Dumbledore: Tom/Snape transference?

[kneazlecat54]

No: HPFGUIDX 135963

Hi, I'm an old poster now using a new sn.  I haven't posted in quite 
a while, but what with Book 6 coming out and the Salem conference on 
the horizon, it's time to get back up to speed!

I wonder if DD decided to trust Snape because he felt guilty about 
his failure to redeem Tom. I think that DD transferred his feelings 
about Tom onto Snape.  DD must have had some regrets about not being 
able to turn Tom to the good, despite all the evidence that Tom was 
a lost cause well before he came to Hogwarts. DD would have hoped 
that his presence and his example (along with others at Hogwarts) 
might have showed Tom that there was a different way to live. But 
Tom never allowed himself to change. 

So when SS came along, DD saw another very gifted student who was 
already deeply immersed in the dark arts and who showed signs of 
being vulnerable to recruitment by the supporters of LV. He was a 
Slytherin, hanging around with a bunch of future DEs and he was a 
sworn enemy of a group of DD's strongest supporters at Hogwarts. He 
was already inventing dark spells of his own (isn't that 
sectusemptra he uses on James in the "worst memory scene, when he 
waves his wand and slashes James's face open?). 

So I would bet that DD kept his eye on Snape during his student 
years. We don't know what happened to Snape right after he left 
Hogwarts, but we do know that within a year he was spying for LV. DD 
must have been terribly saddened by seeing another gifted student 
lost to the dark side. So when Snape came to him and confessed his 
role in the murders at Godric's Hollow, I would bet that DD wanted 
to believe him, to believe that not everyone who is attracted to the 
dark side has to end up there for good. It seems to me that the 
whole confession scenario is so unlikely that DD must have had an 
emotional motive for accepting what's really a pretty lame story. 

Maybe DD hoped that SS was sincere in his confession. But he should 
have known within a week of Harry's arrival at Hogwarts that SS had 
never gotten over his driving hatred of James. And given that 
reality, to trust SS was utmost foolishness. DD was not someone who 
made a habit of allowing his emotions to blind him to reality 
(except in the case of Harry, as he admitted). Yet he stubbornly 
refused to believe what his own eyes told him-that getting revenge 
on James was more important to SS than either DD or LV. And someone 
who's driven by hatred can't be a trustworthy enforcer of good. But 
my guess is that right up to the end, DD wanted to believe that 
redemption is possible. And I think he's right, in theory (we'll see 
about RAB, for instance). He always regretted his inability to save 
Tom Riddle, and so chose to believe in Snape. Sadly, for himself and 
for Harry, he was deceived. 

Kneazlecat54