| 12:48 pm |
When did Severus defect from Voldemort?
The scene where Severus Snape met Albus Dumbledore on a windswept hill in order to bring him news of Voldemort's decision to target Harry and his family clearly took place before Severus Snape took up his position as a teacher at Hogwarts (or why would they need to meet outside the school or its grounds?), and may have been their first face-to-face encounter in quite a while. Neither of them trusted the other: Dumbledore's first move was to disarm Severus, while the latter begged for his life. Dumbledore believed Severus was bringing him a message from Voldemort. This encounter was one of the significant events in the line connecting Trelawney's prophecy to Voldemort's first fall on October 31st 1981. When did it take place?
I do not consider the time before Harry's birth possible at all. Even the Voldemort of DH wouldn't assume the birth would take place exactly when it did. Had Lily's labor started slightly later or lasted longer Harry would have been born on August 1st, and thus wouldn't have matched the criteria of the prophecy.
The leafless trees indicate the scene took place somewhere between late autumn and very early spring. However with Rowling's track record of gross mistakes in many cases where knowledge of the natural world is relevant, whether the field is anatomy and physiology of animals that are significant to her story or astronomy, I wouldn't go looking up when exactly trees lose their leaves completely (which species of tree? in what exact location?), but take it as reference to autumn or winter. I'm not even sure if I should take seriously the fact that snow isn't mentioned. (After all, Dumbledore and Severus could have arranged to meet anywhere in Britain - Apparition allows for it.) So are we in autumn-winter of 1980-1, some eight months to a year before the Godric's Hollow attack or in October 1981, merely weeks before it?
Possibly relevant clues:
- Severus started teaching approximately in the autumn of 1981 (14 years before his interview with Umbridge).
- According to Ministry records Severus initially applied for DADA and was rejected, but offered Potions instead.
- Voldemort had sent Severus to apply for the DADA job (when?)
- The Potters were living in Godric's Hollow in July 1981 (according to Lily's letter) and at the time their movements were very limited. In fact, once James had given the Invisibility Cloak to Dumbledore they no longer left the house at all. However they were visited by Bathilda Bagshot, Peter and presumably Sirius when he was around (maybe others too, but we do not know).
- The Fidelius Charm was cast about a week before the attack.
- The Order's group photograph was taken around June or July of 1981 (2 weeks before the death of the McKinnon family), and shortly after the Order suffered a series of losses.
- Sirius claimed Peter had been spying for Voldemort for over a year before Godric's Hollow.
When considering the question one must think both from Voldemort's POV regarding his preparations for the attack as well as from Dumbledore's POV regarding his protection of the Potters.
The clue that I feel lends the strongest support for the later date is the timing of the casting of the Fidelius Charm. The implication is that Dumbledore took the warning seriously and thought the security arrangements for the Potters had to be upgraded once it was unequivocal that Harry was Voldemort's intended target. Then he offered himself as Secret Keeper, the Potters declined the offer and went ahead and had the Charm cast with the Secret Keeper of their choosing.
While this explains what Dumbledore was doing, it does not explain why it took Voldemort so long to execute the attack. Why did Voldemort wait until Harry was 15 months old?
Well, Voldemort wasn't planning only the elimination of the prophesied child. This was just one step in a plan towards the take-over of Wizarding Britain. The plan involved by necessity the elimination of Dumbledore, followed in short succession by a take-over of Hogwarts and the Ministry (in either order). For the entire war Voldemort had left Hogwarts alone (except for as use as recruitment ground for promising followers, and that was probably done on the sly, for example by taking advantage of Horace Slughorn's habit of inviting former memebers of his club to meet with current members). While Voldemort was able to cause the Ministry to be in disarray, he was incapable of toppling it entirely in years of warfare. However in the second war, shortly after Dumbledore's death the Ministry fell into his hands. The evidence that some further plan involving Hogwarts was in the works is the fact that Voldemort gave the diary to Lucius - perhaps in anticipation of its use. So why wasn't such a plan tried earlier, even before the prophecy? Something was missing, and it seems that something was an agent inside Hogwarts. We see how in Harry's years Voldemort utilized the curse he had placed on the DADA job to get agents of his into Hogwarts, either as the official DADA teacher (Quirrell) or by impersonating the official teacher (Bartemius Crouch Jr impersonating Moody). As Severus reminded Bellatrix, he was sent to interview for the DADA position by Voldemort to act as his spy (and agent for whatever plan) within Hogwarts. But when did that interview take place?
