Practicing Legilimency against an Occlumens(Re: Snape's motivations & Occumency)

[Jen Reese]

No: HPFGUIDX 163267

Carol:
> BTW, I don't think that Legilimency works the way you think it does.
> It can't dixcover underlying motives and loyalties.  LV can't
> explore someone's mind at will. It only works to reveal the thought
> that's uppermost in someone's mind at the moment, which is why it's
> chiefly used to detect lies. 

Jen: Snape's own description in the Occlumency chapter of OOTP makes 
Legilimency sound fairly invasive when practiced by an expert.  
Masters can 'delve into the minds of their victims and [to] intepret 
their findings correctly'.  We see that Snape can call forth a stream 
of memories from Harry, including ones from long ago that aren't in 
his concious mind at the moment, so Voldemort is not seeing only what 
is uppermost in a person's mind.  Plus when Harry sees the memories, 
there's emotion involved such as 'his heart bursting with jealousy'.

Then Snape mentions intepretation involved which means to me some of 
what a Legilimens sees is not obvious from the start but requires a 
level of skill to put the pieces together.  

Carol:
> I doubt that LV even knows that Snape is using Occlumency against
>  him because he's simply suppressing particular memories and 
> substituting others in their place. It's not like Draco all too
> obviously (and slowly) throwing up an easily detectable barrier. If
> Snape tried that with LV, he'd be dead.

Jen:  Maybe Voldemort doesn't know about Snape's Occlumency, or maybe 
he does and needs Snape around a little longer.  

Anyway, my point before was that Snape would need to block too many 
memories *if* he is aligned with Dumbledore's morality and/or holds 
political convictions about the good of the WW such as 'pureblood 
elitism is wrong' for instance.  Having a strong moral filter on 
means a person also has memories of seeing injustice and having 
feelings about those injustices, all things which must be supressed 
for Voldemort.  Not to mention if Snape is intentionally grooming 
Harry to defeat Voldemort, he has concious memories of helping the 
Chosen One.  

I find it easier to believe that Snape is supressing only those 
memories which have to do with his turn to Dumbledore up through the 
death of the Potters and not tons of memories from the time he 
switched loyalty until Voldemort returned. 

> Carol, who never said anything about a layer of goodness in Snape 
> but does think that he's thoroughly and permanently opposed to
> Voldemort despite his Slytherin instincts and personally loyal to
> Dumbledore, even and perhaps especially with DD dead by his hand.

Jen: Ack.  I keep getting feedback that my attempts to characterize a 
Snape different from my own reading are missing the mark.  In my own 
mind I call him "Good Snape" but that seems to connotate "Nice Snape" 
for some (not necessarily you, Carol).  Someone have a few words to 
sum up a Snape who isn't just loyal but has other attributes of 
goodness?  Some of the attributes I've seen are things like Snape 
being heroic or morally and philosophically aligned with Dumbledore 
or solely motivated by deep remorse.