Who's to Blame/Ending Occulmency/Long

[nkafkafi]

No: HPFGUIDX 100619

Wow! I've been sitting back the whole day enjoying the match. 
Impressive debating skills by all participants. Applauses to Alla, 
Annemehr, Kneasy, Arya, Pippin and especially K for supplying her 
opponent with the canon she needed. Here is my own contribution.

I think it is convenient to distinguish here between two different 
questions: 

1. Who's to blame?
 
2. Who's responsible? 

The blame question is mainly a question of feelings and emotions, 
both for the characters and (no kidding!) for the group members. All 
I'll say about this is that Harry certainly blames himself, much more 
than any of the "Snape apologists" blames him. If any Snape fan needs 
canon ammunition, just open OotP in the famed Ch. 37. (DD's and 
Harry's end-of-the-year talk), and you'll get all the confirmation 
you need right out of Harry's own words and thoughts. And that was 
even *before* Harry found out about the two-way mirror. Harry blaming 
Snape is an emotional backlash. He just can't live with so much 
guilt, so he vents some of it by blaming Snape.

The second question, who's responsible, is a completely different 
question. It was dissected to death by many investigation committees 
throughout history, and the bottom line usually boils down to this:

If there was a major screw up, the high command is responsible.

(and the bigger the screw up, the higher is the command held 
responsible for it)

Even if you can precisly trace the causality chain leading to the 
failure, and it turns out it was all the fault of a single private 
not doing what he was told to do, the high command is still 
responsible. Because they should have avoided a situation in which 
the fate of the whole war depends of the actions of a single private.

Rank, knowledge and responsibility come together. They cannot be 
separated. You can't be held responsible if you aren't given the 
authority and knowledge. If you are given rank and knowledge, you'll 
be responsible for both success and failure.

At the bottom of the command chain stands the simple private, who 
frequently isn't informed about anything. He can be held responsible 
for only one thing: refusing to follow orders. But Harry wasn't even 
a private. He was officially a noncombatant. He asked to enlist in 
the beginning of the year and was flat out denied because of his 
young age. After the attack on Arthur, it became more and more 
obvious that this official status was absurd. Harry was conscripted 
to this war before he was even born. He was defending a critical 
front position. High command always knew that. Harry wasn't told. 
Only after Christmas, when he was already under enemy's attack, he 
was allowed some knowledge about the true situation. It was very 
limited knowledge, clearly not enough to function in this front 
position. He wasn't even told what are the enemy's real objectives. 
His rank was not officially updated even to a "private" status. He 
was told by Snape "the HEADMASTER wants me to teach you Occlumency 
this term". The way Harry was led to understand it, it was not DD the 
supreme commander appointing officer Snape as Harry's direct 
commander for carrying out a critical mission for the Order. It was 
the headmaster appointing a teacher for teaching Harry a skill that 
is important only for Harry's own safety. And unfortunately it was 
the teacher whom Harry the least trusted regarding his own safety.

Snape, who did know what was the true situation and how critical the 
mission was, continued to maintain this false impression by 
immediately establishing his usual teacher/student relationship with 
Harry, by refusing to give Harry any information about the DoM 
visions, and by flatly telling Harry that he is "neither special nor 
important". Well, lying to the privates about the situation and the 
mission is a celebrated military tradition. No investigation 
committee would hold a commander to blame for this. The question 
isn't if it was nice to lie to Harry, but weather it was productive 
for achieving the mission. It was not. If Snape couldn't see it, then 
DD at least should have known that the best way to make Harry learn 
Occlumency was to tell him that the lives of the Order members and 
perhaps the whole WW depend on this. DD didn't tell him. Snape didn't 
tell him. 

And so Harry found himself in the absurd situation of fighting a war 
while his direct command refuses to give him the needed information 
or even acknowledge that he is a combatant, and his connection with 
both his supreme commander and HQ almost completely lost. Being 
Harry, he didn't sit on his hands. By that time he was already the 
commander of his own underground resistance force (which was getting 
quiet support from high command) and conducting his own line of 
investigation regarding the enemy's objectives. And Snape seemed to 
be in the way rather than helping. Then there was an emergency 
involving Harry's best friend and Harry acted as a friend rather than 
a soldier (because nobody told him he IS a soldier). This was a big 
mistake, and nearly lost the whole war. Getting out of this with 
Sirius the only casuality was sheer dumb luck.  
 
Who's responsible? The answer seems quite simple to me. There was a 
major screw up. DD was the supreme commander. Snape was the direct 
commander in the field. They knew what was the situation. Harry 
wasn't even in. Therefore they are responsible.

Neri