Conspiracies and re-assessments

[hannahmarder]

No: HPFGUIDX 111956

> Charme:
> >>It's rather like "poor Snape, look how hard his life was" as an 
> excuse for how he later turned out to be a DE, and now supposedly 
is 
> reformed? While I love the complexity of Snape's character, I am 
not 
> fooled by him: he's in it all for himself, unless he does 
something 
> noble to convince me otherwise. As is Peter Pettigrew.<<
> 
> BM:
> I don't think we have enough information to say either way at this 
> point.  Snape may very well be in it all for himself (and JKR is 
> certainly hinting that we're going to find-out more things of an 
> unsavory nature about him).
> 
> Yet, I also have to question why he has taken such great personal 
> risks to whatever end?  Spying for Dumbledore in the past, and 
> whatever he is doing now to find-out what Voldemort is telling his 
> DE's doesn't strike me as the best way for him to go about 
ensuring 
> his own personal safety and well-being, is it?
> 
> Then there's still the unanswered issue of just WHY Dumbledore so 
> strongly trusts Snape.
> 
Not just that, but why does Voldemort trust Snape?  I think that's 
key to the whole mystery of Snape and why he changed sides.  
Voldemort must know that Dumbledore vouched for Snape and claimed he 
was a spy.  He also witnessed via Quirrel Snape's attempts to thwart 
the plot to steal the stone, and to save Harry.  AND Pettigrew 
presumably told him about Severus bursting into the shrieking shack 
to rescue Harry and company from the 'evil death eater' Black.  Yet, 
despite all this damning evidence against him, Voldemort still seems 
to have accepted Snape back into the death-eating fold.  WHY? He's 
hardly the forgiving type, is he?  I've got three theories, I bet 
you can think up others; 
1. Snape isn't a true spy, and still serves Voldemort.  I think this 
is unlikely myself, but it would explain LV's attitude to him.
2. LV knows Snape is a spy, but pretends not to, in order to feed 
false information to the OotP.  Not really any evidence of this yet.
3. LV believes that Dumbledore was lying to protect Snape.  For this 
to be true, LV would need a good reason to think that Dumbledore 
knew Snape was a death eater, but didn't want him exposed.  Could 
Dumbledore and Snape be related? I mean, I've heard theories that 
Dumbledore is related to just about everybody else in the books! We 
know wizard families are all related somewhere along the line.  Note 
that I'm not saying I think that Dumbledore actually DID lie for 
Snape (I don't think he would), rather that LV has a reason to think 
that.

What do you think?