Are appearances important to Snape?
justcarol67
justcarol67 at yahoo.com
Thu Oct 27 22:54:01 UTC 2005
No: HPFGUIDX 142192
KJ wrote:
<snip> As well, he [Snape] seems to harbour no particular resentment
when the Trio knocked him out in the shack. He defended them admirably
to Fudge. Why?
>
A_svirn replied:
> Surely to avoid the most uncomfortable question: just why did they
> knock out a teacher that had hastened to defend them from a
> dangerous criminal? Snape did not want the minister to inquire into
> this business too particular. What he wanted is to silence the kids
> and Sirius. Sirius was to be silenced forever and preferably before
> he could give his version of the events to Dumbledore. He was very
> anxious to feed him to a Dementor without further ado. <snip>
Carol responds:
Other posters have already shown that Snape did not hear the part of
Lupin's speech about PP being a rat, and he was unconscious when PP
transformed. What he heard he could easily have interpreted as further
evidence that Lupin was helping the escaped murderer into the school
(not to mention that he knew quite well that the werewolf was about to
transform and endanger three students, which is probably why he bound
Lupin rather than Black.
You're assuming that his motive in telling Fudge that the kids were
confunded was to silence them. But why would he need to do that? He
had rushed out to save them from a murderer and a werewolf, and he
*did* conjure stretchers and take the three students and the man he
thought was a murderer back to the school.
Maybe Snape asked himself that same question: Why would three students
knock out a teacher who had come to save them? And maybe the only
answer that made sense to him was that they had been confunded. In any
case, it *is* likely that HRH would have been punished or even
expelled for attacking a teacher, and Snape saves them from whatever
punishment they would have received, whether he is lying to protect
them or telling what he perceives to be the truth. I see no need
whatever to lie to protect himself. (It's rashness worthy of James
himself to rush out to face both a werewolf and a supposed mass
murderer, but it's hardly something he needs to cover up.)
Your reading assumes that Snape must already have known that PP was
alive and that Sirius was innocent of his murder. But no one knew
that, not even Lupin himself or Dumbledore. And, as others have noted,
probably only LV himself knew the identity of his spy. (That's the way
it works. If the spy's cover is blown, his usefulness is ended.) As
far as Snape knows, *Black* is the spy and traitor who has come to
Hogwarts to kill Harry, destroying the Fat Lady's painting and later
actually entering Harry's room and attacking Ron's bed curtains with a
knife. Not exactly evidence of innocence.
Carol
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