Trelawney believed that the reason Severus was at the Hog's Head the night of her job interview was because he too was supposed to be interviewing later on. We do not know if she was correct in her assumption or whether this was her inference from the fact that eventually, over a year later, Severus was hired. How could she have known? Did Dumbledore tell her he couldn't stay longer (he was about to leave when she went into trance) since he had to conduct another interview? (Even if he did, would he have mentioned who the candidate was?) Did she ask about Severus later that evening and got the response that well, he was also supposed to be interviewing but this wasn't to be? In any case, the interview did not take place that night as Severus escaped to Voldemort with the prophecy. Once the prophecy was made Voldemort had to coordinate his plans, as the DADA job curse gave him only a year to act. There was no point for him to get a teacher into Hogwarts before he knew whom he was going to attack and before he was secure that he had access to the would-be vanquisher. Therefore he couldn't send Severus again before recruiting Peter.
With the hostility and distrust between Severus and Dumbledore at the time they met I don't think the interview could have taken place prior to their encounter. At the most, Severus could have requested an interview and was rejected. However once Severus agreed to do anything to protect the Potters, Dumbledore hired him as Potions Master to provide a cover for their interactions. He also reported to the Ministry that Severus had originally requested the DADA position (so that Severus could appear to have followed Voldemort's order). Once Severus reported to Voldemort that he got a teaching job Voldemort set his plans in motion, instructing Peter to sabotage any plan Dumbledore came up with to protect the Potters.
Does the alternate scenario with an early defection of Severus work? It certainly is a more attractive scenario to Severus fans, as it provides a long enough time for him to act as a spy from within the Death Eaters while the war was still going on. How do we explain the late casting of the Fidelius Charm if Dumbledore had known for months that Harry was Voldemort's target? Well, perhaps the Potters were protected very strongly, and as Minerva suggested in POA the Fidelius with Dumbledore as Secret Keeper was only suggested as an addition to existing protections because Severus confirmed that Voldemort had a spy in their midst, close to the Potters. (While Severus may have found information pointing to the existence of such spy, he did not know the identity of the spy - I do not believe Peter got his Dark Mark until after he reported that he had become the Potters' Secret Keeper, doing otherwise would have risked someone in the Order noticing).
Now for the harder question: Why did Voldemort wait for October 31st to attack the Potters? Like in the previous timeline, Voldemort was going for a takeover of Hogwarts and the entire of Wizarding Britain after Harry's death. He needed an agent inside Hogwarts, and due to the DADA job curse he wanted to secure this agent's position before attacking Harry. Additionally he had to have secured access to the Potters before even sending an agent to Hogwarts. He had Peter at some point, but Severus could have interviewed only after the DADA job became free (again!) sometime in the spring of 1981 and would have only started teaching in September 1981. I can see Voldemort waiting at least until then. Had the Potters died before term started who knows how Dumbledore's plans would have changed until September? Perhaps he might have decided not to take Severus on after all. But why the additional delay of some 2 months? If Voldemort had a good reason to wait, it must have had something to do with Peter's part in the equation. I can see two possibilities: one was that while Voldemort had recruited Peter well before the attack on the Potters with the intent to use him eventually as a way to access them, Voldemort worked gradually with him, softening him up, so that initially Peter was used to betray Order members in general and only after he became accustomed to this role did Voldemort start employing him specifically against the Potters. I think this scenario might have some support in Minerva's words:
"He was sure that somebody close to the Potters had been keeping You-Know-Who informed of their movements," said Professor McGonagall darkly. "Indeed, he suspected for some time that someone on our side had turned traitor and was passing a lot of information to You-Know-Who."
This may imply the spy had been passing general information on the Order longer than he had been spying specifically on the Potters.
