Snape's defection: the timeline question

[ellecain]

No: HPFGUIDX 151121

> > Betsy Hp:
> > Ooh! Which means that Snape was spying for Dumbledore for over a 
> > year before Godrics Hollow, right?  
> > 
> 
> Neri again:
> Not that I think he wasn't, necessarily, but I don't see how you
> conclude that from the above. 
> 
> Let me explain this timeline more clearly. Karkaroff was caught 
about
> a year before GH. He apparently spent that year in Azkaban, not
> informed about who else was caught and who got killed, and probably
> hoping Voldy will win the war and come get him out. Then he heard
> Voldy lost and the Ministry was rounding the last of the DEs, and
> understood that his only way out is to make some fast deals on the
> expense of his comrades. His hearing that we witness in the 
Pensieve
> certainly takes place *after* GH, although we can't be sure how 
much
> time after (rounding the last of the DEs perhaps took some time. Or
> not). So even when Dumbledore says in this hearing that Snape was
> spying for him before Voldemort's fall, I don't see how you can
> conclude that it was more than a year before.
>
>

Elyse: (Delurking)

I was on Mugglenet and read an editorial that cited Snape's words in
Spinners End as proof he was on DD's side a year before Godrics 
Hollow.
It basically draws on the dialogue in OOtP, where Umbridge asks 
Snape how long he has been teaching at Hogwarts. He clearly states
fourteen years as the time period.
Assuming he joined on the first of September as all new teachers
usually do, at the end of OOtP he would have completed fifteen 
years' worth of teaching.

However in Spinners End, he tells Bellatrix that he has *sixteen*
years' worth of information on Dumbledore.
Now I have a slightly perverse mind, and I like to imagine that this 
was one of those Freudian slips, you know, 
where Snape screwed up and said sixteen instead of fifteen because 
that was when he switched sides.
Sadly, Bella was still stinging from the "fine gesture" remark of 
Snape's (which I found quite funny BTW) 
and failed to notice it.

Well, either that or we're back to JKR did not notice it , her math 
is notoriously bad..etc.
But I'm crossing my fingers and hoping she left that as a clue to 
the more astute readers.

Elyse 
(who thinks Snape did indeed change sides a year before GH, but 
bases this more on the prophecy)