LID!Snape rides again (was: High Noon for OFH!Snape)

[Sydney]

No: HPFGUIDX 149710

Pre-note from Sydney:

***************************

Okay, I just realized that for this entire post I'd been
writing "anklebracelet!Snape" when I meant "anklemonitor!Snape".
Must.. stop.. being.. such.. a girl..

Anklemonitor!Snape is dangerous, essentailly unreformed Death Eater
who is bound by a magical Life Debt Ankle Monitor that gives powerful
shocks;  this ensures that he will protect Harry from harm but has no
other effect on his personality or goals.

Anklebracelet!Snape lives in Malibu and enjoys surfing and long walks
on the beach.  He hasn't been a Death Eater since he went to that
Buddhist retreat in Ojai, dude.  He's much, much scarier.

I was just going to leave it with the correction in the reply, but I
couldn't read the initial post without cracking up, so... deleted
inital post, replaced the offending phrase, re-posted.  I didn't touch
anything else in the post, even my horrible spelling.

On with the show:

*******************************************************



*rubs hands together*

> ****************************
> Harry: did Professor McGonagall told you what I told her after Katie
> was hurt? About Draco Malfoy?
>
> Dumbledore: She told you of your suspicions, yes.
>
> Harry: and do you –
>
> Dumbledore: I shall take all appropriate measures to investigate
> anyone who might have had a hand in Katie's accident".

And so he did.  He's being evasive, for the very good reason that if
Draco was caught he'd be killed by Voldemort, but he's not lying.  "I
trust Snape completely" is lying, in your initial scenario of
anklemonitor!Snape.

>And yet he doesn't even bother
> warning Harry to be on his guard, or indicating in any way that
> Harry's suspicions might indeed be in the right direction.

Well, of course not.  Harry having the smallest encouragement to pay
MORE attention to Draco would endanger BOTH of them MORE.  Draco isn't
targeting Harry.  And as Dumbledore says to Draco on the tower, he
didn't dare involve anyone else because V-mort would kill Draco if he
suspected he was wavering or going to get caught.  It's pretty clear
to me what D-dore is doing here.

Wheras, the Order would most definitely have to be on their guard
against anklemonitor!Snape. And while it would be important for
'D-dore doesn't really trust him but gives it a go'!Snape to maintiain
his cover on V-mort's side by appearing pretty in with the Order, it's
not clear to me at all why Dumbledore would go whole hog and start
telling all and sundry that he trusts Snape completely and not hearing
a word against him.  It's not necessary, the way D-dore's sophistry,
if you will, was necessary above.  Nothing could be easier than for
D-dore to keep Snape useful as spy to both sides, enough so that
V-mort wouldn't kill him, but not so close as to endanger other people
by saying things like (I hate to keep bringing this up) "I trust
Severus Snape completely".  Kind of like he did with Draco, actually.
I mean, geez, Dumbledore never told Harry to trust Draco or that Draco
was harmless, he told him that what Draco was doing wasn't important
to Harry and that Dumbledore was doing what he could to take care of
it, and it would be best if Harry just kept out of it. All true.

You say D-dore wouldn't say "I trust Pettigrew completely" because
it's not necessary, Peter isn't in a position of trust.  Well, of
course he's not. You'd have to be insane to put Peter in a position of
trust just because of a Life Debt to one person.  Because you would
know that he would still find a way to do damage and you, well,
couldn't trust him.  Because Peter is just exactly the sort of shifty,
amoral, totally OFH! guy that anklemonitor!Snape is meant to be.  Who
no one in their right mind would go around cheerfully telling people
they 'trust completely' because of a life debt.

> ***************************
> Harry: It's about Malfoy and Snape.
>
> Dumbledore: *Professor* Snape, Harry.
>
> Harry: "Yes Sir, I overheard them during Professor Slughorn's party...
> <describes what he overheard>.
>
> Dumbledore: Thank you for telling me this, Harry, but I suggest that
> you put this out of your mind. I do not think this is of great
> importance."

