Rejoining ‘Our’ Side: the Return of Severus Snape
A Crazed, Quibbler-Worthy, Absolutely Unverifiable Manipulative!Dumbledore Theory
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Definitions:
“rejoin, v.t.
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“Severus Snape was indeed a Death Eater. However, he rejoined our side before Lord Voldemort’s downfall and turned spy for us at great personal risk. He is now no more a Death Eater than I am.” Dumbledore in the Privy Ministry Hearing, Pensieve, GoF
“You have no idea of the remorse Professor Snape felt when he realized how Lord Voldemort had interpreted the Prophecy, Harry. I believe it to be the greatest regret of his life and the reason that he returned-” Dumbledore to Harry, HBP
"Come over to the right side, Draco, and we can hide you more completely than you can possibly imagine. What is more, I can send members of the Order to your mother tonight to hide her likewise. Your father is safe at the moment in Azkaban.... When the time comes, we can protect him too.... Come over to the right side, Draco...." Dumbledore to Draco, HBP
“And what will you give me in return, Severus?” Dumbledore to Snape, DH
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Fact: Never in seven books is Harry given a coherent explanation of “the Dark Arts” and why they are (or if they are) intrinsically evil. But he's encouraged to believe that they are. And his parents believed so too.
Fact: Severus Snape heard part of a Prophecy and was allowed to leave with his knowledge of it intact.
Fact: When Severus met Albus on that windswept hillside, Albus seemed confident both that Severus was a Death Eater and that Severus had turned over the Prophecy voluntarily to Lord Voldemort (that is, that Severus had not been tricked or forced into revealing it).
Fact: Severus expected Albus to know this: the young man’s first words to the old wizard were, “Don’t kill me!”
Fact: When Severus offered Albus, gratis, the information that the Dark Lord had interpreted the Prophecy to point at Albus’s devoted followers the Potters, Albus didn’t thank the young man for the warning. Instead, he demanded what the young man would offer HIM, Albus, to protect Albus’s own Order members.
Fact: Albus subsequently hired Severus as his Potions Master.
Inference from that fact: Albus concealed the damaging information that Severus Snape had joined the Death Eaters from the public, the Ministry, the Aurors, and from most or all of the Order of the Phoenix. Had he not, the later outcry over his hiring a werewolf would have paled in comparison to the outcry over his hiring a proven Voldemort supporter at the height of the war.
But-Severus had expected Albus to kill him as a Death Eater on that hillside. So he knew that Albus already knew or suspected his affiliation before that time. But if so, Albus must have concealed that knowledge from both the Ministry and his own Order, well before Snape’s desperate decision to defect in an attempt (ultimately futile) to try to save Lily’s life at the probable cost of his own.
And finally, fact: Albus consistently spoke of Severus’s defection from the Death Eaters as Snape’s “return.” As his “rejoining” of “our side.”
Whereas when Albus spoke to Draco, he invited the boy to “come OVER to the right side.”
What theory could we spin to explain these disparate facts?
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This particular crazed theory is the result of a collision between one of Pasi’s excellent stories and a question raised by Oryx_leucoryx on Snapedom. Pasi’s “The Killing of Regulus Black” is totally AU now, but still an excellent read. I’d read it some time ago; it had fermented in my subconscious, and then Oryx_leucoryx raised the question on Snapedom: Who knew that Severus was a Death Eater? And one of the answers is: Albus, and he apparently hid that information for a long time from (at least most of) his own Order, from the Auror Department, and from the Ministry.
Why?
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Dumbledore spoke of Snape as “rejoining our side.”
To rejoin is “to reunite after separation.”
But who initiated that separation, and for what purpose?
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This crazed theory depends on three hypotheses which can, I believe, be neither confirmed nor refuted by canon.
Unverifiable Hypothesis One: that Albus had paid enough attention to Severus as a child to identify the boy’s fundamental character, talents, and weaknesses. Specifically, that Albus recognized, among other things, that Severus a) was a vulnerable loner from an abusive home; b) had an immense capacity for devotion and loyalty; and c) had offered that devotion to his childhood friend Lily Evans.
Unverifiable Hypothesis Two: That the Muggle-born Registration Committee, which came out of the blue for me as a reader, would have come as no such surprise to Albus: that Albus knew, well before the rest of the WW, that Voldemort would eventually aspire to exterminate, not just “rule over”, Muggle-borns (or selected Muggle-borns, while controlling-completely-the magic use and reproduction of the rest).
Unverifiable Hypothesis Three: Pasi’s story opens with Alastor Moody attending the funeral of a talented young Auror, a gifted Occlumens who’d managed to infiltrate Voldemort’s supporters to the extent of being invited to take the Dark Mark. At which he failed: not the best Occlumency would allow someone to take the Dark Lord’s Mark while hiding treason to Riddle in one’s heart. Hypothesis Three: Supposing that Pasi were correct, what would follow?
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Unverifiable Hypothesis One:
I think we can agree that canon establishes that Albus had guessed by (or on) that hilltop that Severus was devoted to Lily Potter née Evans: Albus would scarcely have asked the question, “And what will you give me in return, Severus?” had he not been anticipating the answer he received.
I’d argued previously that Severus’s actions and words that night might have been what clued Albus in; Severus was, after all, risking his life (from both sides) in approaching Albus, he’d stated he had come with a “request”, and he was clearly distraught at Lily’s peril. Moreover, while we know that (as of fifth year) Lily’s girlfriends knew that Lily and Severus were at least friends, it seems that no one else did.
Or more precisely, no one seems to remember. Which is rather curious, really. When Harry, dissecting Snape’s perfidy after Dumbledore’s murder, says bitterly, “And he didn’t think my mother was worth a damn either-he called her a Mudblood,” neither Minerva, Horace, Hagrid, nor Remus objected, “But before that quarrel they used to be friends. In fact, he had seemed to be rather sweet on her. That must have been what Dumbledore thought Snape regretted.”
And yet there had been that extremely public vigil outside the Fat Lady, with Severus threatening to spend the night outside the door for the merest chance to apologize to Lily-risking (and almost certainly receiving some combination of) detention, public ridicule and humiliation, further hexing by the Marauders, and the extreme displeasure of the Pureblood supremacists among his housemates.
Did the gossip mill not work that night? Talk about fools who wear their hearts on their sleeve! Everyone in Hogwarts MUST have known, as of breakfast the next morning, exactly how far gone that Slytherin boy must have been on that pretty Gryffindor prefect, and how she had told him off. So it seems that Severus must have subsequently sold everyone interested on the story that “there were other [girls], and of purer blood, worthier of him….” and that he cared as little about the loss of their friendship as Lily appeared to.
However, Albus was a Legilimens, and Severus was not always an Occlumens capable of deceiving “the greatest Legilimens the world has ever known.”
But in fact, Albus might have previously EXPECTED young Severus to display unreasonable loyalty and continued devotion to his first-ever friend and first love. Depending on what he understood of Severus’s upbringing and consequent character.
"All the privilege I claim... (it is not a very enviable one, you need not covet it) is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone." Jane Austen, Persuasion
Anne Elliot claimed this "privilege" for her sex; but in fact it's a known characteristic of children of alcoholics (which, indeed, Anne Elliot well might have been). Or, as Janet Woititz expressed in Adult Children of Alcoholic Parents, children from such backgrounds are often “extremely loyal, even in the face of evidence that loyalty is undeserved.”
