Snape's death scene

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 174272

Carol earlier:
> > It has nothing to do with defending himself or blowing his cover.
He has one job to do and one only--get the message to Harry Potter
that Harry must let Voldemort kill him to destroy the soul bit in the
Horcrux [erm, I meant in Harry's scar]. If he fails to do that, it's
all over. 
> >snip>
> > It has nothing whatever to do with poor planning. Dumbledore has
told him not to deliver the message until he sees Voldemort protecting
the snake, and until now, the snake has not been protected. 
> 
> 
> Jack-A-Roe:
> First off I must say I was wrong when I said Snape didn't have his
wand out. It was apparently in his hand the entire time and he did 
raise it.
> 
> You are exactly right when you say it's not about his cover. That 
point is over. He sees the snake being protected and knows he must get
his message to Harry.
> 
> As a double agent his life is in constant jeopardy. Which means that
he has to be ready to defend himself and have a way out of every 
situation that he walks into. Being called to Voldemort during the 
battle should have raised a red flag. 

Carol:
How so? Voldemort has actually told him to watch out for Harry Potter,
who is on his way to Hogwarts. He knows that Voldemort has no doubts
about his loyalty. He's Voldemort's righthand man; he's fooled him
time and again with lies and Occlumency and is perfectly capable of
sustaining the pretence; he doesn't know about the Elder Wand; and he
doesn't know tha Nagini is in her bubble. That's his cue that it's
time to deliver the message, and he keeps trying to get away to do it,
but something else is wrong. Voldemort is talking about wands, and
Snape can't answer his questions. He has no reason to suspect that
he's in any kind of danger beyond the usual mortal peril until it's
too late.

Jack-A-Roe:
Voldemort's speech should have had him working his way toward an exit.
When I say he failed to plan I mean he didn't have a way out of the
shack. He could never plan for every contingency but he should have
had something in mind. 
> 
> His life is in danger and all he can do is raise his wand and do 
nothing. This is right after Voldemort tells him that "While you 
live, Severus, the Elder Wand cannot be truly mine."
> 
> At that point he should have started throwing curses and working his
way out the door. Voldemort just said he was going to kill him. After
 all he still has a mission to finish. Instead I believe he froze up 
under the threat, knowing he was going to fail in his mission.
> 
> To me this is a great contrast to Harry who always fights til the end.

Carol responds:
You're forgetting one key thing. Snape knows that he can't fight
Voldemort, whether or not the Elder Wand is working; if he does, he'll
be killed instantly without delivering his message. (Have you
forgotten the scene where Voldemort kills everyone in the room except
the fleeing Malfoys and Bellatrix because of a message delivered by a
goblin?) If Snape raises his wnad, he's dead. (Yes, he could fight any
other wizard in the WW and win, but this is Voldemort.) And he knows
that he can't kill Voldemort because of the soul piece in Harry's
scar. The only way for Voldemort to be destroyed is for Harry to let
himself be killed because the soul bit in his scar makes Voldemort
immortal. Delivering that urgent message is the only thing on Snape's
mind. That and the snake in the bubble telling him that it's time. He
thinks he's going to die without delivering it and that all is lost.
He doesn't care about dying in and of itself. Sparing his own life is
not important. Delivering the message is.

He knew, thanks to Voldemort, that Harry was coming to Hogwarts. If he
could somehow have talked to Harry there and somehow found out that
the snake was in its protective bubble, maybe, maybe, he could have
passed on his message then, using his doe Patronus as the "ironclad
reason" why he should be trusted. But well-intentioned McGonagall made
that impossible. (He could have won the duel but she was fighting
dirty and he didn't want anyone to get hurt. He has no choice but to
leave without talking to Harry, and he doesn't know whether the time
has come yet in any case.) 

Moreover, he had no reason not to obey Voldemort's summons as he had
always done, thinking that lies and Occlumency could protect him. He
didn't know about the Elder Wand. He knew that his disloyalty to
Voldemort could not have been discovered and that even as he stands
there, even as he lies dying, Voldemort does not doubt them. ("I
regret this," says Voldemort coldly before he leaves with
Nagini--luckily for both Snape and Harry.) The wand is a wrench in the
works that makes it impossible to pretend to go for the boy to bring
him to Voldie while really telling him about the soul bit and
revealing his loyalties.

I still don't know exactly what went wrong with Dumbledore's plan
(*please* don't tell me about Draco's Expelliarmus and the wand
switching loyalties--that doesn't explain what DD *intended* to happen
since LV would still have thought that Snape was the master of the
wand), but, obviously, Snape was somehow supposed to maintain
Voldemort's trust *and* get the message to Harry, which he could only
do if he was alive. DD could not have anticipated that he'd be killed
by the snake. (Did he think that the wand would lose its powers
altogether if he let Snape kill him? Did he trust to luck that
Voldemort wouldn't find the wand in time to discover figure out why it
didn't work properly for him? It sure killed a lot of people for a
wand that didn't work!) As I said before, it's not just Draco's
Expelliarmus but Harry's wand acting on its own and Harry's dropping
the photograph of Grindelwald that made it possible for Voldemort to
find the wand. And Harry had a chance to beat Voldemort to the wand
and chose not to take it.

For all those reasons, "that bit" went wrong, but it was no fault of
Snape's. He had no reason to suspect that this summons was any
different from the others and he had to find out whether the snake was
being magically protected. Once he got to Voldemort and realized his
predicament without understanding what had gone wrong, his wand would
not have helped him. He had every reason to fear, but it was his
message, not his life, that he feared for. He could not fight, he
could not run, and he would not beg for Voldemort's nonexistent mercy,
which in any case would not have availed him. And in the end, he did
not fail. He helped to defeat Voldemort, finding a way to deliver his
message that no one could have anticipated, so that Harry understood
that his scar was the last Horcrux and that he must face Voldemort
without fighting, willing to die, as Snape did, for the greater good. 

Harry, of course, had already chosen not to run for his life, to take
the chance of dying. "Sometimes you've *got* to think of more than
your own safety! Sometimes you've *got* to think about the greater
good!" (568). But Snape's message made it clear why and how he had to
die. (Of course, DD was concealing from them both that Harry might
survive, but either he didn't want to give Harry false hope or it
would spoil the sacrifice.) And Snape understood, too, that the defeat
of Voldemort was more important than his own life.

Carol, noting that courage in these books does not always mean
fighting back; sometimes, it means stepping in harm's way