Snapedom

I don't see it as a question at all; my final 'question' was rhetorical. There *was* no point between things going pear-shaped after 5th year and the meeting in the Shack when Severus even had the option (without it backfiring) of trying to win his trust. Before that he did not know of the need to pass on the suicide order, so that did not factor into his calculations, and so as oryx and co have been discussing he thought the best stategy for approaching the Harry issue was to create distance between them for safety's sake. So there's no point IMHO to judging Snape one way or another on the issue of winning Harry's trust in order to pass on the suicide message; at most we can judge the wisdom of his original approach relative to the concerns he knew to be in play at that time.