Snape, Apologies, and Redemption--Lupin vs. DD

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 152692

Alla:
> > If you can show me that Snape never killed, tortured , poisoned 
people while being in Voldemort's employ, I will absolutely say that
he is not responsible for the acts of other  DE, just for his own, but
I think he has plenty of blood on his hands, NOT just by association.
> 
> Ceridwen:
> I have the iron heating up, right beside the oven door.  This will
be my fourth post.
> 
> We are beginning to have some canon for Snape 'slithering out of 
> things' with the DEs.  In 'Spinner's End', Bellatrix says, twice
that I can find off-hand: <snip quotes>

> Bellatrix may be indulging in some hyperbole, but she has the idea 
> that Snape gets out of things.  How often he really does, how often 
> he was absent while the other DEs ran dangers, we don't know.  It 
> could just be a matter of degree, or times in the thick of things, 
> which Bellatrix's anger converts to 'the usual'.  There must be some 
> basis in truth, even if she's going over the top. <snip>

>
Carol responds:
Will a curling iron do? How about old-fashioned electric rollers with
a hot center? I don't own an iron. (You know, permanent press clothes
and all that?) But, to forge ahead, risking burned fingers along with
Ceridwen for a fourth post . . . .

The thing is, Alla, you know that we can't show you what Snape didn't
do. It's simply not possible to do that. But it's also impossible to
show at this point what he did do (with a few small exceptions) and
any judgment that he has murdered or tortured others simply because he
was a DE must be based on assumption. Certainly he is a very different
person from, say, a mad fanatic like Barty Jr. or a simple thug like
Amycus. Nor does he have anything in common with a filthy ravening
brute like Fenrir Greyback. DEs, we are learning, do not all fit in
the same mold.  

"Spinner's End" provides our only glimpse of Snape outside Hogwarts,
and it provides little no evidence that he has himself performed any
Unforgiveable Curses or other violent crimes. (I've already talked
about the Emmeline Vance claim as merely an implication that his
information helped to lead to her capture and death; there are reasons
to suspect the veracity of this claim, as I have noted elsewhere.) In
addition to Bella's distrust of Snape, which certainly must have some
basis (just as Dumbledore's trust in him must have some as yet
unrevealed basis), and her accusations that he "slithers out of
action," claiming to do so on the Dark Lord's orders, we have her list
of things he didn't do: He wasn't with the Dark Lord when he fell, he
never made any attempt to find LV when he vanished, he didn't return
at once when LV was reborn, he wasn't at the MoM battling for the
Prophecy, and he hasn't murdered Harry Potter after having him at his
mercy for five years. The one thing that he *had* done that she knows
of is thwart Quirrell's attempt to steal the Sorceror's Stone, not
exactly aiding her lord and master. (Fortunately for Snape, she
doesn't know that he sent the Order of the Phoenix to the MoM and that
he saved Dumbledore's life after he was desperately injured by the
ring Horcrux curse. He'd have had a harder time explaining those two
actions, I think, especially the last.)

What *has* he done, then? Well, he joined the Death Eaters when he was
perhaps eighteen and he reported overhearing part of the Prophecy to
the Dark Lord at a time when it was impossible to know who it referred
to. (I have a hunch that the Prophecy was overheard on October 31,
Harry's approximate conception date, but I won't argue for it here.)
Um, what else? Oh, yes. He applied for the DADA position on LV's
orders, ostensibly to spy on Dumbledore, but since he was already
spying for Dumbledore "at great personal risk," all that amounts to is
being a double agent, which he assuredly is--but, Draco to the
contrary, that does not make him Voldemort's man. In "Spinner's End,"
he agreed to take a UV to protect and watch over Draco--hardly what LV
wanted him to do if one of his goals was for Draco to fail in the
attempt. And he accepted, for whatever reason, that last last
provision of the vow, apparently against his will, with terrible
consequences for himself as well as Dumbledore. (Surely ESE!Snape
would have refused to take the UV in the first place and acted like
the "brutal-faced DE" once he was on the tower.) Yes, he killed
Dumbledore, but he also got Draco and Harry off the tower and the DEs
out of Hogwarts, stopping one from Crucioing Harry in the process.

None of this has any bearing on what he may or may not have done as a
DE before Godric's Hollow except that he was pretty clearly at
Hogwarts when LV was vaporized. Even Karkaroff's testimony in GoF is
unhelpful. He charges particular DEs with particular crimes--not
nearly as many as we might have thought except in the case of the
Imperius specialist Mulciber, who evidently used his favorite UC on
"countless" people. Others are also identified with the use of a
particular curse (Cruciatus) or a particular murder or with spying and
providing LV with MoM secrets. Snape's name does not come up in
connection with any of these crimes. Karkaroff's testimony gives every
evidence of specialization on the part of the higher-ranked DEs, of
whom young Snape was evidently one. We don't know what he did, but had
he been involved in any of the crimes Karkaroff lists, Karkaroff would
surely have said so. Instead, we get only, "I assure you, Severus
Snape is a Death Eater," a charge of which the MoM has already cleared
him thanks to DD's testimony.

JKR has had numerous opportunities to tell us what Snape did as a DE,
but aside from the eavesdropping incident, she has told us nothing. We
know only what others say he didn't do or fail to say that he did do.
Annoying and frustrating for people on both sides of the question, but
not at all enlightening.

Until we have evidence that he personally killed, tortured, or
Imperio'd anyone, we simply cannot take for granted that he did so.
Guilt by association? Yes. But if he's DDM, he has been trying to pay
for his own past sins, particularly the revelation of the partial
prophecy to LV, for about fifteen years.

Of course you're free to *think* that he has blood on his hands other
than the death of Dumbledore, but at this point, that view remains an
assumption with no canon evidence behind it. (We can't judge Snape by,
say, Amycus and Alecto any more than we can judge Harry by McLaggen.)
What we *do* have evidence for in HBP is Snape's heretofore
unsuspected gifts as a Healer. Maybe, just maybe, Harry isn't the only
one with a "saving people thing." That's the Snape angle I hope to see
more of in Book 7.

Carol, wishing that JKR would write an eighth book, "The Autobiography
of Severus Snape"