Doing it for Lily? was Re: Snape and Harry and expulsion LONG

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 188971



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

> It is also canon that Voldemort took Lucius Malfoy's wand at the very beginning of DH because Voldemort's wand was ineffective against Potter, and when Malfoy's wand failed to defeat Potter, he took Selwyn's.  It is also canon that Voldemort had taken the wandmaker Ollivander prisoner to extract information from him.  

Pippin:
But Voldemort didn't *kill* Malfoy or Selwyn. He also knew that Grindelwald hadn't killed Gregorovich and Dumbledore hadn't killed Grindelwald. Nothing in that says, "Kill Snape!"
 

Voldemort *did* kill Grindelwald and Gregorovich, but not for their wands. They had to die because  it wouldn't do for anyone to know that Voldemort was seeking information about the Elder Wand. As Ron points out somewhere, it's not smart for the master of the wand to let anyone know that he has it. That's  reason enough for Snape to feign ignorance, no matter how much he knows or suspects. The Shrieking Shack was a classic Catch 22 situation: Snape would have to reveal knowledge of the wand to offer any alternate explanation of why it's not working, but if he does, Voldemort will kill him anyway.

But it hardly makes sense for Dumbledore to have planned that, not if he wants Snape alive to give a message to Harry. 

What did Dumbledore want Snape to do with the wand? 

I've had my theories  about that, but maybe for once, I just might have made things too complicated :)

Try this: what Snape was supposed to do with the wand is the same thing that Harry was supposed to do: not use it, and let Voldemort take it if he wants to. The elder wand, like the prophecy, is something that Voldemort supposes he needs to make him more powerful but won't actually help him. 

Consider this. Voldemort is already so powerful that the strongest spells and charms known to Dumbledore will not stop him. He can't be *more* invincible than he is already, never mind that in fact  the wand has been beaten many times.  

He already has allies and weapons so powerful that all out war against him is unthinkable -- giants, inferi and weres, oh my!  Giving Voldemort one more WMD isn't going to make the balance of power  more lopsided than it is already. 

I agree that anyone trying to keep the wand from Voldemort would be set up, but there's no canon that Snape was supposed to do that. Let Voldemort claim the wand, working or no, it won't make him any more dangerous than he is already.

Yes, it's canon that Voldemort enjoys killing and acts irrationally. But, as you said, sometimes he doesn't kill when it would be rational for him to do so. Killing Snape to make himself master of the wand is just the sort of irrational, paranoid notion Voldemort would come up with. But it's hardly the *only* irrational, paranoid notion possible. 

Snape and Dumbledore  couldn't possibly prepare against all the crazy ideas Voldemort might have about why the wand isn't working for him. 

Lealess:
> Maybe, maybe not.  The portrait might also have been sealed, never to be heard from again, or the office sealed.  As for Dumbledore's memories, how do we know the memories are still there, and were not hidden away or destroyed once Potter saw them?  It seems an ever-curious Snape might have looked at those memories if they were readily available, and yet, Snape doesn't seem to know something so basic as why Potter needs the Sword of Gryffindor.

Pippin:
Snape *chose* not to know why Potter needed the sword. If he had really wanted to know, or rather, if he had thought knowing was more important than cooperating with Dumbledore, he could have refused to obey until he was told, as he did in the forest. 

The portraits were empty because they were elsewhere in the castle. Dumbledore's portrait can visit anywhere it likes, and communicate with whom it pleases, including House Elves and ghosts who can leave the castle undetected, whether the office is sealed or not. Unless the castle itself is destroyed, it would be difficult to stop it from getting a message out. 

Lealess:
 He put a lot of faith in very few people, and kept information from all of them.

Pippin:
Yes, and he was like that as a boy,  long before he ever heard of the prophecy.  That was a function of his personality.


Lealess:
> Dumbledore's weeping over Harry's role shows to me that he accepts the Prophecy as determinative.  If the Prophecy was bunkum, he could have laughed it off and encouraged Potter to do the same.  Instead, he communicated that Potter must put himself in mortal danger because of the Prophecy; in other words, he lent credence to its words and helped to put them in action.

Pippin:
*Put himself in mortal danger* ???? As Harry realizes at the beginning of GoF, he's been in mortal danger since he was a baby -- because Voldemort wants to kill him. The prophecy explains *why* Voldemort wants to kill him. And that's no laughing matter. Harry's choices are limited by that fact. He can run, he can hide, he can ignore the danger, he can fight back. But the danger is real. 

Lealess:
> Just because someone comes from a tradition of duelling doesn't mean he will only ever bet on one champion, unless he has reason to believe there is only one champion.  That belief came from the Prophecy, before Dumbledore even knew Potter as a person.  Who else was Dumbledore protecting -- the Longbottoms?

Pippin:
Harry was told in OOP and finally recognizes towards the end that there didn't have to be only one champion. But it was  useful to Dumbledore for Voldemort to think there was. 

As long as Voldemort thinks there is only one champion  to stand between him and world domination, perhaps he will concentrate his energies on eliminating that champion, instead of, say, flattening Europe, or eliminating every Muggle alive, starting with those whom the Muggles themselves consider undesirable. Voldemort could have sent an army of Inferi marching through London -- instead he decided to hunt one little boy. Tough on  the Potter family -- but would they have been better off in the middle of World War Three?

> > Pippin:
> > There's a difference between being coerced into obedience and voluntarily agreeing to obey.
> 

Lealess: 
> In the end, Potter may have had a choice, but there is evidence for me to believe it was a highly-conditioned one.

Pippin:
::rolls eyes:: I don't think one could train even the most adoring, compliant spaniel to obey you by showing up once a year to deliver a treat and say how proud you are, still less one that had been kept in an abusive situation for ten years. And humans, in my experience, respond to training  less reliably than dogs. 

Pippin