DD/LV Chess Snape matters, and Endgame scenarios.

[bleckybecs]

No: HPFGUIDX 124418


Vaulky earlier:
And I want to know why Snape keeps turning up as a black piece.

Vaulky (last post) (last post? - no no-one has died!):
In PS/SS the move made on the King is represented by Quirrel 
advancing on the stone, He advances quickly, through diagon-alley to 
dead end, a Bishop.
He takes two more steps to get to the King. (snip) Dumbledore 
tempted the Bishop closer by moving out of striking range and the 
Bishop takes the bait, "surprise" right into the path of Harry. He 
is then trapped, the Bishop is taken from the board in a surprise 
backwards jump by the DD piece..

Becky:
So far, in total agreement

Vaulky:
Now as for Snape, the reason I see him as a Black Knight is because 
of the moves we see him make. The Halloween Troll for example: After 
the troll is released (Black move), the pieces moving are Harry, 
Ron, Quirrel and Snape. Harry and Ron are both WhitePieces moving 
once each to disarm the situation, which leaves *two black moves*. 
One is Quirrel, so Snapes move should logically therefore be a 
BlackPiece too. (and it certainly doesn't seem to be a move 
instigated by DD)

Becky:
Surprise, surprise, now I'm not!

If we are looking at this whole thing as *purely* chess (which, if I 
read you correctly, you are), then this isn't necessarily the case. 
I have a couple of reasons.
1 - Black doesn't need to move twice at this point (even though I 
think he does). The moves may simply read white, black, white.
2 - If you assume that black needs to move twice, there is no reason 
at all why it can't be the same piece that moves twice (as you show 
in your next paragraph). After all, it seems that he does. We know 
Quirrell let the troll in, and we know he then moved again by using 
that as his cover for going to see what was guarding the stone (see 
PS `The Man With Two Faces` pg.210).

However, I see Snape in a white move. I see Harry and Ron moving 
*together* as white move 1 and Snape moving to head Quirrell off as 
move 2. I know we nowhere see DD ask for this move, but can you 
possibly imagine LV asking for Quirrell to be stopped from working 
out how to get the stone? Again, I come back to that being totally 
ambiguous. I simply choose for SS to be white as I interpret it.

Vaulky:
Again in COS Lucius, Draco, Snape, Hagrid, Hermione, Ron, Harry we 
have an overload of white pieces here, Lucius moves twice, which 
leaves one more black move to even it out, unless we can imagine a 
ESE!HRH we have to assume that Snape did it, because Draco only 
moves once.

Becky:
Please tell me I'm missing something. As I line these players up 
(minus SS), that's 2 for black and 3 for white. You've said already 
that 1 black player moves twice, so by my maths, that evens it out. 
No need for any more black moves (although if you want more black 
moves, what about those of Tom Riddle egging the basilisk on.) There 
is no need for SS to be involved in this movement at all. So far as 
I can see, he isn't.

You previously mentioned `The opening move to the Parseltongue Harry!
SlytherinHeir Rumour.' (Message 124343). I don't see it this way at 
all. He was the one who allowed the snake to remain long enough for 
all those present (and there were a fair few) to see for themselves 
that Harry is a pareselmouth. He couldn't have possibly foreseen 
that. After, not even Harry was aware of it. Every school in the 
world has it's own network of gossipers. I'm sure there were plenty 
who saw what happened who spread that particular piece of gossip all 
by themselves. Plenty who could have made the snake connection with 
Slytherin (Hermione isn't the only one who reads!).

Vaulky:
In POA we have Remus, Sirius, Harry, Hermione, Ron, Snape in the 
climax. Remus is trapped in a bad spot, leaving another overload of 
white pieces moving to distract the attack on Sirius if Snape is a 
white piece. This one *is* the most obvious because Snape is the 
*only* possible visible black piece left moving in the end.

Becky:
Why? Where's Pettigrew in all this? He seemed to be moving pretty 
quickly to me!

I do think that SS is not really acting on any orders from either 
side here (again!). He actually lets his past feelings get the 
better of him for once. He is trying to act out his own justice for 
the way he was treated when he was at school. No white side, black 
side thought process there.

Vaulky:
I know I am intimating a fair bit of authority and I apologise for 
that. Breaking the stories up into chess moves is difficult, and 
despite my tone I would welcome corrections.

Becky:
Apology accepted and totally understood. I'm kind of feeling good 
about the corrections thing, and I'm sure you're more than capable 
of correcting my corrections! <g> To allow yet more snipping, I 
think we have to agree to disagree about Harry becoming a Queen. It 
is of course possible for more than just Harry to become another 
Queen.

Vaulky:
This is the only way I can figure to understand it, Snape is a piece 
on either side. He is a Black Knight *and* he is a White piece (not 
sure about Rook yet but it does seem possible considering he has a 
very 'straight' goal in being in the Whitepiece side, compare with 
the round about sort of reason for his Black piece position

Becky:
This idea of SS being a Rook is very interesting to me. It may just 
have been the way *I* play (and my old schools, etc), but when the 
pawn reached the other side to become a new Queen, we took one of 
the Rooks (which were already out of action) and replaced it on the 
board upside-down as the new queen. I think this plays along very 
well with my idea of SS being a major final player (as previously 
explained), whether as Harry!Queen, or someone else.

Vaulky:
I got this scenario by placing the real pieces on a chess-board as I 
see them at the end of OOtP

Becky:
I'm really beginning to wish I had one so I could do the same!

Whizbang:
And, my favorite question, why did Molly Weasley harbor a common 
garden rat for 12 years?

Becky:
Good question. I like Vaulky's answer, but I'd like to add that 
nobody seems to have noticed what a long life span the rat had. So 
for your 12 years part of the question, I think that's why. Nobody 
noticed it was strange, so nobody questioned it. (Plus, it's yet 
another one of JKR's `12' references which seem so odd and frequent).

Why a rat (watch all the Manx people who won't say `rat', who prefer 
to call them `long tails', shiver at the mere mention!), I have no 
idea. But just because it doesn't appear on the school list of pets, 
doesn't mean some people don't keep them as pets at home. My school 
*never* had a list of pets, and we had 2 guinea pigs and 2 budgies. 
Why was Ron then allowed to take it to school? No idea! Doesn't make 
a lot of sense to me!

Becky - waiting to see how many holes you can punch through that! 
(Putting a guess in the bookies for 12!)