Omniscient Dumbledore (Was Re: Snape's AK Failed!!!)

[nrenka]

No: HPFGUIDX 135189

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, juli17 at a... wrote:

> Julie says:

<snip>

> And I also think DD and Snape do share some plans relating to 
> Harry, as with Occlumency and perhaps the HBP textbook. 

I'm having a hard time imagining the textbook being a setup.  But 
that's probably another thread.
  
> And then there's the stuff he shares only with Harry, about 
> the prophecy and the Horcruxes (though Snape may know 
> about the latter, while McGonagall is certainly in the dark). 
>  
> I agree that Snape isn't DD's confidante in the fullest sense, 
> any more than McGonagall, or Mad-Eye Moody, or Harry. But
> DD has still trusted Snape with a *lot* of information, especially
> over the past several years. 

But now I ask--do you have any *proof*?

I think we've all assumed that Snape was being told a lot more by 
Dumbledore than he may have been.  For instance, Dumbledore may not 
have gone into details with the "teach Occlumency" instruction, but 
told Snape to do it without much further explanation.  There is 
absolutely no positive evidence that Snape, even in his role as spy, 
is being let in upon Dumbledore's command of the larger issues being 
faced by the Order.  It may well be "Severus, your report?", and then 
Dumbledore giving more orders.

<snip>

> As for the good cop/bad cop, I still see that as a viable reason 
> why DD allows Snape to run his classes as he saw fit. DD knows how 
> Snape feels about Harry, how hard (and sometimes even unfair) Snape 
> is, but DD also knows that there are some things Harry needs to 
> learn from Snape.  So while DD didn't set it up that way, and Snape 
> isn't even aware of it in that sense, DD allows the good cop/bad cop
> game that goes on between Harry, Snape and himself to continue, 
> because it serves as a learning experience on several levels for 
> Harry (both because Snape does have skills Harry needs to learn, 
> and because if Harry can't stand up to Snape, who may dislike him 
> but won't actually harm him, how can he stand up to Voldemort, who 
> wants to wipe him off the face of the Earth?).

With good-cop/bad-cop it's always been posited as a *deliberate* 
thing.  For instance, I don't think that Dumbledore really 
understands (or understood) the level of animosity between Snape and 
Harry, and he as much as admits so at the end of OotP.  It is not, it 
seems, Dumbledore's style to go "Harry needs a lesson and I need him 
to do X, so Severus will do this and I'll do that."  It is 
Dumbledore's style to let Snape go his own way, because he considers 
it better for people to fix their own problems and mistakes rather 
than have them fixed for them.  His perpetual optimism about human 
nature taking hold, you see.

I would submit that in this case it hasn't been terribly productive, 
over the years, and that's a rather damning detail.

In fact, I'm rather tickled and exceedingly glad that JKR didn't take 
the fanfic route, whereby Harry grovels at Snape's feet and 
apologizes for his many sins, after which Snape reluctantly agrees to 
mentor the idiot boy.  Snape was Harry's teacher in HBP, just in an 
indirect way--one which highlights some of the more (to put it 
kindly) unpleasant aspects of his personality, but also a practically 
sad loss of potential.

-Nora says: how do we know what we know?