Ouch.
Other characteristics of children from that particular type of dysfunctional family? Fear of losing control; fear of feelings; an overdeveloped sense of responsibility; guilt feelings; inability to relax; harsh, even fierce self-criticism (coupled with difficulty tolerating criticism from others); difficulty in intimate relationships; fear of abandonment; approval-seeking; stress-related physical complaints (such as, perhaps, chronically oily skin and hair and eating disorders which could lead to either gauntness or obesity); anxiety & hypervigilance; compulsive behavior (including compulsive overwork) ….
Nah, not a one of those could be seen to apply in any way to our Severus!
And, oh, per Woititz again, such children “...tend to lock themselves into a course of action without giving serious consideration to alternative behaviors or possible consequences.” (“Anything,” anyone? Or for that matter, accepting the Dark Mark?)
“We got guilt feelings when we trusted ourselves, giving in to others. We became reactors rather than actors, letting others take the initiative. We were dependent personalities, terrified of abandonment, willing to do almost anything to hold on to a relationship in order not to be abandoned emotionally.” (from the ACOA website)
Those with insider knowledge of some types of dysfunctional families have no problem at all identifying Severus’s pattern of behavior. And once one has spotted the overall pattern, one might investigate which parts of the pattern apply in this specific case. Especially if the investigating party might be a Legilimens.
It’s actually entirely predictable that if Severus lost Lily and thought it was because HE was unworthy of HER, that he’d idealize her and have a hard time getting over her. Severus was, after all, like Anne Elliot, someone who “had hardly any body to love” (Jane Austen, Persuasion, again). Indeed, if Severus were soon to be moving almost exclusively in Pureblood-supremacist circles, it’s not as though Lily could be given any serious competition. Avery might accept Snape as a comrade-in-arms, but he was not about to introduce his pretty younger sister to him. The brightest and prettiest of the supremacist Pureblood witches would be even less likely than little Miss Evans to settle for a scrawny, ugly half-blood, whatever his talents and intelligence.
Could Albus have identified Severus as someone scarred by a dysfunctional upbringing in ways that could possibly be exploited? Albus often seemed tone-deaf to people’s feelings, after all. However, Albus himself cane from such a background (“secrets and lies,” said his brother). He’d worked with children for at least thirty years as of the mid-seventies, maybe for double that time; he ought to have picked up something about how children from abusive backgrounds react, at least in theory. He was an adept Legilimens. And he had a proven track record of picking up people with a weakness or secret who served him gratefully in return for his protection: Hagrid, Lupin, Trelawney… Snape himself, later, that reformed DE who owed his freedom, his employment, and his chance of redemption all, all to Albus.
Hypothesis One is unverified in canon, but I think it’s not contradicted.
Unverifiable Hypothesis Two: That Albus, unlike (say) Regulus or myself, anticipated that Muggle-borns faced possible genocide if Voldemort gained sufficient political power. Tom’s first actions when he finally took over the Ministry seemed a bit strange to me. Try to capture Potter, check. Take over the WW propaganda organ, check. Take over the education system, check.
Let known members of the Order of the Phoenix run free to organize a resistance while the subverted Ministry spends its time accusing Muggle-borns of usurping magic and rounding them up-huh wha’? I get as articulate as Hagrid just thinking about it.
But as I pointed out elsewhere, it makes sense if you regard it as Tommy the Indefinitely Prolonged making it a priority to monitor and eliminate genetic threats before they can materialize. Tommy himself, Albus, and Harry (and maybe Severus) were crosses between very old, probably inbred Pureblood lines (Ariana & Aberforth, like Morfinn and Merope, were apparently abnormal; James, while seemingly physically healthy, was the last of a dying line) and Muggles/Muggle-borns. If Tommy believed such crosses to produce the most powerful wizards, he could eliminate potential rivals or challengers before birth by a multi-pronged approach. Bring the oldest houses to extinction where possible, encourage Purebloods to breed only among themselves, encourage the view that mating with Muggles is tantamount to bestiality, and monitor and/or destroy Muggle-borns, who are much more likely to attract Pureblood mates than actual Muggles are.
And if the effects of inbreeding among magical families include a higher incidence, not only of the same stillbirths and birth defects that we Muggles experience, but of Squibs, then spreading the rumor that Muggle-borns have stolen Purebloods’ magic will be snatched at as a scapegoat-my baby has no magic because it was stolen from her by some Muggle, not because her blood is too pure! If Tom had started whispering such things among his followers, Albus well might have figured out that Muggle-borns might be targeted if Riddle ever attained control over the Ministry….
Unverifiable Hypothesis Three: That a spy, an Auror or Order member, could infiltrate the outer ranks of Voldemort’s supporters, but that one had to be genuinely committed to take the Mark itself and enter the inner circle.
The only real support for this is that as far as we know, no one DID ever succeed in entering the Death Eater ranks as a spy. (Jodel indeed had speculated that Snape himself had done so, but that theory was canon-shafted by DH.) We know of Death Eaters who turned after their branding (Regulus, Severus, Igor, Draco); we’re told that Dumbledore at least (not the Ministry) had other “useful spies.” But Severus is the only double agent in the inner circle that we ever get the smallest whiff of. Yet it is almost inconceivable that neither the Ministry nor Dumbledore would have tried to infiltrate the Death Eaters. Ergo, any such attempts must have been unsuccessful.
Obviously, if it were true that one had to be in earnest to take the Mark binding oneself permanently to Voldemort, then the only way for the other side to get a spy in the innermost circle would be to locate a branded Death Eater who could somehow be coerced or seduced to betray his master and his mates.
Unless, of course, one were possessed of the great brain of Albus Dumbledore.
That pre-eminent example of Homo habilis, Man the Toolmaker, as the dioramas used to say admiringly.
What if one didn’t try to locate a potential double agent, but to make one? Find a promising piece of obsidian and chip it into the proper shape?
What if one sent someone in? Someone whom one could manipulate into taking the Mark absolutely sincerely, but with a hidden hook that one could use to make him turn (return) to one’s own side at one’s pleasure?
Such as, perhaps, the shocking revelation that the organization that one had joined in good faith would kill one’s true love if it actually attained power?
I did say this theory was crazed, didn’t I?
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But indulge me.
Suppose one were the headmaster of Britain’s premier school of wizardry, and one were looking for a pupil one could shape into the perfect double agent to infiltrate into Lord Voldemort’s most trusted ranks.
What would one look for?
Well, the first consideration would be the characteristics required to be a successful spy in the Death Eater camp. The candidate must obviously have a natural talent for Occlumency. He (almost certainly he-Riddle allows few women in his inner circle, so those few would be under extra scrutiny-an automatic disqualification) must furthermore be brave enough to be willing to risk himself, and intelligent and devious enough to have a chance of pulling such a deception off. He must be someone Riddle would want to recruit-either well-connected, well-placed, or talented in his own right.
And the candidate must be someone susceptible to being recruited: either a Pureblood who was (or could be induced to become) attracted by Riddle’s overt ideology that Purebloods are superior to everyone else, or someone vulnerable for other reasons. There is. after all, a type of boy who’s the natural prey of extremist organizations.
