[HPforGrownups] Dark Magic and Snape (was:Re: CHAPDISC: HBP24, Sectumsempra)

[Magpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 161406

a_svirn:
Also, since it is only his own immortality Voldemort is preoccupied
with, his "dark knowledge linked to immortality" couldn't have been
much of a lure for Snape, since it wasn't a sort of knowledge
Voldemort was likely to share. In fact he is liable to kill anyone
who gets too interested about it. Whatever else Snape might have been
delusional about in his youth, he surely knew that.


Magpie:
I think I explained myself badly there.  I meant I think something more 
related to what Betsy says here:

Betsy Hp:
I just don't see this one.  Snape is the intellectual of
Potterverse, but he seems to have done just fine on his own.  I don't see 
Voldemort playing the part of teacher.  I don't see him as a holder of 
forbidden knowledge.

I think Snape went to Voldemort out of anger, not curiosity.  Possibly 
because he agreed with the political views that attracted Lucius to 
Voldemort's side.

Magpie:
Iow, I don't think that Voldemort is truly interested in anyone else's 
immortality besides his own, definitely.  But I think the lure of the DEs 
can still be immortality--just of the kind that I've read described as 
fueling genocide in the real world.

So I more mean, as Betsy said, not that Snape saw Voldemort as a teacher who 
would give him personally the secret to immortality, but that the 
quasi-immortal talk of the DEs (purifying the race of Wizards, the strength 
the group promised against enemies of true Wizards etc.) could be attractive 
in itself.

Snape was obviously a very intelligent Wizard, more so than average it 
seems.  And he does seem to think outside the box more than a lot of other 
Wizards do (I wonder if we'll learn why no one ever speaks of Snape's great 
smarts while he was at Hogwarts--we hear people still remember how bright 
James, Lily and Sirius were, but Snape's more known for his social 
shortcomings).  But there's no indication that he couldn't have pursued his 
own experiments without Voldemort.  The Slytherins who became DEs may have 
appreciated him more than others and that would probably be attractive too, 
but I think that the thing that seems to have really gotten Snape was anger 
and hatred, not intellectual curiosity.  When I said he as tempted by the 
immortality Voldemort stood for I didn't mean literal things like Horcruxes 
but the stuff your average DE would know that isn't necessarily spoken of as 
a quest for immortality but is tangled up with one in the real world.

-m