Snape the Spy (WAS Re: Who was responsible for Sirius' death? ...)

[Zara]

No: HPFGUIDX 167641

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Neri" <nkafkafi at ...> wrote:
>
> Neri chimes in:
> It started with the fiasco of the Occlumency lessons 

zgirnius:
If he is not to be credited with the lives he saved at Hogwarts, 
surely he should not be blamed for his failures as a teacher?

> Neri:
> 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). 

zgirnius:
It seems to me all that he failed to discover was the planned date of 
that operation, a detail any competent evil overlord would give out 
only on a need-to-know basis. The Order knew Voldemort was after the 
prophecy (and this could be the information Snape provided at the 
Order meeting at the start of OotP). And they knew he planned to use 
Harry to get it (though Snape discovered this through teaching Harry 
Occlumency, not more conventional spying on the enemy.

Snaep did not devise the plan for dealing with this matter, though. 
That appears to have been Dumbledore, based on Dumbledore's 
statements to Harry at the end of OotP.

> Neri:
> Then when the
> DoM operation did start he failed to realize immediately what it 
was,

zgirnius:
He did realize immediately what it was, it seems to me. He checked on 
Sirius anyway, which was only prudent. Just because Snape was 
expecting Voldemort to send Harry a fake vision 'to make him do 
something' does not rule out the possibility that Harry might see 
something unintended.

> Neri:
> and in addition failed to just keep an eye on Harry, which would 
have
> foiled the operation even without realizing what it was.

zgirnius:
Here we start to enter the murk of timeline issues. How long did it 
take for Snape to check that the vision was indeed not genuine? This 
depends on an unknown quantity, the speed of Patronus communication 
across long distances. Harry had left with Umbridge very shortly 
after Snape himself left the office, so even assuming near-instant 
communicaton, Snape could have missed them even if he came straight 
back. 


> Neri:
> and on
> top of it he also failed in getting Draco and Narcissa out of
> Voldemort's hands, which Dumbledore hoped to do.

zgirnius:
The locations of the two Malfoys not in Ministry custody are unknown 
to us at present.


> Neri:
>  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.

zgirnius:
This is of course debatable. I don't think he wanted the job 
particularly.

> Neri: 
> 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. 

zgirnius:
Snape confirmed that Voldemort was getting stronger in GoF.
He brought some unspecified piece of intelligence to an Order meeting 
in OotP, which I believe was about Voldemort's desire to get the 
prophecy. That the information was not used in the best possible way 
by his commander in chief, by the latter's own admission, is hardly 
his fault.
Dumbledore 'was told' about Voldemort's wrath at learning of the 
destruction of the diary. I know who I think brought that tidbit, 
which was a supporting bit of evidence that led Dumbledore to the 
conclusion that the Diary had been a Horcrux.

--zgirnius, who thinks all flavors of Snape are hypothetical at least 
until 7/21/2007.