DDM!Snape clue

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 148375

I know people have suggested before that it was Snape who shouted
"Petrificus Totalus!" and saved Harry from Fenrir Greyback, but I
think I can make a fairly strong case that it was indeed Snape. I'll
start with the canon:

"As Harry plunged after them [Snape and Draco], one of the Death
Eaters detached themselves from the fray and flew at him: It was the
werewolf, Fenrir. He was on top of Harry before Harry before Harry
could raise his wand. Harry fell backward with filthy matted hair in
his face . . . hot greedy breath at his throat--

"*Petrificus Totalus*!" (HBP Am. ed. 598)

The werewolf falls away, petrified and Harry is free. He cannot have
cast the spell himself as he's unable to raise his wand. The speaker
is unidentified. Surely if it were, say, Lupin or McGonagall, JKR
would have said so and let it go. Snape at this time is just rounding
a corner at the far end of a corridor, the perfect position from which
to whirl around unnoticed by anyone on either side of the fight and
throw one quick defensive spell. I realize that this isn't proof, but
he was there and he had the opportunity. And, of course, if he's
DDM!Snape, he also had the motive, the same motive that leads him to
stop the big blond DE from Crucioing Harry a few minutes later.

In the following chapter, Harry has given his version of the events,
including a somewhat inaccurate account of Snape's reasons for joining
Dumbledore (discussed in dozens of posts so I won't repeat those
arguments), and is listening as his friends and the Order members fill
him in about their battle with the Death Eaters. 

Lupin says that Snape and "the boy" (Draco) "emerged out of the dust.
Obviously none of us attacked them." Tonks adds, "We just let them
pass. We thought they were being chased by the Death Eaters--and next
thing, the other Death Eaters and Greyback were back and we were
fighting again"--this is the point at which Greyback attacks Harry--"I
thought I heard Snape shouting something, but I don't know what--"

"'He shouted, "It's over,"' said Harry. 'He'd done what he'd meant to
do'" (621). [And of course, he's getting the DEs out of Hogwarts, but
Harry doesn't notice that.]

Snape does shout "It's over, time to go!" to the DEs just before he
rounds the corner, but these words are shouted *before* Greyback and
the others join the fray, not *during* it like the Petrificus Totalus
spell. It seems very likely that he would turn back at that point to
see whether they're obeying him and discover that they're not doing
so. And that would give him the time and the opportunity to fire a
parting shot at Grayback, which Harry, preoccupied with his horrible
half-human attacker, would not see.

So while Harry could be right that the words Tonks heard but did not
understand were "it's over," the timing makes it at least as likely
that she heard the less intelligible words of the spell. In the chaos
of the battle, with Ginny distracted, Neville out cold, Bill nearly
dead, Hermione and Luna not even involved, everyone else busy fighting
for their lives, no one would have paid attention to whose voice they
heard and who was casting which spell. Tonks heard Snape's voice but
not his words; Harry heard a spell but did not recognize the voice
that cast it. Put the two together and it's Snape casting the spell.
Or at least, it fits together nicely as a very strong possibility.

Of course, the words Tonks heard could be the words Harry supplies,
"It's over," but he could be mistaking one set of words for another,
just as in SS/PS he notoriously attributes LV's causing the pain in
his scar to Snape. We have a number of incidents of the same type
throughout the books. In HBP, for example, the movement that Harry and
Hermione hear in the library that they attribute to Madam Pince turns
out to be Draco listening in on their conversation, as we find out in
his conversation with Dumbledore on the tower. Here we have, or we may
have, a variation on the device of mistaking one thing for another,
with "It's over" as a kind of red herring to distract us from
"Petrificus Totalus." And I can't think of any other reason why JKR
would have had Tonks not hear what Snape said except to call our
attention to his speaking at exactly the point when the spell would
have been cast.

At any rate, the speaker of the spell cannot be Harry and the evidence
suggests that it's Snape. And if it is, we can be sure that we'll hear
from Snape's own mouth in Book 7 that he saved Harry's life yet again
with no reward but "cheek." 

Carol, who acknowledges that Harry has very good grounds to hate Snape
now (much more so than he did in OoP) but pretty sure that the events
in HBP are not exactly as they seem to be from his perspective