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

[lupinlore]

No: HPFGUIDX 147271

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "justcarol67" <justcarol67 at y...> 
wrote:
>
<SNIP>
> 
> 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
>

Why was Voldemort's reaction neither sane nor logical?  Let's see, he's 
told that the one with the power to destroy him will be born as the 
seventh month wanes to parents who have thrice defied him.  This means 
it can only be one of two possbilities.  Why should he wait and take a 
risk that the potential danger will become actual?  Why worry about 
which is which?  That would have been foolish and risky in the 
extreme.  The action he took was perfectly sane and perfectly logical.  
Strangle both potential dangers in their cradle (pun very much 
intended), making sure that you act first against the danger you think 
is most likely.  Surely no one believes he would have allowed Neville 
to survive?  No, after finishing Harry he would doubtless have killed 
Neville just to be sure.  Which would have been the perfectly sane and 
logical, if ruthless, course of action to take.

And also the perfectly predictable course of action.  Anyone with even 
a modicum of understanding of paranoid personalities, much less with 
the kind of intimate awareness of Voldemort's outlook that even a 
novice deatheater would have had, would have clearly forseen 
Voldemort's perfectly sane, logical, and predictable reaction.


Lupinlore