"revulsion and hatred etched in the harsh lines of his face"

[zgirnius]

No: HPFGUIDX 135404

dan:
> If I had been so silly as to make an unbreakable vow to help Draco 
in
> his task without knowing what that task was, not only would I be an
> abysmally stupid person, and I don't think Snape is abysmally 
stupid,
> but I wouldn't, upon discoving the truth, feel hatred and revulsion,
> but horror at what I would, I suddenly found out, have to do.
> 
> But really, would Snape just make a vow like that in complete
> ignorance of what Draco's task was? What if it was to burn down
> Hogwarts and kill all the students? It could have been anything...

zgirnius:
The difficulty with this discussion is that we do not know the 
motivations for *any* of Snape's actions. And how we would construe 
any one of them clearly rests to some extent on how we had construed 
the others. And what, generally, we expect of him.

For example, if you're mostly convinced Snape is a Death Eater, 
Chapter 2 can read like a confirmation of this opinion. If you think 
he's spying for the Order, you may see things differently. I've 
personally been doubtful Snape is a loyal DE. (I tend to believe that 
he is a morally flawed character who has some personal reasons for 
siding with the Order). So I assumed that in that chapter we finally 
saw him engaged in spying for the Order, as GoF suggests he does. (At 
least, it suggests DD *believes* he does...)

It seemed obvious to me that he did not know the task, but deduced 
from the remarks made that it was a big deal of the sort it would be 
worthwhile to sniff out. It also seemed to me that he was oddly 
affected by Cissy's emotional outbursts. (Oddly because it did not 
seem to fit my earlier conceptions of the guy...) In the conversation 
directly preceeding the first mention of a UV, Cissy asks that Snape 
do two things-to watch over Draco and protect him from harm while 
Draco carries on the asssignment. When Snape agreed to the UV, I took 
this to me an indication that he expected to confirm he would do 
those two things. (His motives would include some intention to help 
Cissy, and the hope of using the added trust to worm out the details 
of the task, in exchange for protecting Dracfo, which he could do. He 
could even expect DD to help with *that*.) And he did, but then Cissy 
continued (and Snape was obviously surprised/nervous, as his hand 
twitched.) Was he stupid not to back out at that point? I can't 
decide how suspicious it would look to agree to the first 2 clauses 
and not the third, from LV's point of view if this conversation got 
back to him (via Bella, most likely). But then Snape would have had 
to decide this in a split second, so I could see him making either 
decision, and could see either decision at this point being a mistake.

Why am I dwelling so long on this unrelated scene when you asked 
about the tower? Well, in my reading, again, Snape works out what the 
task is at some point, and then is faced with a decision. He doesn't 
want to kill DD, (he does not want to help LV, also, working with DD 
and having his trust for all these years may have some meaning to 
him) but does not see a way out of it for himself. So to me that hate 
and revulsion was obviously self-directed. When the choice is forced 
upon him at the end of the book he chooses to kill DD and save 
himself. This is a guy who appears to be hung up on courage (note his 
comments in other books to Sirius, and his contempt for Pettigrew...) 
I found this view to be confirmed soon after in his extreme reaction 
to being called a coward by Harry.

Just my take on it. Unfortunately, I can see other possibilities. I 
really think JKR did a great job of making sure we would not be able 
to say definitevely what was going on here without knowledge she will 
presumably provide in Book 7...