Heroes and Not - Snape's Odds of Winning?

[Steve]

No: HPFGUIDX 145268

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Sherry Gomes" <sherriola at e...>
wrote:
>
> CH3ed:
> ... The end does justify the mean in this case even if we 
> assume DDM!Snape. Or even if it is ESS!Snape, what happened
> on the tower was the best of a rotten thru-and-thru situation.
> The action doesn't end with Snape killing DD or Snape 
> turning his wand on the DEs. ...edited...
>  
> 
> 
> Sherry now:
> 
> ...
> 
> DDM Snape people, ask what should Snape have done? If he didn't
> kill DD, and the effects of the UV kick in, then the death eaters
> would have killed Dumbledore, Harry would have jumped into the
> fray and been killed; death eaters would have overrun the school.
> I ask you, canon please? Do we indeed *know* that is what would 
> have happened?
> 
> ...edited...
>
> Sherry

bboyminn:

This is a very speculative point to be calling for canon on. I could
just as easily turn the tables and ask for canon proving that Snape
would win if he defended Dumbledore and attacked the Death Eaters. 

Certainly you could come up with some vague references that imply that
Snape /might/ have been able to win; he is good at dueling. But then,
of course, we would counter with the Unbreakable Vow. 

I have speculated that if Snape, under more favorable conditions,
simply maintained the intent to kill Dumbledore, he could stave off
the consequences of the Vow indefinitely. However, if he turns and
defends Dumbledore, fighting the DE's in the process, there is no
ambiquity. He has turned against the Vow, and will surely suffer the
consequences. 

On this last point, if we, for the moment, accept Ron's statement that
to break the Vow means death, we must then ask the mechanism of that
death. Would Snape's heart stop and he would drop dead on the spot?
Would Snape get incurable cancer and take a year to die? Or, would he
remain in prefect health except for the unexplained fact that he was
withering away, a circumstance that would cause his eventual death
five or ten years later? Or, maybe at some random point in the
undetermined future, Snape would step from the curb and get hit by a
bus. We don't know this mechanism of death.

But we do know that Snape is out numbers, in a small open space with
no cover from which to fight. Maybe he will win and maybe he won't,
and that is the very reason for not choosing to fight. The odds of
winning are very much against him. To do so would take a huge risk
that has the potential for EXTREMELY DISASTEROUS consequences.

If Snape wins great, but then there is that nasty Vow to content with.
If Snape tries and loses, then Snape, Dumbledore, and Harry are likely
dead, and perhaps even Draco is dead as a result.

True, you are correct, we don't know that Snape can't win, we don't
know that Dumbledore can't help. But I think it is fair to say that
the odds are against that happening. Dumbledore seems too weak to
stand. Snape has to content with the Umbreakable Vow. Harry, with his
'saving people thing', is not likely to stay out of the fight. 

When every choice will have a disasterous outcome, the question then
becomes 'What is the /least/ disasterous choice?'. Disasterous as it
was, scary as it was to lose Dumbledore; I believe that Snape made the
least disasterous choice.

So, in the end, it's not a matter of whether Snape /could/ win if he
chose to fight, it's a question of what are the odds of him winning
under those circumstances? I say, if Snape fights, he has chosen a
course of action that has an extremely high potential for a
cataclysmicly disasterous outcome. 

I never thought I would see the day when I would defend Snape, but
here we are.

Steve/bboyminn