Snapedom

Part III - Dumbledore

With regard to the request he made of Dumbledore:

 

This request we do get to see Severus make. However, it is slightly more complicated than the request he makes of Voldemort, since he ends up requesting protection (something he assumes Dumbledore is both able and willing to give them) for the entire family. Let's go back to the scene itself.

 

Severus, apparently in great distress judging by the broken quality of his speech, relates that Voldemort "thinks [the prophecy] means Lily Evans!" Dumbledore points out that the prophecy did not refer to a woman, but "to a boy born at the end of July" - a very neat replacement of the vague statement Severus heard ("The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches...Born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies...") with Dumbledore's own interpretation of it (motivated by...? Speculation on this issue is rampant). Severus replies with " You know what I mean! He thinks it means her son, he is going to hunt her down – kill them all – " Despite the acknowledgement he has just made that the child is the subject of the prophecy and thus the main target, in his worry and fear he immediately reverts again to the danger posed specifically to Lily, even going so far as to refer to her as if she were Voldemort's main target ("he is going to hunt her down"). Dumbledore responds to the distressed young man with manipulation, pointing out that "surely" Voldemort will spare the woman if his follower really does care about her all that much and suggesting (disingenuously and speciously) that Severus offer the child "in exchange" for "mercy" towards her. Severus stumblingly answers this suggestion with "I have - I have asked him -". Again, his speech is broken and he seems nearly too distressed to speak coherently. It is also unclear if he simply stopped speaking, implying he had said something along the lines of 'kill the child but spare the woman,' or if Dumbledore interrupted him before he could say exactly what he actually requested of Voldemort (beyond the implication he had asked for Lily's life in some manner). Dumbledore immediately rounds on him contemptuously, interpreting his answer back at him to mean that he "did not care about the deaths of her husband and child," to which accusation Severus makes no reply. After a moment of silence Severus finally makes his actual (versus an implied) request of Dumbledore: “Hide them all, then [....] Keep her – them – safe. Please.” He asks Dumbledore to protect all of them, stumblingly correcting his instinctive immediate focus on Lily to include the others. He then answers Dumbledore's demand for something "in return" with the word "anything."

 

Keep that in mind - Severus agrees without qualification to do "anything" merely a few heartbeats after Dumbledore has driven him to explicitly request the protection of all three of them, James included.

 

Now, I think we can reasonably suppose that at this point in time Severus believed that Dumbledore was not only able but willing to protect and hide the people fighting against Voldemort under his command, as well as their child. He seems surprised at Dumbledore's request for payment (as indeed I was) - it seems natural to him, as it does to me, to suppose that a man supposedly vocally championing love, tolerance and justice would automatically care about the wellbeing of his subordinates, and so would do all in his power to protect them regardless of any payment or return favor from the person delivering the warning that they have been targeted. But Severus requests the protection of all of them in the end, and agrees to whatever Dumbledore wants in return. Given what we can suppose of his view of Dumbledore's willingness here, Severus' ability to save or damn any one of the three is equal in a way it was not with Voldemort. It is limited, of course, by Dumbledore's willingness to protect them, but it is limited equally in all three cases, as far as Severus knows or can suppose. Therefore, it seems at first glance that, despite the eventual request to save all of them, Severus' conduct here is at first possibly even more damning than his request to Voldemort for Lily's life alone. Especially considering Dumbledore's neat little manipulative trick with the "exchange" argument - it's specious, but only if you stand back and think for a moment. In the rush of the narrative, it is unfortunately easy to take what he says as given and simply read the scene as: 'Severus admits to having callously offered to exchange the life of an infant for that of its mother (who was, not entirely unpredictably, willing to die to protect her son), and only requests protection for the others when pressed.'

 

But, given the fact that his ability to save the lives of all three is here equal...does he actually specifically request only the life of one, and knowingly, deliberately ignore the other two? He certainly does not argue against saving James and Harry in any way, or propose any absurd (and specious) "exchange" to Dumbledore along the lines of convenience or any such thing, of course. But does he at first abandon the husband and son to their fates, as many seem to read him doing based on that little 'exchange' with Dumbledore, only reluctantly including them when Dumbledore presses upon him?

