JKR chat--Snape the coward or the one left forever?

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 92956

Earendil:
> I sincerely believe Karkaroff to be the "one who has left forever". 
> He's the only one (as far as we know from the books and as far as I 
> can remember) to have betrayed Voldemort *openly* by giving away 
> names of Deatheaters during his trial - even if it was clearly 
> cowardice. Because of him, Deatheaters were sent to Azkaban. The 
> ones who pretented to have been under an Imperius curse 
> were 'forgiven' by Voldemort. But would he be so indulgent with 
> someone who clearly betrayed his own? Even if Voldemort considers 
> Karkaroff as a coward (which he is) I suppose he would never allow 
> him to come back (or to live very long) considering what he did.
> 
> By giving away the names of fellow Deatheaters Karkaroff condemned 
> himself to never return to the Dark Lord's side. He fled when the 
> scar burned. Because he's a coward, that's for sure. But maybe also 
> because he knows that should he be found by other Deatheaters, he 
> would soon be a dead wizard.
> 
> And this would leave Snape as the coward.

I'm pretty sure that Barty Crouch sent LV an owl telling him that
Karkaroff had left Hogwarts, and he may also have indicated his
suspicions of what he would consider to be Snape's disloyalty. Anyway,
you might want to go upthread and read the other posts on this topic.
I'm not going to present my arguments again for fear of annoying the
List Elves (not to mention the list members who've already read them),
but there's quite a lot of discussion on this subject if you're
interested. Just use the search function or follow the thread "up" to
the original post. (If you have trouble figuring out how to do that,
I'd be willing to hunt up the original post for you. Or you can ask a
List Elf, which might be better.)

Carol