Mary_j_59, talking earlier on Snapedom about Severus’s recruitment, comments:
“He {Severus} was an isolated, impoverished, and angry young man, and also quite vulnerable. Borolin points out that cults and hate groups "love bomb" kids like Sev, telling them how special and valuable they are, insisting that they are appreciated, and getting them firmly sewn up with their new friends. Only then, when their emotions are fully engaged, do the cult leaders begin inculcating doctrine.”
And then there’s the most important consideration of all: that whoever one sent in could be reeled back, fairly certainly, at the desired time. Probably, since the candidate will need to be willing to act in ways that would seem insane to anyone governed by simple self-interest, by danger to someone whom the candidate values above his life.
So you’d need to target someone who’s capable of such loyalty that he would sacrifice himself unhesitatingly for those he loves best, and who loves someone who’d be threatened by Tom’s ultimate triumph.
Why, at first glance there are at least three candidates in Lily Evans’ year alone!
However, there’s another consideration at play: Albus knows that Riddle doesn’t have a terribly good track record for rewarding his followers. It’s one of the things Albus counts on for getting the candidate to return to his side-if danger to a loved one is to be the hook, the candidate must conclude that he can’t count on protecting his beloved as a reward for any service, however exemplary, that he might provide to his Dark Lord.
There is one reward, however, and only one, that Death Eaters do obtain consistently: anyone with sadistic impulses will find ample opportunity to indulge them. Send James or Sirius in to join the D. E.’s, when they already get off on causing pain and humiliation to others, and you risk getting back (if at all) a full-fledged sadist like their cousin Bellatrix (assuming she was such, before Azkaban). Far better, on that count, to find someone who doesn’t have a natural bent for hurting others.
In the year in question, that leaves one obvious candidate; there may, of course, have been others, not visible from our vantage.
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So what would be the procedure, should a headmaster wish to push a particular student to join the Death Eaters?
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The very first step, obviously, would be to interview potential candidates. The interview process would serve multiple purposes. If one had founded, or were purposing to found, an Order of the Phoenix, a vigiliante group opposed to Tom’s, one would naturally privately examine the more talented, intelligent, and brave students with a view for future recruitment. And one would naturally mark which students seemed most susceptible to the lure of positive attention.
Having identified a potential candidate, perhaps towards the end of fourth year, one would push him towards the camp one wished him to join initially, while isolating him from other possible sources of validation, support, and friendship.
How might this be done?
One step would be to let loose the hounds to drive him in the right direction.
In this case, that would be easy enough. The candidate was already on terms on enmity with a pack of Gryffindor bullies in his year; all one would need do was to let the pack slip their leashes. Or rather, loosen the leash a trifle.
Appointing the right Gryffindor prefects for fifth year would do wonders along that line.
Prefects’ primary disciplinary tools are scolding, detentions, and docking house points. But when a prefect docks points from a housemate, the anger felt by housemates at the points lost can sometimes be directed, not at the miscreants, but at the prefect who docked the points. Especially in houses Gryffindor and Slytherin.
Gryffindor prefects, therefore, come in four major flavors: those like Percy Weasley, determined to do what they understand to be their duty, and making themselves odious in their house in so doing-but generally keeping order. Those like Ron Weasley, always ready to enforce a rule against another house, but cheerfully bending the rules to his or his house’s (for example, confiscating a banned item to play with it himself). Those like Hermione Granger, knowing that she ought to be like Percy, but without the moral courage to take the consequent social opprobrium. Those under her discipline learned that she’d verbally espouse the rules and try usually to enforce them, only to cave when doing so would cost her too much socially. And the fourth, finally, the spineless ones like Remus who turn their heads not to notice misdemeanors they ought to punish.
(Slytherin prefects exhibit much the same range of behaviors, but with slightly different underlying motivations. Ravenclaws are less likely to throw group four; a Ravenclaw analyzes which pattern of behavior best suits hir and sticks with it. Hufflepuff prefects are almost always group one; their own housemates will shame them into a semblance of fairness, even if they’d personally rather be partial. Have I mentioned recently that I LIKE House Hufflepuff?)
So if one wanted the Marauder pack to slip its leash, appoint prefects who wouldn’t oppose them effectively. Suggest Lupin as the male prefect. He has a heart; he has a conscience; he knows full well that he should oppose the worst of what his pack does. The headmaster could convincingly argue for giving him the chance to rein in the others. But Lupin hadn’t the guts to risk losing his pack’s support even momentarily; he wouldn’t check them.
(And really, who else could be picked? James was the only other option we know of, and no one could have expected him to even try to enforce rules, much less fairly. He’d be Ron [or, we suppose, Draco], only doubled. Except, of course, in the real world if you gave a boy that responsibility, you’d also be giving him the duty of monitoring his own behavior. And if he violated that duty, he’d then be doubly erring and subject to double punishment. Which might make an impression.)
For the other fifth-year prefect, the girl, pick the Muggle-born Evans. A political choice, most would think it, a slap at the Pureblood supremacist faction; an obvious choice, would think others, given her talent and intelligence.
But. This Muggleborn might be impressed and intimidated by the trappings of the Pureblood culture to which she can’t aspire, but she’s trying hard not to show it. She was pretty, bright, vivacious; she had always been popular, sought-after, both in the Muggle cow-byre in which she was raised and now here among her own.
And she knew full well that she walked on thin ice socially in the WW, and she has always had high social standing.
Like Lupin, she has both a heart and a conscience. But she cares about her own popularity. If she were appointed prefect, this would be at stake in her decisions. Her friends would let her know, unmistakably, that in Gryffindor house, the people who really belong don’t jeopardize the House standings by deducting House points for anything that can be ignored. And that a true Gryffindor would never penalize their house’s best Quidditch star and his cronies for anything short of murder.
Best of all, of course, she was the candidate’s dearest friend from before ever they were at school. If she felt that she was failing him in not adequately reining in her housemates’ attacks on him, her own feelings of guilt would drive a wedge between them (even if he himself didn’t blame her, since Slytherins put the same pressure on their prefects to show house bias).
Next, make sure that the punishments given by staff aren’t such as would actually restrain the Marauders. When caught in the act, the Marauders must be punished, naturally. However, the punishments should never be onerous enough actually to deter them. If James and Sirius were separated for detentions, for example, encourage their initiative in obtaining or creating magic mirrors to communicate with each other. And make sure that the staff (especially Pomfrey) knows that accusations of bullying supported by nothing but the alleged victim’s word were not to be tolerated. Telling tales on other students is never to be encouraged!
Consider the Weasley twins, two decades later. They boasted of being experts, pre-Umbridge, at never putting more than a toe over the line leading to expulsion. The Marauders were undoubtedly the same. If that line moved a bit, were drawn further out, they would quickly learn to take advantage. So it would be easy enough to encourage the Marauders to escalate their attacks on the candidate and his house. (Other students would suffer collateral damage, of course.)
The Marauder attacks would serve several purposes. One, they would make the candidate feel that the authorities couldn’t or wouldn’t adequately protect him and make him susceptible to considering who else might. Two, his attempts to defend himself-to train his power and use his creativity against his tormentors-would make him more attractive to the Dark Lord’s recruiters. Three, his long-simmering fear and anger are emotions the Dark Lord could eventually use to reel him in. And four, those Slytherins in the candidate’s year who were able and willing to stand up to a popular Gryffindor jock and his gang were those who despised Sirius as an apostate Black. And those particular Slytherins were from families which held other views as well. They would draw the candidate to a certain political persuasion.
