Dumbledore's plan was Doing it for Lily?

pippin_999 foxmoth at qnet.com
Mon Feb 15 23:57:44 UTC 2010


No: HPFGUIDX 188924




Lealess:
> 
> The only part of his plan Dumbledore admits didn't work as he intended was Snape not ending up with the Elder Wand.  We aren't told why that was important.  From Snape's reaction in the Shrieking Shack, I think it's safe to conclude Snape didn't even know about the Elder Wand.

Pippin:

If he did know, what would he have done differently? 

I think we have a hint that he did know. 

If the clues given to Hermione were necessary to keep Harry from discovering too quickly that Voldemort was after the Elder Wand,   Dumbledore must have thought a clever person, ie Snape, would  work out what Voldemort was after without them. 

Dumbledore's plan was to die undefeated and master of the wand. He guessed that the Elder Wand would then lose  its powers. In that case, Snape could safely present it to LV as a trophy, and LV would either conclude that the Elder Wand had worn out at last, or that DD's wand had never been the Elder Wand in the first place. He would never guess that the wand had been disarmed deliberately. 

If Dumbledore's guess had been wrong, and the wand still worked, then Snape would be master of the one weapon which, in the hands of superb duelist, might be able to resist the Dark Lord. Snape would know that he wouldn't be able to *kill* Voldemort until the soul bit in Harry had been destroyed and Harry's other tasks had been accomplished. But Voldemort could certainly be put to inconvenience.

Unfortunately for DD's plan, the mastery of the wand passed to Draco Malfoy before Dumbledore died. Snape probably knew that the wand had been buried with Dumbledore and thought it was as safe there as it would be anywhere. Removing it without its owner's permission would be problematic.   Hogwarts does not tolerate thievery and things missing from their rightful owners tend to make their way back in time. 

Even if Voldemort seized the wand, he couldn't become its master unless he defeated Draco. But Snape didn't reckon on Voldemort taking the wand in secret, thinking he'd mastered it, and then deciding that he had failed because *Snape* was master of the wand.

Snape turns "marble white" when he hears that the wand has been taken from Dumbledore's tomb. Snape is part of Voldemort's inner circle.  Would he be shocked to hear that Voldemort, creator of numerous Inferi, would desecrate a tomb? I don't think so.

IMO, he's white because he knows what has happened and what is about to happen, and he thinks he's failed. He's never going to get the truth to Potter now. All he can do is try to  protect both Harry and Draco by choosing to die with his secrets intact. 

It's frustrating for me as a Snape fan that the book doesn't tell us whether Snape  was as brave and clever in his last moments as I'd like to think. But the books aren't about Snape. They are about what Harry thinks of Snape. They're about Harry recognizing at last that Snape was brave, clever and utterly loyal to Lily and Dumbledore. 

For myself, since I always believed in Snape and Snape/Lily, that did not come as a surprise. What surprised me was that JKR's antidote to prejudice was not keeping an open mind until one has all the facts. Canon shows that, unfortunately, human beings aren't  good at that. Almost every character in the books is prejudiced, but none of the characters think so. It's no good warning people not to be prejudiced, because nobody, even Voldemort, is deliberately closed-minded. Even Voldemort can recognize a generous, self-sacrificing action when there's incontrovertible evidence. 

The trick, in canon, is to try to see the good in other people, even when they can't see any good in you. And to be just as ready to assume the good as you were to assume the bad. 
 Harry never had proof of all the evil things he believed about Snape and the Slytherins. So why should we insist upon proof before we stop believing them?

Pippin





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