Under the influence

[pippin_999]

--- In the_old_crowd at yahoogroups.com, "eloise_herisson"
<eloiseherisson at a...> wrote:

> Is *this* the proof of which Dumbledore has been so reticent? That 
> Snape came to him willing to die for what he'd done? 
> 


Pippin:
This is rather uncanny. I've been having these same thoughts myself
offliist. Great minds...

I'm on travel and haven't got my canon handy. But didn't Dumbledore
say that Voldemort would want to interrogate the drinker of the
potion? 

What if it makes you reveal the thing you least want Voldemort to 
know?

I'm thinking that in order for Dumbledore to use Snape as a spy, he
would have had to increase Snape's occlumency skills to the point
where Snape could hide his remorse from Voldemort. That would 
mean occlumency lessons, with Dumbledore  using all his considerable 
legilimency skills to try  to force the truth out of Snape.

That could be what DD is reliving. That would explain the pleas--
and also that Harry thinks, when he hears Dumbledore pleading on the
tower, that he's never heard Dumbledore plead before. He hasn't,
because what he heard before was Dumbledore's recollection of Snape 
pleading, first,  that he doesn't want to relive that memory again,
then the memory itself, that he doesn't want the Potters killed, that
he would rather die.

On a somewhat related thought, we've seen LV try to use Dumbledore as
his executioner more than once. Consider young Snape, a gifted wizard,
full of drive and intelligence, with a passion for the dark arts, who
is growing out of his adolescent gawkiness into a man who can command
the attention of a room just by walking into it -- could Voldemort
have sent Snape to apply for the jinxed DADA job because he feared
that Snape could become a rival Dark Lord?

In that case, Voldemort wouldn't have seriously prepared Snape to
resist Dumbledore any more than he did Draco, and the reason
Dumbledore thought he had nothing to fear from Snape's occlumency
skills is that he is the one who brought them to their present level.

BTW, what *do* you think all those Christie books are doing on JKR's 
shelves? Hercule Poirot (note his initials) would be perfectly
satisfied with poison as the cause of DD's death.

Pippin
from hot, muggy Peoria, Illinois