[HPforGrownups] HPB writing/ Snape Timeline/ poor Lupin, and some other replies

[Kathryn Jones]

No: HPFGUIDX 134310

Christina Katsos wrote:

>  >>lizvega:
>  >>In Spinner's End, Snape tells Bella and Cissy that he was at
>  >>Hogwarts when Voldemort fell, placed their under LV's orders.
>  >>Fast forward 16 years and Dumbledore tells Harry that delivering the
>  >>news of the prophesy to LV, and the ramifications of doing so, was
>  >>perhaps the greastest regret of Snapes life. Harry assumes, and
>  >>tells the other's in the hospital wing, that Snape came to Hogwarts
>  >>because of his parents murder, not before it.
> 
> Christina:
> This can all be factual and still make sense.  Remember, Dumbledore got
> news that the Potters were in danger and put them into hiding (PoA, Chapter
> 10).  The order of events probably went something like this: LV gets the
> prophesy from Snape, LV interprets the part of the prophesy he has and
> figures out his target (Harry), Dumbledore gets tipped off that the Potters
> are in danger and tells them to go into hiding, the Potters go into hiding,
> Peter Pettigrew tells LV how to find the Potters, and LV goes to find them
> in Godric's Hollow.  Even if it was Snape himself that tipped off
> Dumbledore (realizing his terrible mistake and going to DD with remorse),
> he still would have been switching sides before the Potters
> died.  According to Trelawney, Snape was looking for a job at around the
> same time she was interviewing for hers and made the prophesy (US HBP
> 545).  The Potters were killed on October 31st, so we can probably assume
> that Snape started off that school year working at Hogwarts and had been
> teaching there for about two months when Voldemort fell.  I don't find it
> difficult to believe that that much time would have lapsed between Snape
> overhearing the prophesy and the Potter's ultimate demise (someone please
> correct me if I'm wrong, the timeline at this point is really
> confusing).  Not that I think Snape is telling the sisters the whole truth,
> but that's another story :)

Kathy writes:
    This all confuses me as well. Dumbledore said that Snape had been 
spying prior to the fall of Voldemort. Sibyll's prophecy was prior to 
Harry's birth.  How much prior we don't know. We now know that Snape 
told Voldemort and it probably wasn't a big deal to a 22 year old that I 
tend to picture much like a nasty Percy. When he found out that it was 
the Longbottoms and Potters, he panicked. These were people that he new, 
and at least one of them, he liked. In OotP Sibyll had been teaching for 
sixteen years. One year before Harry was born, give or take a month or 
two.  Snape had been teaching for 14 years. One year after Harry was 
born. Harry was fifteen months old when his parents were killed. The 
Potters must have been in hiding for almost two and a half years. Snape 
had been teaching for five months by the time they were killed. We don't 
know how long the Potters were hidden or how long Voldemort looked for 
them, or how they managed to attract his attention three times and 
survive before the prophecy. Snape was, until book 7, anyway, at 
Hogwarts as he told the sisters. I think that Snape is skirting around 
the truth a bit, but that is the only successful way to lie.  Tell as 
much truth as possible and just change the small stuff.
KJ