Snapedom

The Unbreakable Vow, Revisited

This is a revision of my views in “Unbreakable;” you really need to read that first.
http://asylums.insanejournal.com/snapedom/295388.html

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I was reading Potionpen’s excellent “The Truth is What I See It Is” series on Archive of Our Own. It’s a Severus background fiction, largely canon-consistent, with an interesting angle on the Prince background, Sev’s sorting, and his years as a student in Slytherin House. However, I regretfully concluded that the author had gotten Snape’s relationship with Narcissa Black wrong. I really liked the friendship depicted between the princess and the rantypants brewery swot, Prince, but it was entirely AU. Canon-shafted.

I could accept Potionpen’s argument for placing Narcissa in Severus’s year on the grounds that the Black Family Tree and its dates are not, after all, book-canon (and o dear maths on some of its other dates).

But the Spinner’s End chapter, which IS canon, made it entirely clear that Narcissa and Severus were acquainted merely as patron’s wife and patron’s client.



First, Narcissa was obviously pulling out all available stops to persuade Severus to protect her son in that scene. She appealed to Draco’s admiration for his favorite teacher, she appealed to Snape’s friendship with her husband. If she’d ever been on terms of personal friendship, or even brief alliance, with Snape, she’d have appealed to that as well. (“Remember that time when I hexed my cousin Siri on your behalf!”)

She didn’t, therefore they weren’t.

But more fundamentally, the scene also made it plain that Narcissa had never known Snape very well. If she had, she would never have needed Sev to make an Unbreakable Vow to reassure her that he’d do “all in his power” for anyone he took under his protection. Dumbledore, who knew Snape intimately, never required more than the barest gesture of assent, the three times Dumbledore exacted such an agreement.

Nor could Snape have maneuvered Narcissa into asking him to make a Vow as he did: by playing the role of a slippery, unreliable, heartless son of a serpent who would, in the clinch, only ever follow his immediate self-interest unless he could somehow be pinned down to honor his (half) promises.

This was, after all, the young man who swore “anything” to protect the one he loved: who abandoned all his ambitions, who gave his life and talents entirely over to an enemy, who risked (and eventually received) a horrific death … all to try to save a woman and family who weren’t even his! More generally known, this was the impoverished half-blood outcast who spent his first five years at Hogwarts surrounded by Pureblood supremacists whom he needed to make his friends and allies if he ever wanted to get ahead—who stubbornly refused, ever, to relinquish his friendship with that Gryffie Mudblood who in their eyes was dragging him down. This was the boy who risked being hexed to a bloody pulp by both Marauders and his own roommates by abasing himself IN PUBLIC to beg forgiveness of said Gryff when he’d offended her.

This was also the adult man who took protecting students so seriously that he ran down a dead-end tunnel to save a couple of ungrateful brats from the very werewolf and mass-murdering lunatic who’d once almost murdered him in that very place. Who was the only teacher to leap from his bed at what sounded like an unknown student shrieking in agony, who ignored his own burglarized office to try to rescue the endangered student—only to discover it was just Potter’s Triwizard egg. Who raced to face he knew not what (and to save he knew not whom) when Myrtle screamed, ‘MURDER! MURDER IN THE BATHROOM!”

It’s wildly unlikely that Snape should have showed such strong protective impulses (emphasis on impulse—really the man was almost a Gryffindor when he thought a kid was in immediate danger!) as an Occluded adult, and never showed that side of himself to his peers when he was an unshuttered boy.

When Snape scolded Harry, “Fools who wear their hearts proudly on their sleeve, who cannot control their emotions, who wallow in sad memories and allow themselves be provoked this easily—weak people, in other words—stand no chance (OotP 24),” he was speaking from personal experience.

But anyone who’d been close to Severus before the end of his fifth year would have known him before he’d succeeded (or maybe tried) in correcting that lamentable weakness in himself. (Fifth year, because SWM was when we saw him allowing himself to be provoked with such drastic consequences, and the public abasement and spurned apology that followed were the last time canon showed Severus wear his heart on his sleeve in front of anyone but Dumbles.)

Okay, people change, yes.

Except, Severus really didn’t. He just learned to disguise his nature.

Snape’s callous-and-cowardly act might have deceived his enemies, most of his students, and his casual acquaintances. It wouldn’t have been readily accepted by anyone who’d known the young Severus intimately. So if Narcissa ever had, that schtick of Snape’s couldn’t have driven her so quickly to such a pitch of desperation that she would make such an outrageous request as an Unbreakable Vow.

Since Narcissa was driven to ask him to make that Vow, clearly she’d never known him very well.

Q.E.D.

