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

[pippin_999]

> 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. 

Eloise: 
> 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. 

Pippin:

If the green goo is fatal, it takes the UV out of the equation. 
Then whatever Snape did doesn't *have* to have killed Dumbledore, 
because the vow says, "Should it prove necessary." There's no
necessity to kill somebody who's dying already and can't be saved.

And if we know that Snape didn't *have* to kill Dumbledore, then
we have no reason to suppose the AK was effective when it acted like
no AK we've ever seen. I will invoke one of Lexicon Steve's Laws here,
and say that the only events that occur in the Potterverse are the
ones that Jo has written about. We cannot extrapolate that there are 
lots of times when an AK behaves like the one that apparently killed
Dumbledore, because Jo has never written about them.

Ergo, Dumbledore was killed by falling off the tower, or by the 
poison. Now, no doubt whatever Snape did caused him to fall 
from the tower. But should he have believed that would prove fatal? 
This is no Muggle we're talking about, this is Albus Dumbledore,
greatest wizard who ever lived. Under ordinary circumstances,
even without a wand there are ways he could have saved himself.
Even a non-animagus can transfigure  into a bat (see
FBAWTFT), he could have called Fawkes, he might have enough
inborn magic to bounce the way Neville did. 


So for it to be murder, Snape would have to have believed that
Dumbledore was so injured that he couldn't have saved himself,
but not so injured that he was going to die anyway, because then
it would be pardonable as a ruse de guerre.

We know that Snape can do wandless, non-verbal legilimency,
(that's how he saw the image of the potion book in Harry's mind)
so Dumbledore could have conveyed to him a clear image of the
green goo and its effects. We know that finding the antidote for
an unknown combination of poisons is a timeconsuming process
that even Hermione found difficult. It is at least logical that
Snape could have realized that Dumbledore was doomed.

The ruse de guerre is not a technicality or a legal nicety from
Harry's point of view. We want Harry to prove himself as a hero 
by doing something really difficult, right? Well, which do you think 
would be harder for him? Forgiving Snape for murder
because Snape did some dazzlingly repentant act? Or realizing that 
there was no murder, that his quarrel with Snape has always been 
purely personal, and that Snape has been, since his return to the 
good side, no more a  Death Eater than Harry?

Pippin