Did Snape know Draco's task in Spinner's End (was: Re: more snape stuff)

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 168396

Beckah:
  
>   Snape never actually SAYS what the plan is, he just says he 
knows of it.  Could it be that he was fishing for information??  
Kind of like when you have kids and you say "I've already heard your 
sisters side but I'm waiting until I hear yours before I decide what 
I'm going to do" so that you can find out what is going on?  Does 
that make any sense?  To me it seemed like Snape had no idea that 
there was a plan for Draco to kill DD, but when Narcissa and Bel 
show up he figures out that something is going on so he pretends 
that he knows in the hopes they will tell him what is going on - 
he's fishing for information so he can act to stop it. 
>    
>   What do you guys think of this??  Am I reaching or is this 
plausable??  Thanks for your input.

Magpie:
You're definitely not the only person to wonder that! It doesn't 
work for me, personally. To me, Snape fishing for that information 
in the scene robs it of most of its meaning and makes it just funny. 
Narcissa was just about to tell him what the plan was and he 
interrupted her. If he'd let her speak for another second he would 
know what he's allegedly fishing for throughout the scene, and that 
makes little sense to me. Maybe it looks good for him to take LV's 
side and remind her she's not supposed to talk, but not if the 
alternative is making a suicide pact to do the thing instead (which 
is going against LV more than allowing Narcissa to shoot off her 
mouth)--a thing Snape never succeeds in finding out about in the 
scene anyway. 

If Snape has no idea what he's talking about lines like "I believe 
he means me to do it in the end" are just empty bluffing for him, 
and also, we're robbed of the terrible moment when Snape realizes 
just what he's stupidly agreed to do. That presumably happens 
offscreen because by the time they get to school he and Dumbledore 
both know what Draco's supposed to do with no help from the UV that 
we see. So there's no storyline, that I can see, about Snape's 
reaction to what he's accidentally done. Also since it was clear to 
me in Spinner's End what Draco was supposed to do it's hard for me 
to believe Snape couldn't figure it out too--Narcissa gives him some 
pretty big hints.

So for me, the reason everyone talks around the plan is because JKR 
is hiding it from the reader. Snape's own dialogue doesn't seem to 
show a man fishing for information. He's not using his claim to know 
the task already to ask the women leading questions about the task 
as he could, as you did in your example (when you said you'd already 
heard one kid's story it was to encourage the other kid to tell his 
own--Snape isn't doing that).

-m