The candidate was naturally a bit of a loner, but he was bright; he’d figure out quickly enough that his best hope to make himself less of a target for the Marauders was to start hanging out as much as possible with that specific group of housemates. To accept their offers of friendship.
And once he started doing so, he could then be penalized for it. Either told he was weak to be unable to stand against a gang of four bullies without support, or punished by his oldest friend’s disapproval for making such a poor choice of new friends.
If the candidate threw his new friends over, he’d be throwing himself to the Marauders as their meat-but that objection is not one he can make without looking weak or cowardly.
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But it’s not enough to drive the candidate to affiliate loosely with the desired group.
One would also need to eliminate, so far as possible, the candidate’s chances of getting support from other sources.
Well, what are the other possible sources of support for this particular candidate? He’s a loner, with only one close friend outside his house. However, he’s bright: an obvious candidate for his Head of House’s Club, and an obvious object of interest to other teachers.
How could one ensure the candidate not be invited to join the Slug Club? That’s easy enough: use the rivalry with the Marauders. The candidate’s talent makes him an obvious Slug Club recruit, but his appearance and personality are not prepossessing. If one pointed out to Horace that he could have EITHER the candidate OR the current Black and Potter scions, he’d likely invite the latter first.
Of course, Black and Potter weren’t likely to accept the invitation on their own. If, however, the headmaster hinted about the Order of the Phoenix he’s setting up-and that if they want to be considered for membership, they should join the Slug Club, at least for a year or so, to make contacts that will be useful later and to spy on the Slytherins in the Club…. If the two Marauders later dropped out, to Horace’s chagrin and disgruntlement, they would have served their purpose of excluding the candidate.
The headmaster might also privately warn the non-Slytherins on his staff that You-Know-Who had been a Slytherin and was recruiting largely from that house; they should be wary of encouraging ambitious Slytherin children, as they might find the talents they encouraged perverted to Voldemort’s service.
And he would let drop the same information to the Gryffindor prefects. Leading the Gryffindor prefect to distrust both the candidate and his other associates would serve nicely to separate her from him.
In fact, don’t just inflame the Gryff’s existing prejudice again the Snakes by associating the house itself with You-Know-Who. The candidate shows particular aptitude in two fields, one of which is the Dark Arts, um, excuse me, we like to say at Hogwarts, Defense. But the Dark Lord is known to be a master of the Dark Arts, particularly of Dark spells of domination and cruelty. So the headmaster might encourage selected Gryffindors, especially the prefects, in the misapprehension that those spells are the whole of the Dark Arts, that Dark magic is itself intrinsically evil, and that an interest in them leads nearly inevitably to an interest in joining that noted master, Voldemort.
This reputation would obviously spread among other Gryffindors. And now, finally, we can make sense of Sirius's dismissal of his parents as obvious followers of You-Know-Who. Jodel pointed out that Sirius knew that his family was tossing every Knut they could into layering protections on Grimmauld Place-during the time of Voldemort’s rise. Who did Sirius think they were trying to protect themselves from? The Ministry? They owned the Ministry!
Why did Sirius not even consider the possibility that his parents, nasty Pureblood supremacists though they may have been, did not support that upstart Dark Lord fellow?
Well, as the saying goes, "Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?" Sure, the senior Blacks acted as though they were preparing to withstand a siege by the up-and-coming power. But if Dumbledore had specifically warned the Gryffindors that Slytherins, especially ambitious ones, were natural followers of You-Know-Who; and if he'd told them further that the Dark Arts are evil and all its practitioners accepted You-Know-Who as their Lord; and if You-Know-Who was espousing a Pureblood supremacist ideology.... Well, then! Sirius’s family met all the recruitment criteria; of course they must support him.
And then consider Lily’s concerns about her first friend in the Wizarding World. Severus was a Slytherin, and openly wanted to better himself, and he had friends who used Dark Magic and he clearly didn't see how self-evidently evil they were to do so.... Maybe he was Dark himself? So when he finally snapped during the Marauders’ torture and used that opprobrious racist epithet, he filled in the one missing piece of the DE-wannabe profile. Just as Dumbledore had been hinting he inevitably would.
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And now see how circumstances do conspire in Dumbledore’s favor. Consider the werewolf caper. Dumbledore must have been LIVID at Sirius for endangering the chess piece he’d spent perhaps a year in shaping-and correspondingly grateful to James for saving his piece’s life.
But how well Albus can use this, to drive Snape in the proper direction….
Indeed, it all works out perfectly: Twinkles can let James know that for his heroic rescue of an enemy Albus will give him the Quidditch captaincy, and will consider him for Head Boy (and Lily Evans is the most serious contender for Head Girl) if James will only clean up his act and stop getting caught hexing other students. James is fully bright enough to appreciate the distinction between “stop hexing” and “stop getting caught hexing,” although he won’t realize the headmaster MEANT him to catch it.
And Lily decides Snape’s a DE-wannabe, right on schedule, and cuts him off.
And an embittered and embattled boy has only one set of allies to defend him, and one set of friends left to offer him any support or validation.
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And now consider that Prophecy.
Dumbledore’s original plan would have been to reveal to Snape, at some time in the nebulous future, the Dark Lord’s true plans regarding Muggleborns, and then to catch the boy as he recoiled at having joined a group that posed a direct threat to his Lily.
But what if, when Dumbledore heard that Prophecy and discovered that Severus had heard it too, Dumbledore already knew that Lily was pregnant and due at the end of July…? Then the Prophecy could apply, or could be made to seem to apply, to her son. And then Snape would have imperiled her by his own actions, not just by joining the wrong group.
And his guilt and horror would give Dumbledore a lifelong choke collar on the boy.
No wonder Albus let Severus go to report that Prophecy to the Dark Lord, even aside from the prospect of luring Tom into unwise action.
The trap springing shut.
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I did say this theory was crazed. And, alas, absolutely unverifiable.
A/N: I wrote almost all of this essay four/five years ago, but I considered it too, ah, extreme to post on Snapedom. But a recent exchange with oneandthetruth regarding Albus reminded me of it, so I’ve dusted it off to post here. Hope you enjoy!
Appendix:
The site moderator gave me permission to post links to essays outside DTCL
Much of what I asserted Twinkles might do if his aim during Severus’s last several years at school were to drive Severus into Tom’s arms were things I’d previously argued Twinkles was doing anyhow: encouraging (the Marauder’s) bullying, blackening Slytherin’s reputation, promoting misinformation on the Dark Arts…
Here, then, are essays independently analyzing Dumbledore’s responsibility for unjustified biases (deliberate misinformation) and bullying at Hogwarts.
Evidence that Dumbledore deliberately encouraged anarchy and violence at Hogwarts:
“Mr. Filch has Asked: Discipline at Hogwarts”
http://asylums.insanejournal.com/snapedom/276142.html
See also oneandthetruth’s “Chaos a Hundred Times Over”
http://asylums.insanejournal.com/snapedom/292051.html
That Slytherin’s reputation had been blackened, some time between Severus’s Sorting and Harry’s, by the selective release of the information that Voldemort had been a Slytherin (while concealing which Slytherin he’d been):
“The Corruption of the House System”
http://terri-testing.livejournal.com/26003.html
That the reputation that the Dark Arts as a whole are intrinsically evil was unjustified, relatively new, and originated among Dumbledore’s followers:
“Dark Magic Doth Never Prosper”
http://terri-testing.livejournal.com/28365.html
*
Definitions:
“rejoin, v.t.
