Another Snape thread

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 151902

Note: As Yahoo seems to have eaten all the messages posted today, I'm
reposting this one. (If it's the original posts, I'll delete it.)

With apologies to Geoff and to anyone else who's tired of discussing
Snape, I can't get the man out of my mind. I know perfectly well that
he's a fictional character, but I worry and wonder about him as if he
were real and feel thwarted because I can't do anything about the
predicament he has landed himself in. (I'm not worried about Harry;
he'll suffer, but he'll triumph in the end. Maybe even grow up
emotionally as well as legally, since the book is IMO as much a
bildungsroman as a heroic quest. But Snape's fate, like his loyalties,
is much less cut and dried.)
 
My concern is this. Snape has nowhere to go except to Voldemort
(where, I think, DD wanted and expected him to go at the end of the
year given that he assigned him the DADA position). If he's ESE! or
OFH!, then it doesn't matter. He's wicked, he'll stay wicked, and
that's that. But if he's DDM!--if he killed Dumbledore against his
will because he had no choice--it matters very much. What will he do
now? What *can* he do?
 
IMO, in the past, he's used his considerable ingenuity and his
position at Hogwarts to "slither out of action" when the DEs expected
him to join in their various evil pursuits, whether that was raiding
the MoM or baiting Muggles at the QWC. But now the war is on. Snape
has lost his position at Hogwarts and with it his role as double
agent. (Even if Draco had killed Dumbledore without Snape's
involvement, he would have lost the job as a result of the DADA curse
and there would be no one left to spy on.) 
 
Snape can't show his face in the WW without risking arrest or
assassination. And worse, Voldemort will expect him to show his
loyalty by participating in the various raids and other DE activities,
maybe even commit some murders on his own. I suppose he could fake the
murders using the Draught of Living Death, but how would the Order
know he had done that if he can't communicate with them? How can he
keep from committing further crimes and further splitting his soul?
IMO, he's already suffering mental anguish, shown by the comparison of
him to Fang in the burning house, kept from surfacing and
incapacitating him only through his superb Occlumency. Any additonal
crimes will only make matters worse, making it still more difficult to
forgive himself.
 
What, then, can he do? Does anyone think that he can, as a reward for
killing Dumbledore, ask for an assignment that doesn't involve
anything so crude as an Unforgiveable Curse, such as potion making, or
teaching young DEs (Draco and possibly Theo Nott) whose Head of House
he formerly was, or working behind the scenes to engineer a prison
break (with the intent of undermining Lucius Malfoy's loyalty to LV)?
Any other ways in which he might continue to "slither out of action"
while still maintaining the appearance of loyalty to LV? Most
important, how can DDM!Snape help Harry when the whole Order sees him
as "a murderin' traitor" (as they once saw Sirius Black), especially
if he's forced to commit further crimes to keep his cover? And where
do all those healing skills revealed in HBP fit in?
 
Ideas, anyone? What do you think Snape will be up to, mostly off page,
in Book 7? Surely all those revelations about him in HBP don't lead to
a dead end on the tower.
 
Carol, knowing that it's silly to worry about a fictional character
whose fate and redemption are outside her control but concerned for
Snape's soul nonetheless