Snape's role

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 176578

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "dumbledore11214"
<dumbledore11214 at ...> wrote:
>
> > Angel
> <SNIP>
> > Here is my view of Snape's role in the Potterworld.  Without Snape 
> there
> > would not have been a Harry Potter.  <SNIP> In Snape's own words - 
> (apologies no book at hand) When Snape came to enlist
> > Dumbledore's help in saving the original trio (James, Lily, Harry) 
> he spoke
> > only about Lily and Dumbledore rebuffed that the prophecy spoke  
> not of a
> > woman.  Snape's reply was - "that's why he think's it's her", 
> because it was
> > Snape who overheard the prophecy and Snape who delivered the 
> faulted
> > prophecy and Snape who inadvertently casted a hero out of Harry 
> and brought
> > about Voldemort's demise long before the initial rook was moved.
> <SNIP>
> 
> 
> Alla:
> 
> Without Snape the story of Harry's life would have been much 
> different, very true and we would not have it as it was in the story 
> we read.
> 
> But without Snape, if we look at the story from within the story, ( 
> in my mind meaning as if the characters as "real"), the "boy" named 
> Harry Potter would still been born in that world.
> 
> Except that boy would have a chance to grow up with mother and 
> father and not to be a "Chosen one", would have a normal life, a 
> family, possibly a godfather, who would never went to jail.
> 
> Granted his parents could still die in the war OR NOT. They would 
> not have to hide and use a Secret Keeper though.
> 
> Somehow I think Harry would love his life to be without Snape 
> shaping it as it turned out. 
> 
> JMO,
> 
> Alla
>

Carol responds:
Without Snape, there would have been no eleven-year respite for the
WW. Order members were being killed off one by one--the McKinnons, the
Boneses, the Prewetts, Benjy Fenwick, etc. It was only a matter of
time for Lupin, Black, and the Potters, and Pettigrew would have
turned spy Prophecy or no Prophecy since he was afraid of LV and
looking for protection from the biggest bully on the playground. 

The only thing keeping Voldemort from taking over the Ministry, and,
from there, the WW, had Snape not revealed the partial Prophecy would
have been Dumbledore. There would have been no Chosen One without LV's
acting to thwart the Prophecy. (And, had Snape not asked LV to spare
Lily, there would *still* have been no Chosen One because all three
Potters would have died at Godric's Hollow.) I suppose DD could have
gone after the Horcruxes himself, but if he'd put on the ring and
there was no Snape at Hogwarts to slow the curse, or he'd gone after
the (fake) locket with no Chosen One to accompany him, there would go
the WW. And that's not counting the help that Snape gave Harry in the
books, especially DH, including teaching him about Bezoars.

Essentially, if Dumbledore could have stopped Voldemort by himself, he
would have done so. He couldn't. He needed Harry--not the normal Harry
as he might have been in the unlikely event that both his parents had
survived the endless Voldie War that began ca. 1970 and would have
continued unabated throughout Harry's lifetime, but the
soulbit-inhabited Harry who became Voldie's "equal" and acquired "the
power that {LV] knows not" through his mother's self-sacrifice.

Snape's love for Lily is, of course, central to both his protection of
Harry and to his redemption, but Snape is also a key figure for other
reasons.

He revealed the partial Prophecy, triggering the events at Godric's
Hollow. He begged Voldemort to save Lily, making her survival possible
and her death a self-sacrifice rather than a planned murder, which in
turn gave Harry the blood protection (extended by DD to the Dursleys)
and made Harry's survival possible. He informed DD that LV was
targeting the Potters, indirectly resulting in the Fidelius Charm
(broken by PP). He spied for DD at "great personal risk" before
Godric's Hollow. He taught Harry about Bezoars, which would ultimately
save Ron's life. He saved Harry from Quirrell. He taught Harry
Expelliarmus, which saved Harry himself many times and became his
signature spell. He discovered that Harry was a Parselmouth. He
protected Harry throughout his school years, conjuring stretchers in
PoA and helping to thwart both Crouch!Moody and Umbridge. He went back
to LV, again at great personal risk, to find out what LV was telling
his DEs. (He seems to have been DD's source of information for the
Prophecy plna, for example.) He taught Harry what Occlumency and
Legilimency are and why he needed to learn Occlumency. He reported to
DD that Harry was seeing dreams and visions of LV and the DoM. He sent
the Order to the MoM to save Harry and his friends (after rescuing
Neville from Crabbe's chokehold). He prolonged DD's life, saved Katie
Bell and Draco (and, by implication, others--"Lately, only those whom
I could not save" is spoken before the Katie Bell and Draco
incidents). He aids Harry by sending him the Sword of Gryffindor and
giving him that last crucial message. He protects the students of
Hogwarts as best he can from the Carrows. (Imagine Yaxley as
headmaster of Hogwarts in his stead--or Lucius Malfoy, if he were in
LV's good graces. Or Bellatrix as headmistress. . . .)

Carol, who thinks that Harry's life without DDM!Snape would have been
short and brutal