ChapDisc: DH 18, The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 182750

Alla wrote:
> <snip> Please, let's make Snape tell Voldemort the safe houses of
the Order, oh oh please let him inform Voldemort that there is a very
good way to make Harry come to him, let's catch Ginny Weasley and
Harry is  almost bound to come flying to save her, etc. Is there ANY
information which is off-limits for passing to Voldemort if it helps
increasing Snape's informative standing?
> 
> Because if it is not, it smells evil to me.

Carol responds:

I think the fact that LV doesn't have this information shows that
there *are* limits, either to Dumbledore's orders or to what Snape is
wiling to do or both.

Their goal is to protect Harry until he can face Voldemort. (Snape, of
course, doesn't know that Harry can survive this confrontation.)
Naturally, they're not going to give LV information that he doesn't
need just to sustain or increase Snape's credibility. But giving LV
information about a specific plan that LV knows must exist (the blood
protection is about to expire, and Harry has to leave some time before
his seventeenth birthday) is essential if Snape is to become
headmaster and carry out the rest of the plan.

Giving him specific information about the safe houses is not. Notice
how vague Snape is when LV asks where the Order is going to hide Harry
next. He says "At the home of one of the Order. the place, according
to the source, has been given every protection that the Order and
Ministry together could provide" (5). 

So Snape not only doesn't specify which Order member's house Harry
will be taken to, he also doesn't indicate that there will be seven
safe houses (eight counting the one for the Dursleys'). He states that
there's probable little chance of capturing Harry once he's there and
turns the direction of the conversation to the timing of the
Ministry's fall--very, very deft, Severus!

At any rate, there are clearly limits on the amount and types of
information that Snape gives LV--only as much as necessary to maintain
the illusion that he is telling LV everything he knows about the
matter at hand.

As for ginny Weasley, there's no reason whatever to bring her up and
every reason not to do so, for both her sake and Harry's.

BTW. Zara's idea that the plan is the Order's, not Dumbledore's, makes
sense to me. It certainly can't be *Portrait!*Dumbledore's because
Snape is the only person communicating with the portrait. So, either
it's Dumbledore's old plan, in which case he would surely have
suggested the Poly-juiced Potters to begin with, or it's the Order's
plan, cobbled together without DD's help and reported to Snape by his
source, presumably Mundungus.

Maybe Portrait!DD saw just how flawed that plan was and suggested the
seven Potters as the only possible way to keep it from becoming a
debacle. That's what Snape seems to imply to Confundungus, at any
rate: "You will suggest to the Order of the Phoenix that they use
decoys. Polyjuice Potion. *It is the only thing that might work*"
(688). The "only" way that the plan "might" work. It doesn't sound to
me as if DD suggested it, or as if either he or Snape has much faith
in a plan that can only possibly be saved from certain disaster by
having Snape Confund Mundungus and plant the suggestion of the
Polyjuiced Potters.

As to why DD wanted Snape to reveal the time and date, at least in
part and perhaps solely to maintain Snape's credibility, I've already
discussed that in another post.

Carol, who thinks that everything started falling apart when DD put on
that ring