Skip to main content

harry potter - What good did Snape do anyone by infiltrating the Death Eaters?


OK, first of all, my Harry Potter knowledge is a bit rusty so I may be forgetting something.



  • In The Half-Blood Prince Dumbledore made Snape kill him (I know he was going to die anyway) so he could gain Voldemort's trust.

  • In The Deathly Hallows, his portrait instructs Snape to provide Voldemort with the correct date on which Harry was to be moved, again, to gain Voldemort's trust.


Why did Dumbledore want a spy in Voldemort's inner circle so badly?



Would anything have been different if Snape had not been in Voldemort's inner circle?



Answer



He was invaluable as a spy.


As a double (triple, quadruple) agent, Snape served two purposes:




  1. As an Order agent in Voldemort's ranks, he could pass information about Voldemort's plans to Dumbledore and the Order.




  2. Since Voldemort believed him to be a spy for him in the Order's ranks, he could pass false information about the Order's plans to Voldemort.





Both of these are extremely important roles in espionage. The secret of all warfare is knowing the enemy's plans while keeping your own hidden, so as to keep the element of surprise. The two-way flow of information through Snape gave the Order a much-needed advantages over Voldemort.



"All war is based on deception" -- Sun Tzu, The Art of War.




After Dumbledore's death, he was the most direct link between the late Headmaster and Harry. He was the person who, on instructions from Dumbledore's portrait, conjured the Patronus to lead Harry to the sword of Gryffindor.


He also used his position as a double agent during this time to subtly protect the students at Hogwarts while seeming to be terrorising them on Voldemort's instructions. Using his power as Headmaster, he kept the Carrow siblings under control and ensured many students were given 'fake' punishments such as being sent into the Forest with Hagrid.




Not really relevant to the main point of your question, but as @Ellesdil pointed out in a comment, Dumbledore's reasons for having Snape kill him were considerably more than just for the latter to gain Voldemort's trust:

"Ultimately, of course, there is only one thing to be done if we are to save [Draco] from Lord Voldemort's wrath. [...] You must kill me. [...] I ask this one, great favour of you, Severus, because death is coming for me as surely as the Chudley Cannons will finish bottom of this year's league. I confess I should prefer a quick, painless exit to the protracted and messy affair it will be if, for instance, Greyback is involved - I hear Voldemort has recruited him? Or dear Bellatrix, who likes to play with her food before she eats it."


-- Dumbledore, HP and the Deathly Hallows, Chapter 37: The Prince's Tale



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

harry potter - Do the Kwikspell courses work?

In Harry Potter we are introduced to Kwikspell course in The Chamber of Secrets (and never hear about it again). We see Filch taking courses, presumably by mail. The descriptions of Kwikspell make me think it is for people who are weak in magic (kind of like how Neville was supposed to be when he was younger), but had magic in them nonetheless. However, Ron's comments later in the chapter make it sound like it is mainly for Squibs to learn magic. However, it is strongly implied through out all the books that Squibs are essentially Muggles, and will never be able to do magic. How then is a Kwikspell course supposed to work? Do we have any information to know if it works at all? Is it a scam? An answer from any level of canon is welcome. Answer Kwikspell courses are (probably) useful to some wizards, but not to squibs. The Kwikspell course literature comes with two testimonials. Madam Z. Nettles of Topsham writes: ‘I had no memory for incantations and my potions were a family joke...
Post a Comment
Read more

futurama - How much time is lost in 'Time Keeps on Slippin''

In time Keeps on Slippin' , Farnsworth creates a basketball team which he matures by abusing Chronitons. This leads to time skipping forward by random, but ever increasing amounts. How much time was skipped in this way? Answer Unfortunately, I don't think a good estimate can be made for this, for two reasons: Many of the time skips move forward by an indeterminate amount of time. At one point, the Professor mentions localized regions of space skipping forward much more than others. We then see two young boys on the street below complaining about having to pay social security, only to suddenly become senior citizens and start complaining about wanting their money. Thus, each individual could have experienced a different amount of time skippage.
Post a Comment
Read more

star wars - What "exactly" happens when someone turns to the Dark Side?

When I saw the original Star Wars saga as a kid, the concept of the Dark Side imprinted in me was quite simple. You did a bad thing, so you're a bad person so you go to the Dark Side and keep doing bad things. Now, obviously this doesn't hold true in reality. In my mind it is perfectly reasonable for Luke to kill the Emperor and Vader and then just flee the Death Star and rejoin the Alliance. After all they are at war, those are enemy officers that have captured him and are taunting him by threatening with death of all loved ones and the whole operation was intended to kill the Emperor anyway. The same would hold true for Anakin. He could have killed Mace Windu to save the Chancellor and Padme but that doesn't mean he's going to then go mad and kill all Jedis including children. It doesn't add up from a merely psychological point of view. He had a set of objectives and that made him want to keep the Chancellor alive (quite valid by the way, Mace Windu is quite clums...
Post a Comment
Read more

star trek - Warning regarding forward saucer section in Nemesis?

In Star Trek: Nemesis , just before the Enterprise rams into the Scimitar, Picard sends a text message from his captain's chair arm pad to Troi — who is manning the helm in lieu of the crewman who was just blown out through what was once the view screen — indicating that she should put full impulse on standby. (Literally, if you watch the scene closely, Troi's console prefaces the order with "TXT MSG" !) My question is: Did Picard also somehow warn crew members in the forward saucer section about what was about to happen? The ramming of the Scimitar was a heat of the moment decision. Considering that he also resorted to calling the auto-destruct sequence shortly after (which ended up being offline), he probably was of the mindset that any losses would be acceptable in order to hault Shinzon's march to Earth. Still, I'm curious. Answer The original script indicates that he called for the crew to " brace for impact ". Whether that call (or the comma...
Post a Comment
Read more