Thoughts Regarding Snape

[Allie]

No: HPFGUIDX 171150

Allie:

First off, props to you, Julie, for a thought-provoking post.  I've
been participating in debates over Snape's loyalties on several forums
since the day after the HBP release, and to be honest, I'd never given
the "Dumbledore asked Snape to deal the final blow" theory the time of
day up until this point.  Your logic seems to hold together well, and
it does indeed present a plausible version of events leading up to
Dumbledore's death.  However (of course there always has to be a
"however" where Snape is concerned), there's still one point that
gives me pause: how could Dumbledore have expected Harry to accept
help from Snape in the future after witnessing what he witnessed at
the Astronomy Tower?

Julie said:

"7. Because Dumbledore is now dying at an accelerated rate, he
believes (and has said) that Snape can be of more use to Harry than
Dumbledore now can.  If in fact there is no way Dumbledore can
survive, or if upon surviving he knows he would be a mere shadow of
himself (note his powers were so greatly diminished HE apparently
couldn't save himself, and didn't bother to call Fawkes to save him
either), then it's certainly a logical conclusion that an alive Snape,
a DDM!Snape, his status now secured in the enemy camp, can give Harry
and the Order far greater aid than Dumbledore can."

Allie replies:

In order for Snape to give Harry and the Order greater aid, it would
be prerequisite for Harry and the Order to acknowledge that Dumbledore
did in fact ask Snape to kill him.  Based on Harry and Snape's
history, I just can't imagine this happening, and I'd have thought
both Dumbledore and Snape would foresee this problem in the process of
developing their secret plans.  (And if we assume that Snape is loyal
to the Order, the circumstances of Dumbledore's death must have been
planned well in advance, immediately after Snape told his mentor that
he had made the Unbreakable Vow with Narcissa, as opposed to a
spur-of-the-moment self-sacrifice in the face of Death Eaters at
Dumbledore's beloved school.)

Harry has indicated his dislike and distrust of Snape numerous times
throughout the series.  In his third year, for instance, he attacked
Snape for his narrow-minded determination to turn Sirius over to the
dementors, shouting "You're pathetic!  Just because they made a fool
of you at school you won't even listen!" (PoA, American paperback, pp.
361).  Two years later, he declared to himself that "whatever
Dumbledore said, he would never forgive Snape" 
 and this was before
he even found out about Snape's Unbreakable Vow and realized that it
was Snape who overheard the prophecy midway through his sixth year
(OotP, American paperback, pp. 851).

Dumbledore, of course, knew all this.  As recently as the end of OotP,
Harry told him point-blank that "Snape made it worse, my scar always
hurt worse after lessons with him [
] How do you know he wasn't trying
to soften me up for Voldemort, make it easier for him to get inside my
[mind]?" (OotP, pp. 833).  Dumbledore has also informed Harry that "I
have watched you more closely than you can have imagined" and it would
not have taken much in the way of fancy magical spying devices for
Dumbledore to notice that Harry and Snape openly loathed each other
(OotP, pp. 839).  He himself acknowledged the fifth-year Occlumency
lessons (the only time he asked Harry and Snape to work together as
allies against the Dark Side) as a "fiasco" (HBP, American hardcover,
pp. 79).

In short, Harry has always hated and will always hate Snape,
Dumbledore was aware of Harry and Snape's mutual enmity, and
Dumbledore would have had better judgment than to create a plan that
hinged on Harry overcoming his past and learning to trust his least
favorite teacher, his father's childhood enemy, his headmaster's
murderer, and the man responsible for his marking as "the Chosen One."
 For Dumbledore to believe that Harry would sit still to listen to any
advice from Snape without jinxing his former teacher silly, in my
view, defies logic.  Therefore, my only conclusion can be that Snape's
apparent murder of Dumbledore was not the brainchild of Dumbledore
himself, but of a different master.

Time for a couple pre-emptive defenses.  It is true that Harry has
believed seemingly impossible stories of innocence before.  Sirius's
explanation of the change in Secret-Keeper, the illegal Animagi, and
so forth, initially appeared to be just as farfetched as the proposed
theory that Snape killed Dumbledore on his victim's orders.  However,
Sirius's story had one crucial element that Snape's never had:
evidence.  He waited until he had Pettigrew cornered, until he could
force the rat to transform to human, until he had a guilty culprit who
could say "'He was taking over everywhere!  What was there to be
gained by refusing him?'" before he even approached Harry (PoA, pp. 374).

Snape could lay down claims that he acted on Dumbledore's wishes 'til
the cows came home, but he would never have proof that he did it out
of interest in Harry's well-being, not Voldemort's.  He could whip out
a Pensieve and show a flood of memories of his instructions from
Dumbledore, but how would Harry know that even as he received these
orders, Snape wasn't thinking "how convenient, now I have a handy
cover-up for the death the Dark Lord so desperately wants"?  A
portrait, which according to J. K. Rowling only speaks "catch phrases"
from the subject's lifetime, can offer no substantive evidence that
Dumbledore really intended these events to be.

Furthermore, at the age of sixteen, Harry is much less naïve than the
thirteen-year-old who rescued Sirius from the clutches of the
Ministry.  He has seen three people, including a fellow student and
two of his closest friends, die at the hand of Voldemort and his
servants.  He is suspicious of the government, he has to watch all the
people he trusts for signs of the Imperius Curse, he has witnessed
Voldemort's return, and he is burdened by the knowledge that he must
destroy the most powerful wizard of all time or else be destroyed
himself.  It would take a lot to make him trust a man who was
effectively responsible for his parents' deaths and may or may not be
a Death Eater, and frankly, I don't blame Harry.  I would tend to be
wary of a man who is very good at breaking into other people's minds
and very good at keeping them out of his own, myself.

Finally, having said all this, I'd like to take a moment to put
forward my own views on Snape, because I'm concerned that I've
slightly misrepresented myself in this post.  Do I believe that Snape
was working for Voldemort throughout HBP?  Not necessarily.  Do I
think his entire role in the war against Voldemort thus far has taken
place by Dumbledore's design?  Most likely not.  To me, Snape's
loyalties until the final chapters of Book Six were highly, highly
ambiguous; if an objective observer had witnessed every second of
Snape's life from the moment he went to the Hog's Head to overhear
Trelawney's prophecy to the moment of Dumbledore's death, I doubt even
he would be able to tell us which side Snape was on.  From the
beginning, I believe Snape was a man out for himself, playing spy for
whichever side seemed to be winning at the moment.  In killing
Dumbledore and forfeiting Harry's trust, however, he appears to have
made his choice; until new canon, I consider him a servant of Voldemort.

Allie