Snape's defection: the timeline question

[Neri]

No: HPFGUIDX 151152


> 
> 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.
> 

Neri:
I haven't read the mugglenet editorial but I think that JKR's 
numbers, in this case at least, work quite well together. Trelawney 
said to Umbridge during the school year of OotP that she has been a 
teacher for "almost sixteen years", and it appears she started 
working shortly after making the prophecy. At that time Snape was 
apparently already gathering information on Dumbledore for Voldemort, 
as he told him the first half of the prophecy. So in Spinner's End, 
less than a year after Trelawney's "almost sixteen years" statement, 
Snape is quite justified in saying that he has sixteen years worth of 
information on Dumbledore.

It is true that, strictly speaking, Snape had to include only the 
years since GH, since he was supposed to report immediately to his 
master any information he gathered about Dumbledore before that. 
Snape should have also, perhaps, taken the OotP year out of this 
count, because he went to Voldy in the end of the school year of GoF, 
only thirteen and a half years after GH. But in Spinner's End Snape 
is engaged in a fierce debate with Bella, and "sixteen years worth of 
information on Dumbledore" sounds better than "thirteen and a half 
years worth of information on Dumbledore", so it should not come as a 
surprise that he prefers to speak loosely and use the more inclusive 
count.  

Regarding Snape "switching sides", this was a big discussion before 
HBP, involving great philosophical theories, one of which still runs 
a popular bar in Theory Bay these days <g>. I'm not sure that all the 
Snape fans quite realize yet how the revelations of HBP put this 
discussion in a whole new light. It's now clear that Snape was sent 
by Voldemort himself to gather information on Dumbledore, and 
probably to serve as a double agent. Snape wouldn't have been able to 
take a post at Hogwarts before GH without Voldemort's blessing. So it 
appears the whole "changing sides" thing started as an intentional 
ruse on Snape's and Voldemort's behalf. Voldemort probably told Snape 
to feed Dumbledore some useless information in order to maintain an 
illusion that he changed sides. Later (and we don't know how much 
time before GH) Snape also passed to Dumbledore at least one item of 
true information that Voldemort certainly wouldn't want him to pass – 
that Voldy knew the first part of the prophecy and was targeting the 
Potters. But Snape had just discovered that he had personal interest 
in this specific item. We can't be sure how genuine was the other 
information he was passing to Dumbledore at that same time.

So rather than this dramatic decision of Snape to "change sides", the 
whole story now appears more like Snape settling into a convenient 
arrangement of a double-agent, passing false or genuine information 
to both sides according to his own personal interests, and 
practically insuring his own survival whatever side wins the war. A 
convenient arrangement that Snape was probably maintaining for some 
time before GH (perhaps a year, perhaps almost two years) and seemed 
eager to renew just several hours after Voldemort came back to power. 
The whole "Snape was working for us before Voldemort's fall at 
considerable risk to himself" and that heroic "you know what I must 
ask you to do" scene in the end of GoF now appear, well, somewhat 
less heroic.   

If Snape indeed "changed sides", one wonders how come he didn't turn 
in Lucius, Bella, Rodolfus, Rabastan, Avery, McNair, Nott, Crabbe, 
Goyle, Rookwood, or in fact any other DE that we know of, even after 
GH. He could have prevented the attack on the Longbottoms and the 
Lucius' Diary scheme in CoS had he done so. Of course, there is the 
possibility Snape didn't know that any of them were DEs at the time. 
I searched Spinner's End and couldn't find any clear proof that he 
and Bella knew each other to be DEs before GH, although I somehow get 
the impression that they did. In any case it would seem extremely 
strange if Snape didn't know that any of the above, some of them 
members to his "gang of Slytherins", were DEs at the time. Especially 
considering that Karkaroff, who appears to be a much less able agent 
than Snape, knew both Snape and Rookwood as well as a bunch of others 
that didn't go free. It's not a conclusive evidence against DDM!
Snape, but I think it's certainly another thing that JKR will have to 
explain if she goes that way.

Neri