Will Snape betray Dumbledore? Re: my greatest fear....

[snow15145]

No: HPFGUIDX 121331



Nora snipped:

Now, mind you, I'm not arguing that Snape is evil, although it's
been amusingly and carefully set up so that the arguments that he is
trustworthy are counterbalanced by those that he isn't, to the point
that either outcome can be looked back and said "Aha! There's the
setup!". Hermione says he is (as she trusts in DD), and she's often
right. However, we just got DD messing up bigtime, and wouldn't it
be nicely BANG-y if Ron the skeptic were right?

Snape is not perfect--no one in the books is. This is not news, nor
is it truly damning for him. But I think it's worth a careful
examination of what mistakes he makes, and why he makes them.

Snow:

I really liked the way you stated this, Nora, and just had to reply 
with my controversial cents worth. 

Snape is a confusing character, for every good reason to believe in 
Snape you can find an alternate reason to suspect him. So which is 
Snape, good or bad and who is right or wrong about him, Hermione or 
Ron? Hermione bases her reasoning on trust in DD and logically 
deduces that Snape must be good because he saved Harry in his first 
year. Ron on the other hand does not seem as excepting to just trust 
DD's opinion of Snape and bases his suspicious reasoning on instinct 
and intuition. Add to that the prospect of the people-are-not-always-
who-they-say-they-are theme. (Well hit me over the head if we have 
not been introduced to that way of thinking.) A good percentage of 
the people DD has trusted have turned out to be someone they are not 
and the majority of them were appointed teachers. I'm with Ron
and I 
don't give DD a very good grade in his successfulness at using his 
legilemency powers
unless...  Examining the situation with this bit 
of information, how can you possibly assess Snape logically or 
trustingly based on DD's faith? 

I have been searching since the end of the fourth book to find the 
hidden but also in-your-face clue to who Snape really is or who he is 
not, why
is a different variant altogether. I have found two examples 
for consideration:

(1)	The night the Death-eaters were playing a bit of muggle 
torture, I found it quite interesting that one of the masked marching 
death-eaters that night had specifically tortured the muggle Mrs. 
Roberts by turning her upside down revealing her panties (just like 
someone else we know that wears gray undies. This was after all a 
part of Snape's worst nightmare). Could Snape have been the death-
eater that night that performed this curse on Mrs. Roberts?

(2)	The chapter in POA entitled The Servant of Lord Voldemort, 
how ironic that this chapter opens with Snape revealing his presence 
to the marauders and the trio. If
big if
Pettigrew is not the servant 
of Lord Voldemort being referenced at this time, then who is? I 
believe Pettigrew became a servant of Voldemort after this event took 
place. Voldemort himself as much as says so to the death-eaters in 
the graveyard:

"You returned to me, not out of loyalty, but out of fear of your old 
friends."

Pettigrew doesn't sound like much of a servant in this light. I admit 
the chapter name could just be representative of the fact that 
Pettigrew did escape and return to Voldy but I just can't resist 
speculating on the fact that JKR can be so obviously unobvious with 
her clues that you tend to disregard intuition that the clue may be 
straightforward this time. 

Since there is still nothing conclusive either way, I will look at 
Ron's perception who, at least to me, seams to have more intuition, 
jokingly or not, than Hermione any day. 

Snow