Snape's part in death of Sirius

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 107919

> Neri:
> Potioncat, you don't have an argument with me, you have an 
argument  with Pippin:
> 
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/10778
1 
> 
> 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.

<snip>
>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.<

Pippin:
Isn't it one of the points of OOP that it is sometimes your duty to 
stay put, even if you know your allies are in danger? 

The delay is JKR's fault, not Snape's--her time line has some  
holes in it. What's unaccounted for is the time between five pm, 
when Harry has his vision, and the escape from the DADA office. 
Would it really take five hours to set up the diversion? I can't see 
why, but that's the way the canon crumbles. 

There may be a similar hole in the Ministry battle. Put the Order's 
arrival before 0100 and the battle seems to last inordinately long. 
Put it after 0100 and you have to explain what  the Order or 
Snape were doing all that time. But I can account for three or four 
hours of Snape's time easily enough. 


1700  -- Harry has his vision

1700-2200
The DA clears the corridors for a five minute window in the DADA 
office
Harry speaks to Kreacher at Grimmauld Place
Umbridge ambushes Harry
Umbridge sends Draco for Snape
Snape arrives and is put on probation for not supplying 
veritaserum to Umbridge
Harry and Hermione leave with Umbridge
2200?  --one hour before sunset -- Harry, Hermione and 
Umbridge enter  the forest
						--people are still eating in the Great Hall (!?)
						--Snape contacts the Order for the first time
2210? --Ginny, Luna, Ron and Neville overpower the I-squad 
2300? -- sunset -- Harry leaves the forest via thestral It took  50 
minutes for Harry and Ron to walk from the edge of the forest to 
Aragog's lair in CoS, the same path taken by Harry and 
Hermione with Umbridge, so this accords approximately with my 
estimate of one hour in OOP.
2400? -- (the witching hour) Harry arrives at the Ministry. Can a 
Thestral travel 450 miles an hour? A Firebolt can accelerate to  
175 mph in 10 seconds, presumably its top speed is even 
faster, and a thestral is faster still

0400? -- Harry returns to Hogwarts 

My answer to Neri's challenge needs to account in a logical, 
rational, non negligent way, for   Snape's time.  What was Snape 
doing?

First he contacted the Order.  My guess is he sent a portrait 
message from his quarters in the castle to  Phineas in 
Dumbledore's office, and Phineas then contacted the Order.

Snape could have Phineas check to see if Harry had contacted 
the Order.  Sirius would be positive he hadn't--he didn't use the 
Mirror, did he?  Kreacher would lie, if asked, even to Sirius 
himself.  He's already had to punish himself for wounding 
Buckbeak, anyway.

Snape  does not yet have any reason to think that Harry is on his 
way to the Ministry. Snape is *not* going to  try to explain the 
whole topsecret mindlink business to the Order members at 
second or third hand. Lupin's the only one who might 
understand what he was talking about. Besides the vision is 
*false*; who knows what Voldemort is up to? He's already set up 
one Order member who was caught breaking into the DOM. A 
rescue party would face the same danger, and as far as Snape 
knows there's nobody who needs rescuing. None of this would 
be instantaneous, so the remaining DA members would have 
time to overcome the Slytherins and escape the castle before 
Snape turned his attention back to  what's going on in the DADA 
office.

In GoF and OOP the Slytherins get hexed just after lunchtime, 
and are still hexed when the HEx arrives in London, so the  
scenario  that Snape did nothing and did not find out what 
happened until the hexes wore off and the Slytherins freed 
themselves seems unlikely. 

But Snape had been put on   probation and ordered to leave 
Umbridge's office. If he interfered  again, he could be sacked 
and turned out of the castle.  Snape would have approached with 
caution, as he did in the Shrieking Shack, disabling the stealth 
sensors,  unlocking the door without benefit of Sirius's magic 
knife, and finally discovering the carnage within. He would see 
that Harry, the DA and Umbridge weren't there. Could we allow 
an hour for that? Depends on how good Snape is at 
housebreaking.

He would have to dehex the Slytherins and/or  get them to the 
Hospital Wing before they could tell him anything. That could 
take an hour or two all by itself. He might have to argue with 
Madame Pomfrey about whether they should be allowed to talk 
to him. Then he'd have to make sense of what they were saying. 
He'd have to pretend to be interested in the 'weapon' and not 
particularly interested in saving any Gryffindor skins, or it would 
look suspicious. 

The Slytherins know that Snape and Umbridge are now at odds, 
they know that Draco and Umbridge are not co-operating either, 
and they'll be trying to take advantage of the chaos in their 
clumsy and exasperating way. I imagine Snape wished he hadn't 
been telling Umbridge the truth about not having any veritaserum 
handy, and tried to use his less than Dumbledorean talents at 
legilimency to sort it all out.


Eventually, Snape gathered that the kids went into the forest and 
that the Slytherins hadn't seen them come back. That would be 
when he grew worried. I'd guess that would be about the time 
Harry and co arrived in London. The thestrals are magical, and 
can fly even faster than Firebolts, There's plenty of time for the 
thestrals to get to the Ministry before Snape can deduce what 
happened. 

At once,   Snape  contacted the Order again, this time perhaps by 
Floo, saying that he believed Harry might have been lured to the 
Department of Mysteries by Voldemort. He requested that Sirius 
stay behind to inform Dumbledore, because if Harry did talk to 
someone at Grimmauld Place, Sirius was the one person it 
couldn't have been. Snape himself remained at Hogwarts, which 
was his responsibility. He wouldn't be  Snape if he didn't take  
the opportunity to needle Sirius,  but I'm not sure that has any 
bearing. "Sirius had risked everything, always, to see Harry, to 
help him..."

Presumably the Order couldn't apparate directly to a secure area 
of the Ministry. They'd arrive in the hall of the fountain and have
to travel down to the DoM, overpower any security the Death 
Eaters themselves had set up, and locate Harry, who was no 
longer in the Hall of Prophecy where they might logically expect 
him to be, but in the Death Chamber. 


Pippin