CHAPDISC: DH30, THE SACKING OF SEVERUS SNAPE

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 184508

Potioncat wrote:
<snip>
> As in the Tower battle in HBP, Snape needed to get away without 
harming anyone. Flying out the window was his best bet at that moment.
I'd like to know where he went. Was he one of the masked DEs fighting
the Hogwarts army? <snip>

Carol responds:
I agree that he wanted to get away without harming anyone (even though
he again *looks like* a coward. Poor severus!). If he fought in the
Hogwarts battle, he would have done the same thing, casting harmless
spells or even Protegos to protect the Order and the students. But
Harry didn't see him fighting and no one else mentions seeing him, and
he couldn't be a masked DE because he was wearing his ordinary
headmasters' or teachers' robes (black, to be sure, but probably
different from DE robes), and where would he have found a mask?

I think that one thing and one thing only was on his mind, as
evidenced by his agitation, his looking around for Harry while he
talked to McGonagall, apparently operating on auto-pilot while his
thoughts were elsewhere, and his obsessive repetition of "Let me find
the boy" even after Voldemort tells him "no." Now that he's seen
Nagini in her bubble, he knows that it's all the more urgent. For that
reason, I think he doesn't see his own danger or understand the
importance of the wand until it's too late. And even then, dying, he
makes sure that Harry receives the message. (Does he sense that
Harry's there? It doesn't seem so.)

At any rate, I think his one concern from the moment he learns that
Harry will be coming to Ravenclaw Tower and Voldemort will be
following is to get to Harry and give him that message before it's too
late. Father than fighting with the DEs, trying to maintain his cover
and risking being killed by McGonagall without fulfilling his mission,
he would (IMO) have "slithered out of action" once again to look for
Harry.

Carol, preferring to interpret Snape's motives and actions her own way
rather than having JKR's "definitive" version!