Snape finding Lily's letter: why the letter was there, and why was Snape?

[krista7]

No: HPFGUIDX 174013

Zara writes:

> So Lily wrote to him at his then place of residence, not 12 GP. How 
> did the letter get there?
> 
> We can explain it in a number of ways, but it does require 
> explanation, it is not the natural place for such a thing to be. I 
> figure that after Sirius was sent away, the Ministry boxed up his 
> stuff and gave it to Ma Black, who dumped the items in his old 
> bedroom.


I think there is a strong suggestion of just this in the text. 
Harry notes it looks like someone had shaken books "roughly," 
almost separating books from their spines. Amongst the pages
on the floor with the letter, for example, are pages from a 
motorcycle manual, clearly Sirius' book. So the context
suggests (in the absence of a spilled box) that the letter
came, like the pages of the manual, from one of those roughly-
shaken books, that Sirius had tucked that letter and photo 
into a book and forgotten it. So, somehow, his books got back 
to GP.

My guess is that his things were sent back to GP when he went to
Azkaban, and Kreacher was told to sort them out. That's why the 
books got onto the shelves, not in a box stashed away somewhere.

As for why Sirius didn't show Harry this photo before--again,
because it was in his book, I suspect he just didn't know he had it.
The only other photo of Harry's parents present in the room is of the
Marauders,
and it is permanently glued to the wall.

And now for a question: what *exactly* was Snape looking for in the
house? 

Krista