Snape the spy

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 88094

"as_ziggy" wrote:
<snip>
> I read a few fanfics in which Snape not only had spied for Dumbledore 
> but is still spying (up until Voldemort's defeat or other 
> circumstances where Snape's secret has to be exposed).  I began to 
> wonder at the plausibility of it because I think there are a few 
> clues that Voldemort might have picked up on that Snape was loyal to 
> Dumbledore and not himself.
> 
> One clue occurs in the Philosopher's Stone.  Wouldn't Voldemort have 
> suspected that Snape may have been loyal to the other side when Snape 
> was constantly going out of his way to stop Quirrel from getting the 
> stone?  I'm sure it wouldn't have been difficult to notice from the 
> back of Quirrel's head.  And even if he hadn't always hidden in 
> Quirrel's turban, Quirrel would have at least had to explain why he 
> hadn't gotten the stone yet.
> 
> Another clue would be that Snape did not attend the Death Eater 
> meeting in GoF when Voldemort returned and broke his followers out of 
> Azkaban.  Missing such an important meeting, I imagine, would be a 
> huge offence and something that Voldemort noticed and should probably 
> be suspicious about.
> 
> In any case any suspicion on Voldemort's part should have made it 
> impossible for Snape to continue to spy for the Order.  I think the 
> spying would have ended with Voldemort's first fall.  If Snape did 
> any spying after that it would probably only be on the Death Eaters 
> who didn't get tossed in Azkaban and who still believed he was one of 
> them.
> 
> So now I'm wondering what you all think about Snape's spying career.  
> Speak out =)
> 
> Anna

Hi, Anna. I know that Steve has already responded to your post with a
rather complex triple agent theory. I have a simpler explanation:
Snape's loyalty is to Dumbledore and Voldemort knows it but has (or
had) his own reasons for letting him live for awhile.

Leaving the turban for a moment, let me skip to your second point. I
think that rather than risking death by going to Voldemort directly to
explain his absence from the graveyard, Snape went to Lucius Malfoy,
his old friend and continuing contact, and explained to him that you
can't apparate from Hogwarts and he couldn't leave the Tri-Wizard
Tournament without raising Dumbledore's suspicions. Malfoy, who
continues to trust Snape because of the reports that Draco gives him
of Snape's treatment of his students, passed the information along to
Voldemort. I think that Voldemort finds a connection between Malfoy
and Snape useful and hopes to learn something about Hogwarts, Harry,
and Dumbledore by maintaining the connection even though he knows that
Snape is a spy and (in his view) a traitor to the DEs.  In my view,
Voldemort wouldn't pass on this suspicion to Malfoy because Malfoy has
to trust Snape (at least to the degree that Malfoy trusts anyone) for
his role as Snape's contact to work.

As for the turban incident, whether Snape knew that Quirrell was
acting as an agent for Voldemort or not, trying to prevent Quirrell
from obtaining the stone was an act of loyalty to Dumbledore which
Voldemort would see as an act of enmity toward himself. Combine that
incident with Snape's absence from the graveyard and Snape's
disloyalty becomes a fact in Voldemort's mind. When he refers to Snape
as "one, who I believe has left us forever," he does not mean "I think
but I'm not sure." Notice that "I believe" is not set off with
quotation marks.  It's part of a statement of belief like "I believe
that God exists" or "I believe that capital punishment is unjust."
Beliefs of that sort have the strength of fact in the believer's mind.
"He will be killed, of course," is not a conditional statement (if I'm
right and he's guilty, he'll be killed). The guilt and the death are
both established as truth in Voldemort's mind. (Fortunately Voldemort
is not a prophet and we don't have to take Snape's death as a given!)

So, to summarize, I think you're right that Voldemort knows perfectly
well which side Snape is on, and it isn't his. I also think that
Lucius Malfoy, up until the MoM incident, did *not* know of Snape's
defection and thought he was a faithful DE placed by Voldemort at
Hogwarts as a spy before Voldemort's fall. Now that Malfoy is in
Azkaban he may have other ideas. At any rate, the old Snape/Malfoy
relationship will be difficult if not impossible to sustain and
Snape's role as spy will be much more difficult and dangerous than it
was in previous books. Fortunately, Snape is extremely intelligent and
has the advantage of being able to think like a dark wizard (as well
as having every spell and potion known to wizardkind at his command),
so I think we can count on some surprises from him in Book 6. We can
also count on his survival, at least until Book 7, where JKR has
promised he'll do something big--possibly a direct encounter with
Voldemort in which he repays his life debt to James by saving Harry.
Whether Snape himself will survive that encounter, I don't know.

Carol