Snape's part in death of Sirius

nkafkafi nkafkafi at yahoo.com
Tue Jul 27 16:16:03 UTC 2004


No: HPFGUIDX 107875

> Potioncat:
> One flaw I see in your timelines (both very good, but I snipped for 
> space) is that some of the events overlap.

Neri:
No overlap that I can see. The terms that appear to be overlapping 
are with opposite signs. Just draw on paper three parallel timelines 
(Harry's, Snape's and the Order members') and you'll see it 
immediately. 

>  The other is that we 
> don't know how long the trip to London took.  The train takes 
hours, 
> but Harry is thinking that he is going faster than he ever has 
> before.
>

Neri:
It should be several hundred miles from Scotland to London. If they 
did it in only 2 hrs it would still be much faster than Harry ever 
flew before (knight bus' quantum leaps notwithstanding).
 
> The battle between the DA and DEs does not seem to last very long, 
> but I couldn't begin to guess how long it actually is.  Then the 
> Order shows up and it continues for a while.  Then DD sends Harry 
to 
> Hogwarts and Harry watches the dawn. How long is a night in 
Hogwarts 
> in June?
>

Neri:
My guess would be around 6 hrs. Maybe only 5 from last twilight to 
first light of dawn. Events from the take-off-from-the-forest until 
Harry's-back-to-DD-office should add up to this amount.
 
> <snip>
> Even if the fight in her office had made noise, who would have 
> noticed or cared? I would think the castle was pretty noisy by this 
> time. Students  had been warned away from the area near her 
office.  
> Most wouldn't care if something happened to her and 
might "overlook" 
> the sound if they did hear it.
> 
> Snape finds out Black is safe.  He presumes Harry is with 
Umbridge.  
> Harry once did detention with her from supper until midnight. When 
> would Snape miss his students?  If he spends as much time in the 
> Slytherin common room, as McGonagall does in the Gryffindor common 
> room, then he wouldn't know about his students until they worked 
> themselves free and came for help.
> 

Neri:
Potioncat, you don't have an argument with me, you have an argument 
with Pippin:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/107781 

Either it is the on-top-of-it-all, the-last-defender-of-Hogwarts 
Snape, or it is sits-in-his-office-and-doesn't-know-bout-nothing 
Snape. You can't have it both ways.

> At that point (whenever that is) he finds out they left the 
castle.  
> I still don't think he has any reason to think that Harry could get 
> to the MoM.  Or perhaps this is the point that he contacts the 
> Order, because he finds out that Umbridge and Harry left a "long 
> time" ago.  He starts searching the Forest after he contacts the 
> Order.
>

Neri:
The problem starts when Snape contacts the Order the first time. He 
already knows that Harry believes in Sirius being hostage at the DoM 
enough to break into Umbridge's office. At this point, is it possible 
for Snape not to suspect that Harry had a mind contact with the Dark 
Lord? Snape already knows about three such cases, two of them that he 
personally saw in Harry's mind. Yet he tells HQ nothing about it. He 
only inquires if Sirius is there. Then he either doesn't bother to 
check about Harry's situation, or he finds out that Harry went to the 
most dangerous place around, and instead of notifying HQ immediately 
he waits several (critical) hours into the night doing absolutely 
nothing.

Was he delaying on purpose? I personally don't believe he was. Was he 
acting responsibly? You decide.
 
> But still, I ask, does anything in canon indicate that Snape was 
> delaying in JKR's mind?  If he was, then I would think it will come 
> up in Book 6 or 7.  But this reminds me of SS/PS.  I once asked 
> where Snape was while the Trio were working their way through the 
> Tasks. Someone worked out an explanation.  And, for the kids to be 
> the heroes, they have to be able to pull things over on the adults.

Neri:
In SS/PS there wasn't any discussion in the book about what Snape was 
doing during the time and how did it affect the outcome. There is 
definitely a discussion about it in OotP.

JKR's mind? There is perhaps not much indication that Snape was 
delaying in JKR's mind. OTOH there is also not much indication that, 
in JKR's mind, Snape is a responsible man who gives a fig about what 
happens to the blasted Potter, or to any Gryffindor. On the face of 
it, Snape appears throughout canon as a man full of hate, who is 
governed by his emotions rather than by his responsibilities. Now, if 
the Snape fans claim this is all Harry's limited and biased point-of-
view, and want to pick canon inside out to prove that Snape is 
actually a rational and responsible man, well that's OK by me. It's 
actually a lot of fun. Please explain Snape's actions and timing in 
the above case.

Neri






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