Dumbledore and Snape that night WAS: Re: GoF CH 27-29 Post DH look

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 182368

Zara:
> > Second, Voldemort seems to have thought that Snape would be able
to worm his way into a job at Hogwarts. Since he has no idea Snape has
already betrayed him at this point, I think he should not expect this
of a Death Eater he has sent to Albus as a messenger in the past. 
> In  Spinner's End, the whole "tale of remorse" line Snape feeds 
Bellatrix, is apparently supposed to be something that happened post-
GH, not something Voldemort suggested pre-GH.
> 
> Potioncat:
> I'm not so sure. I thought DD was supposed to know that Snape was a
 DE when he hired him. If DD had no reason to think Snape was a DE, 
Snape had no reason for the "tale of remorse". Speaking of which, 
that "tale of remorse" story to Bella was really true. Sort of. 
Besides, if Snape had been a messenger, it would give him the chance
to offer his services. Just to clarify--I know DD knew Snape was a DE
when he hired him. I thought LV had Snape pretend to switch sides 
when he went to work at Hogwarts. Or do you think LV kept Snape under
 wraps so that he could ask for the job as if he were not a DE? That
is, LV did not know that DD knew of DE!Snape. In that case, Trelawney
may have been right about part of Snape's motives that day.
> 
Carol responds:

Snape is altering the facts a little for Bella and for Voldemort: The
"tale of deepest remorse" (entirely true) predates the application for
a job at Hogwarts by quite some time and relates to his remorse for
revealing the Prophecy, not, as Harry thinks, to the deaths of his
parents, and not, as he implies to Bella (and probably LV) for being a
Death Eater. He had, of course, been spying long enough to risk his
life and prove his loyalty to DD before he applied for the job of DADA
teacher, which he would have started exactly two months before the
Potters' deaths (which he could hardly feel remorse for since they
hadn't happened).

I don't think that Snape had acted as a messenger; I don't know how DD
knew that Snape was a Death Eater (maybe he was dressed as one or
mentioned "the Dark Lord" in his message requesting a meeting with
Dumbledore), but DD certainly hadn't told the Order, as I'm sure he
would have done if he had known it previously. Nor do I think that he
would have let Snape go after the eavesdropping incident if he had
known Snape to be a DE at that time.

Anyway, DD certainly knew that Snape had been and was still pretending
to be a loyal DE when he hired him, but the meeting on the hillside is
another matter. The lightning spell and Snape's uncharacteristic
terror ("don't kill me!"), as well as DD's contemptuous treatment of
him makes it seem as if he's known for some time that Snape was a DE,
but I don't see how that fits with the Order members not knowing.
Maybe it's a recent discovery or revelation by Snape himself. (Or
maybe JKR is just forgetting the details of her story, as she
sometimes does. This scene could have been written, like the epilogue,
long before the rest of the series.)

As for Trelawney's thinking that Snape was applying for a job, we know
that she has been teaching for not quite sixteen years (implying a
later than usual hiring date for a surprise job opening), whereas
Snape has been teaching for fourteen years (no "almost"). So he would
have had no reason to be eavesdropping on job interviews even if he
really thought that Trelawney could give him "tips" (I don't think so,
Sybil!) in, say, late October nearly two years before he actually
applied for the DADA position on LV's orders. 

Let's say that the Prophecy/Eavesdropping occurs on Harry's conception
date, October 31. (Well, that's how JKR would see it.) Between that
time and Harry's birth on July 31 of the following year, Snape would
have been a regular DE. Some time after that (not very long, if LV
reads the birth announcements in the Daily Prophet), Voldemort would
discover the identity of the two boys who had been "born as the
seventh month dies." How much time passed before he let Snape know
"how he interpreted the Prophecy," we don't know, but the incident on
the hilltop seems to have occurred in winter given the cold and "the
wind whistling through the leafless trees" (DH Am. ed. 676). It seems
to have taken Voldemort awhile to make up his mind, or at least, to
inform the young DE of his intentions. Let's say that it's December of
Harry's birth year, some fourteen months after the Prophecy. It's
unlikely that Snape applied for the always-open DADA position the
previous August. 

