Snape's Psychology: WAS: More thoughts on the Elder Wand subplot - Owner?

[zanooda2]

No: HPFGUIDX 187514

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "dumbledore11214" <dumbledore11214 at ...> wrote:

> Nope, reread, and even more convinced that I am blaming 
> dear Snape for exact thing he deserves to be blamed for, 
> namely not asking Dumbledore to keep James and Harry safe, 
> till Dumbledore basically forces him to that is. 


zanooda:


Oh, Alla, I never expected you to agree with me :-). Actually, I don't think anyone will :-). That's not why I wrote my post, see. It was just something that was bugging me for a long time and I was tempted to write about it many times, but I never did, because it doesn't change much, you know? I mean, this way or another Snape didn't care what happens to James and Harry, right? But the list is quiet at the moment, so I thought I could finally get it off my chest and forget about it :-).

 
> Alla:
 
> What I do not see is how you can interpret Snape's  *response* 
> as anything but him intending to ask Dumbledore as well only 
> for Lily's life.


zanooda:

His response shows that he indeed didn't ask LV (not DD) to spare James and Harry, it also shows that he didn't think of them and didn't care about them, but it doesn't show me that he didn't intend to include them in his request to DD :-).  

DD says to him "you don't care about the deaths of her husband and child?" - and Snape shrinks because he in fact didn't care :-). But DD's "you don't care" comes as a response to Snape asking *LV* only for Lily's life, not as a response to Snape asking *DD* to protect only Lily. 

Snape didn't ask DD anything at all at this point of conversation. And it is said only after it is said :-). I don't know what Snape wanted to ask DD. I can easily believe that he *didn't intend to ask* to protect the whole family, but I can't say "he didn't ask", because he didn't have time to ask about anything at all yet :-).



> Alla wrote:
 
> It is this *then* that tells me that had Dumbledore not 
> expressed his disgust and was more agreeable with Snape 
> asking for Lily only that Snape would have asked for her 
> life too.


zanooda:

Still, this is an assumption, not a fact, because Snape's original request was never expressed ...


> Alla:

> And second thing what he says is "keep her - them - safe". 
> Again, first out of his mouth is what he truly wanted to 
> ask and as afterthought, to get Dumbledore to be more agreeable
> is "them".


zanooda:

First out of his mouth is what he *truly wanted*, not what he "truly wanted to ask"... :-). Alla, I'm not trying to convince you (or anybody else). As I said, I just wanted to get this off my chest. It's one of those things that you really want to say for some reason :-).

For example, when we discuss Snape and the prophecy, we always say that Snape didn't care about the unknown innocent baby when he retold the prophecy to LV. And I always wanted to say that, IMO, it's practically impossible to guess from the overheard part of the prophecy that it was about an unborn baby. I never said it though (until now :-)), because it doesn't make a lot of difference if it's about a baby or someone else. Just nitpicking, LOL.