Snape's original defection, a question

[terri-testing.livejournal.com]

Something I think canon is silent on--I'd like opinions, informed or otherwise.

When we saw Albus send a white-faced Severus to Tom's side at the end of GoF with that "if you are prepared" comment, it was as a double-triple-quadruple-(to the nth) agent. Snape's life then balanced on his persuading a paranoid and enraged Dark Lord that he was really still loyal (or loyal again) to the Death Eater cause, but that Albus falsely believed Snape to have turned his loyalty irrevocably to him, and to now be only pretending to be a Death Eater in order to spy for Albus.

A very perilous position, particularly when both masters are expert Legilimens and know the other to be the same. The more one master trusts Snape, the less the other ought to, eh?

What does he see in your mind that I do not? What do you show him, and hide from me?

So--was this fiendishly difficult and demanding position the same as the one Severus was placed in when he originally obtained a place at Dumbledore's right hand as a supposedly repentant DE?

Or was the original assignment a little less complicated: that Severus was to approach Dumbledore as a remorseful Death Eater begging him for sanctuary at Hogwarts, the only stronghold still firm against Voldemort? In exchange for a pre-agreed--with the Dark Lord--flood of information on the Death Eaters?

And then stay there as a sleeper until Tom activated him?

If Tom had ordered Severus to do nothing but cement Dumbledore's trust until he explicitly told him otherwise, if Severus didn't regularly have to face Tom's interrogations and report satisfactorily on Dumbledore's doings, his position (both then and in GoF) was, while precarious, not as immediately lethal as we had thought.

Opinions?

Comments

[sunnyskywalker]

That is to say, I mean that rather than just considering it he had actually started on the project. That would take care of the "but why didn't he just..." problem: he did. Harry and Neville may have been the last two babies on the list, presumably because the Potters and the Longbottoms were the hardest to get at. (Some poor Muggleborn baby is probably recorded as a Sudden Infant Death Syndrome victim in the official coroner's report, and no one except maybe Muggle-paper-reading Dumbledore ever knew.) And he may have deliberately targeted several adults whose parents had thrice defied him back at school or something too - all those "random" killings might not have been random at all.

But maybe that's just my preference for a Voldemort who was actually clever once and has degenerated by the time we meet him.

[oryx_leucoryx]

Of course it depends which part of the prophecy Severus delivered. If it was really the first part, Tom would be after sons or daughters of those who had defied him three times, born at the end of the 7th month under whatever interpretation (including those born prematurely), in any year. If Severus delivered the tail end of the prophecy then Tom would be after boys or girls, born at the end of the 7th month (under whichever interpretation) who were still not born when the prophecy was made, but not necessarily children of people who had defied him.

Heck, maybe the reason Harry's year is atypically small is because those are the kids that survived the purge.

[sunnyskywalker]

Oh, that might work! It takes care of the problems with the "baby bust" theory (like wizards not actually seeming to react to crises by delaying having children - not just the Weasleys but active Aurors like Tonks and the Longbottoms, risk-taking Gryffindors like the Potters, plus all those other elopements Molly mentioned which don't sound like they involved caution and thinking years in advance and so probably led to a few babies - and maybe this is all due to it not being the kind of war where soldiers leave home and don't have the opportunity to have babies, not any psychological difference necessarily). It would also add to the general horror of the last two years or so of Voldemort's first rise - so many families killed, even the babies! He spared no one!

With so many of the adults who would have had magical children in Harry's year being on Voldemort's enemies list anyway, maybe even Dumbledore didn't realize how many of those dead babies were actually ones Voldemort saw as potential Prophecy Babies. Especially if a quarter of them were Muggleborns and Voldemort was smart enough to just sneak in and AK them while leaving the rest of the family untouched - might not even make the Muggle news.

Come to think of it, how many Muggleborns besides Hermione and Justin do we know in that year? There ought to be around 10. Are there? That might be a good chunk of the population drop right there. Something which could easily be chalked up to either a fluke of Muggles just not having many magical kids for a couple of years or as bad luck from the DEs killing enough Muggles that by sheer bad luck, they got some of the future Hogwarts intake too.

Between that, a few halfblood kids caught when their parents took them to their Muggle relatives for a visit or were otherwise easy to get at, a few families killed all together like the Boneses may have been (attributed to them being OotP members or blood traitors or any number of reasons), and adults who otherwise might have conceived children born in Harry's year killed off before they could do so, you can account for a lot of the difference between Harry's class size and the apparent norm. Maybe you'd still need a few families putting off kids temporarily, but it wouldn't have to be as many of them.

[hwyla.livejournal.com]

Just a note - as far as 'canon' goes - Hagrid tells Harry that the surprising thing about Voldy being vaporized while trying to kill him is that Voldy attempted to kill him at all. This is either written extremely badly (as one would think the actual surprising bit is that Harry survived) OR it means that Voldy almost never killed children/babies. I agree it makes little sense, but it is what Hagrid said. Of course, Hagrid isn't always right either.

It should also be noted that Dean Thomas' father (according to JKRs old website) was killed by Voldy and yet nothing ever happened to his muggle wife or babyDean - despite the fact that they didn't even know the man was a wizard or anything at all about the war and so were not hiding in any form at all.

As for showing Voldy in a truly evil manner - I'm still incredibly surprised that Voldy didn't just AK every pregnant witch due to birth a child over that entire summer - just to prevent the possibility of children born early or late fitting the prophecy.