VA/H=Mx13+RP? Snape's Culpability?

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 147264


Alla wrote:
> 
> <snip> Of course for DE Snape it would be a natural impulse to pass
the information to Voldemort. I am just not getting how it makes him
less culpable. Yes, he did passed the Prophecy to his boss, but the
boss is the bad guy, REALLY bad guy, so if the argument is something
along the lines that Snape did not know  that the murderous evil
maniac will act upon the information that  the child would be born who
can defeat him, as murderous evil maniac would act? I just don't see
at all how Snape could not have known that. I am NOT buying stupid
Snape and I am also not sure how Carol's argument fits into the
picture at all.
> 
> Snape was thinking in terms of rewards and punishment? Okay, but how
is that mutually exclusive of Snape understanding that Voldemort will
go for a kill ASAP? IMO of course.
> 
Carol responds:
Think about how long it takes to run (or be thrown downstairs) and to
Apparate. That's how long young Snape would have had to think about
the Prophecy. Possibly he didn't even think about the meaning and
implication of the words until he was reciting them. At that point he
would have seen Voldemort's reaction and realized that Voldemort
interpreted the Prophecy to mean that an unborn child was the threat
and that he (LV) intended to identify and kill that unborn child. I
still contend that young Snape, intent on getting to his boss with a
potentially important but obscurely worded piece of information, did
not have time to reason it out. Just memorize it, Apparate, and report
to LV. I'm pretty sure that he'd be thinking about the consequences to
himself (reward or punishment) if he had time to think about anything
at all--not about the consequences to some unknown person born at the
end of July who presented a future threat to Voldemort. As Dumbledore
said, it was only after he realized how Voldemort *chose* to interpret
the Prophecy that it became meaningful to him and he repented. 

For all we know, he could have gone to Dumbledore that very day. Or he
may have gone to him as soon as he was fairly certain of the identity
of the child LV had decided to go after. And all that would require is
reading the birth announcements in the Daily Prophet and keeping a
careful eye on LV for his reaction to the same announcements.

Again, we listmembers can read and reread the Prophecy at our leisure.
Young Snape heard it once, delivered in a strange voice by a woman in
a trance, and would have had little or no time to think about it. It's
not as if he could take a nice leisurely stroll from Hogsmeade to
Little Hangleton (which IIRC is hundreds of miles away). He must have
Apparated, and he would have had only a few seconds of spinning
through the air to get his thoughts together. If you have important
news to deliver to Voldemort, news that involves potential danger to
your master, you don't dally along the way to figure out exactly what
the esoteric message may mean for the unknown persons involved in it.

Had he done so, being a logically minded young man, he would surely
have thought that LV would bide his time and discover where the threat
came from, not act to snuff out an infant's life before he could
become a threat. (How would Voldie know that one particular child born
at the end of July was "the One"? Given the number of wizards in the
WW, even those who had "thrice defied" Voldemort at some point in
their lives, how could he be sure that he was killing the right child?
What if the birth wasn't announced in the Daily Prophet and he killed
the wrong child, thinking himself secure, only to find that "the One"
had hidden for twenty or thirty years until he was ready to defeat him? 

If he had time to think about the Prophecy at all, Snape at twenty
would probably have expected Voldie to think as *he* did (logically),
probably in terms of a future rather than a present threat. I doubt
that Severus would have anticipated the maniacal and paranoid response
that you seem to think he should have expected. For one thing, his
experience with evil overlords was rather limited at that point. He
was young, he had only been a DE for about two years, he was not privy
to LV's secrets (no one was), and he was not himself a maniac. But for
reasons already explained, I doubt that he had time to think about it.
He just delivered the message and discovered, too late, how LV
interpreted the Prophecy.

Carol, who doesn't for a moment doubt Snape's intelligence or think
he's naive but doesn't think he would or could have interpreted the
Prophecy as we do, with the benefit of hindsight and Dumbledore's
explanations, or as LV did, in a way that was neither sane nor logical