It's not of great importance, to Dumbledore (because he already knows
what's going on), or to Harry, because it has nothing to do with him.
  Ron getting hit with the potion was a co-oincidence that could never
have been foreseen by Dumbledore.  Anklemonitor!Snape getting a bit
of petty vengeance on Lupin by arranging for him to be at the wrong
place at the wrong time could be anticipated by any idiot, especially
after Snape's antics in PoA.


> ***********************************
> Harry: Professor Trelawney was just in the room of requirement ... and
> she heard Malfoy wooping! Celebrating! He's trying to mend something
> in there and if you ask me, he's fixed it at last and you're about to
> walk out of the school without –
>
> Dumbledore: Enough. Do you think that I have once left the school
> unprotected during my absences this year? I have not. Tonight, when I
> leave, there will again be additional protection in place. Please do
> not suggest that I do not take the safety of my students seriously,
Harry.
> *********************************

Okay, here I don't even see the pervarications at all.  He had the
Order there, he says on the tower he thought is was impossible for
Draco to succeed in bringing DE's to the school.  As far as he has any
reason to expect, it's half the Order against one scared kid (OMG--
shades of the DoM!).  He takes the saftey of all his students,
including Draco, seriously.  Like Ron and the poison, you're nudging
what was an unanticipated, and unaticipatable, error, into something
Dumbledore was pervaricating about, in order to prove that D-dore is
habitually lying.  He habitually conceals information if he thinks it
will make people safer (although he had to balance the immideate
danger to Draco against a slight chance of danger to Harry and others
in the first two examples, a choice which must have been difficult but
which was probably the right one).  I don't think he conceals
information to put people MORE in danger, as he would be doing by
issuing his blanket statements about Snape.

> Also, he apparently doesn't station Snape or anybody else to follow
> Draco that night, and he doesn't instruct the Order guards to watch
> the RoR But "there will be additional protection" and " I take the
> safety of my student seriously". Gee, don't you feel safer already?

By the way, I have a theory about why Snape wasn't watching Draco that
night!  Want to hear it? <g> It's merely a little theory.  It's just
that I can't get over how weird it was that Dumbledore tells Harry to
go 'wake' Snape.  I mean, Snape is a known insomniac, it's just like,
midnight, it's the big crazy night where everything is about to Go
Down.  And Snape-- busybody SNAPE?!-- is going to say, "Yawn!  well, I
guess I'll go to bed.  Wake me up if anything interesting happens".
Yeah, right.  I happen to think that after the heated argument in the
forest, Snape told Dumbledore that he could sod off, he was through,
he was just going to kick back and let the s**t hit the fan and if he
dropped dead, well that was just too bad for the Good side, because
they wouldn't have Severus Snape to kick around any more.  I think, in
fact, that that night, Snape was all set to do his Hero thing, stop
Draco from doing the deed, and drop dead, oh Poor Martyred Snape.  And
Dumbledore knocked him out.  Which is why he was so sure Snape would
need waking, and why he was just sitting fully dressed in his office
when Flitwick burst in. Anyways, like I said, it's just a little
theory.  I'm not putting money on it.

Neri:
> He knew for sure, as he later admits on the tower, that Draco was
working
> for Voldemort, and yet he endangered the whole school, his own
> precious students, in order to give Draco a true chance to choose
> right from wrong.

No, he put his school in some danger, which he did everything he could
to stem, from a very frightened kid, in order to definitely save that
kid's life.  "I knew that you would have been murdered if Lord
Voldemort realized that I suspected you".

>Are you so sure that Sophist!Dumbledore would deny
> that same right from LID!Snape, even if it endangers some Order
> members?

Yup.

I mean, I'm sure Dumbledore would have chosen his words as cautiously
with them as he did in Draco's situation, in order to maximize
EVERYONE'S saftey.

>After all, LID!Snape is practically insured, by the deepest
> magic there is, to save Harry's life, and unlike Draco he wasn't yet
> working for Voldemort, at least not that Dumbledore knew.

