Dumbledore Disgusted (was: Snape's Request gave Harry a second chance?)

[Ceridwen]

No: HPFGUIDX 175865

Mim:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/175861
I've been going WTF ever since reading in HBP that Trelawney was
aware of Snape's interruption. I'll guess that even though in a
trance she retained some awareness of what was going on (doubtful)
or that someone later told her about what had happened.

Judy:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/175857
The only answer I can think of here is the one Potioncat suggested,
that Dumbledore deliberately let Snape go, presumably so that
Voldemort would go after the Potters and cause the Prophecy to take
effect. Still, even if Dumbledore were cold and calculating enough
that he would want Voldemort to target the Potters, how would
Dumbledore know that Voldemort would end up with his own curse
rebounding on him? The whole thing about Trelawney *knowing* that
Snape heard the Prophecy seems like a plothole to me.

Ceridwen:
In trying to reconcile Trelawney's statement with everything else, I 
have to think it was just a convenient vehicle for informing Harry 
and the reader who the eavesdropper was.  Within the story, it's a 
lot harder to explain.  The only ways, in my opinion, are, one: Snape 
listened and heard the first part, Aberforth discovered him and 
distracted him through the second part, then burst into the room with 
him at about the same time Trelawney was emerging from her trance; 
or, two: Aberforth found Snape listening at the keyhole and dragged 
him into the room, just as Trelawney began to feel funny as she fell 
into her trance, and this was the last thing she noticed before 
beginning the prophecy, during which DD motions to Aberforth to 
remove Snape from the room, or casts some muffling spell to prevent 
Snape from hearing the rest.  There are calesthenics any way you try 
to make it fit within the story.

Judy:
So, my interpretation of the phrase, "mercy for the mother, in
exchange for the son" is that since Snape has ALREADY given Voldemort
the prophecy (therefore telling him of the boy who may be able to
defeat him), Snape could ask for Lily's life as his reward.

Ceridwen:
Right.  Snape had already delivered "the One".  Now, he can bargain 
for "the One's" mother.  I'd asked elsewhere why LV might honor Snape 
with even considering his request; this is probably the answer.  I 
can't see LV entertaining Snape thinking he can "allow" him to do 
what he intends to do.  It would be like the scene with Lucius 
apparently thinking for a moment that he and LV were going to 
exchange wands, only worse, since the prophecy has to do with LV's 
continued existence, while the wand thing is secondary to that, in 
that  it was just a movement, not something said outright by Lucius.  
Snape would be dead and gone if he said anything along the lines 
of, "I won't let you kill the Potter boy if you don't spare his 
mother."  Even if he bowed and scraped and said it in a much more 
subservient way, the result would be the same, in my opinion.  The 
master orders, the servant makes a tentative request.  And there is 
no reason to believe that LV's relationship with his DEs is anything 
but master and servants.

Judy:
I agree with Mim here. Suppose Snape had refused to do what
Dumbledore wanted. Would Dumbledore have therefore done nothing to
save the Potters? If so, YIKES! If Dumbledore would have tried to
save them anyway, then he's definitely just manipulating Snape here.

Ceridwen:
Dumbledore held Lily's life up like a carrot on a stick here, didn't 
he?  I expect he would have warned the Potters, though, no matter 
what Snape answered.  Which, yes, makes his badgering into 
manipulation.

On a related note, was the information supplied to the Potters by 
Bathilda Bagshot the reason why they refused his offer of being their 
SK?  Lily's letter could be interpreted to imply that: hard to 
believe DD and GG were friends.  At twenty-one or twenty-two, they 
could still be idealistic enough to think that what once was, always 
is, and that DD is not trustworthy.  It apparently is supposed to be 
bothering Lily.  She doesn't think DD would like them to know some of 
the things Bathilda has told them, and she doesn't "know how much to 
believe, actually, because it seems incredible that Dumbledore" (DH, 
US, 181) "could ever have been friends with Gellert Grindelwald." (DH 
US 689)  To be honest, she does say that she thinks BB's mind is 
going, as also mentioned by Rita Skeeter.

