Mind-linked!Snape (Part II)

[nkafkafi]

No: HPFGUIDX 116370


(Continued from post 116369. Numbers in square brackets refer to notes
and canon points in the end of the post)



***************************************
"You are neither special nor important,
and it is not up to you to find out
what the Dark Lord is saying to his
Death Eaters"

(Snape to Harry)
***************************************



Our theory begins when a certain dark wizard decided to become
immortal [1]. Not an easy task, that one, but our wizard was quite
accomplished. His first shot at the problem was very impressive
considering he was only fifteen at the time – he managed to record his
personality and memories in a magic diary. Whoever wrote in the diary
and conversed with it for some time would be possessed by this
personality, and finally die giving life to it. This was indeed some
kind of immortality, since the diary could be kept for a long time (50
years, as it happened) and when the new body grew old he could simply
pass the diary to a new victim, and so on. However, it appears that
there were certain technical difficulties with the idea, since our
young wizard had abandoned this early experiment. Perhaps the problem
was that the new body would always remain with the limited knowledge
and powers of the original diary, a compromise that our dark wizard
certainly would not accept. He was going to live forever AND gain all
the powers he could. Besides, when in the diary phase he would be
completely vulnerable and depended on the next host or on a middleman,
and our wizard wasn't inclined to trust.

And so, after the small matter of murdering his father and
grandparents (this appears to be a personal business and nothing to do
with the noble quest of conquering Death) our wizard went abroad to
study the Dark Arts for many years. He became the greatest dark wizard
of his time, and took himself the proper title of Lord Voldemort [2].
He especially studied the art of possessing, and learned enough so he
could easily take over small animals and perhaps even humans. However,
there is a big difference between controlling someone as a proxy while
still living in your own body [3] and transferring yourself completely
to another body. Only the second implies true immortality - the
ability to exchange an old body like a worn shirt for a new and young
body. But it also means severing the tie between you and your original
body for good, and practically becoming a spirit. In other words, you
have to forfeit your Humanity.

We don't know when exactly did this take place, probably sometime
during these long years of his disappearance, that Voldemort
consciously made The Choice and successfully completed the experiment
of trading his humanity for immortality. From that moment even an AK
could only destroy his body, as it did in Godric's Hollow, but his
spirit would just be released and keep on existing without it.   



*************TBAY mode ON *************
(skip to OFF if you can't stand TBAY)

"Now wait just a minute," interrupted Faith. "It is indeed canon that
Voldemort conducted an experiment that protected him from being killed
by the AK, and it IS canon that he has the ability to possess people,
but this business of trading his humanity for immortality, where is
your canon for THAT?"

"Well," said Neri, "we do have this one." He waved his wand towards
the main sail of Mind-Linked!Snape, and words appeared on it:

---------------------------------
SS/PS Ch. 4:
"Some say he died. Codswallop, in my opinion. Dunno if he had enough
human left in him to die"
----------------------------------

"THIS is your canon?" said Faith in disbelief. "Hagrid? How would he
know? And even HE is not sure about it". 

"True," admitted Neri. "But I thought that trading humanity for
immortality is a rather powerful metaphor".

"So you've built this ship on a metaphor," said Faith and gripped her
life belt even harder.

Neri raised his eyebrows at her. "I expected YOU to have more respect
for metaphors" he commented.

"Oh, I see. Now we're getting personal," grumbled Faith under her nose.

"Can I continue? Thanks." Captain Neri double-tapped his wand again
 
*************TBAY mode OFF *************



You can imagine Voldemort's frustration when he discovered that, even
after taking this crucial step, his objective had eluded him. True, he
was now practically immortal, but for some reason he could not keep
his powers with him when leaving his body and moving into a new host
[4]. Moreover, the hosts did not respond well to being possessed and
died after a short time [5]. It turned out that an additional
ingredient was necessary for success [6].

We don't know how many additional years passed until Voldemort thought
of a way around this new difficulty. It seems that the way was to
create a special mind link with the host before the actual takeover.
Through this link all Voldemort's powers would be first transferred to
the victim. Only after the victim would have these powers as his own,
the actual possessing would take place. This implied that the takeover
would be a very risky business: If the victim realized in mid-process
what was going on, he could use Voldemort's powers against him before
being possessed. In order to prevent such an unfortunate result the
victim should either consent to the transfer, or be a small baby who
would not understand what is done to him and what powers he is given.
But this difficulty was the lesser problem. The real problem was that,
despite years of efforts and studies, Voldemort could not find out how
such a link might be created. 



*************TBAY mode ON *************

"That last paragraph has no canon to support it," Faith interrupted
again. "Not even a metaphor this time."

"It follows rather logically from the previous paragraph," said Neri.
"And JKR did say that the steps that Voldemort took to guard himself
against death would be very difficult to guess [7], which implies that
the clues we currently have regarding them are very scarce."

