Suicidal!Snape and the Curse of DADA-- LONG!!

[Sydney]

No: HPFGUIDX 141913


> colebiancardi again:
> 
> Hmmm...I don't think Snape wants any curse, nor do I believe Snape is 
> suicidal.  I think that he takes a lot of risks for the greater good 
> in defeating Voldy, but I think if he can figure out a way to live, 
> he will do it.  If Snape's remorse to DD included killing himself, 
> then what is stopping Snape from offing himself over the last 16 
> years?  

Part of the theory is that he made some sort of promise to Dumbledore
(not an Unbreakable Vow.. that would be a little counterproductive!)
that he would not take his own life.  I mean, the guy's one of the
world's leading experts on poisons, clearly he could bump himself off
without a lot of hassle if it was that simple. Partly I think Snape
wants to go out a hero, so he could have viewed being dramatically
outed as a double-agent as being rich in possibilities for that. 
Perhaps I should call it Deathwish!Snape, instead. 

It just seems to me that Snape being after the DADA job is hard to
separate from Snape wanting the DADA curse.  If he didn't know about
the curse, we're back to the lame, "Chemistry teacher who's desperate
to teach Physics" scenario, which is just plain lacking in emotional
content.  But I find it hard to believe that Dumbeldore DIDN'T tell
him about the Curse.  I suspect, by the way, that he warned Lupin
about it-- in HBP, Lupin tells Harry that his lycanthropy "would have
come out anyways";  and cuddly Albus putting his friends in a cursed
post without telling them, I can't really get my head around.  I
wonder if Moody cheerfully thought he had no dark secrets, and would
therefore leave fairly innocuously?

I have a smaller theory to offer, for those who don't like their
Snapes suicidal-- he COULD have just viewed the 'leaving Hogwarts'
part of the curse as the bonus, and his ritual application was a 'take
this job and shove it' gesture.  What that lacks is the explanatory
scope of deathwish!Snape, which also covers the Vow and the tale of
remorse, as well as being more in keeping with the crazy melodrama of
the HP universe.