Judy:
At any rate, even if I find a way to justify Dumbledore's treatment
of Snape during the scene where Snape begs Dumbledore to help Lily, I
still have a real problem with how cruel Dumbledore is to Snape when
Snape learns of Lily's death. The most positive reading I can come up
with is that Dumbledore is acting here; he is pretending to be cruel
in order to manipulate Snape into helping save Harry.

Ceridwen:
That's just less negative, not positive, in my opinion.  This casts 
Dumbledore as the manipulative puppetmaster some have proposed before 
DH.  His mercy is short, going only to the end of his broken nose.  
His backstory would suggest more empathy than we get in these scenes -
 because of his actions and bad associations, his sister was killed.  
He made a bad choice of companions at about the same age, definitely 
in the same age group, as Snape.

He can't see the "tough love" approach as working - the fistfight 
with Aberforth at Ariana's funeral and the resulting bad feelings 
Aberforth held over the decades, should have shown him that grieving 
people need compassion, not harsh treatment.  But, we got something 
similar between DD and Harry after Sirius's death, didn't we?  And 
people jumped over backwards to try and explain it, myself included, 
I think.  He was much less cruel to Harry than to Snape, and Snape 
had known Lily longer than Harry knew Sirius.

Judy:
I agree completely that Snape's infraction here was not just calling
*Lily* a mudblood, it was using the term at all. However, after Lily
points that out to Snape, she turns her back and leaves, with
Snape "struggling on the verge of speech." It seems to me that Snape
might have acknowledged how wrong he had been to use "mudblood" at
all, if Lily had let him. Lily missed an opportunity to get Snape to
realize that it was wrong to use that term for anyone, for him to
grow and see the error of his ways. Yes, it is asking a lot of the
character of Lily, who is only 16, to get over her anger at Snape,
who has offended her. But, I think it is reasonable to ask this of
Lily, because we are supposed to see Lily as being far superior,
morally, to Snape. (When asked in an interview if Lily had ever been
a Death Eater -- as Snape had been -- JKR said, "How dare you!")
Refusing to forgive, walking away as Snape tries to apologize,
strikes me as mean and vindictive, which adds to my impression of the
books as not promoting forgiveness.

Ceridwen:
Teens of under sixteen years of age, or just at sixteen, have been 
harshly condemned in the Potterverse for going against the ethical 
rules.  Marietta is condemned to permanent scarring (per JKR 
interview, recent) because she betrayed the DA.  Never mind that, to 
remain loyal to them, she would have to choose between them and her 
mother.  She was a traitor either way, and once she went to that 
first meeting, where the DA was misrepresented to her, she had no 
choice but to be a traitor.  Draco at fourteen is turned into a 
ferret and bounced off the floor from a great height, which, though 
McGonagall admonishes Crouch!Moody, is presented as something to 
laugh about.  Montague spends a while in the Vanishing Cabinet 
courtesy of the twins, and a longer time in the hospital wing, for 
trying to take points.  Nothing is done.  So I would put Lily at 
sixteen at the same moral place as everyone else in the series is 
supposed to be.  She definitely shut the door against Snape without 
giving him a chance.  She is culpable, according to what we have seen 
of others of nearly the same age.

(me being bitter) But, she's one of the Elect, the future mother of 
the Chosen One.  She can get away with it.  Never mind that she got 
an apology, never mind that Dumbledore is held up as being somehow 
saintly for offering second chances, she can shut the door and have 
no repercussions.  None of the Good Guys have comeuppance for 
anything.  The closest we get is the twins selling Peruvian Darkness 
Powder to Draco's DEs, which results in the karmic scarring of their 
brother, but those lemons turn to lemonade because Fleur is found to 
be loyal to Bill himself, not the handsome guy he once had been.  I 
suppose one could make a case for Lily being punished by being killed 
based on Snape's information, but the text gives us a more noble 
reason: she and James had defied Voldemort three times.

Ceridwen.