"An original excuse for sloppy theorizing," muttered Faith, but didn't
argue further. Neri pointedly double-tapped his wand again.

*************TBAY mode OFF *************



In the meantime our dark wizard had made much better progress with his
other project, which was conquering the Wizarding World and
exterminating all m**bloods. He gained a lot of political power and
many followers. Most of them were expendable thugs and henchmen, but
one of them was a young and talented Dark Arts wiz by the unlikely
name of Severus Snape. Voldemort taught Snape Legilimency and
Occlumency, meaning to use him as a spy on his hated enemy, the white
wizard Albus Many Middle Names Dumbledore. Perhaps in one of these
training sessions he explained to young Snape the problem of the mind
link, most probably posing it as an interesting puzzle in Dark Arts
espionage and hiding from him that this was a crucial key to
immortality. To his extreme surprise the young wiz discovered the
solution to the problem that had eluded Voldemort for many years. 

After swallowing a lot of humiliation, Voldemort pretended to praise
the little wiz for his beginner's luck and suggested a first
experiment: the two of them will create such a special link between
their minds and test if it can be used for sneaking under the defenses
of an expert Legilimens and Occlumens such as DD. The young, naïve
Severus was of course extremely proud and grateful for the privilege
of linking minds with the greatest dark wizard of all times, but
Voldemort had a different plan altogether. He was going to make young
Snape his long-term host, the first in an endless chain of future
hosts that will give him true immortality. A side benefit of this
would be getting rid of someone who by now, without realizing it, knew
far too much.


*************TBAY mode ON*************

"I didn't say anything," said Faith.

"You were doing it very loudly," said Neri. "I admit I don't have
canon for this part. It's an assumption that will help solve several
mysteries."

"Of course," said Faith.

"I've embellished it a bit with some small details that I've just made
up, and they aren't actually necessary for the theory," clarified
Neri. "We really don't have any way to know how exactly Snape came to
be mind-linked with Voldy, but I wanted to show that there is at least
one feasible way it COULD have happened."

"Sure. Please continue." Said Faith innocently.

Neri glared at her, then double-tapped his wand.

*************TBAY mode OFF ************


It is not clear how exactly this experiment had faired. The main
detail for our theory is that a mind link between the two was indeed
formed [8]. It is actually quite possible that the taking over had
succeeded, but perhaps Voldemort still wasn't certain enough about the
success to make the final move. He wanted to be completely sure,
before taking the irreversible step of leaving his old body behind for
good, that his new body doesn't expire on him like all the previous
ones did. So for a time he had maintained his old body while keeping
Snape as an additional or a part-time host, unable to resist him. He
had probably amused himself during this time by picking Snape's mind
apart and rearranging it in interesting ways [9].

What saved Severus was perhaps the news, brought by some spy from the
Hog'd Head, that the great-great-granddaughter of a well-known seer
had made a prophecy to DD. It appeared that a child was to be born at
the end of July who will have a mysterious power that will enable him
to vanquish the Dark Lord. This gave Voldemort a pause. The child
himself was a mere annoyance. He could be located and eliminated. But
the implication that there is a power in the world that can vanquish
the immortal Dark Lord was what really bugged him [10]. Does this mean
that he is NOT death-proof after all? He raked his brain and couldn't
think what power it might be. Then he had a brilliant idea: Now that
he was sure he could create the mind link and transfer himself to any
body, why not transferring himself into the very child pointed by the
prophecy? Then he would keep all his powers AND gain the mysterious
power of the child [11].

So Voldemort returned to his old body and discarded Snape, which he
didn't need anymore. He deleted his powers from Snape's mind and
erased Snape's memories of this whole incident, and in a second
thought sent him to spy on DD according to the original plan, not so
much because he cared about what Snape will discover at Hogwarts, but
more just to get him out of the way. Even if DD uncover Snape, then
this would just occupy him and distract him from Voldemort's real
objective. Voldemort now had his immortality project well planned
before him, and conquering the world could wait several years. He had
all eternity for that, after all. It was easy to narrow his search
after the child to only two candidates, then decide which one of them
is the more likely. Locating the family proved more difficult, but
finally his agent in the Order had managed to get that information
also, and everything was now ready for Operation Immortality at
Godric's Hollow. 

But Voldemort had missed (as usual) one critical detail: he had
learned from Snape the practicalities of creating the mind link, but
he never really bothered to fully understood the theory behind it, and
so he failed to realize that the mind link is permanent. He thought
that by erasing Snape's memory about the incident he had covered his
tracks completely, but in the meantime Snape, now trying to infiltrate
into Hogwarts as a teacher, has been receiving impressions, memories
and emotions through the link, and he quickly deduced what had
happened to him. Having experienced Occlumency and Legilimency with
the Dark Lord, he immediately realized that the mind link is
bi-directional, so his own thoughts can also wander through the link
and reach Voldemort's mind [12]. And he knew that the moment Voldemort
will sense Snape's thoughts and realize that the link is still open
and his own thoughts are leaking to Snape, then Snape is toast.
Voldemort wouldn't even have to send his henchmen. All he had to do is
possess Snape one last time through the link and finish him off in two
seconds. Nowhere in the world would be far enough to run away and hide
from such an attack. 

