Blackwidower!Snape - repost from TOL (long)

[Barry Arrowsmith]

--- In the_old_crowd at yahoogroups.com, "dungrollin" <spotthedungbeetle at ...> wrote:
> 
> I blasted it quick with some little yellow pills which made the 
> ceiling go all swirly. Looks stationary enough again now.
> 

Don't trust swirly ceilings.
They're as bad as floors that you have to hold onto to stop falling off.

> Kneasy
> > Well, maybe.
> > Certainly he might keep the troops in the dark about a possible 
> > vanquisher, but there again he might consider it an opportunity to 
> > demonstrate his supremacy. Depends if he's read the Rules. But what 
> > he'd want more than anything else is information, and to get that 
> > he'd have to pass the word that there were certain classes of 
> > intelligence that he's particularly interested in.
> 
> Dung
> I'm going by one of JKR's faq polls:
> 
> The Lestranges were sent after Neville to kill him.
> No, they weren't, they were very definitely sent after Neville's 
> parents. I can't say too much about this because it touches too 
> closely on the prophecy and how many people knew about it, but the 
> Lestranges were not in on the secret.
> 
> Which strongly suggests, firstly, that the information was highly 
> restricted (if precious Bella didn't know), and secondly, that who 
> *did* know about the prophecy before OotP will be important. The only 
> certainties we have are Snape, Voldy and DD, and *not* the 
> Lestranges. 
> 

Yeah, but the situation had changed by the time of the 'let's go and
play at the Longbottoms' incident. They wanted to know what had
happened to their glorious leader. Neville was not their main interest,
in fact he couldn't be "the one" because "the one" had already done 
something nasty to their Lord and Master. Neville was therefore 
irrelevant but his parents might know something since he had been
considered to be a possibility  for the  starring role. Highly likely 
then, that they'd been involved in discussions, plans and had 
knowledge of why DD picked on these two particular kids and how
any protective spells DD may have emplaced may have worked.

A long time ago, I posited that Voldy would insist that he would deal
with the two sprogs personally, and he wouldn't thank any ultra-keen
DE  sticking his nose (or wand) in. For why? Power. It's what Voldy is
all about. The contender has a power he knows not,  but I'll bet he 
very much wants to know what it is and whether he can identify it, 
develop it or even steal it for himself. It's the rationale behind 
Possession Theory, he wants into their minds to suss out this 'power'.
So he wouldn't want anyone else queering his pitch or, horror upon 
horror, maybe getting useful info that one day could be used against 
him.

Some information was  widely known among the DEs, it must have
been, why else drop in on the Longbottoms?  That they did suggests
that they knew Neville was one of the critical pair and his parents
would know what had happened to Voldy at GH.

> 
> Dung
> It's irritating. On the one hand it looks as though he's got plenty 
> of time, and on the other, one can't help but wonder why he waited so 
> long between hearing the prophecy and going after the Potters. If 
> it's at all relevant, I can only imagine that it was due to lack of 
> information, that he didn't know who'd calved at the right time. 
> 

What's also irritating is that we're none too sure of just when the two
families went into hiding. It makes a difference to the theorising.
Was Voldy looking for them for 15 months (unlikely IMO) or did 
something stir him up later? If so, what? Puppetmaster!DD?
If DD was in the business of setting a Voldy trap then it'd be no damn
good unless Voldy had some idea of where the bait was. By the same
token, unless the families were planning on staying in hiding for years,
the situation had to be brought to a conclusion. Either accidentally or
deliberately the news must eventually leak. DD would prefer a leak 
he could control, either through a known Voldy agent or one of his own.

> 
> Dung
> It still strikes me as possible that it was reading the Potters' 
> names in the magical book which persuaded Snape that he had something 
> to offer DD. Snape tells DD that Voldy sent him to Hogwarts to find 
> out the names of children born at the right time, (Snape may have 
> assumed that there weren't any, that it was his now dead sprog that 
> was the one to whom the prophecy referred), and is surprised to 
> discover the Potters qualify. 
> 
> DD sends him back to Voldy with the names to keep Snape's cover, and 
> sets up the fidelius charm, either (nice!DD) supposing that the 
> Potters will accept his offer to be secret-keeper and that everything 
> would be ok, or, (naughty!DD) since he knows about the marking, he 
> half-heartedly suggests himself as sk if they can't find anybody 
> else, and banks on the spy close to the Potters ratting them out.
>

Why not say that there were no candidates of the required vintage?
Much sneakier, it lulls Voldy into a sense of false security - unless
DD isn't quite sure of Snapey.

The SK is a whole different other SFAIC. So much so that I wonder if
it was designed to fail.

 
> Dung
> (Swop?? Am I being slow?) 
> Trying to pin RW dates on WW events confuses me. I prefer to 
> reference something in canon, e.g. the year of Harry's birth. I date 
> Reggie's death according to the tapestry in OotP, which says some 
> fifteen years previously, which makes it the year of Harry's birth, 
> the year before GH. If you insist on saying '79 or '80, you have to 
> specify which year you're going with for Harry's birth, coz afaik 
> that's either '79 or '80, too isn't it? I don't think you can have 
> Reg dying in '79 and Harry born in '80. But I could be wrong...

Why not a swop?
Yep, sorting out HP dates are a pain in the arse, I agree.
Not only are we mostly reliant on calculating out which year at school
each book refers to and then adding 11, there's also  Jo's notoriously
shaky maths to contend with. It do make it difficult. Whenever figuring
out recent history, the what happened when, there's always a suspicion 
that it'll all come crashing down when Jo pipes up with "Er.. now let me
think..."

Kneasy