- To join together again; to reunite after separation.
- To come back; to come or go back, as to a former place, condition, etc…
- To revert to a former owner…”
*
“Severus Snape was indeed a Death Eater. However, he rejoined our side before Lord Voldemort’s downfall and turned spy for us at great personal risk. He is now no more a Death Eater than I am.” Dumbledore in the Privy Ministry Hearing, Pensieve, GoF
“You have no idea of the remorse Professor Snape felt when he realized how Lord Voldemort had interpreted the Prophecy, Harry. I believe it to be the greatest regret of his life and the reason that he returned-” Dumbledore to Harry, HBP
"Come over to the right side, Draco, and we can hide you more completely than you can possibly imagine. What is more, I can send members of the Order to your mother tonight to hide her likewise. Your father is safe at the moment in Azkaban.... When the time comes, we can protect him too.... Come over to the right side, Draco...." Dumbledore to Draco, HBP
“And what will you give me in return, Severus?” Dumbledore to Snape, DH
*
Fact: Never in seven books is Harry given a coherent explanation of “the Dark Arts” and why they are (or if they are) intrinsically evil. But he's encouraged to believe that they are. And his parents believed so too.
Fact: Severus Snape heard part of a Prophecy and was allowed to leave with his knowledge of it intact.
Fact: When Severus met Albus on that windswept hillside, Albus seemed confident both that Severus was a Death Eater and that Severus had turned over the Prophecy voluntarily to Lord Voldemort (that is, that Severus had not been tricked or forced into revealing it).
Fact: Severus expected Albus to know this: the young man’s first words to the old wizard were, “Don’t kill me!”
Fact: When Severus offered Albus, gratis, the information that the Dark Lord had interpreted the Prophecy to point at Albus’s devoted followers the Potters, Albus didn’t thank the young man for the warning. Instead, he demanded what the young man would offer HIM, Albus, to protect Albus’s own Order members.
Fact: Albus subsequently hired Severus as his Potions Master.
Inference from that fact: Albus concealed the damaging information that Severus Snape had joined the Death Eaters from the public, the Ministry, the Aurors, and from most or all of the Order of the Phoenix. Had he not, the later outcry over his hiring a werewolf would have paled in comparison to the outcry over his hiring a proven Voldemort supporter at the height of the war.
But-Severus had expected Albus to kill him as a Death Eater on that hillside. So he knew that Albus already knew or suspected his affiliation before that time. But if so, Albus must have concealed that knowledge from both the Ministry and his own Order, well before Snape’s desperate decision to defect in an attempt (ultimately futile) to try to save Lily’s life at the probable cost of his own.
And finally, fact: Albus consistently spoke of Severus’s defection from the Death Eaters as Snape’s “return.” As his “rejoining” of “our side.”
Whereas when Albus spoke to Draco, he invited the boy to “come OVER to the right side.”
What theory could we spin to explain these disparate facts?
*
This particular crazed theory is the result of a collision between one of Pasi’s excellent stories and a question raised by Oryx_leucoryx on Snapedom. Pasi’s “The Killing of Regulus Black” is totally AU now, but still an excellent read. I’d read it some time ago; it had fermented in my subconscious, and then Oryx_leucoryx raised the question on Snapedom: Who knew that Severus was a Death Eater? And one of the answers is: Albus, and he apparently hid that information for a long time from (at least most of) his own Order, from the Auror Department, and from the Ministry.
Why?
*
Dumbledore spoke of Snape as “rejoining our side.”
To rejoin is “to reunite after separation.”
But who initiated that separation, and for what purpose?
*
This crazed theory depends on three hypotheses which can, I believe, be neither confirmed nor refuted by canon.
Unverifiable Hypothesis One: that Albus had paid enough attention to Severus as a child to identify the boy’s fundamental character, talents, and weaknesses. Specifically, that Albus recognized, among other things, that Severus a) was a vulnerable loner from an abusive home; b) had an immense capacity for devotion and loyalty; and c) had offered that devotion to his childhood friend Lily Evans.
Unverifiable Hypothesis Two: That the Muggle-born Registration Committee, which came out of the blue for me as a reader, would have come as no such surprise to Albus: that Albus knew, well before the rest of the WW, that Voldemort would eventually aspire to exterminate, not just “rule over”, Muggle-borns (or selected Muggle-borns, while controlling-completely-the magic use and reproduction of the rest).
Unverifiable Hypothesis Three: Pasi’s story opens with Alastor Moody attending the funeral of a talented young Auror, a gifted Occlumens who’d managed to infiltrate Voldemort’s supporters to the extent of being invited to take the Dark Mark. At which he failed: not the best Occlumency would allow someone to take the Dark Lord’s Mark while hiding treason to Riddle in one’s heart. Hypothesis Three: Supposing that Pasi were correct, what would follow?
*
Unverifiable Hypothesis One:
I think we can agree that canon establishes that Albus had guessed by (or on) that hilltop that Severus was devoted to Lily Potter née Evans: Albus would scarcely have asked the question, “And what will you give me in return, Severus?” had he not been anticipating the answer he received.
I’d argued previously that Severus’s actions and words that night might have been what clued Albus in; Severus was, after all, risking his life (from both sides) in approaching Albus, he’d stated he had come with a “request”, and he was clearly distraught at Lily’s peril. Moreover, while we know that (as of fifth year) Lily’s girlfriends knew that Lily and Severus were at least friends, it seems that no one else did.
Or more precisely, no one seems to remember. Which is rather curious, really. When Harry, dissecting Snape’s perfidy after Dumbledore’s murder, says bitterly, “And he didn’t think my mother was worth a damn either-he called her a Mudblood,” neither Minerva, Horace, Hagrid, nor Remus objected, “But before that quarrel they used to be friends. In fact, he had seemed to be rather sweet on her. That must have been what Dumbledore thought Snape regretted.”
And yet there had been that extremely public vigil outside the Fat Lady, with Severus threatening to spend the night outside the door for the merest chance to apologize to Lily-risking (and almost certainly receiving some combination of) detention, public ridicule and humiliation, further hexing by the Marauders, and the extreme displeasure of the Pureblood supremacists among his housemates.
Did the gossip mill not work that night? Talk about fools who wear their hearts on their sleeve! Everyone in Hogwarts MUST have known, as of breakfast the next morning, exactly how far gone that Slytherin boy must have been on that pretty Gryffindor prefect, and how she had told him off. So it seems that Severus must have subsequently sold everyone interested on the story that “there were other [girls], and of purer blood, worthier of him….” and that he cared as little about the loss of their friendship as Lily appeared to.
However, Albus was a Legilimens, and Severus was not always an Occlumens capable of deceiving “the greatest Legilimens the world has ever known.”
But in fact, Albus might have previously EXPECTED young Severus to display unreasonable loyalty and continued devotion to his first-ever friend and first love. Depending on what he understood of Severus’s upbringing and consequent character.
"All the privilege I claim... (it is not a very enviable one, you need not covet it) is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone." Jane Austen, Persuasion
Anne Elliot claimed this "privilege" for her sex; but in fact it's a known characteristic of children of alcoholics (which, indeed, Anne Elliot well might have been). Or, as Janet Woititz expressed in Adult Children of Alcoholic Parents, children from such backgrounds are often “extremely loyal, even in the face of evidence that loyalty is undeserved.”