Alternatively, perhaps it went something along the following lines: Suspicions regarding a spy in the Order who is close to the Potters may have arisen somewhere in the summer. Dumbledore suggested the Potters use the Fidelius Charm with himself as Secret Keeper. I believe that in 1981 the Fidelius Charm was rather obscure magic - it appears the very security-aware Blacks did not know of it(*), so I don't think the Potters had the knowledge cast the spell on their own. For months Dumbledore tried to convince them to let him be their Secret Keeper while the Potters (probably with encouragement by Peter) insisted that he teach them the spell so they could use their own Secret Keeper. Peter kept Voldemort abreast of this development and he decided to wait for Peter to become Secret Keeper. (This of course implies that Sirius was manipulated by Peter into suggesting the switch with the intention to frame him. As we know Voldemort had a very long history of frame-ups.) Eventually Dumbledore relented, taught them the spell, and the rest is history.
Another question is how did Severus learn of Voldemort's intent to attack the Potters? In my opinion the most likely source is Voldemort himself. After all, Voldemort does not easily admit a vulnerability to others, so I doubt he shared information about the prophecy with anyone who did not already know about it if he could help it. This certainly works with the late-return timeline: Upon learning that Dumbleodre did not trust Severus enough to grant him an interview Voldemort told him of the intention to attack the Potters, knowing this would drive Severus to Dumbledore. Of course for a while Severus may act for Dumbledore, but Voldemort believed that this would be temporary: If Lily was 'sensible' and lived he could use her life to force Severus into anything, and if she wasn't and died Severus would have no reason to support Dumbledore any longer - indeed, he'd leave Dumbledore for his failure to protect Lily. All Voldemort had to do was keep anything important from Severus for a while.
Does it work with the early timeline as well? This would mean Voldemort revealed to Severus the plan to attack the Potters several months before Severus could possibly hope to interview for the DADA job. Perhaps Voldemort wanted Severus to earn Dumbledore's trust for a while before having him ask for the job? If so he had to be certain Severus didn't know anything that compromised Voldemort and the Death Eaters too much - indeed, he did not know about Voldemort's other spies - Peter and Augustus Rookwood, nor about the star recruit, Bart Crouch Jr. Alternately, Severus knew about the plan because as the one who had delivered the prophecy he was one of those involved in finding whom the prophecy might have referred to (others would have been DEs with access to Ministry records). If this was how it happened then Severus must have used very good acting skills to request Lily's life without raising suspicion that the mere existence of such a threat to her was enough to turn Severus from Voldemort, to the point Voldemort stook to using Severus as his agent at Hogwarts even after he had made his request.
So I am now willing to agree that the early defection timeline is plausible, and thus the possibility of Severus turning in fellow Death Eaters for months on end before Voldemort's first downfall is canon-compliant. In fact, there is a hint in canon for a possible example of this: Igor Karkaroff. In his hearing Karkaroff turns in Travers for his role in killing the McKinnons, who died in July 1981, according to Lily's letter. On the other hand, Dolohov, who was one of the 5 Death Eaters who had killed the Prewett brothers (according to his 'wanted' ad in OOTP), is only blamed by Karkaroff of torturing 'countless Muggles and non-supporters of the Dark Lord', not any deaths, let alone the deaths of wizards connected to Dumbledore. This suggests to me that Karkaroff was arrested somewhere around July or August of 1981, before several other attacks and arrests. And during the hearing Moody comments to Dumbledore that it had taken him 6 months to track Karkaroff down. If so, Moody had been seeking Karkaroff since about January or February - was that the result of a tip-off from Severus to Dumbledore? This might explain why in GOF Severus is on speaking terms with Karkaroff despite the latter's attempt to turn Severus in at the same hearing: they had both betrayed one another when they had the chance (the difference being that Severus' betrayal of DEs was supposed to be in exchange of protecting Lily while Karkaroff's betrayal was purely selfish). Notice also that when given the time Karkaroff accused the people he turned in with specific acts, whereas all he could say of Severus was that he was a Death Eater (repeated twice). This is yet another argument supporting the view that Bellatrix was correct in her description of Severus as one who stayed behind while others faced dangers.
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* I don't think 12GP was under a Fidelius Charm because Sirius, who had severed ties with his family around 1976 was able to enter it in 1995. However there remains the possibility that after Walburga's death in 1985 Kreacher became a Secret Keeper and Sirius, as his master, called him and commanded him to give him the secret. Though if house-elves become Secret Keepers upon the death of a previous Keeper of a Secret they know, we need to ask what measures the Order took to prevent Kreacher from sharing the Secret of 12GP with Narcissa or Bellatrix. |