And so, Snape's only chance to stay alive was to block the link the
best he could, control his thoughts to the outmost, empty his mind of
all emotion, put even his dreams at night under the strictest
discipline (or perhaps he had to stop sleeping and dreaming
altogether) and still continue to live in fear every second of his
life that one unguarded thought will slip through the link and reach
Voldemort. And controlling his emotions was even harder when pondering
how the Dark Lord, which he had admired and loyally served, had
deceived him and abused him and discarded him like a used tissue.
Snape wanted release from mind control and he wanted revenge, and
there was only one person who might be able to help him to achieve
these. So one day he went to DD and told him everything.

**************TO BE CONTINUED***************



Notes and canon 
---------------

[1]. GoF, Ch. 33: "You know my goal - to conquer death"

[2] The meaning of the name Voldemort – "flight from death" – also
relates to his goal of achieving immortality.

[3] Voldemort probably used Nagini as a proxy when possessing her at
the MoM.

[4] We can deduce that Voldemort couldn't simply move into another
body with all his powers, because as Vapormort he couldn't maintain
his powers with him, except for the power to possess others (GoF, Ch.
33: "Only one power remained to me. I could possess the bodies of
others"), and he wasn't able to get his powers back by simply invading
into the body of another wizard. It seems that magical powers, like
physical powers, are attached to the body rather than to the spirit. 

[5] When Vapormort possessed small animals they died quickly on him
(GoF, Ch. 33: "I sometimes inhabited animals 
and my possession of
them shortened their lives; none of them lasted long"). When he took
hold of Quirrell he didn't gain his powers back and could maintain
Quirrell alive only by consuming unicorn blood.

[6] It is more-or-less canon that Voldemort needed more than one step
to achieve immortality. He tells us that "one or more" of his
experiments had worked (GoF, Ch. 33). Interestingly, when JKR recently
posed the question of how Voldemort survived the AK she exactly
repeated the words "one or more"
(http://www.jkrowling.com/textonly/news_view.cfm?id=80). Also,
Voldemort uses "steps" in plural when saying (GoF, Ch. 33): "They, who
knew the steps I took, long ago, to guard myself against mortal death"

[7]JKR said that the steps Voldemort took would be very difficult to
guess (http://www.jkrowling.com/textonly/news_view.cfm?id=80): "You
should be wondering what he did to make sure that he did not die — I
will put it that way. I don't think that it is guessable. It may be —
someone could guess it — but you should be asking yourself that question."

[8] Snape to Harry during Occlumency: "You are neither special nor
important, and it is not up to you to find out what the Dark Lord is
saying to his Death Eaters" (OotP, Ch. 26). Snape saying that Harry is
not special and not important seems preposterous, considering that
they both know Harry is mind-linked with Voldemort. The only way I can
interpret it so it would make sense is as "you are not the only person
with a mind link to the Dark Lord". Note also that Snape, just prior
to saying this, had immediately recognized the scene of Rockwood
kneeling in front of Voldemort in Harry's mind and didn't show the
slightest surprise, merely annoyance that his poor student was not
able to guard his dreams.

[9] OotP, Ch. 24:
"Then you will find yourself easy prey for the Dark Lord!" said Snape
savagely. "Fools who wear their hearts proudly on their sleeves, who
cannot control their emotions, who wallow in sad memories and allow
themselves to be provoked so easily — weak people, in other words —
they stand no chance against his powers!"

Snape being so emotional here suggests that he himself was such a
"fool who wears his hearts proudly on his sleeve" and paid the full
price for it.

[10] In the graveyard scene in GoF (Ch. 33) Voldemort says about his
DEs: "perhaps they believed a still greater power could exist, one
that could vanquish even Lord Voldemort
 ". The words "power" and
"vanquish" here clearly relate to the first sentence of the prophecy.
It was the power pointed by the prophecy that had really bothered
Voldemort, not a small baby.

[11] Note that Voldemort didn't send a squad of DEs to eliminate baby
Harry, but went there in person. Moreover, he didn't even take the DEs
squad with him as backup. Why? For some reason it was very important
for him to be alone with the child. 

[12] It is Snape who first explains to Harry that the mind link is
bi-directional. (OotP, Ch. 24): "The important point is that the Dark
Lord is now aware that you are gaining access to his thoughts and
feelings. He has also deduced that the process is likely to work in
reverse; that is to say, he has realised that he might be able to
access your thoughts and feelings in return."