The dust corpse

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 174952

montims wrote:
> 
> in fact, I'm a little confused about the dust corpse.  If Snape were
unable to say that line about not killing DD, either because of the
tongue lock or because it's not true (on the surface...), what would
that dusty thing have done to him?

Carol responds:
I think it was just supposed to scare him, the avenging corpse of his
victim apparently about to attack him. They all think that snape is a
coward, remember? Personally, I can't see Snape being frightened by it
or unable to deal with it even if he were DD's murderer given his
extensive knowledge of DADA. But since it seems to collapse into dust
on the word "kill" or "killed," all he would need to do to dispatch it
is to say calmly, "Albus, you know that I didn't kill you willingly"
or "You know that I killed you on your orders." If it didn't dissolve
into dust, he could use some other spell from his extensive arsenal,
but I don't think that would have proved necessary. Seems like a
feeble protective device to me if Snape were really evil, but as I
said, I think Mad-Eye Moody was counting on Snape's fear and guilt as
a deterrent. He has no idea who he's really dealing with. It would
have required a lot more than a dust corpse to make the Order HQ
Snape-proof.

As for the tongue-tying curse, since Snape didn't intend to reveal the
Secret anyway, it would have provided him with a new,
Legilimency-proof excuse for not revealing the Secret. (I choose to
believe that the Pensieve memories are in their proper sequence and
JKR's chat response is uncanonical. ;-) )

Carol, who thinks that the Order had no more clue regarding Snape's
powers than his loyalties