What would a successful AK mean?

[antoshachekhonte]

No: HPFGUIDX 142872

> Sherry now:
> 
> i can't let this one pass.  police officers go to prison if they kill their
> captain or brother officers.  Soldiers do not get medals for killing their
> own generals!  Neither of these arguments makes sense to me.  If Snape offed
> the *enemy's* leaders, that's completely different.  You just don't kill
> your own people and get away with it.  Even accidental so-called friendly
> fire killings in the military are investigated.  As for The death eaters
> being there, that is the time for Snape to come out of hiding and declare
> himself to be DDM.  Not to kill his leader in a cowardly self-preserving
> act.
> 
> I won't comment on so-called mercy killing either because that is just way
> too hot a topic for me, at least to engage in.  Sigh.
> 
> As for it being too boring to make Snape evil in the end, to me, it would be
> quite refreshing.  We've been set up to believe that Snape is mean and evil
> and so to believe he isn't really.  So, to make him evil, whether it's out
> for himself in true Slytherin fashion, or Voldemort's true disciple, if he's
> evil it isn't what most people have expected.  It would also have the great
> effect of making Harry right all along, at last!  And since Harry is the
> true hero of the books, I'd love to see him be right.
> 
> Sherry
>


Antosha:

True. But spies have killed allies while wearing the uniform of the opposing side and it 
hasn't meant that they've been executed once they crossed back over. It's a particularly 
horrific part of being in deep cover. 

My point about police officers wasn't that they weren't bound by the same laws; it was that 
the AK isn't in and of itself proof of evil.

What is your interpretation of the argument that Harry overheard between DD and SS 
midway through HBP? As I read it, I could only take the conversation as meaning that 
Snape was being pushed (by LV and the Vow) to do something he wasn't willing to do, and 
Dumbledore was telling him that he had to follow it through. I can only assume that DD 
KNEW Malfoy's assignment--as he says he did--and that he therefore knew Snape's 
involvement.

Killing is killing, whether friend or foe. JKR tells us that it tears the soul. Absolutely. But 
that doesn't mean that there aren't times when it can be justified, and it seems to me at 
least possible that Dumbledore himself saw this as one of those times and was urging 
Snape to do what had to be done. If he hadn't, Snape himself would certainly have died 
(having broken the Unbreakable Vow) and Dumbledore himself would probably have 
died--either at the hands of the other DEs or as a result of the potion that he had drunk or 
because of the curse on the ring--the curse that Snape himself rescued Dumbledore from, 
at least temporarily. This way, at least, Snape survives--and two of LV's closest associates 
are both bound to Harry by life debt.

I don't think Snape is a nice man or even a particularly good person. But I can see at least 
the possibility that he did what he did for honorable--or, at least--justifyable reasons.