Spinner's End--further evidence for DDsMan!Snape??

[nkafkafi]

No: HPFGUIDX 140058

> Potioncat:
> Congratulations to Neri, the delay has almost become canon! The 
> thread about this has been my all time favorite, even though I 
> disagree with the "delay" conculsion.
>

Neri:
Thanks <blushes>.
 
> DD says that Snape responded immediately and BADASS ALBUS it is. 
> 
> Given that Patronuses are the method of communication, and they 
> appear to take some time to get from here to there and also appear 
to 
> be one-way and given that JKR has not always relied on scientific 
> charts for her data...I don't think Snape delayed.
> 

Neri:
I recently discussed how the revelation about the Order's method of 
communication affects the question of Snape's delay in:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/137349

My conclusion was that this revelation doesn't make Snape look any 
better, more likely worse.

Regarding the "scientific charts", they weren't really needed to 
construct the delay timeline. I've recently noticed that JKR knows 
very well at what hour the sun sets in Scotland in the summer. This 
is obvious from the PoA climax, which takes place at the same time of 
the year as the OotP climax. The famous 3 hours that Harry and 
Hermione lived through twice are canonically from 9 PM to midnight, 
and JKR tells us that when the trio were going to Hagrid's hut at 9 
the sun was yet to set. This coincides very well with our 
scientifically charted sunset time for the OotP climax. As to the 
hour of first light of dawn we don't have canon from JKR, but in our 
timeline we used a very early hour (IIRC around 3:00 AM). I can't 
believe JKR thinks it's even earlier, and if she thinks it's later 
then this would make the time Snape delayed even longer. 


Julie wrote:
>
> I confess I can't think of any reason for Snape not to tell
Bellatrix that
> he delayed notifying the Order of Harry's suspected journey to the
DoM.
> If he's ESE! then he has no reason to keep it quiet. If he's DD's
Man,
> then he had no reason to delay notifying the Order in the first
place. 


Neri:
The reason that Snape wouldn't want to bring it up is that this whole 
timing issue is very delicate from his POV. Bella was there at the 
DoM, triumphantly aiming her wand at Neville and practically making 
Harry surrender just when the Order members broke in. Had Snape 
bragged about the delay, Bella would have rightly told him "if you 
had delayed even *one more minute* we would have had the prophecy in 
our hands. But *you* were more worried about blowing up your precious 
cover than about winning the war".

The reason that *JKR* wouldn't want to bring up the timing issue is 
that it's a bit complicated to explain. It would have made the 
narrative in Spinner's End longer and more cumbersome (and after OotP 
JKR clearly became sensitive about the length of the books). Snape 
*does* say that his orders were not to interfere, and he does take 
some credit for Sirius' death, and after all he claims so many crimes 
in this chapter that one more or less would hardly change anything. 
Would you have accepted the delay as a proof for ESE!Snape only 
because he bragged about it in front of Bella? I suspect not.

I don't expect JKR to bring up the timing issue in Book 7, for the 
same reasons: it's complicated and redundant. Perhaps she'll refer to 
it in an interview or in her website once the series is finished. 
This is more an issue of proper plotting. When JKR plotted the OotP 
climax, it's nearly unbelievable (math problems or not) that she 
didn't notice the 5 hours difference between Umbridge taking Harry to 
the forest and the Order members breaking into the DoM. She had to 
decide what were the Order members doing during all that time, and 
why didn't they respond sooner. Especially after she made clear that 
the they were guarding Harry devotedly throughout the year, and after 
the assassination attempt that nearly succeeded because Dung let 
Harry out of his sight for just one hour.

So JKR had to divide the responsibility for these missing 5 hours and 
disguise them in a way that wouldn't prematurely blow up Snape's 
cover and wouldn't attract too much attention. This she did 
skillfully using sentences like (paraphrasing from memory) "once you 
did not come back from the forest, Professor Snape grew worried and 
contacted the Order at once". The words "at once" disguise the 
question of how much time was "not coming back from the forest" and 
when exactly did Snape "grow worried". Only a detailed timelining 
would reveal that it must have been around midnight. JKR had 
Dumbledore telling us that Snape intended to search the forest 
himself, which sounds good, and in another place that "it was Snape 
who deduced where you went when you didn't come back from the 
forest", which also sounds good. You need to combine these two 
statements to realize that Snape went to search the forest (if at 
all) *after* he himself deduced Harry was no longer there. And of 
course, JKR made Harry blaming Snape for the wrong reasons, so we'd 
all argue about them and miss the real problem.

What JKR *didn't* do is to clearly imply that during these 5 hours 
the Order members in 12GP had known that Harry was under a mind 
attack and running somewhere in the Forbidden Forrest with Umbridge, 
and yet did nothing about it. This would have taken the 
responsibility out of Snape's shoulders. But IMO it would have been 
practically unbelievable for Sirius to leave this in Snape's hands 
and not come running, or for the paranoid Moody not to check on the 
guards in the DoM just to make sure. So JKR muddied and disguised the 
missing 5 hours issue the best she could. Now that the issue is 
thoroughly muddied, it's not convenient to raise it in books 6 and 7, 
and as I've said above it also rather redundant.   

Neri