Snape (was Re: the mind link / Diary!Tom / wizard divorce / Draco /

[Zara]

No: HPFGUIDX 180860

> Potioncat:
> That works. Except that would put even more on Snape's shoulders. I 
> suppose DD would think he's up to it. <g>

zgirnius:
All in a day's work. <g> 

> Potioncat:
> We know that Regulus joined the DEs without really knowing what 
sorts 
> of things LV would do. It could be that Severus did too. I just 
can't 
> understand how he could join an organization that had as part of 
its 
> beliefs that Muggleborns were mud.

zgirnius:
I don't see why it is necessary to share every belief of an 
organization one joins, if one has personal reasons for wanting to 
join. Sure, it's best and all that, but people make decisions every 
day which are suboptimal, and that one certainly was. Also, it is 
possible Snape actually shared, or came to share, those beliefs, and 
viewed Lily as an exception. She was not like the others, she was 
special, powerful, what have you. 

There's a man in my family who believes women are less suited than 
men for a number of professions owing to our more emotional natures, 
which are more easily swayed by irrational arguments and simply don't 
grasp abstractions well. After lengthy debating of this subject with 
me, he has conceded that *I* have no such shortcomings (he would 
otherwise be in the position of being unable to outreason an inferior 
creature, <eg>, and I am successfully employed in a field for which 
I 'ought' to be unsuited in his view), but feels that I 
am 'unfeminine' in this regard. In the same way, it is possible that 
Snape came to regard Lily as some sort of prodigy of nature, the rare 
Muggleborn who is as powerful, or more powerful, that most 
wizards 'of wizarding blood'. (See Slughorn for another possible 
example of such a view, minus the 'mud'.)

And of course, he may not have been thinking in terms of killing off 
all Muggleborns, or arresting them, or banning them from school and 
employment outright.

> Potioncat:
> Do we think DD knew before the meeting on the hill?

zgirnius:
He knew. His first words to Severus (after reassuring him he was not 
about to be killed) were, "Well, Severus? What message does Lord 
Voldemort have for me?"

It is possible that Snape revealed his allegiance in whatever 
communication he sent requesting the meeting in the first place.

Another way Albus could have known, that Sirius would not, would be 
the prophecy. If Snape had done or said something in his escape from 
thre Hog's Head that aroused suspicion, Albus might have guessed. Or 
if Voldemort took steps after that event that Dumbledore recognized 
as being responses to the prophecy - he could only have learned from 
Snape.