Who was responsible for Sirius' death? ...

[Neri]

No: HPFGUIDX 167635

Neri chimes in:
The whole pre-HBP argument about whether DDM!Snape is responsible for
Sirius's death seems terribly outdated to me. If Snape is DDM then the
DoM battle night would only be one additional debacle (and not nearly
the worst) in the ongoing disaster of his secret agent career in VW2.
It started with the fiasco of the Occlumency lessons and continued
with his failure to find out in advance about the coming DoM operation
(several list members noted this long before HBP, but at the time we
didn't know for certain that Snape was indeed a spy). Then when the
DoM operation did start he failed to realize immediately what it was,
and in addition failed to just keep an eye on Harry, which would have
foiled the operation even without realizing what it was. Then there's
making the third part of the Unbreakable Vow, which most DDM theorists
must ascribe to Snape being careless, outwitted or blackmailed because
the alternative is even worse. Then he failed in winning Draco's trust
(despite being his favorite teacher for five years and a friend of the
family), failed to prevent the attacks that nearly killed Katie, Ron,
Slughorn and Harry, failed to find out in advance about the RoR
operation from his fellow DEs and failed in discovering Draco's plan
or stopping him (which Harry very nearly succeeded with far fewer
resources). Then he had to kill his own supreme commander (!!!) and on
top of it he also failed in getting Draco and Narcissa out of
Voldemort's hands, which Dumbledore hoped to do.

The DDM!Snapers figure that the DADA jinx was to blame for some of the
above (it could hardly be blamed for all of it). That would have been
a better excuse if it didn't look like Snape had known about the jinx
and still wanted the job. It seems he had underestimated the jinx. Or
overestimated himself.
  
During the above two years we don't know about a single item of
information that secret agent Snape had managed to bring from the
enemy camp to save the day. It does look like he had brought the
information about Draco's mission, but due to his own abysmal handling
of this situation it didn't help any. Overall I'd say right now
DDM!Snape is looking like a serious contender for the title of the
worst secret agent in the history of both literature and RL. The only
positive things he had managed – blocking the curses on Dumbledore and
Katie – had no apparent connection with his secret agent career. He
could have done them without being a spy in the enemy's camp.

So right now, blaming DDM!Snape for irresponsibility during the night
of the MoM battle seems rather like abusing a corpse. He has so many
worse things to explain first. Not to mention that at the moment
DDM!Snape is somewhat hypothetical anyway. 

If, however, Snape is *not* DDM, then it is almost certain that his
actions during the night of the MoM operation will be revisited, and
there will be some new revelations about it. If this will be the case
then JKR had surely laid the groundwork for it in the end of OotP.


Neri