The Pig to be Slaughtered

[lupinlore]

No: HPFGUIDX 172480

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "muscatel1988" <cottell at ...> 
wrote:
>

> 
> "It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more 
> than our abilities."  That sentence is, for me, the judgement on 
> Dumbledore.  His overarching choice was to raise Harry as a pig for 
> slaughter.  Snape recoils at the idea; it is hard not to.
> 

Well, except that by DH, at least, he wasn't intending Harry to be a 
pig for slaughter.  He was intending Harry to live and triumph 
through the resurrection magic that he was confident would be 
activated by Harry's selfless sacrifice.  He was, in effect, lieing 
in his conversation with Snape (as, to be fair, JKR lied. or at least 
bent truth to the breaking point, when she said magic could not bring 
back the dead).

However, it does seem that there is a character being prepared as a 
pig for slaughter in HBP and DH, and that character would be Snape.  
Consider this -- DD wants the Elder Wand to be left without a master, 
thus his decision to willingly die at Snape's hand.  However, he must 
have known that Voldemort would assume Snape was now the master of 
the wand.  Therefore, he must have known what would happen.  Snape, 
for his part, did not even have the truth to defend himself with, as 
he did not know anything about the Hallows (not that it would have 
made any difference to Voldemort).

The fact that Draco intervened and messed up DD's plan really doesn't 
change anything as far as Snape goes.  Voldemort still thought Snape 
the master of the wand, just as DD must have intended.  Even if Snape 
HAD been the master of the wand, it wuld have made no difference, as 
he did not understand what he would have been master of.

However you cut it, DD seems to have put a plan in play that would 
almost inevitably lead to someone being killed in order for Voldemort 
to be defeated.  But he was lieing to Snape about who he planned to 
sacrifice.  It was not Harry, his beloved grandson-substitute, but 
Snape the troublesome and ambivalent servant who would die so that 
the Dark Lord could be vanquished.  When all was said and done, 
Dumbledore was perfectly willing that Snape die so that Harry could 
live.  Whether that is just or not is, I suspect, a subject of some 
controversy.

Lupinlore