[HPforGrownups] Re: Snape's involvement in the murder of Sirius

[Bart Lidofsky]

No: HPFGUIDX 169251

From: pippin_999 <foxmoth at qnet.com>
>If Snape had claimed it was his information that got *Harry* to
>the MoM, that would be a different story. But as neither Narcissa 
>not Bella presumably knows anything about how Sirius happened
>to turn up with the other Order members, they wouldn't be in 
>a position to challenge Snape. 

Bart:
OK, for the sake of this discussion, I am going to assume that Snape is really working for OOP, and pretending to be working for the DE's. This assumption is mainly to avoid REALLY complex sentences which don't assume one or the other. So, the DDM's can read it as is, and the ESE's can just switch things around. 

Being a double agent is difficult, but so is having one. In order for a double agent to operate effectively, he has to give regular and useful information to his enemies, which means that his handlers have to make sacrifices, hopefully to get increased value. 

In the case of Snape (using the above mentioned assumptions), he knows a lot more than he's telling. He has a lot of info about the OOP's, but is only giving a limited subset to the DE's, while the DE's are thinking that he's only giving up the information they authorize to the OOP's, while he's giving everything. And, certainly, the DE's are going to give him false info that he's not supposed to turn over, so that they can trace it if he does (I'm not sure the OOP's are doing this, because DD does at least claim to trust him. Depends on HOW DD knew, which I can safely say we ALL hope is addressed in Book 7). Now, there are two mistakes Snape can make. He can pass information to the OOP's which they can trace to him, or he can give information to the DE's which is more valuable than the OOP's knew. In both cases, his skills as a leglimens and an occlumens are both key. If he makes the first kind of mistake, the result is simple. He's a walking dead man. Yes, the DE's may string him along a bit more, and give him false information that is going to be truly devastating to the OOP's, if believed and followed up upon (as they did with Harry when Voldy found out about HIS spying). 

If he makes the second kind of mistake, he needs to do some acting. Because, once the milk is spilled, it is to his advantage to not only take credit for spilling the milk, but bragging about it. Because if he passes information which the OOP would never allowed him to give (except by mistake), the cloud of the disastrous result has a silver lining of making him more credible to the DE's as a double agent. So, certainly, he would brag to Trixie and Cissy about the biggest blunders, in a calm sort of "I meant to do that! I meant to do that!" way.

Which of course means that his claims are completely compatible with what he would say as DDM. And, as I've mentioned before, it is NOT compatible with his being ESE, as there is no explanation as to why he sicced the OOP on the battle of the DoM. 

Bart