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In Snape’s defence ...

By Susan Wight - posted Wednesday, 11 July 2007


Ladies and Gentleman of the Wizengamot, Severus Snape’s murder of Dumbledore revealed his true nature, marking him as a confirmed Death Eater. But did it really? It is your onerous duty to judge this very talented wizard and I put it to you that in order to condemn him you must establish his guilt beyond all reasonable doubt. You have been asked to authorise the use of the Unforgivable Curses in the pursuit of this wizard. Let us therefore consider the evidence:

Snape gazed for a moment at Dumbledore, and there was revulsion and hatred etched in the harsh lines of his face. “Severus … please …”

Snape raised his wand and pointed it directly at Dumbledore. “Avada Kedavra!”

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You have heard this, ladies and gentleman, from the eye-witness, Harry Potter, who was on the scene during Dumbledore’s last moments and has given us his sworn testimony that he saw Severus Snape cast the Unforgivable Curse at the weakened and disarmed Dumbledore.

There can therefore be no doubt, no doubt at all ladies and gentleman, that Snape did cast that killing curse at Dumbledore but ... BUT, ladies and gentlemen, I put it to you that this damning fact is not enough to condemn this man. I ask you, before you come to your verdict, to take a moment to consider the possibility that Dumbledore was not begging Severus to spare him but pleading with him instead to end his life.

The entire magical community is screaming for Snape’s blood but the entire magical community, ladies and gentleman, has been wrong before. What of Sirius Black? What of Peter Pettigrew? Only last summer The Daily Prophet had us all convinced that Harry Potter himself was an attention-seeking pratt and that the great Albus Dumbledore had lost his marbles. Ladies and Gentlemen, the entire magical community and The Daily Prophet were wrong then and they could be wrong now!

Let us therefore examine the events leading up to that fateful scene on top of the Astronomy Tower at Hogwarts.

The witness, Professor Hagrid, has stated that he overheard Snape and Dumbledore arguing, “I jus’ heard Snape sayin’ Dumbledore took too much fer granted an’ maybe he - Snape - didn’ wan’ ter do it any more ... Dumbledore told him flat out he’d agreed to do it an’ that was all there was to it.”

I submit that if Snape really was a Death Eater, the last thing he could afford to do was quarrel with Dumbledore. Their argument can only mean that Snape was loyal but that he baulked at a task which he saw as asking too much of him.

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Snape’s bravery, in the words of Dumbledore himself, “[turning] spy for us, at great personal risk” makes it unlikely that it was fear that prompted his objection. I put it to you that it was revulsion. Dumbledore and Snape must have been discussing the one thing we know that Snape had agreed to do, and I emphasise we know this from uncontested evidence - to kill Dumbledore.

Severus had Bellatrix Lestrange watching him as Narcissa Malfoy begged him to make the Unbreakable Vow to watch over her son and he agreed. Bellatrix was already suspicious of him - “I don’t trust you Snape, as you very well know”, accusing him of “the usual empty words, the usual slithering out of action”.

In his double-agent role, Snape had, at all costs, to avoid blowing his cover. He could not refuse to make the Unbreakable Vow and, after all, there seemed to be no harm in saying he would strive to protect Draco. The vow, however, seemed to go further than he anticipated. He had no hesitation in agreeing to “watch over” Draco, nor to “protect him from harm”, but his hand twitched within Narcissa’s as she whispered, “if it seems Draco will fail ... will you carry out the deed that the Dark Lord has ordered Draco to perform?” There was a moment’s silence ... “I will,” said Snape.

Given the circumstances, what other answer could he give? He knew that Bellatrix would “carry my words back to the others who whisper behind my back and carry false tales of my treachery to the Dark Lord”. Once he made the Unbreakable Vow to undertake that hateful task, Snape had committed himself to carry it out or die and, during his argument with Dumbledore, Dumbledore must have been insisting Snape go through with it. The vow made it inevitable that one of them must die and it is likely that Dumbledore decided Snape’s survival was more important than his own in the ongoing fight against He Who Must Not Be Named.

We know that Dumbledore exacted a high degree of loyalty from those working with him against He Who Must Not Be Named - loyalty to the cause rather than to him personally.

The tasks he set the Order were not easy - he sent Hagrid as an emissary to the giants, Lupin to live among the werewolves, and Snape to spy on He Who Must Not Be Named. When taking Harry in search of the Horcrux he demanded, “If I tell you to leave me, and save yourself, you will do as I tell you?” Dedication beyond personal loyalty was required. Dumbledore did not see the fight against He Who Must Not Be Named as a one-person crusade.

After Harry prevented the Dark Lord from acquiring the Philosopher’s Stone, Dumbledore told him, “while you may only have delayed his return to power, it will merely take someone else who is prepared to fight what seems a losing battle next time”.

