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

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 163284


> 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.  

Pippin:

Oh, of course Voldemort knows that Snape is an occlumens. It would
be folly to send anyone to spy on Dumbledore who wasn't. But Voldemort
doesn't think that any occlumens is good enough to fool *him*. Of
course everyone tries to hide things from Voldemort anyway, so Snape 
would have to hide some memories imperfectly and let Voldemort 
discover them, while the memories and feelings he really wants
to hide remain safely under wraps. But I don't think Snape has
to hide all that much.

I don't think Voldemort has any problem at all with people raging
against injustice, as long as it's directed at his enemies. It's one of
his best recruiting tools. Snape's anger over the way James treated
him would serve him well. As long as Snape can disguise any
feeling that he despises injustice on principle instead of because
it is against his interest, Voldemort will have nothing to worry
about. 

I don't think Snape believes much in fairness. He'd like to, maybe,
but where was fairness when James and co were making his 
Hogwarts days miserable? I think he regarded Dumbledore's 
quest for fairness in the same light as Harry regarded DD's quest 
for the good in everyone...noble but hopelessly quixotic and 
very likely dangerous.  Snape would only have to hide the
'noble' part of this feeling from Voldemort.

Snape despised James for attacking him four on one because it was 
cowardly. He did not say it was unfair. But his remorse over the
prophecy  was genuine, IMO, because  it would be cowardly to 
take revenge through Voldemort. Snape would despise himself
if he realized that's what he was doing. But self-hatred wouldn't
be a feeling he needed to hide, only the cause of it.

My Snape  doesn't have many warm fuzzy feelings that he
needs to suppress.  If he did most of his reporting to
Dumbledore via pensieve, he wouldn't have any memories
of telling Dumbledore things he shouldn't have.

Snape will have to present Voldemort with a false memory of 
murdering Dumbledore (assuming he didn't actually do it), and
false rage and hate to go along with it, but we saw that Voldemort
 was able to create a false and very vivid mental tableau of 
torturing Sirius in the MoM. Presumably DDM!Snape is similarly capable,
and has presented Voldemort with other false  memories  in the
past, such as the 'murder' of Emmeline Vance.

Pippin