Snape's timing and the supposedly missing five hours (Was: Interpretation)

[nkafkafi]

No: HPFGUIDX 142050

> Carol responds:
> First, I'm not sure what you mean by "JKR's privet clock." 

Neri:
I meant private, of course. The way she imagines the time to be in 
the story, as opposed to the true times of sunset and dawn in 1996 
(or whatever it was) at some point in Scotland. 

> Carol:
> That aside, I'll grant you that she has figured out the timing of
> *Harry's* actions with some precision, even though this is the same
> woman who thinks that Charlie Weasley, the star Seeker without whom
> Gryffindor couldn't win a match until Harry arrived, can be two
> (changed to three) years older than Percy and yet Gryffindor hasn't
> won a match in seven years. (Huh?) I won't go into the other 
examples
> of her maths inadequacies, but we all know they exist and she admits
> them herself. Even if, realizing this deficiency, she sat down with 
an
> almanac to figure out the timing of *Harry's* actions, chances are 
she
> has *not* figured out exactly how Snape's actions (which she touches
> on only to show why DD still trusts Snape) would fit the 
requirements
> of the plot. 

Neri:
First, there's no need for an almanac. You just google "Edinburgh" 
(or any other nearby city), "sunset" and "sunrise" and you 
immediately get several weather and astronomy sites that would supply 
you with the numbers. She doesn't even need to be so exact as to go 
for any specific year.

Secondly, why would JKR bother to plot the timing of Harry's actions 
in such a consistent way? In PoA it was because of the time-travel 
plot. Here, it could be exactly in order to synchronize them with the 
actions of the other characters, which are surely critical for the 
plot.

> Carol:
> She doesn't even seem to notice that it would make more
> sense for him to go into the forest *before* contacting the Order 
the
> second time. (DD, being highly intelligent, would see this as well, 
as
> would the relentlessly logical Snape. I see no other way that he 
could
> have figured out that Harry and his friends were indeed gone.) 
>

Neri:
If Snape deduced Harry could catch a thestral and fly to the DoM, as 
Dumbledore said he did, then IMHO it would be *much* more logical for 
him to warn the Order about this before he goes to the forest. This 
way both possibilities (Harry in the DoM and Harry in the forest) are 
covered immediately, and especially the more dangerous of the two.

> Carol: 
> What JKR needs is for Harry to get into the forest with Hermione and
> Umbridge, ditch Umbridge, be rejoined by their DA friends, fly to 
the
> MoM, be met by the DEs, fight the DEs, be rescued by the Order just 
in
> time, then have Harry fight Bellatrix and have Voldie arrive 
followed
> by DD just in time to fight him. This plot requires that the Order 
be
> delayed and that DD be delayed even more so that his arrival roughly
> coincides with Voldie's (accomplished through his talk with Kreacher
> at Order HQ). 

Neri:
There's a very simple way to achieve this: just avoid having Umbridge 
summon Snape to her office. He simply wouldn't know about all this, 
find out from the Slyths several hours later that Umbridge took Harry 
to the forest and that they didn't came back yet. Then Snape would do 
the most natural thing to do in such a situation: inform HQ about it. 
HQ would do the most natural thing from their point of view – check 
on the status of the guard in the DoM - and would get mo answer. That 
all it takes, and no one would accuse poor Snapie. 

Instead JKR throws Snape into the middle of the plot, she has Harry 
raising suspicions about his resposibility, she has Dumbledore 
explaining it in a rather unsatisfactory way, and she charts the 
times of Harry's rescue mission from beginning to end, including 
seeing the first light of dawn from Dumbledore's office window – a 
rather pointed detail when IIRC she had never even mentioned this 
window in any of Harry's previous visits in this office. 

> Carol:
> *The plot* requires Snape to contact the Order at about the time the
> kids are fighting the DEs (setting aside whatever time it takes them
> to get organized and arrive at the DoM, into which you can't 
Apparate
> directly). It's clear from the sketchy and somewhat inconsistent
> details of Snape's side of the action that JKR has not thought it
> through nearly as fully as she has thought through the fully enacted
> Harry scenes. 

Neri:
Or that she thought them quite fully, for leaving a possibility that 
Snape wasn't on the Order's side, or that he simply didn't care much 
about Harry.

> Carol:
> It's also clear, as has been repeatedly stated on this
> list, that neither Dumbledore nor Bellatrix considered the Order's
> arrival to be excessively delayed. 
> 

Neri:
I have repeatedly answered this argument.

> Carol:
> And if it didn't, blame the requirements of JKR's plot, not Snape,
> without whose action in sending the Order to the MoM, Harry and his
> friends would be dead.
> 

Neri:
I don't know yet what are the requirements of JKR's plot. I'll know 
that only after Book 7. All I can say for now is that certain 
developments and well-specified timelines don't fit the official 
explanation very well, but OTOH could fit quite well with an ending 
in which Snape isn't the hero who always has Harry well-being and the 
Order's cause in mind. 


Neri