Ouch.
Other characteristics of children from that particular type of dysfunctional family? Fear of losing control; fear of feelings; an overdeveloped sense of responsibility; guilt feelings; inability to relax; harsh, even fierce self-criticism (coupled with difficulty tolerating criticism from others); difficulty in intimate relationships; fear of abandonment; approval-seeking; stress-related physical complaints (such as, perhaps, chronically oily skin and hair and eating disorders which could lead to either gauntness or obesity); anxiety & hypervigilance; compulsive behavior (including compulsive overwork) ….
Nah, not a one of those could be seen to apply in any way to our Severus!
And, oh, per Woititz again, such children “...tend to lock themselves into a course of action without giving serious consideration to alternative behaviors or possible consequences.” (“Anything,” anyone? Or for that matter, accepting the Dark Mark?)
“We got guilt feelings when we trusted ourselves, giving in to others. We became reactors rather than actors, letting others take the initiative. We were dependent personalities, terrified of abandonment, willing to do almost anything to hold on to a relationship in order not to be abandoned emotionally.” (from the ACOA website)
Those with insider knowledge of some types of dysfunctional families have no problem at all identifying Severus’s pattern of behavior. And once one has spotted the overall pattern, one might investigate which parts of the pattern apply in this specific case. Especially if the investigating party might be a Legilimens.
It’s actually entirely predictable that if Severus lost Lily and thought it was because HE was unworthy of HER, that he’d idealize her and have a hard time getting over her. Severus was, after all, like Anne Elliot, someone who “had hardly any body to love” (Jane Austen, Persuasion, again). Indeed, if Severus were soon to be moving almost exclusively in Pureblood-supremacist circles, it’s not as though Lily could be given any serious competition. Avery might accept Snape as a comrade-in-arms, but he was not about to introduce his pretty younger sister to him. The brightest and prettiest of the supremacist Pureblood witches would be even less likely than little Miss Evans to settle for a scrawny, ugly half-blood, whatever his talents and intelligence.
Could Albus have identified Severus as someone scarred by a dysfunctional upbringing in ways that could possibly be exploited? Albus often seemed tone-deaf to people’s feelings, after all. However, Albus himself cane from such a background (“secrets and lies,” said his brother). He’d worked with children for at least thirty years as of the mid-seventies, maybe for double that time; he ought to have picked up something about how children from abusive backgrounds react, at least in theory. He was an adept Legilimens. And he had a proven track record of picking up people with a weakness or secret who served him gratefully in return for his protection: Hagrid, Lupin, Trelawney… Snape himself, later, that reformed DE who owed his freedom, his employment, and his chance of redemption all, all to Albus.
Hypothesis One is unverified in canon, but I think it’s not contradicted.
Unverifiable Hypothesis Two: That Albus, unlike (say) Regulus or myself, anticipated that Muggle-borns faced possible genocide if Voldemort gained sufficient political power. Tom’s first actions when he finally took over the Ministry seemed a bit strange to me. Try to capture Potter, check. Take over the WW propaganda organ, check. Take over the education system, check.
Let known members of the Order of the Phoenix run free to organize a resistance while the subverted Ministry spends its time accusing Muggle-borns of usurping magic and rounding them up-huh wha’? I get as articulate as Hagrid just thinking about it.
But as I pointed out elsewhere, it makes sense if you regard it as Tommy the Indefinitely Prolonged making it a priority to monitor and eliminate genetic threats before they can materialize. Tommy himself, Albus, and Harry (and maybe Severus) were crosses between very old, probably inbred Pureblood lines (Ariana & Aberforth, like Morfinn and Merope, were apparently abnormal; James, while seemingly physically healthy, was the last of a dying line) and Muggles/Muggle-borns. If Tommy believed such crosses to produce the most powerful wizards, he could eliminate potential rivals or challengers before birth by a multi-pronged approach. Bring the oldest houses to extinction where possible, encourage Purebloods to breed only among themselves, encourage the view that mating with Muggles is tantamount to bestiality, and monitor and/or destroy Muggle-borns, who are much more likely to attract Pureblood mates than actual Muggles are.
And if the effects of inbreeding among magical families include a higher incidence, not only of the same stillbirths and birth defects that we Muggles experience, but of Squibs, then spreading the rumor that Muggle-borns have stolen Purebloods’ magic will be snatched at as a scapegoat-my baby has no magic because it was stolen from her by some Muggle, not because her blood is too pure! If Tom had started whispering such things among his followers, Albus well might have figured out that Muggle-borns might be targeted if Riddle ever attained control over the Ministry….
Unverifiable Hypothesis Three: That a spy, an Auror or Order member, could infiltrate the outer ranks of Voldemort’s supporters, but that one had to be genuinely committed to take the Mark itself and enter the inner circle.
The only real support for this is that as far as we know, no one DID ever succeed in entering the Death Eater ranks as a spy. (Jodel indeed had speculated that Snape himself had done so, but that theory was canon-shafted by DH.) We know of Death Eaters who turned after their branding (Regulus, Severus, Igor, Draco); we’re told that Dumbledore at least (not the Ministry) had other “useful spies.” But Severus is the only double agent in the inner circle that we ever get the smallest whiff of. Yet it is almost inconceivable that neither the Ministry nor Dumbledore would have tried to infiltrate the Death Eaters. Ergo, any such attempts must have been unsuccessful.
Obviously, if it were true that one had to be in earnest to take the Mark binding oneself permanently to Voldemort, then the only way for the other side to get a spy in the innermost circle would be to locate a branded Death Eater who could somehow be coerced or seduced to betray his master and his mates.
Unless, of course, one were possessed of the great brain of Albus Dumbledore.
That pre-eminent example of Homo habilis, Man the Toolmaker, as the dioramas used to say admiringly.
What if one didn’t try to locate a potential double agent, but to make one? Find a promising piece of obsidian and chip it into the proper shape?
What if one sent someone in? Someone whom one could manipulate into taking the Mark absolutely sincerely, but with a hidden hook that one could use to make him turn (return) to one’s own side at one’s pleasure?
Such as, perhaps, the shocking revelation that the organization that one had joined in good faith would kill one’s true love if it actually attained power?
I did say this theory was crazed, didn’t I?
*
But indulge me.
Suppose one were the headmaster of Britain’s premier school of wizardry, and one were looking for a pupil one could shape into the perfect double agent to infiltrate into Lord Voldemort’s most trusted ranks.
What would one look for?
Well, the first consideration would be the characteristics required to be a successful spy in the Death Eater camp. The candidate must obviously have a natural talent for Occlumency. He (almost certainly he-Riddle allows few women in his inner circle, so those few would be under extra scrutiny-an automatic disqualification) must furthermore be brave enough to be willing to risk himself, and intelligent and devious enough to have a chance of pulling such a deception off. He must be someone Riddle would want to recruit-either well-connected, well-placed, or talented in his own right.
And the candidate must be someone susceptible to being recruited: either a Pureblood who was (or could be induced to become) attracted by Riddle’s overt ideology that Purebloods are superior to everyone else, or someone vulnerable for other reasons. There is. after all, a type of boy who’s the natural prey of extremist organizations.
Mary_j_59, talking earlier on Snapedom about Severus’s recruitment, comments:
“He {Severus} was an isolated, impoverished, and angry young man, and also quite vulnerable. Borolin points out that cults and hate groups "love bomb" kids like Sev, telling them how special and valuable they are, insisting that they are appreciated, and getting them firmly sewn up with their new friends. Only then, when their emotions are fully engaged, do the cult leaders begin inculcating doctrine.”
