Snape tidbits (Was: Carol/Carol again)

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 146527

Carol earlier:
> << As we see at the Yule Ball, he takes ten points each from
Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff for rule breaking (Miss Fawcett and a boy
whose name I can't remember making out in the rosebushes) >>
> 
Catlady:
> I don't recall it being made clear to me that there was a rule
against making out in the rosebushes (or elsewhere). I got the
impression that Snape was blasting rosebushes and took points from
those of the fleeing students whom he could identify in the dark
simply out of Snapish spite. 

Carol again:
I'm not sure about the rules, but I think we can make a fair guess at
what Miss Fawcett and her male friend were doing. If they wanted to
dance, they'd be at the ball. If they wanted to talk, they could sit
at a table, where it was warmer. They wouldn't need to hide in the
rosebushes. And the narrator notes that Fleur Delacour and Roger
Davies, also hiding in the rosebushes, "looked pretty busy to Harry."
I think Snape is prowling the rosebushes to catch kissing couples. It
hadn't occurred to me that he was inventing a new rule. At least he
didn't give them detention! My point was simply that we do see him
taking points from students from a house other than Gryffindor on this
occasion, and he treats Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff equally. With equal
unfairness, if you like, but it's still equal. Wonder what he would
have done with Fleur and Roger. Deducted double points for him since
he couldn't deduct them from Fleur?

Carol earlier:
 > << I think that spy!Peter (snip) was operating very much in the
> background, not as a DE himself and not known to the DEs because he
> was giving his information directly to Voldemort (who trusts no one
> and operates in secrecy). >>
> 
Catlady:
> That would make sense, to keep one's spy's identity a secret. It
permits the possibility that Snape didn't know who the spy/traitor
was, believed the general opinion that it was Sirius, and thus was not
planning to feed a man he knew to be innocent to the Dementors (not
even via Fudge). However, it seems quite impossible that any DE, even
Snape, could have believed the wilder claims that Sirius was LV's
second in command -- how can a second in command be kept secret from
the people he is commanding?

Carol:
I'm glad you agree that it makes sense to keep the spy's identity 
secret and that Snape wouldn't know it for that reason. As for
believing the wilder claims about Sirius being LV's second in command,
he would have known that the spy, whoever he was, was no such thing,
that the Daily Prophet was just exaggerating the truth as usual. But
he could easily believe that Sirius Black was a murderer; he had his
own experience with the Prank, to begin with, and the slashed painting
and bedcurtains as further evidence that Black was a homicidal maniac.
> 
> BUT, per Sirius, and I think JKR meant us to take it as fact, the
Death Eaters in Azkaban were crying out against Pettigrew as the
traitor who led LV to his defeat, apparently an ambush. How could the
DEs in Azkaban have known that Pettigrew was the faithless Secret
> Keeper and Snape, also a DE, didn't know it?

Carol:
Black also states that many of the prisoners went mad or died quickly.
I think that among the few he didn't were Bellatrix Black and her
followers, the Lestrange brothers--the only DEs, not counting young
Barty Jr., who believed that Voldemort wasn't dead or permanently
vanquished. So I think it was those three that Sirius Black overheard.
He says he saw them come in, so quite possibly their cells were near
his. Bellatrix starts to tell Snape in HBP that "in the past,
[Voldemort] entrusted me with his most precious--" and then she breaks
off. His secrets? His precious possessions? Maybe, as I speculated
earlier, Bellatrix knew about the locket Horcrux. And if she knew
about that, she may also have known the identity of the spy/Secret
Keeper who betrayed the Potters. Only she would think that he was only
pretending to betray the Potters and in fact knew what would happen to
Voldemort.

Snape, OTOH, was at Hogwarts when the Potters chose their Secret
Keeper. He may have been told by Dumbledore that the Potters intended
to make Black their Secret Keeper--he would readily believe the worst
about Black--but he couldn't have been told by Voldemort or the Death
Eaters. I think only those few Death Eaters knew the identity of the
spy/Secret Keeper, and probably they, too, stopped talking about it
(except for screaming it out in their nightmares) after a few weeks or
months in the company of the Dementors.

Carol, who loved your Monty Python quote but thought a gudgeon was a fish