 

I think it quite possible to read the scene differently, especially once you realize that Dumbledore's dig about exchanging the son for the mother is both disingenuous and specious. It is, in fact, designed to manipulate Severus - already an emotional wreck and neither fully rational nor fully coherent - into an even less powerful and more pliant position, where he is less likely to resist Dumbledore's taking advantage of his distress to gain himself a spy. And it succeeds. Dumbledore's got his number down, you have to admit that.

 

Subtracting Dumbledore's little game, look again at what Severus says and consider his state of mind. It's obvious, of course, that by far the greatest part of his emotional and psychic energy is taken up with the threat of danger to Lily. This is not surprising, given his history with her, and I think it fairly understandable (I will return to this issue later). He's so eaten up with worry about her, in fact, that even factual information about the specificity of targets is too much for him to keep straight: although he knows that the child is the main target and is pointedly reminded of this by Dumbledore, he repeatedly refers to Lily as if she were the particular object of Voldemort's wrath. He also switches incoherently between "her son," "she"/"her" and "them"/"them all," even before Dumbledore presses him about the lives of husband and son: "He thinks it means her son, he is going to hunt her down – kill them all – ”.

 

I think his line to Dumbledore just before this is the key here: "You know what I mean." I think he means just what he says: that although he is concentrating on Lily because the bulk of his present emotions have to do with her, he is in fact (stumblingly, incoherently) asking not just for her life alone, specifically, but for Lily and her entire family to be protected. In his great distress and stuttered warning to Dumbledore, "Lily" is his shorthand for the conceptual unit, "Lily and her family," "Lily and those in danger with her because of that stupid prophecy." He assumes (perhaps semiconsciously) that Dumbledore understands that, having given warning that Lily is in danger because her son has been targeted by Voldemort, Severus means for Dumbledore to hide the entire family.

 

In actual fact, to speak any one of their names in connection with his warning is to place all of their lives in Dumbledore's hands, considering their relation to one another - a relation of which Severus of course is fully aware. But that again is something rather passed over by the narrative voice.

 

By making the request at all he obviously assumes that Dumbledore is not only able but willing to protect his underlings, which includes not only Lily but James and presumably would include their infant child, the actual target, as well. And where is it indicated that that is supposed to have been an unreasonable or unexpected assumption for him to make? That's the sort of assumption one generally makes about people who parade themselves as the upholders of justice and tolerance and all that is good, isn't it?

 

I think his surprise at the very idea of being asked for payment indicates that Severus did, in fact, assume that Dumbledore's immediate, natural reaction to receiving a warning that two of his subordinates and their son had been targeted for death would be to rush to protect them all - even if, in the messenger's haste and distress, the warning itself was worded in a vague manner focusing on only one of the three people at risk. (And if he is not supposed to assume that, what does that say about Dumbledore and his conduct towards those fighting for him?)  So no, I don't believe that the only solid reading of Severus' request to Dumbledore is that he callously ignored husband and child and only reluctantly tried to save them as well. It only seems that way because of the specious "exchange" Dumbledore proposes he offer to Voldemort, and the stumbling hesistancy of his reply that he had asked something of madman, followed by his silence when Dumbledore accuses him of "not caring" about the others (a specific accusation I will turn to in a moment). Regardless of who he cared about, Severus acted to protect all three people here, as far as his ability to do so allowed. (Acting to protect regardless of personal feeling: something that apparently becomes a habit with Severus, to judge by his actions in the second war!) And his asking only for Lily when speaking with Dumbledore would of course not condemn James and Harry anyway. Once the initial warning is given (accomplished as soon as Severus had spoken any specific name Dumbledore could use as a reference to judge Voldemort's target), Dumbledore can choose to protect who he pleases, regardless of what Severus requests. Again, something Severus must be well aware of.