And then there’s the most important consideration of all: that whoever one sent in could be reeled back, fairly certainly, at the desired time. Probably, since the candidate will need to be willing to act in ways that would seem insane to anyone governed by simple self-interest, by danger to someone whom the candidate values above his life.
So you’d need to target someone who’s capable of such loyalty that he would sacrifice himself unhesitatingly for those he loves best, and who loves someone who’d be threatened by Tom’s ultimate triumph.
Why, at first glance there are at least three candidates in Lily Evans’ year alone!
However, there’s another consideration at play: Albus knows that Riddle doesn’t have a terribly good track record for rewarding his followers. It’s one of the things Albus counts on for getting the candidate to return to his side-if danger to a loved one is to be the hook, the candidate must conclude that he can’t count on protecting his beloved as a reward for any service, however exemplary, that he might provide to his Dark Lord.
There is one reward, however, and only one, that Death Eaters do obtain consistently: anyone with sadistic impulses will find ample opportunity to indulge them. Send James or Sirius in to join the D. E.’s, when they already get off on causing pain and humiliation to others, and you risk getting back (if at all) a full-fledged sadist like their cousin Bellatrix (assuming she was such, before Azkaban). Far better, on that count, to find someone who doesn’t have a natural bent for hurting others.
In the year in question, that leaves one obvious candidate; there may, of course, have been others, not visible from our vantage.
*
So what would be the procedure, should a headmaster wish to push a particular student to join the Death Eaters?
*
The very first step, obviously, would be to interview potential candidates. The interview process would serve multiple purposes. If one had founded, or were purposing to found, an Order of the Phoenix, a vigiliante group opposed to Tom’s, one would naturally privately examine the more talented, intelligent, and brave students with a view for future recruitment. And one would naturally mark which students seemed most susceptible to the lure of positive attention.
Having identified a potential candidate, perhaps towards the end of fourth year, one would push him towards the camp one wished him to join initially, while isolating him from other possible sources of validation, support, and friendship.
How might this be done?
One step would be to let loose the hounds to drive him in the right direction.
In this case, that would be easy enough. The candidate was already on terms on enmity with a pack of Gryffindor bullies in his year; all one would need do was to let the pack slip their leashes. Or rather, loosen the leash a trifle.
Appointing the right Gryffindor prefects for fifth year would do wonders along that line.
Prefects’ primary disciplinary tools are scolding, detentions, and docking house points. But when a prefect docks points from a housemate, the anger felt by housemates at the points lost can sometimes be directed, not at the miscreants, but at the prefect who docked the points. Especially in houses Gryffindor and Slytherin.
Gryffindor prefects, therefore, come in four major flavors: those like Percy Weasley, determined to do what they understand to be their duty, and making themselves odious in their house in so doing-but generally keeping order. Those like Ron Weasley, always ready to enforce a rule against another house, but cheerfully bending the rules to his or his house’s (for example, confiscating a banned item to play with it himself). Those like Hermione Granger, knowing that she ought to be like Percy, but without the moral courage to take the consequent social opprobrium. Those under her discipline learned that she’d verbally espouse the rules and try usually to enforce them, only to cave when doing so would cost her too much socially. And the fourth, finally, the spineless ones like Remus who turn their heads not to notice misdemeanors they ought to punish.
(Slytherin prefects exhibit much the same range of behaviors, but with slightly different underlying motivations. Ravenclaws are less likely to throw group four; a Ravenclaw analyzes which pattern of behavior best suits hir and sticks with it. Hufflepuff prefects are almost always group one; their own housemates will shame them into a semblance of fairness, even if they’d personally rather be partial. Have I mentioned recently that I LIKE House Hufflepuff?)
So if one wanted the Marauder pack to slip its leash, appoint prefects who wouldn’t oppose them effectively. Suggest Lupin as the male prefect. He has a heart; he has a conscience; he knows full well that he should oppose the worst of what his pack does. The headmaster could convincingly argue for giving him the chance to rein in the others. But Lupin hadn’t the guts to risk losing his pack’s support even momentarily; he wouldn’t check them.
(And really, who else could be picked? James was the only other option we know of, and no one could have expected him to even try to enforce rules, much less fairly. He’d be Ron [or, we suppose, Draco], only doubled. Except, of course, in the real world if you gave a boy that responsibility, you’d also be giving him the duty of monitoring his own behavior. And if he violated that duty, he’d then be doubly erring and subject to double punishment. Which might make an impression.)
For the other fifth-year prefect, the girl, pick the Muggle-born Evans. A political choice, most would think it, a slap at the Pureblood supremacist faction; an obvious choice, would think others, given her talent and intelligence.
But. This Muggleborn might be impressed and intimidated by the trappings of the Pureblood culture to which she can’t aspire, but she’s trying hard not to show it. She was pretty, bright, vivacious; she had always been popular, sought-after, both in the Muggle cow-byre in which she was raised and now here among her own.
And she knew full well that she walked on thin ice socially in the WW, and she has always had high social standing.
Like Lupin, she has both a heart and a conscience. But she cares about her own popularity. If she were appointed prefect, this would be at stake in her decisions. Her friends would let her know, unmistakably, that in Gryffindor house, the people who really belong don’t jeopardize the House standings by deducting House points for anything that can be ignored. And that a true Gryffindor would never penalize their house’s best Quidditch star and his cronies for anything short of murder.
Best of all, of course, she was the candidate’s dearest friend from before ever they were at school. If she felt that she was failing him in not adequately reining in her housemates’ attacks on him, her own feelings of guilt would drive a wedge between them (even if he himself didn’t blame her, since Slytherins put the same pressure on their prefects to show house bias).
Next, make sure that the punishments given by staff aren’t such as would actually restrain the Marauders. When caught in the act, the Marauders must be punished, naturally. However, the punishments should never be onerous enough actually to deter them. If James and Sirius were separated for detentions, for example, encourage their initiative in obtaining or creating magic mirrors to communicate with each other. And make sure that the staff (especially Pomfrey) knows that accusations of bullying supported by nothing but the alleged victim’s word were not to be tolerated. Telling tales on other students is never to be encouraged!
Consider the Weasley twins, two decades later. They boasted of being experts, pre-Umbridge, at never putting more than a toe over the line leading to expulsion. The Marauders were undoubtedly the same. If that line moved a bit, were drawn further out, they would quickly learn to take advantage. So it would be easy enough to encourage the Marauders to escalate their attacks on the candidate and his house. (Other students would suffer collateral damage, of course.)
The Marauder attacks would serve several purposes. One, they would make the candidate feel that the authorities couldn’t or wouldn’t adequately protect him and make him susceptible to considering who else might. Two, his attempts to defend himself-to train his power and use his creativity against his tormentors-would make him more attractive to the Dark Lord’s recruiters. Three, his long-simmering fear and anger are emotions the Dark Lord could eventually use to reel him in. And four, those Slytherins in the candidate’s year who were able and willing to stand up to a popular Gryffindor jock and his gang were those who despised Sirius as an apostate Black. And those particular Slytherins were from families which held other views as well. They would draw the candidate to a certain political persuasion.
