Of essence divided?

[houyhnhnm102]

No: HPFGUIDX 154368

Peggy:

> I don't think his "have you forgotten our orders" 
> can be taken one way or the other, as far as his 
> being a loyal DE or DDM!Snape... we know only that 
> they have been given that order.

houyhnhnm:

We only know that Snape *says* they have been given 
that order. There is no corroborating evidence.

I see what you are saying. That Snape could only have 
dared to make such a claim if they *had* been given 
such orders and Snape knew about it and the DEs knew he knew.

But see what follows from that assumption. For it 
to be true, Snape would have to have been in on the 
plans to bring Death Eaters into Hogwarts.  Draco 
says he wasn't.  Of course Draco may have been left 
partially out of the loop himself.  He certainly was 
not informed of the fact that Fenrir Greyback was 
coming along for the ride.  But if Snape had a higher 
security clearance, so to speak, than Draco, isn't it 
logical that he would have been told of what Draco was 
trying to accomplish in the RoR. 

But then, if Snape was in on the plan to invade Hogwarts, 
and he is DDM, Dumbledore would have to known also, and 
Dumbledore claims not to have known.

On the other hand, we know from Karkaroff (and from 
everything we've seen of Voldemort) that Voldemort 
keeps his minions in the dark.  Like all tyrants, 
he maintains contol by keeping his followers suspicious 
and jealous of each other, pretending to have favorites 
but trusting no one.  This creates a fertile atmosphere 
for a spinner to work in and Snape is a master spinner.

The crew of DEs at Hogwarts that night were a pretty 
dim-witted lot.  It is hard to imagine that Amycus and 
Alecto, for example, have ever even been in a position 
to *imagine* that they were the Dark Lord's favorites.  
Here is Big Bad Snape, who *has* done a pretty good job 
(as we see at Spinner's End) of convincing the other DE's 
that he is Voldemort's right hand man, telling them to 
"remember our orders".  Even if they never heard any such 
thing, the DEs are not going to question him.  They aren't 
going to want to admit that they were left out of the loop.  
"Oh, yeah, *those* orders."

I think there is a very good possibility that Snape was 
bluffing.  At any rate there can be no certainty that 
Voldemort did really give such an order; therefore, I 
don't think it is wise to use that *fact* as a premise 
on which to build other arguments.