See, now, you throw these little things in, and I just have to know
what you mean.  At what point did Dumbledore not know that Snape was
working for Voldemort?


> So what would our Sophist!Dumbledore say to Lupin or another Order
> member who suspects LID!Snape? If he says "I trust Snape to save
> Harry's life but I don't *really* trust him", this would just alienate
> Snape more. Pretty quick nobody in the Order will want any connection
> with him, and in the end he'll have no choice but going to Voldemort's
> side.

*furrows brow*.  Erm... I thought the whole point was that Snape had
no choice but to stay on Dumbledore's side?  Which is why Dumbledore
trusts him completely?  *tries to furrow brow and raise brow at the
same time, hurts self*.  What have we been arguing about again?  Have
I been missing your whole point?  Could anklebracelet!Snape actually
just return to Voldemort if his feelings were sufficiently hurt?

[ed.:  I left this instance in, because anklebracelet!Snape would
totally have his feelings hurt]


Neri:
> Like I explained several times before, LID!Snape *doesn't* share
> Voldemort's goals. At the very least he must save Harry's life at
> least once before he can truly be on Voldemort's side. Even after the
> end of Book 6, when he is officially on Voldemort's side, he still
> must save Harry's life, so he is effectively an agent of "our side"
> within the enemy's camp. Does that means he's on "our side" or not?

Um, not?

"Kill Harry" is only one item on Voldemort's to-do list.  Last time I
checked, 'terrorize people', 'kill all who oppose me', 'randomly
torture muggles', and 'take over the world' were also on the list.
Oh, and 'conquer death' (note to Voldemort:  you might have more
success at achieving your goals if you narrow your focus.  Hey, I have
the same problem, I empathise).  Nothing in the Life Debt would
prevent Snape from participating in any of those, which would be
rather more to the point to all these people Dumbledore is telling
that Snape is on their side.  Anyways, I see no reason to believe that
Snape is in agreement with Dumbledore that Harry is the only person
who can kill Voldemort.  Doesn't he keep telling him that he's neither
special nor important?

> Neri:
> if Dumbledore fully believed in Snape's remorse, LID
> still works just as well. Dumbledore simply believed Snape's remorse
> was genuine, really trusted him completely, and was wrong about it.

<SNIP>

> Ah, I see that you simply prefer another version of LID!Snape. Say, a
> version in which the Life Debt is kind of a poetical magic
> highlighting Snape's own remorse. Well, I'm quite open to this
> version, if it works well with the canon. As I said, LID!Snape can
> have as many versions as LOLLIPOPS.

So, basically you're a DDM!Snaper? <g> Because to me it looks like
you're just taking the basic DDM!Snape, the angry guy who hates most
people on his side but feels duty-bound to see out the defeat of
Voldemort, and using a magical prosthesis (using the term again
because it makes me feel clever) to replace the emotional content.  I
think anklemonitor!Snape sort of works with Snape from the text,
because obviously his motives are being kept off-screen and he's
actively trying to conceal them; and whatever is making him serve the
Good side, it isn't making him very happy.  Anguished remorse over
Lily does the same thing but:

--works with Snape's 'hearts on sleeves' speech which is like the
Snape rosetta stone if you ask me;

--works better with the Love theme (remember?  theme of the books?);

--makes sense of why it's suddenly important that Lily was a potions
whiz and gives her a role in book 7 ('awful boy', anyone?);

--prevents Dumbledore from turning into a dangerous liar for no reason;

--keeps "Severus... please..." clear and meaningful and heartbreaking--

--Oh!  and actually demands some emotional movement from Harry, which
seems pretty vital for any sort of Snape theory.

-- Sydney, who supposes she's a LD!Snape in the sense that she thinks
it will come up again, but in that case, isn't everybody?

*********************************

Sydney, thanking everyone for their patience, and hoping she doesn't
crack up randomly in meetings today imagining dialogue for
anklebracelet!Snape.