Who was responsible for Sirius' death? ...

[Neri]

No: HPFGUIDX 167668

> 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:
Who's talking about Snape as a teacher? *Agent* Snape was ordered by
his supreme commander to make Harry voldy-proof, because this was
critical for the war effort, and he failed. If this was his only
failure you could blame Harry (as most people did pre-HBP, although
Dumbledore himself admitted that Snape put his personal problems with
James before Order objectives here) but since then it turned out to be
only the first in a long list of Snape's failures. 

> 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.
> 

Neri:
As you say, the Order already knew Voldy was after the prophecy. You
didn't need to be a hotshot agent to figure that much out, and
security measures were taken against it. What the Order was lacking,
what a spy in the enemy camp could contribute, was precisely the
planned date of the operation, as well as the means. Since DDM!Snape
was not able to find that out his spying mission did not contribute
anything to the Order and was, in practice, worthless.  


> zgirnius:
> He did realize immediately what it was, it seems to me. He checked on 
> Sirius anyway, which was only prudent.

Neri:
If Snape realized immediately that an operation was underway, then he
should have also realized that Sirius could be only a false bait to
lure Harry to the DoM, and therefore the fact that Sirius was safe in
HQ did not in any way mean everything was fine. If Snape realized that
an operation was underway he should have alerted the whole Order at
once, tell them to send people to the DoM (the DEs could be captured)
and above all locate Harry as fast as possible.    


> 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?

Neri:
Alerting the Order would take the same time it took checking if the
vision was genuine. Finding that the vision was not genuine does *not*
mean an operation wasn't underway. In summary, Snape either failed to
realize an operation was underway, or did realize it but failed to
alert the Order immediately about it. And he was the spy who was
supposed to discover what the enemy was scheming.


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

Neri:
Their location doesn't matter much. If Voldy wants them dead he'll
find them like he found Karkaroff. This is why Dumbledore's plan was
to fake their death, and Snape failed this too. 
 
 
> zgirnius:
> This is of course debatable. I don't think he wanted the job 
> particularly.

Neri:
Everything is debatable if you want to debate it, but at the moment it
appears Snape wanted the DADA job a lot.


> 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.
>

Neri:
As I was saying, during his the VW2 spying career we don't know about
a single item of information Snape managed to bring from the enemy
camp *to save the day*. 


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

Neri:
Well, lets say DDM!Snape seems considerably more hypothetical now than
he seemed after OotP. In fact, even the term DDM was only invented
after HBP. Before that it wasn't needed at all, as DDM!Snape was the
consensus. 


> Magpie:
> Doesn't it rather make Dumbledore the worst commander in history?

Neri:
If you read my posts you know I'm far from being thrilled by
Dumbledore's performances as a commander. One of his recurring
mistakes seems to be relying too much on Snape and too little on Harry
(he admits to both in the end of OotP, and yet repeats both in HBP).
However, Dumbledore at the very least can show a few significant
contributions. Like capturing eight DEs single-handed, or winning a
duel against Voldy (admittedly only by points, not KO), or uncovering
Voldy's most important secret, or finding and destroying a Horcrux. It
is this kind of contributions that is so suspiciously absent from the
file of secret agent Snape.

Besides, Dumbledore at least has the decency to be nice, polite, and
admit to mistakes once in a while. And when Dumbledore makes a really
critical mistake he gets killed. When DDM!Snape makes a critical
mistake someone else gets killed.


> Magpie:
> Concerning Draco, I don't know why anyone would consider Snape as 
> mishandling that situation. It read to me far more obviously as a
situation 
> coming to a head because of individuals driven by different powerful 
> agendas. Snape is dealing with a teenager who is changed. His previous 
> relationship with him is why Snape is a figure Draco is challenging and 
> rebelling against. It's not a reason that Snape should be able to
know what 
> Draco is doing (even the question of Legilimancy is for once actually 
> answered in the text where we're told he can't read his mind because
he's 
> doing Occlumency). Dumbledore is no more able to stop the necklace
or the 
> mead than Snape is.

Neri:
Another long list of excuses, but DDM!Snape was deeply involved in the
Draco affair from the beginning, and the bottom line is that and he
failed in preventing the consequences. Again.


> Magpie:
> Not to mention, it's possible that Dumbledore could be 
> keeping Snape from taking more decisive measures with Draco. Harry
tells DD 
> Draco's up to something in the RoR and Dumbledore dismisses him.
Snape might 
> have gotten as far and would have gotten the same response.
Whichever man 
> Snape is, Dumbledore is in control of the plot in HBP. The final 
> confrontation with Draco seems like something DD was working towards.
> 

Neri:
Indeed, the only way to have a DDM!Snape who isn't a complete failure
is to have a Dumbledore who is a complete failure. But I doubt that
what we're going to discover in DH is that Dumbledore was a complete
failure.


> Magpie:
> But that's really neither here nor there, because we're in Harry's
pov and 
> Harry is not privvy to any secret information Snape would give
Dumbledore. 
> We don't know what information Lupin is getting from the werewolves
either, 
> but presumably that doesn't make him incompetent.
> 

Neri:
The werewolves didn't attack Harry or Hogwarts yet. The DEs did, twice
in two books. Imagine that the werewolves would have attacked while
Lupin was sitting oblivious in his office, or behaving as if nothing
of importance had happened for several hours, and Snape got killed in
the attack while bravely defending Harry. I suspect we'd have hundreds
of threads in HPfGU about Lupin's incompetence. 


> Magpie:
> Wouldn't he be revealed to be just as incompetent if not moreso? Why on 
> earth did he send a squad of Order members to the MoM when Voldemort
had 
> sent a team of DEs to get in and out with the Prophecy? When there
was no 
> reason whatsoever for him to send anyone to help at all? Everything
went 
> exactly as Voldemort planned, so why did LVM!Snape decide to send in
the 
> cavalry? Just to spice things up?

Neri:
Ah, now we're getting somewhere. The really interesting question is
how to explain Snape's strange behavior in the end of OotP *in light
of what we know post-HBP*. Forget what you believed before HBP, what
seemed likely then and what didn't seem likely. Major things have
changed and it's time for reassessment. The fact that Dumbledore was
vouching for Snape counts now much less than it counted pre-HBP (he
was also vouching for Snape in the end of HBP and minutes later was
AKed off the astronomy tower). It appears highly suspicious that
Dumbledore makes things appear like everybody in the Order had acted
"at once" (he repeats this expression three times within half a page!)
while canon clearly shows that several hours must have passed. It
looks like Dumbledore is covering for somebody. For whom? The
assumption that this must be a flint because we got the official
explanation from Dumbledore and the night's events will never be
revisited isn't that obvious anymore. And if the night events will be
revisited, the revelations will probably be important, not just who
did exactly what and when for completeness sake. So lets reassess. How
does Snape's behavior during that night look like?

As you correctly points out, it doesn't look like LVM!Snape. Neither
does it look like a DDM!Snape. Snape's behavior here is contradictory
(what else is new...). At first he's totally cool with what's
happening, and several hours later he sends the Order to the DoM. One
explanation could be that he's slow on the uptake, but I don't think
this is so. Snape's behavior suggests to me two things: he has his own
agenda, and he is torn between contradicting objectives. Here are the
details:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/149239


Neri