Should Snape Be Punished?

[Mike]

No: HPFGUIDX 170636

> > Mike:
> > As I've posted before, no amount of remorse from Snape
> > will bring back Harry's parents.
> 
> Pippin:
> And no amount of punishment will bring them back either. 

Mike:
This may prove interesting. For the purpose of this exercise, I'd 
like to assume that the end of Deathly Hallows will have Snape being 
ultimately on the side that eradicates the Voldemort menace. How and 
why JKR convinces us does not matter for this little exercise, and we 
have know way of assessing that right now anyway.

The question is, with what we know right now of Snape and his 
misdeeds, should he spend time in Azkaban? Get a community service 
sentence? Or should he walk free?

< Dumbledore in HBP p. 549, US>

"Professor Snape mad a terrible mistake. He was still in Lord 
Voldemort's employ on the night he heard the first half of Professor 
Trelawney's prophesy"

Mike:
After VW I the MoM rounded up all suspected DEs they could catch and 
punished them. True, many got off by pleading the Imperious, but 
Snape didn't deny his involvement. On the other hand, as Pippin 
pointed out, Snape must have convinced Crouch Sr. to clear him and 
Crouch doesn't appear to be an easy man to win over. Yet, we must 
keep in mind that Crouch said "cleared by this council" followed 
immediately by "vouched for by Albus Dumbledore". So, would he have 
been cleared on the evidence (of his switching sides, I suppose) had 
he not also had Dumbledore vouch for him? And what about now, when it 
appears that Snape killed the guy who vouched for him?


< Dumbledore in HBP p. 549, US>

"But he did not know -- he had no possible way of knowing -- which 
boy Voldemort would hunt from then onward, or that the parents he 
would destroy in his murderous quest were people that Professor Snape 
knew, that they were your mother and father --"

Mike:
This quote presents a real problem for Snape. That "which boy" sure 
seems to indicate that though Snape couldn't know "which", he should 
have known that there was going to be **a** boy to be hunted by LV. 
Granted, Dumbledore is speaking to Harry here, but I still don't see 
a lot of wiggle room for Snape. He's kind of in the position of a 
terrorist bomb maker claiming he couldn't have known who the bomb was 
going to kill.

You could say he was a young, angry man and trying to ingratiate 
himself with LV. But Dumbledore told us the years of Voldemort's 
assent were marked by with disappearances. It stretches credulity to 
think that Snape wasn't aware of his boss's penchant for eliminating 
his opposition.

Finally, we have to ask: What was Snape's crime in the specific 
instance of revealing part of the prophesy to Voldemort? Maybe my 
above analogy to bomb making is too harsh. Though the prophesy did 
eventually lead to the Potter's deaths, one cannot truly say that it 
was privledged information of Dumbledore's. It seems that Dumbledore 
being present was purely happenstance. 

Also, you may not agree with my argument that Snape should have known 
LV would try to kill some baby and probably that baby's parents. 
Snape hasn't been a DE for that long. I suppose it's possible 
infanticide never occured to Snape. Not the way I read it, but your 
mileage may vary.

I have limited myself to this specific incident because of the 
premise I set down in the beginning; what we know *now*. We have no 
knowledge of any other crimes Snape may have commited. And we have 
Bella's words of "slithering out of action,... on the Dark Lord's 
orders" which hints that Voldemort thought of Snape as his spy and 
only as a spy. LV might not have assigned Snape *any* other missions, 
Bella sure seems to think so.

My guess is that JKR will not have Snape spend time in Azkaban, that 
is if he survives and the DDM premise is true. (My tongue-in-cheek 
wish for him to suffer horribly, notwithstanding) Whether he does or 
doesn't get punished is irrespective of whether he *deserves* to be 
punished.

Mike