Snape's original defection, a question
Oct. 21st, 2013 09:07 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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deathtocapslockSomething 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?
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?
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Date: 2013-11-10 03:51 am (UTC)Bye-bye!
So part--even most--of that six months lead-time for apprehending Karkaroff, might have been Moody struggling to construct a plausible cause to start investigatmg the man that didn't brtray that Albus' had acquired s source within the Death Eaters.