Snape and the blah-blah what happened on the tower....

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 141981

Doddiemoe wrote:
<snip>
> Irregardless for me I do not like Snape not so much because he AK'd 
> Voldemort as much as, he set this whole chain of events in motion by 
> telling moldy-voldie about the prophecy..
> 
> Sorry....just think Snape will pay heavily for creating seven books 
> of turmoil...and hundreds dead and thousands if not millions placed 
> in jeopardy due to his actions. (no wonder why he's so bitter to 
> those who would recognize the error of his ways.) <snip>

Carol responds:

I think you mean "AK'd Dumbledore"?

That aside, I don't think we can blame everything that Voldemort has
done on Snape. In fact, even setting aside his apparent remorse for
the consequences of reporting the partial Prophecy to Voldemort, his
spying "at great personal risk" before teaching at Hogwarts, and his
aiding Dumbledore in dealing with Quirrell and Crouch!Moody, to name
only a few examples, if we look at the consequences of the Prophecy,
only James and Lily were killed because of it. Voldemort himself was
vaporized. So rather than being responsible for "hundreds dead and
millions placed in jeopardy," Snape is partially responsible (along
with Wormtail and, of course, Voldemort himself) for only two. After
that, the WW had an eleven-year respite thanks to the events at
Godric's Hollow.

At that point, Voldemort tried to return by possessing Quirrell, who
was thwarted in part by Snape. Only one person died, Quirrell himself,
and he was a bad guy. There are no deaths in CoS and no new ones in
PoA, only reports of old ones for which Peter Pettigrew was
responsible--including the actual betrayal of the Potters, who were
his friends. Pettigrew's release enables *him* to go after Vapor!mort
and restore him. PP kidnaps Bertha Jorkins and is at least partially
responsible for her death; helps to kidnap and Imperio the real Moody
and release Barty Jr. to take his place, indirectly enabling Barty to
kill his own father; and AKs Cedric Diggory. I can see blaming
*Wormtail* as well as Voldemort for all of these crimes, but Snape had
no hand in them. And in OoP, he tells Sirius Black to stay at
headquarters because Dumbledore is on his way. It's no fault of
Snape's that Black didn't listen or that Bellatrix sent him through
the veil.

It's possible that Snape is telling the truth about passing
information on Emmeline Vance (though he carefully makes sure that
Bellatrix is no longer in the Dark Lord's confidence before telling
her so), and whether or not there are extenuating circumstances, he
did cast the spell that sent Dumbledore over the battlements of the
astronomy tower. But Bellatrix's words about his "usual slithering out
of action" suggest that he has done very little of the kinds of dirty
work she herself is so often involved in. And Snape's crimes, at least
until HBP, consist chiefly of passing on a single piece of information
to his master that he could not possibly have interpreted as Voldemort
did--a crime for which he has been trying to atone for sixteen years.
In comparison with Wormtail's crimes, his (until HBP) are barely worth
noticing. 

It was Wormtail who betrayed the Potters by revealing their
whereabouts to Voldemort, and Wormtail who restored Voldemort to his
body. If we're going to blame anyone besides Voldemort for Voldemort's
crimes at Godric's Hollow and later, it should be Wormtail, not Snape.

But Voldemort himself is *solely* to blame for the murders he
committed to create his Horcruxes and *primarily* to blame for the
murders and other crimes he ordered the Death Eaters to commit in VW1
and now in VW2. He murdered his own father and grandparents, among
others, before Severus Snape was even born. To shift the blame for
Voldemort's actions to Snape, or even to Wormtail, is to mistake the
primary villain of the HP books, Tom Riddle aka Lord Voldemort,
without whom MWPP, Lily Potter, Sirius and Regulus Black, Cedric
Diggory, and Albus Dumbledore (and many others) would still be alive
and the Longbottoms would still be sane.

Carol