In killing Dumbledore, Snape publicly declared his allegiance to the Dark Lord and left himself well placed to assist with his defeat from within the Death Eaters, having once and for all quashed doubts on both sides. Narcissa stated, “[The Dark Lord] would reward you beyond all of us”. As Dumbledore’s man, Snape would have been horrified at the prospect and preferred to die himself rather than murder Dumbledore.

Consider for a moment the quandary of a brave man, prepared to die in the fight against He Who Must Not Be Named. Dumbledore asked him to go a terrible step further and to kill his own leader in the pursuit of the cause. The decision would have been an agonising one for Snape - to die or to kill his mentor, the only one who had ever completely believed in him.

This explains why it was the word “coward” flung at him by Harry Potter that visibly tortured him during his flight from the scene of Dumbledore’s death - a scene where he had committed an act of loyalty which would bring him no accolades but instead brand him with the worst of the Death Eaters and mark him as the Ministry’s next Most Wanted man after He Who Must Not Be Named himself.

From Dumbledore’s point of view, the choice may have been obvious. The Unbreakable Vow meant either he or Snape must die. He was increasingly aware of his own age, “an old man’s mistake”, “I am undoubtedly slower than I was”, and “weaker resistance, slower reflexes ... Old age, in short”.

Snape, on the other hand, is relatively young and at the height of his powers; is a powerful wizard in his own right, an accomplished potion maker, spell maker and Occlumens. Moreover, he has, as much as anyone has, the Dark Lord’s confidence. Even Narcissa was adamant, “He trusts you so, Severus”. Dumbledore calmly accepted serious injury in his work for the Order, “a withered hand does not seem an unreasonable exchange for a seventh of Voldemort’s soul”. He also had no fear of death, “it is the unknown we fear when we look upon death and darkness, nothing more” and “it really is like going to bed after a very, very long day. After all, to the well-organised mind, death is but the next great adventure.”

The fact that Dumbledore was prepared to order Harry to leave him and save himself when they went in search of the Horcrux proves his acceptance that his own death may be necessary in the fight against He Who Must Not Be Named and that he accepted that probability quite objectively.

This is not to suggest that Dumbledore thought lightly of the task - “killing is not nearly as easy as the innocent believe” - but he may have accepted that his time was coming and that others would need to carry on the fight against evil without him.

We know that Dumbledore had a good reason for trusting Snape. “He always hinted that he had an iron-clad reason for trusting Snape.” Dumbledore himself said, “I trust Severus Snape completely” and we know that he trusted few people so completely. Even Professor McGonagall, his trusted Vice Principal and fellow member of the Order, did not know where he went on his excursions from Hogwarts.

What Harry sees as Dumbledore’s “insane determination to see good in everyone”, was really a refusal to accept other people’s prejudices. He was willing to give people a chance - Hagrid, Lupin, Black, even Lockhart, but he did not do so naively. He gave them a chance to rise above their own weaknesses. The way he kept an eye on young Tom Riddle showed that he did not do so blindly. Dumbledore also gave the young Harry a chance to prove himself but he watched over him “more closely than you can have imagined”.

Harry believes that Dumbledore’s reason for trusting Snape was his remorse over the death of Harry’s parents, but before setting off in pursuit of the Horcrux, Dumbledore seemed to consider telling Harry something else about his trust in Snape; “he looked as though he was trying to make up his mind about something”. We must assume that Dumbledore did not completely confide in the young Harry and there was something that he held back.

I put it to you that it would have taken more than a glib profession of remorse on Snape’s part to convince Dumbledore of a change of loyalty and there must have been some strong evidence of Snape’s remorse in order for Dumbledore to accept it so implicitly and yet not to divulge it, to the best of our knowledge, to any other member of the Order.

I put it to you that this missing piece of evidence could have been that Severus Snape loved Lily Potter - Harry’s mother. In support of this theory, I offer you the fact that, although Harry believes that Snape hated both his parents and dismissed Lily as a “filthy little Mudblood”, he has only the evidence of the Pensieve for his belief in Snape’s hatred of Lily - evidence, yes, that the teenage Snape at one time was derisive of Lily but not conclusive proof that an older Snape felt the same way.

I remind you that the very same incident in the Pensieve offers proof that people’s feelings towards each other do change with time. Harry witnessed Lily Evans, as she then was, chastising James Potter with considerable venom and Harry subsequently wondered how she ever came to marry James. I put it to you that Snape’s feelings towards Lily could have changed significantly over the course of time.

