding things out.  Snape's memories are shielded by 
Occlumency, by the Pensieve, and perhaps by the Secret Keeper 
spell as well.
 
Carol:
I do think he's the one LV thought (rightly) had left him forever. He
can't be the loyal servant at Hogwarts (Crouch) or the coward who fled
(Karkaroff)--those positions are clearly taken by other people. And he
can't have been in the graveyard. There wasn't time to leave the
Tri-Wizard tournament, grab a hood and robe, run to Hogsmeade,
apparate, watch the events in the graveyard, disapparate, hide the
mask and robe, and return to the tournament in time to help DD unmask
the imposter. And he could have presented all that as a plaausible
excuse to Malfoy, as I've indicated above.

Otherwise, I agree with you that Snape, with the help and knowledge of
DD, can hide from the DEs and even from LV himself where his loyalties
lie. Not all wizards could do it, but Snape is not an ordinary wizard.
He's a superb occlumens, he can think like a Death Eater, and he's
very, very intelligent. OTOH, after the events in the DoM, his main
contact is in Azkaban and he'll probably need to work directly with
LV. And if LV suspects that he had anything to do with the Order
members and Dumbledore showing up, then the dangers he's been facing
have just increased tenfold. If JKR hadn't told us to watch for him in
Book 7, I'd be worried about losing him in Book 6. (And, yes, I do
care very much about Snape.)

Carol, who wishes that Fred hadn't put "Secret Agent Man" into her head!