The candidate was naturally a bit of a loner, but he was bright; he’d figure out quickly enough that his best hope to make himself less of a target for the Marauders was to start hanging out as much as possible with that specific group of housemates. To accept their offers of friendship.
And once he started doing so, he could then be penalized for it. Either told he was weak to be unable to stand against a gang of four bullies without support, or punished by his oldest friend’s disapproval for making such a poor choice of new friends.
If the candidate threw his new friends over, he’d be throwing himself to the Marauders as their meat-but that objection is not one he can make without looking weak or cowardly.
*
But it’s not enough to drive the candidate to affiliate loosely with the desired group.
One would also need to eliminate, so far as possible, the candidate’s chances of getting support from other sources.
Well, what are the other possible sources of support for this particular candidate? He’s a loner, with only one close friend outside his house. However, he’s bright: an obvious candidate for his Head of House’s Club, and an obvious object of interest to other teachers.
How could one ensure the candidate not be invited to join the Slug Club? That’s easy enough: use the rivalry with the Marauders. The candidate’s talent makes him an obvious Slug Club recruit, but his appearance and personality are not prepossessing. If one pointed out to Horace that he could have EITHER the candidate OR the current Black and Potter scions, he’d likely invite the latter first.
Of course, Black and Potter weren’t likely to accept the invitation on their own. If, however, the headmaster hinted about the Order of the Phoenix he’s setting up-and that if they want to be considered for membership, they should join the Slug Club, at least for a year or so, to make contacts that will be useful later and to spy on the Slytherins in the Club…. If the two Marauders later dropped out, to Horace’s chagrin and disgruntlement, they would have served their purpose of excluding the candidate.
The headmaster might also privately warn the non-Slytherins on his staff that You-Know-Who had been a Slytherin and was recruiting largely from that house; they should be wary of encouraging ambitious Slytherin children, as they might find the talents they encouraged perverted to Voldemort’s service.
And he would let drop the same information to the Gryffindor prefects. Leading the Gryffindor prefect to distrust both the candidate and his other associates would serve nicely to separate her from him.
In fact, don’t just inflame the Gryff’s existing prejudice again the Snakes by associating the house itself with You-Know-Who. The candidate shows particular aptitude in two fields, one of which is the Dark Arts, um, excuse me, we like to say at Hogwarts, Defense. But the Dark Lord is known to be a master of the Dark Arts, particularly of Dark spells of domination and cruelty. So the headmaster might encourage selected Gryffindors, especially the prefects, in the misapprehension that those spells are the whole of the Dark Arts, that Dark magic is itself intrinsically evil, and that an interest in them leads nearly inevitably to an interest in joining that noted master, Voldemort.
This reputation would obviously spread among other Gryffindors. And now, finally, we can make sense of Sirius's dismissal of his parents as obvious followers of You-Know-Who. Jodel pointed out that Sirius knew that his family was tossing every Knut they could into layering protections on Grimmauld Place-during the time of Voldemort’s rise. Who did Sirius think they were trying to protect themselves from? The Ministry? They owned the Ministry!
Why did Sirius not even consider the possibility that his parents, nasty Pureblood supremacists though they may have been, did not support that upstart Dark Lord fellow?
Well, as the saying goes, "Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?" Sure, the senior Blacks acted as though they were preparing to withstand a siege by the up-and-coming power. But if Dumbledore had specifically warned the Gryffindors that Slytherins, especially ambitious ones, were natural followers of You-Know-Who; and if he'd told them further that the Dark Arts are evil and all its practitioners accepted You-Know-Who as their Lord; and if You-Know-Who was espousing a Pureblood supremacist ideology.... Well, then! Sirius’s family met all the recruitment criteria; of course they must support him.
And then consider Lily’s concerns about her first friend in the Wizarding World. Severus was a Slytherin, and openly wanted to better himself, and he had friends who used Dark Magic and he clearly didn't see how self-evidently evil they were to do so.... Maybe he was Dark himself? So when he finally snapped during the Marauders’ torture and used that opprobrious racist epithet, he filled in the one missing piece of the DE-wannabe profile. Just as Dumbledore had been hinting he inevitably would.
*
And now see how circumstances do conspire in Dumbledore’s favor. Consider the werewolf caper. Dumbledore must have been LIVID at Sirius for endangering the chess piece he’d spent perhaps a year in shaping-and correspondingly grateful to James for saving his piece’s life.
But how well Albus can use this, to drive Snape in the proper direction….
Indeed, it all works out perfectly: Twinkles can let James know that for his heroic rescue of an enemy Albus will give him the Quidditch captaincy, and will consider him for Head Boy (and Lily Evans is the most serious contender for Head Girl) if James will only clean up his act and stop getting caught hexing other students. James is fully bright enough to appreciate the distinction between “stop hexing” and “stop getting caught hexing,” although he won’t realize the headmaster MEANT him to catch it.
And Lily decides Snape’s a DE-wannabe, right on schedule, and cuts him off.
And an embittered and embattled boy has only one set of allies to defend him, and one set of friends left to offer him any support or validation.
*
And now consider that Prophecy.
Dumbledore’s original plan would have been to reveal to Snape, at some time in the nebulous future, the Dark Lord’s true plans regarding Muggleborns, and then to catch the boy as he recoiled at having joined a group that posed a direct threat to his Lily.
But what if, when Dumbledore heard that Prophecy and discovered that Severus had heard it too, Dumbledore already knew that Lily was pregnant and due at the end of July…? Then the Prophecy could apply, or could be made to seem to apply, to her son. And then Snape would have imperiled her by his own actions, not just by joining the wrong group.
And his guilt and horror would give Dumbledore a lifelong choke collar on the boy.
No wonder Albus let Severus go to report that Prophecy to the Dark Lord, even aside from the prospect of luring Tom into unwise action.
The trap springing shut.
*
I did say this theory was crazed. And, alas, absolutely unverifiable.
A/N: I wrote almost all of this essay four/five years ago, but I considered it too, ah, extreme to post on Snapedom. But a recent exchange with oneandthetruth regarding Albus reminded me of it, so I’ve dusted it off to post here. Hope you enjoy!
Appendix:
The site moderator gave me permission to post links to essays outside DTCL
Much of what I asserted Twinkles might do if his aim during Severus’s last several years at school were to drive Severus into Tom’s arms were things I’d previously argued Twinkles was doing anyhow: encouraging (the Marauder’s) bullying, blackening Slytherin’s reputation, promoting misinformation on the Dark Arts…
Here, then, are essays independently analyzing Dumbledore’s responsibility for unjustified biases (deliberate misinformation) and bullying at Hogwarts.
Evidence that Dumbledore deliberately encouraged anarchy and violence at Hogwarts:
“Mr. Filch has Asked: Discipline at Hogwarts”
http://asylums.insanejournal.com/snapedom/276142.html
See also oneandthetruth’s “Chaos a Hundred Times Over”
http://asylums.insanejournal.com/snapedom/292051.html
That Slytherin’s reputation had been blackened, some time between Severus’s Sorting and Harry’s, by the selective release of the information that Voldemort had been a Slytherin (while concealing which Slytherin he’d been):
“The Corruption of the House System”
http://terri-testing.livejournal.com/26003.html
That the reputation that the Dark Arts as a whole are intrinsically evil was unjustified, relatively new, and originated among Dumbledore’s followers:
“Dark Magic Doth Never Prosper”
http://terri-testing.livejournal.com/28365.html