High Noon for OFH!Snape

[Sydney]

No: HPFGUIDX 149418

*eye squint*  *tumbleweed*

It's you or me, OFH!Snape.

*twitches fingers over revolver*

I've had three hobbyhorses I've wanted to take for a trot around this
site.  Okay, four-- selling jogging!Snape is very dear to my heart. 
One, that Snape/Lily is well-nigh unavoidable (and fun!  yay!  fun!).
 Two, that the oddity of Dumbledore's immediate pleading with Snape on
the tower, far from being a small detail, means that Snape AKing
Dumbledore on his specific request is the straightforward reading of
that scene; and that it is, in fact, the Evil!Snapers who have to come
up with convoluted, extra-canonical theories to explain it.  

Hobbyhorse number 3:  Out-for-Himself!Snape must die.  ESE!Snape is a
pretty thin fellow and not much of a threat; but OFH!Snape has been
seducing away some people that I need for my Evil Army.  So, he's got
to go.

I could go through all the books and rip this guy apart, but let's
stick to some narrow paramaters.  Dumbledore's pleading on the tower
(The Curious Incident, shall we call it, of the Dumbledore who Didn't
Bark, for those who recall their Sherlock Holmes) has shown how
fruitful it can be to look at this stuff in detail rather than in
vague impressions. 

So.

Let's have a look at that Unbreakable Vow.



"If you are there to protect him... Severus, will you swear it?  Will
you make the Unbreakable Vow?"
Snape's expression was blank, unreadable.  ...
"Certainly, Narcissa, I shall make the Unbreakable Vow," he said quietly.


The taking of the Vow makes one thing very clear-- Snape is willing to
die.  Not necessarily suicidal, but definitely not holding his life at
a particularly high value.  Anyone who sees a way around this, be my
guest.

Surely it must be clear that of all our Snapes, the most entirely
incompatible with the Vow is Out-For-Himself!Snape.  People who are
out for themselves simply do not, under any circumstances short of the
absolutely unavoidable, make promises that they drop dead if they
don't fulfill.  Seriously, even if you have every intention of
remembering to pick up the milk, would you literally swear to drop
dead if you didn't?  Snape is not an impulsive, panicky person, and he
certainly was not unavoidably trapped into making the Vow.  And Snape
wasn't Vowing to do something simple-- he was Vowing to do something
very difficult that Voldemort himself had repeatedly failed to do. 
Whatever OFH!Snape wants out of life-- money, power, that sort of
thing, he's not going to get it if he's dead.  He had precious little
if anything to gain and everything to lose from the Vow.  

I don't know, maybe you can posit that OFH!Snape was cross with
himself for procrastinating on the Gaining Power goal, and thought
taking the Vow might be a good motivator, sort of like doing
Affirmations or something.  "I will succeed or drop dead". Might make
a good weight-loss tool?    

Unless you've got one heck of a theory (or wash your hands of the
whole thing by saying the character most consistently portrayed as
calculating is an idiot), the Vow scene boots OFH!Snape right out the
window.  

Taking the Vow doesn't work well with ESE!Snape either.   There's
plenty of reason to think Voldemort would be downright displeased at
the Vow.  Draco is supposed to die, either in the attempt or by
failing and being executed.  Snape is not supposed to be protecting
him.  Neither Snape nor Narcissa were supposed to be talking about the
plan to other people at all.  And Snape has Voldemort's biggest fan
right there in the room-- Bellatrix.  And a guy who can turn into a
rat spying on him.  ESE!Snape might make a Vow to kill Dumbledore if
it had been proposed by Voldemort, but not one proposed by a tearful
mother, two-thirds of which dealt with protecting a kid that V-mort
wanted to make an example of.

ESE!Snape:  buh-bye.  

LifeDebt!Snape:  How does this work again?  It's hard to argue with a
theory when I don't actually understand what it claims!  Reading over
the original LID post, I think Snape-loves-Narcissa is brought up as
an unrelated explanation.  So, Snape is ready to die to save the
child, not his own, of the woman he loves.  First, this is pretty far
from being out for yourself;  second, I think that whole scenario
integrates into the plot a teensy bit better if the woman is Lily and
the child Harry.  

What does this leave us with?  Not a whole lot.  No two ways about it,
taking the Vow was an extremely weird thing to do.  

Let's try to look at this logically.  I see two scenarios here-  not
mutually exclusive ones, but they are distinct, so lets look at them
seperately:

One is our old friend Suicidal!Snape.  He took the Vow intending to
break it.  If he knew that the task was to kill Dumbledore, so much
the better-- it practically guaranteed his goal, to die a hero (but,
oh, that pesky DADA curse..). If Dumbledore has been nagging him about
hanging around until he can help bring down Voldemort, he's got an
easy out here. When Narcissa proposed the Vow, his first thought is,
'ooooh, that's that thing where you die, right?  I'm in'.

Much as I adore Suicidal!Snape, that doesn't account for the jerk of
the hand at the third clause of the Vow.  I think that was definitely
a "gah" moment.  Plus, it's a bit defeatist for Snape's personality. 
So looking at this from another angle-- what does anybody have to gain
from the Vow?  Why does Narcissa propose it?  Surely it would be more
likely to alienate someone you were going to for help, to demand that
they promise to help you or die?

I think Narcissa proposed, and Snape took, the Vow, because it was the
only way to protect Draco from Voldemort.  Voldemort intended Draco to
be killed, and if he doesn't die in the attempt, he will be killed
afterwards-- "He told me to do it or he'd kill me".   But the Vow
throws a massive spanner in the works-- Snape has effectively lashed
his fate to Draco's, and Snape is Voldemort's top (well, only
competent) guy-- "his favorite, his most trusted advisor", Narcissa
calls him.  Here V-mort thought he had a disposable minion to off as a
punishment to his father;  but now if he pushes Draco too hard, or has
a go at him himself, he also loses one of his most valuable people at
the same time.  

I don't think Voldemort was pleased with this at all, and I don't
think Snape had a merry time of it when it came out-- as it's hard to
see how it didn't, with Bellatrix and possibly Peter overhearing.  But
what's he going to do?  Minions are not so thick on the ground as once
they were.  

And it was a good plan, too, except for that darn third clause. Which
I really wonder why Narcissa proposed it-- so Voldemort would be in
such a good mood with D-dore dead, than he wouldn't just snap and kill
both Draco and Snape?  Because she suspects Snape isn't loyal to
V-mort, and worries that might threaten Draco?  

What makes this a nice theory is a) it actually makes sense (always
good in a theory), and b) it's by way of being a Dark version of
Lily's sacrifice for Harry.  Snape is ready to die for Draco, but it's
Dark magic, not Love magic, that binds it, and the consequences
destroy the Light Dumbledore, not the Dark Voldemort.  Coolio!

I'm still giving Suicidal!Snape some cred though, because of the tower
scene-- Dumbledore would not have felt he had to PLEAD with Snape, if
he was confident that Snape wouldn't try to break the Vow.  

Last man standing:  decent, cunning, miserable, instinctively-Dark,
trying-to-do-the-right-thing-yet-screwing-up,
not-too-fond-of-being-alive, Snape.  That's my boy.

-- Sydney, who really DOES have lots of opinions on all sorts of
non-Snape things in the books, but a) if she posted on them would
cease to have a life entirely, and b) her posts would mostly consist
of "I agree with Magpie".