Redressing our Injustice to Albus Dumbledore

[terri-testing.livejournal.com]

All of us who have blamed Albus for reneging on his promise to Severus to protect Lily in exchange for Severus’s “Anything” must own ourselves to have grossly wronged the man.

He never made any such promise.

Severus begged him, “Hide them all, then….Keep her—them—safe. Please.”

“And what will you give me in return, Severus?”

He never technically agreed to do it, see? Just acknowledged the entreaty and asked for Snape’s best offer.

No, “I will. But what will you give me in return?”

Not even, “If I do, what will you give me in return?”

So he didn’t fail to keep his word.

Any more than he later actually said that he would be protecting The-Boy-Who-Must-Die-At-The-Right-Moment.

“Make sure it [Lily’s death] was not in vain. Help me protect Lily’s son.”

See? Twinkles didn’t actually commit to anything himself. If Snape chose to believe Albus was planning to protect rather than abuse and sacrifice the child, that was Snape’s interpretation.

So all of us who ever criticized Twinkles on the grounds that he’d failed to keep his promises to Severus to protect Lily, and later Harry, can just take it back.

Comments

[terri-testing.livejournal.com]

Scumblewhore even worse? How can you say so?

(I'm reminded of Marianros's statement that she'd rather expose her children to a serial pedophile than to Albus....)

And if wasne't just Snape's desperation he took advantage of here--it was his own reputation for being "too--well--noblle" to use Tom's methods.

Snape DIDN'T trust Tom's promises, or non-promises, whatever. That's why he went to Twinkles in the first place.

His mistake was believing that Albus was any different.

And he paid for it with his life. And worse (from his standpoint), Li'ly's.

But after all, where do we imagine that ickle Tommy LEARNED to negotiate? Makes me want to re-read those Albus-Tom scenes in CoS and HBP really, REALLY carefully.

The problem with the fanfic is that when Severus approached Albus, he imagined tht he was dealing with an honorable man, and so didn't realize he needed a negotiatot, or at least to examine Albus's every word and pin him down inexcapably.

Very fortunately, Albus cut short Tom's lessons before Tom fully absorbed what an advantage it is to be popularly held to be above suspicion.....

[oryx_leucoryx]

Oh, where would Tom have ended up had he managed to be above suspicion... Most popular Minister ever, re-appointed repeatedly, I suppose. And Albus as headmaster and Chief Warlock would have had to work with him.