Could I be wrong about Snape being evil?

[bettiethebookworm]

No: HPFGUIDX 156688

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Sydney" <sydpad at ...> wrote:

> Dumbledore.  That makes the MOST sense of Snape's behaviour in
> Spinner's End. He knows at this point that someone is going to have to
> kill Dumbledore; he knows this is probably going to be him. Making the
> Vow is not then either an emotional mistake or a flirtation with
> suicide (sigh... bye suicidal!Snape!), but an acknowledgement of the
> inevitable. Strangely, this jives with some anti-Snapeists opinion
> that the obvious reason he took the Vow was because he intended on
> doing it anyways!  This interpretation though has the advantage of
> actually making sense, in that taking a Vow to kill a Dumbledore who
> is ready to be sacrificied is not completely insane.
> 
Hi, I'm new to the group, but thought I'd throw in my two cents here.  

Perhaps this point has been made before, but I have found no evidence
in the text that Snape new what he was promising.  Could it be that he
made the unbreakable vow as a means of finding out what Voldemort had
planned for Malfoy?  My best guess is that Snape was not in the DL's
inner circle and needed to find a way in.  Could he in a million years
have guessed that V would have asked a sixteen year old wizard to take
out Dumbledore?

If my theory were true, it could be that Dumbledore made Snape promise
to fulfil his vow, whatever it might be, rather than sacrifice his
life no matter the consequence.  Perhaps Dumbledore hoped to find a
trace of goodness in Malfoy (which he did) and didn't want him to be
pulled further into V's inner circle by fulfilling his comands.

There can be no doubt whatsoever that Snape hates Harry.  Perhaps self
hatred at having killed Dumbledore mingled with a jealousy and hatred
of Harry explain to some degree his attitude at the end.  He may even
have hated Dumbledore in that moment for having made him promise to
fulfill the vow.  He certainly would never have shared his true
feelings or motives with Harry even of a more trivial circumstance.

As for the whole Dumbledore Horcrux thing, it never occurred to me.  I
find the notion interesting and am looking forward to following that
discussion.  Undoubtedly we will learn more about Dumbledore's arm in
the next book as it is a subject that seems less than fully explored.

I'm quite excited at having found a more mature venue for discussing
the HP series.

Bettie