[HPforGrownups] Re: What happened to Snape's body after the war was won?

[Shelley Gardner]

No: HPFGUIDX 191302


> Pippin:
> The Shrieking Shack was opened by Voldemort and so no longer sealed off. I presume there were DE's whose job it was to tidy up after their master, so Snape's body was probably transformed into something else and disposed of. I think, much as I would like to believe otherwise, that he*is*  dead -- unless of course, like Sherlock Holmes, his author has to resurrect him out of desperation.  May she be spared such a fate!
Shelley:
I'm not sure sure either of these first statements are correct. I will 
take them one at a time:

The Shrieking Shack was never "sealed off"- rather, it was protected by 
a rumor that it was haunted or a bad place to be, and had an entrance 
tunnel on the Hogwarts grounds that was guarded by the Womping Willow. 
Guarded by the tree and a rumor or minor spells that would scare the 
ordinary person away from the borders is not the same as sealed off- to 
me it's the same as the House Doors, the entrance to the kitchen, and 
the entrance to the Ministry of Magic- if you know he password or the 
thing that you were supposed to do (tickle the pear, go to a phone booth 
and dial these numbers), then you gained access. It was only meant as a 
mild, general deterant to entry. Those who "should know" had the 
information, but that information could be easily discovered by someone 
else through word of mouth. Voldemort's access to the Shrieking Shack 
meant that Snape (or someone else from Hogwart's history, possibly 
Wormtail) had given him the information to know where to touch on the 
tree to gain entrance. This, Voldey's use of the Shrieking Shack came as 
no real surprise to me- we already had evidence from the Room of 
Requirement that this kid (Riddle) was nosey enough to know that 
Hogwarts had such secret places that could be discovered to those who 
were looking, and as a grown up, it wouldn't have taken much imagination 
to inquire what other such hidden places could be used for his purposes.

The second part, of Snape's body: I don't think we have any evidence 
that any DE cared what happened to people after they were dead, and 
certainly not their own, unless that body and or body part was useful as 
a spell component. Voldemort knew where he had killed Snape, but Snape's 
lifeless corpse was of no use to him, nor the Shrieking Shack, the he 
even needed to tell the DEs to go clean up after his mess. I doubt he 
even mentioned it to them. They were of course, in battle, and had 
things to do that were more important. No one had any reason to return 
to it later, or even care. I think only Harry might have cared, but 
Rowling didn't provide us with any clues (in hindsight it would have 
shown Harry cared about Snape to provide those details) that he did 
anything to insure Snape had a burial or any ceremony to celebrate his 
life. It strikes me that Harry, maybe by exposure to the Muggle 
upbringing, seems to care more about the burial process than does the 
Wizarding community, but that's just an impression on my part. We can 
make an assumption that he would have retrieved the body for a proper 
burial, but we can't know for sure how or when that occurred. He may 
have just had the tunnel sealed off as a final resting place for Snape, 
but we aren't told either way. It just seems really unlikely that any DE 
saw to Snape's burial, and given that the rest of them thought Snape was 
still in league with Voldemort until the very end, I doubt anyone else 
would care where Snape's dead body rested.

Shelley


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