Snape's Remorse

[pippin_999]

--- In the_old_crowd at yahoogroups.com, "susiequsie23"
<susiequsie23 at s...> wrote:
> 
> Pippin:
> IMO, if Snape had killed Dumbledore for some evil purpose, or had
> it together enough to pretend that he'd done so, he'd be showing 
> elation. Instead, he adopts the mask of anger, because in his
> confusion about what just went down, it's the role that's 
> easiest to perform. 
> 
> 
> SSSusan:
> Can you expand on this, please, Pippin?  You know that I'm also not
of  the opinion that Snape killed DD for an evil purpose, but I'm
intrigued about just what you're saying here.  WHY the confusion for 
Snape?  What DOES he believe he's done?  
>

Pippin:
I think, in light of DD's explanation of why he didn't move in on
Draco, we have an explanation for old questions like, 'If Snape tells
DD everything, why didn't he do something about Quirrell?' 
The answer is that  Voldie uses relatively innocent people as 
pawns, and if he's rumbled, he kills them. 

So let's assume that whether he took the vow with Narcissa 
under DD's orders or not, Snape told DD about it and they had a
thorough discussion of Snape's options. That does not make Snape 
Dumbledore's confidante anymore than Draco is.

Now Jo told us that she worded Trelawney's prophecy very carefully,
and we can presume the same of Snape's vow. "And should it prove
necessary...if it seems Draco will fail, will you carry out the deed
that the Dark Lord has ordered Draco to perform?"

There are three or four loopholes here. "Should it prove necessary" --
well, it's obviously not necessary if Dumbledore dies of some other
cause. Dumbledore has been up to some pretty dangerous stuff lately.

Another is  that the deed is undefined. 
If the Dark Lord has ordered Draco to take out the garbage, put out 
the cat, and kill Dumbledore, then it seems to me Snape has his
choice of  tasks. 

I think Snape and DD  were pretty sure that Draco's tasks involved
more than killing Dumbledore, as indeed they did, and they were
hoping that Draco would admit failure and turn to Snape for help at 
some earlier stage of the  game. Dumbledore believed that the DE's 
couldn't get inside the castle, and that Draco on his own wasn't 
capable of killing anyone. 

There was also the option of making it seem that Draco had succeeded. 
The oath only kicks in if it seems Draco will fail. That might have
been the  preferred option. But it was forestalled by the train stomp.

Dumbledore would be reasonably sure that Draco was not a killer after
he utterly failed  to do anything worse to Harry on the train than
break his  nose and then  make fun of him. The Dark Lord will hear of
this incident too -- Draco didn't keep it a secret, after all. No,
Draco definitely doesn't have what it takes--he breaks orders by 
attacking Harry, and then doesn't do anything remotely vile by DE 
standards. If Voldemort really expected Draco to kill Dumbledore,
he'd have known then that he had the wrong tool, and he'd have 
broken it. 

Narcissa is right -- the Dark Lord doesn't expect that his orders
will result in the death of Dumbledore. 

So if it seems that Draco has given up trying to kill Dumbledore, and
Snape steps  in  and tries, but also  falls short of success -- then 
the vow is not broken. He's carried out the deed that Draco was
ordered to perform.

Well, Snape can do that. 'You can all point your wands at me and
say the words, and I doubt I'd get so much as a nosebleed.' Snape 
naturally finds this a bit dicey. He used to be able to do an AK, I'd
assume, what if he still can? But Dumbledore trusts Severus.


The difficulty, as Dumbledore sees it, will be to do it without
blowing  Snape's cover. Whether Snape or Draco eventually tries to 
kill him, Dumbledore is going to have to fake his own death. 
This he plans to do -- has Sluggy brew up some DoLD potion, 
brings Harry up to speed on  the hunt for the horsedroppings, 
and so forth. Naturally he can't let Harry in on the full extent of 
the plan, because Harry's mind will be an open book whenever 
Voldemort decides to take a looksee.  

DD says he ordered Snape  to watch over Draco, and I think the row
that Hagrid overheard was Snape trying to get out of this after the
Ron incident. Snape was blaming himself and trying to resign, or else 
get permission to move against Draco, and Dumbledore told him he 
was to continue his investigations of Slytherin House (and no more)
 -- he'd agreed to do it and that's that.

So Snape arrives on the tower, sweeps his eyes around, deduces that 
Harry is there, sees that Dumbledore looks to be in dire straits.
Perhaps he realizes Dumbledore is dying, but perhaps he thinks it's
an act, just part of the show they've planned to deceive the DE's.

 And Dumbledore utters his plea, and Snape, Dumbledore's man through 
and through, does the curse, which fails. It blasts Dumbledore into
the air, which we can be reasonably sure wouldn't have killed him on
its own.  If baby!Neville can bounce, surely it's not beyond the
powers of a wizard like DD. 

But the "not a health drink" green goo of death catches up with DD and
kills him as he falls. 

Snape realizes DD must have died as  soon as he hears Harry yell,
"Stupefy!' behind him. He doesn't know what the hell went wrong.

But  there are a bunch of Death Eaters in the castle, and his first 
priority is to get them away from the kids. So he does, hindered by
Harry, who, as usual, has been deceived by appearances. 

Pippin