Who, I ask you, was the schoolboy Snape (or as he styled himself at that time, “The Half-Blood Prince”) writing instructions to in the margins of his potions book? Oh yes, many of those notes were instructions, consider the phrase “just shove a bezoar down his throat”: it is not a recipe, not a note for his own later study, it bears the unmistakable marks of being a frantic message to help a fellow student being questioned by a teacher.

I put it to you that Lily Evans’ astounding talent in Potions which impressed Professor Slughorn so much could have been because she was receiving help from none other than the talented Severus Snape, just as her son was to receive such help from the messages scribbled in his book years later - help which ironically led Harry to say he had learnt much more about Potions from the Prince than he had ever learnt from Snape.

Again and again Snape has derided Harry’s father. Who could blame him given the bullying he received at James’ hands during his student years? Even Harry was shocked to find out how his father had treated Snape.

We can assume that much of Snape’s dislike and mistrust of Harry was based on the fact that he saw Harry as very like his father. “How extraordinarily like your father you are, Potter.” It is even possible that Snape believes that Harry has bullied Draco Malfoy during his school years much as his father bullied Snape.

On many occasions Snape arrived on the scene after an altercation between Draco and Harry and believed Draco’s version of events. Yes, there is plenty of evidence that Severus Snape hated James Potter and disliked his son intensely. However, during all Harry’s years at Hogwarts, Snape has never once referred to Lily Potter in a derogatory manner.

If Snape did love Lily Evans, imagine his remorse and inconsolable grief when he realised that the information he provided to He Who Must Not Be Named brought about her death and orphaned her son. I submit that love would convince Dumbledore and that it was Snape’s love, grief and remorse that was the iron-clad reason for Dumbledore’s belief in Snape.

I remind you also that not only did Snape have to convince Dumbledore of his change of loyalty initially but that he had to maintain Dumbledore’s belief in him for 16 years of close contact. Snape apparently served Dumbledore without raising suspicion for 16 years. In fact he spent far more time with Dumbledore than with He Who Must Not Be Named. It was therefore more difficult to deceive Dumbledore effectively in terms of maintaining that deception over a prolonged period of time as Bellatrix pointed out, “And through all this we are supposed to believe Dumbledore has never suspected you? He has no idea of your true allegiance, he trusts you implicitly still?”.

If there was any cause for doubt during those years or any lack of sincerity on Snape’s part, Dumbledore, “blessed as I am with extraordinary brainpower” had plenty of opportunity to find him out.

In addition, Ladies and Gentleman, I put it to you that the impact of a Death Eaters’ spree at Hogwarts was nowhere near as extensive as it might have been. And who was it who took charge, limited the damage and who got the Death Eaters out of Hogwarts as quickly as possible? It was Severus Snape, “It’s over. Time to go.” Snape parried curses in his flight but did not retaliate. In addition, he actually forced a Death Eater to lift the Cruciatus Curse from Harry, “Have you forgotten our orders? Potter belongs to the Dark Lord - we are to leave him! Go, Go!”

Clearly Dumbledore knew this would be Severus Snape’s last year at Hogwarts. Otherwise he would not have given him the Defence Against the Dark Arts job that Snape had reputedly wanted for years, “we have never been able to keep a Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher for longer than a year since I refused the post to Lord Voldemort”.

Dumbledore and Harry had just returned from the mission for the Horcrux in the cave and Dumbledore was desperately weakened by the potion he drank in order to secure the locket. Before the Dark Mark was sighted above the castle, his one thought was to get back, his one plea, “I need Severus ...” It was to Severus that he returned injured after retrieving Marvolo’s ring and it was Severus that he insisted on seeing after the misadventure in the cave.

Naturally we all assumed that was to secure an antidote to the deadly potion and quite possibly that was the initial reason, but what if the reason changed once Dumbledore saw the Dark Mark above the castle and knew what that must mean? The antidote theory does not explain why Dumbledore immobilised Harry on the battlements. But if, once Dumbledore saw that Dark Mark above the castle, he expected Draco to make an attempt on his life and suspected how that situation must play out, that would explain his immobilisation of Harry - to keep him safely out of the action when Snape came to finish him off. He then begged Snape to go through with it, “Severus ... please ...”

I submit that the hatred and revulsion on Snape’s face that night was self-hatred and revulsion for the task he had to perform.

Ladies and Gentleman of the Wizengamot, the use of the Unforgivable Curses must not be authorised in this case! I put it to you that Severus Snape may indeed be the Dark Lord’s right hand man but that there is enough evidence to stay your decision until further evidence comes to hand which may show him in a more complimentary light.

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About the Author

Susan Wight is a Victorian mother who, together with her husband, home educated her three children who are all now well-educated adults. She is the coordinator of the Home Education Network and editor and a regular writer for the network’s magazine, Otherways.

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