Draco and Dumbledore/ Molly and Harry-Treated like Family

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 159999

Carol earlier:
> > I don't think their surveillance is useless. Once Snape tells
Draco that "already you are suspected of having an hand in it" (the
cursed necklace incident) and that such tactics are amateurish and
easily traceable to him, he goes back to his primary plan, the cabinet.
>
> a_svirn:
> Then it was even worse than useless: Snape actually helped Draco,
> warned him about being watched and ensured that he would stick to
the main objective. <snip>

Carol responds:
Worse than useless? It kept loose-cannon Draco focused on a plan that
seemed not to be working and kept him from sending any more dangerous
objects into the castle.

Both Snape and Dumbledore knew that Draco was trying to kill
Dumbledore but neither knew exactly what he was up to, as far as we
can tell from canon. Neither of them thought that he could bring DEs
into the castle because neither knew about the Vanishing Cabinet.
Snape's warning against easily detected amateurish tactics kept Draco
from endangering other students for the rest of the school year. (The
mead was drunk in March but brought into the castle in December. No
other dangerous objects entered the castle for six whole months.)
Nothing, no word of warning, could have deterred Draco from working on
the Vanishing Cabinets. He was under orders from Voldemort and later
receiving death threats, and nothing Snape said could have prevented
him from doing so. Had Snape made a direct attempt to hinder rather
than "help" Draco, he would not only have revealed where his loyalties
lie, he would also have triggered the Unbreakable Vow.

And as Dungrollin mentioned (and I hinted in an earlier post, number
159740,

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/159740 )

a direct confrontation between Dumbledore and Draco would also most
likely have triggered the Unbreakable Vow. Draco would have had to
attempt to kill him without DE backup and would of course have failed,
causing Snape's death. That, IMO, is what DD was trying to prevent.
And Snape, of course, could not explain either the third provision of
the vow or say anything that would give away his true allegiance to
Dumbledore. (Assuming DDM!Snape, of course.)

On a sidenote, I think that Snape probably did continue the
"investigations into his house," perhaps more detentions for Crabbe
and Goyle, maybe, with a little Legilimency thrown in. Clearly, he
already knew that Crabbe and Goyle were acting as Draco's assistants
and Draco resorted to polyjuicing them in the hope of tricking Snape.
(I doubt that he succeeded.) But they didn't know what Draco was up
to, and all Snape could have learned from them was what Harry found
out via the house-elves and reported to Dumbledore, that Draco was
polyjuicing his friends as girls and that he was up to something in
the RoR. And he seems to have been following either Draco or Harry
when the Sectumsempra incident occurred, another instance in which he
did all he could to help Draco (and Harry--no expulsion and keeping an
eye on him) without giving himself away.

What else could Snape have done besides warn Draco not to use
amateurish methods? Let the mead- and necklace-type incidents
continue? I think not.

Carol, who thinks that Snape and DD did the best they could under very
touch-and-go circumstances and that matters would have been much worse
without Snape's "running interference," as Magpie calls it