Snape can't be Evil

[trinity_lsw]

No: HPFGUIDX 133997


Mandorino:
> There's only one thing that bothers me about writing
> Snape off as evil...
><SNIP>


That's not the only thing that bothers me about this whole idea of 
Snape being evil. My roomie and I were just theorizing about that 
and we came to the following conclusions (which might or might not 
make sense, but anyways...):

Snape, it seems, chose neither the Good nor the Bad side... he 
simply chose well, to stay alive. Why? Here goes:
1. Not wanting to blow his cover in front of Narcissa and Bellatrix, 
he had no choice but to make the Unbreakable Vow. 

2. Now, having made that UV, he had no choice but to protect Draco 
from harm and finish the job he (Draco) was appointed to, which was 
to kill Voldiekins. But does that make him necessarily evil? Not 
really. He could simply have wanted to save his own ass... or not.

 
Here we enter the realm of total speculation. 

3.Maybe, I said _maybe_, he was merely obeying and order from DD. 
Think of it this way: DD has this mysterious total trust in Snape. 
Now, this kind of blind trust has to have solid backup proofs. I 
mean, the guy he trusts so deeply was, after all, involved in the 
deaths of many people, Lily and James Potter included. Now, even if 
DD does believe that everybody has some mesure of goodness 
somewhere, he'd still need some serious proof that Snape really had 
switched sides. What if he asked Snape to make an Unbreakable Vow 
binding Snape to the Good Cause? 

4. Okay. Snape killed DD. Of course, that now puts him under the 
header "Bad guy" in everybody's mind, doesn't it? What if that was 
exactly what both DD and Snape wanted? Accepting as true the theory 
of the Vow, it all makes sense: in order to protect the Good, or 
something like that, Snape would have been told to do _anything_. 
That is, even killing a fellow do-gooder... even killing DD himself 
And, wouldn't that just be something very typical of DD to say? 
remember, in HBP, he kept reminding Harry how unimportant his 
blood/life/etc was compaired to Harry's? If Harry, champion of the 
Cause is more important to DD than his own life, surely the Cause in 
itself would be, too. 
Now, Snape having place himself in a dire situation with his Vow to 
Narcissa, and being force to honor his Vow to DD, he would have 
killed him and flew, saving both his life and his cover. 

5. So does that mean Snape evil? No. Does that mean he is good? No. 
All this means is that he is alive, probably because he has a very 
important part to paly in the outcome of the war. 

Okay, there surely is loads of loopholes to be fond in this theory, 
but we still find it quite interesting... any thoughts?

Trin

Ps. On an entirely different topic... Call me blind or stupid, but I 
couldn't find anywhere evidence that Snape's mother was in Riddle's 
year. Can someone tell me where that came from?