Snape, fearing for Lily's life and distrusting Voldemort, begs
Dumbledore to keep her safe and promises to do "anything" in return.
That would mean some eight months of spying on LV "at great personal
risk" to prove his courage and loyalty before he applies for the DADA
position at Voldemort's request ca. August of the year the Potters
died and begin teaching on September 1. (Maybe Trelawney took his
application for this position nearly two years after she began
teaching as evidence that he was looking for a job all that time--poor
boy: twenty-two years old and unemployed since graduating from
Hogwarts! I think she's just assuming, based on faulty hindsight, as
many other characters do in the book, and her sherry-altered brain may
be no better than JKR's at math.)

At any rate, Dumbledore knew quite well whose side Snape was on by the
time he hired him, but Voldemort wouldn't have known that. I think he
thought that Snape's gift for acting and secrecy would enable him to
hide his identity as a Death Eater from most of the Wizarding world
9as it almost certainly did), and to persuade Dumbledore, who might
have guessed from the eavesdropping or from his former friendship with
known DEs that Snape had been a DE, of his "deepest remorse" for
having joined. He tells Bellatrix that he joined DD's staff "fresh
from my Death-Eating days," which isn't really true. He was still a
DE, albeit a disloyal one, at the time he was hired, and was
ostensibly acting as a spy for LV. And Bella knows that he applied on
LV's orders, not after Godric's Hollow when his "Death-Eating days"
would really have been over (at least until LV's resurrection forced
him to return as DD's spy).

Sorry. I'm not really sure what I'm arguing here, only that the
chronology is confusing. To return to the posts above, I don't think
that Snape had acted as a messenger or that he had previously applied
for the DADA position. I don't know how DD knew that he was a DE when
they met on the hillside. it makes no sense to me, really. He
definitely knew that Snape had been a loyal DE and was still
pretending to be one when he hired him since Snape had acted as DD's
spy for some time (I'm guessing eight months) before he was hired,
which was considerably *after* his "tale of deepest remorse," which
related to the eavesdropping. 

Why LV thought DD would hire Snape (aside from high marks on his DADA
OWL and NEWT), I don't know. Certainly, he'd know that the supply of
good DADA teachers was running short(!) but that doesn't explain why
DD would allow a young man he knew to be a DE on his staff. Either LV
didn't think DD knew (which doesn't fit with the "tale of deepest
remorse") or he had great faith in Snape's powers of persuasion, along
with Dumbledore's record of giving people second chances and supposed
readiness to trust.  

What I want to know (changing the subject here) is what took Voldemort
so long to act on the Prophecy. It's winter before he informs Snape
that he intends to go after the Potters, but it's another ten months
or so before he actually kills them (one week after the SK switch).
Maybe they went into hiding in Godric's Hollow (ordinary precautions,
no fighting, use the Invisibility Cloak or Poly-juice Potion when you
go outdoors) on snape's information. At about this time, or earlier (a
year before the Poters' deaths, according to Sirius Black), Wormtail
started spying for Voldemort. That must have been when the Order
members started getting picked off one by one (per Lupin): McKinnons
and Prewitts and others with no direct connection to Harry being
killed by DEs (Dorcas Meadowes by LV himself) being killed, probably
on Wormtail's information. At some point, the danger to the Potters
apecifically must have intensified and DD suggested the Fidelius
Charm, which for some reason wasn't put into effect until a week
before they died. (How Snape, who was at Hogwarts teaching Potions,
knew about the increased risk and reported it to DD, I can't guess.)

I suppose that JKR wanted Harry to be a toddler, not an infant, when
his parents died, but unless "Wormy" was deliberately postponing
giving information on the Potters and choosing other Order members to
betray instead, I really don't see how even Voldemort could have taken
so long to go after the Potter child. Maybe he thought that he needed
to destroy or substantially weaken the Order first? And if it took
only a week after the SK switch, why didn't he just find them and kill
them before the Fidelius Charm was put in place?

Carol, who hopes that JKR's vaunted encyclopedia includes a detailed
chronology, complete with the dates of the eavesdropping, the
encounter on the hillside, Snape's job interview and every other
incident mentioned in my rambling and incoherent post