Snape's Messenger Patronus ((was Re: Snape's Dementor lesson

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 182680

Kamion53 wrote:
> I don't think Snape was ever very keen on showing his Patronus to
somebody else then to Dumbledore, it's shape was similar to that of
Lilly Evans and the proof that his loyaty to Lilly and thereby to
Dumbledore had not wavered. <snip>

Carol responds:

I've already given reasons why I think that Sirius Black would have
brushed aside any apparently similarity between Snape's Patronus and
Lily's, which I won't repeat here. (It might actually have been
advantageous to the Order and to Harry for Black to know that Snape
was loyalty to Dumbledore, but it would have spoiled JKR's plot by
making Snape's loyalties unambiguous.)

It's interesting, however, that neither Harry, who feels that the doe
has come for him alone and that she's somehow familiar, nor Ron, who
at first thinks that the doe is Harry's Patronus and then remembers
that she had no antlers, associates the doe with Lily even though
Harry, at least, knows that his father's Animagus form (we don't know
his Patronus) and might be expected to make the connection. (Probably
the fact that his mother is long dead has some bearing on the matter.) 

But the doe's being female isn't even considered when they try to
figure out whose the Patronus is, nor is whom or what it might
represent. Harry asks Ron if *he* cast it and Ron says no: he thought
it was Harry's (DH Am. ed. 371). Ron asks if it might have been
Kingsley, and they remember that Kingsley's is a lynx, and Ron even
wonders if it might have been Dumbledore since Dumbledore had the
Sword of Gryffindor last. And Harry doesn't laugh, finding the idea
that DD could come back from the dead to help them comforting. Neither
finds it at all incongruous that a powerful male wizard might have a
female Patronus. (It is, after all, a very bright and beautiful and
powerful creature.) Harry does, however, inform Ron that DD's Patronus
was a Phoenix.

Granted, Harry speculates earlier about the meaning of Tonks's changed
Patronus, but in this case, meaning doesn't seem to come into the
picture. Your Patronus is what it is, at least from their point of
view, and they make no connection between the *specific* Patronus and
the caster. They're simply trying to figure out who might have cast
it, knowing only that the caster was helping them and had access to
the Sword of Gryffindor. (Not surprisingly, Snape doesn't occur to
them as a possibility.)

Given Ron's and Harry's failure to interpret the Patronus as
symbolizing Lily, I'm not sure that we can safely assume that Sirius
Black or Remus Lupin (the only Order members present in 12 GP when
Snape contacted the Order who really knew Lily and might have seen her
Patronus) would have connected Snape's Patronus with Lily.

Carol, who still thinks that they would have been worried about
Harry's safety and paid no attention whatever to the form of Snape's
Patronus *if* he used it on that night, which he may or may not have done