ESE, DDM, OFH, or Grey? (WAS: DDM!Snape the definition)

[zgirnius]

No: HPFGUIDX 162640


> Jen: 
> For me, Harry will always be the gold standard for Dumbledore's man 
> through and through and Snape is not Harry.  The point of Grey is 
to 
> say that Snape and Harry are not the same on the inside with 
> different skins, they are not opposite but equal.  Harry would 
never, 
> ever find himself in the position of having to kill Dumbledore and 
> the fact that Snape did **matters**.  Not proving to be evil or out-
> for-himself is a long way from Snape earning the title of 
> Dumbledore's Man in my book. 

zgirnius:
Well, I can see not liking the name of the theory because it seems to 
equate Snape and Harry. If nothing else, Harry has never done 
anything evil like joining the DEs and reporting the prophecy. 

Also, your statement about Harry seems incorrect. If the potion in 
the Cave was indeed a deadly poison (as it seems we both believe, 
correct me if I misunderstood/confused you with someone else, I 
thought in the post to which I responded you were suggesting that 
Dumbeldore's mental faculties might have already been affected by 
that deadly poison), then Snape's action is one of the things 
standing between Harry and that killing. If Dumbledore were less 
amazingly resilient, that could have caused his death.

Of course, Harry didn't *know* it was a poison. But if we are going 
to blame Snape for the UV, he did not know it would lead to his 
killing Dumbledore either, because he believed he and Dumbledore 
could manage Draco so as to avoid the issue. Sure, it was a possible 
outcome, and was in a sense the most straightforward, but then, the 
most straighforward outcome of drinking an unknown potion concocted 
by Voldemort to protect one of his Horcruxes is also death.


> Jen: The UV led diretly to what happened on the tower and therefore 
> the reason Snape took the Vow matters greatly.  I just looked at 
the 
> list again while writing this and saw Pippin's post about Blown!
Snape 
> which I will read with great interest because I haven't come up 
with 
> a satisfactory answer for the UV myself.

zgirnius:
For the UV/Tower to represent a fall from grace by Snape, the reason 
can't be connected to Snape's spying mission. That's a 'good' motive 
for the Vow. The Vow led to the killing, but not in a direct way, 
there were other factors involved, some entirely beyond Snape's 
control. If he took the Vow as part of a bid to re-establish his bona 
fides with Voldemort, in order to still be useful to Dumbledore's 
side, it was at worst a miscalculation (as opposed to a sin, an evil 
deed, whatever word it is that I am looking for here).
 
> Jen:
> His 'worst' came out in 
> HBP and led to his own downfall just like it did when he handed 
> over the prophecy to Voldemort.

zgirnius:
Is this your guess about the UV that you are referring to here?

My bottom line difference with Grey, though, comes down to what we 
think we have been shown about the character. You insist he is 
not 'noble'. That's a big shiny word, on which I would not insist use 
to describe Snape, but I disagree that he would never risk his life 
for another individual or a cause. In my understanding of canon, he 
already did, when he embarked on the whole double-agent mission at 
the end of GoF.