Snape's culpability again (was Re: Get Fuzzy comic & RAB)

[eloise_herisson]

Pippin:

> This has the desirable side effect, from my point of view, of
> exonerating Severus. If there's no antidote to the green goo, then
> his action on the Tower, whatever it was, is pardonable. 

Sorry. I still really don't get this.

What Snape did may well be pardonable, because we don't fully 
understand the circumstances or motivation behind it yet, but I don't 
see that the green goo having no antidote *on its own* makes it so. 
At the very least, Snape would have to know the situation. If he 
didn't and he cast that curse with malice with intent to kill, then 
by all the standards I was brought up to believe in he was morally 
wrong. He can be *forgiven*. Dumbledore probably *would* forgive him, 
whatever his intent. He might not be convicted in a court because of 
a legal nicety (though in the WW I doubt it), but the fact that 
Dumbledore was doomed anyway (if he was) cannot of itself justify 
Snape's action.

The only other way I can excuse it is by viewing him solely as an 
enemy killing under orders in the course of war. Of course, how 
anyone not under Imperius could possibly justify promoting 
Voldemort's cause is another matter.

~Eloise