*

And I’d picked up my quill to write Potionpen every detail of my objections when it hit me: unless, of course, Narcissa wasn’t’ deceived by Sev’s act—she was collaborating.

*


I don’t see anything in the text that forces the reading that Cissy and Severus were collaborating to manipulate Bella, and Wormtail, and ultimately the Dark Lord.

But the reading works. In fact, it explains away some things that were otherwise puzzling.

Posit one thing not shown in canon.

A message. Something along the lines of, “Come beg me to use my supposed influence to save your son. Bring your sister along to stop you.”


Now let’s look at the scene again. Start with their first interaction.

“Narcissa!” said the man, opening the door a little wider, so that the light fell upon her and her sister. “What a pleasant surprise!”

“Severus,” she said in a strained whisper. “May I speak to you? It’s urgent.”

“But of course.”

He stood back to allow her to pass him into the house. Her still-hooded sister followed without invitation.

“Snape,” she said curtly as she passed him.

“Bellatrix,” he replied, his thin mouth curling into a slightly mocking smile….

“So, what can I do for you?” Snape asked, settling himself in the armchair opposite the two sisters.

“We… we are alone, aren’t we?” Narcissa asked quietly.

“Yes, of course. Well, Wormtail’s here, but we’re not counting vermin, are we?”



Start with how the characters address each other. Bellatrix calls him Snape; he calls her Bellatrix.

Anyone want to hazard a guess as to whether, in 1981, an impoverished young half-blood the Dark Lord had unaccountably recruited had permission to address Mrs. Lestrange (or any other Pureblood woman of rank) by her first name without her having expressly granted him that liberty?

But in 1996, he being high in the Dark Lord’s favor and she eclipsed by the Ministry fiasco, he dared so to address her. Without her permission: she never called him Severus, though she can’t otherwise insult the Dark Lord’s current right-hand man by insisting “Ne me tu-toyez pas!”

Similarly, he calls Narcissa consistently by her first name. From first seeing her at his door. Except unlike her sister, she reciprocates, calling him Severus.

Narcissa Black Malfoy is groveling to curry favor with that upstart, from her sister’s point of view. (And probably from Peter’s.)


Only… Narcissa is a first name. But Cissy also had pet names. If the two had been friends once upon a time, close friends, they might once have had nicknames they used with each other.

You know, like how Lily called Severus not “Snape,” not even “Severus,” but “Sev.”

Using first names is a signal. But what it signals may not be the obvious. Look at the opening interaction again: He addresses her first, calls her Narcissa, and says it’s a pleasant surprise to see her.

He can be read as setting the scene here, for their audience of two. Especially if he’d somehow hinted for her to come to him.

If they barely knew each other, his addressing her by her first name is a rude reminder that he now outranks her illustrious family in the Death Eater ranks (if nowhere else), and her reciprocating is a signal both that she acknowledges that and that she’s willing to lower her Pure-Blooded self to kowtow to a half-blood, to get whatever it is she wants.

OTOH, if they once had been friends, closer than Bella or Wormtail would have cause to know, calling her that might be a entirely different message: We’re pretending not to know each other well. Play along.


*

I posit a message, rather than simply a shared mutual understanding that of course Severus would share Narcissa’a wish to save Draco from both death and killing, because of one otherwise unaccountable fact:

Narcissa dragged her sister along for the show.

Think about it. The Dark Lord has assigned your only son a death-mission. You’re desperate to get him out of it. You conceive the notion of begging the person currently highest in the Dark Lord’s favor to intervene on your son’s behalf.

This person, by the way, is only high because everyone formerly above him has recently been disgraced. He has not himself pulled off any recent coup for the Death Eaters that might leave him imagining that he had accrued credit that he might use, much less squander on your behalf. His first concern will be, must be, not to endanger his own precarious position.

Like your husband just did.


You’re planning to disobey the Dark Lord’s direct instruction not to speak of Draco’s task to anyone. You’re going to beg the help of someone who might be putting himself in disfavor by merely opening his mouth on your son’s behalf. And your only idea is that the current favored advisor should use his position to plead with the Dark Lord to change his mind, to give up his master plan?

With no apparent benefit to the Dark Lord should he abandon his lovingly-thought-out plan to kill Draco?

On what grounds could anyone criticize this particular plan of Tom’s? That it wouldn’t work? “My Lord, this is not an efficient plan for disposing of Dumbledore. If the boy attempts to kill Dumbledore and fails publicly, he’ll first be sent to Azkaban for trying, and later killed by you for failing. And Dumbledore will know you want him dead—oh wait, he already know that. If Draco tries and fails in secret, or if he fails to try, you’d have an excuse to kill him in punishment. If he succeeds, unlikely as that might be, you’d be down one Dumbledore and could let the boy be killed by the DMLE before you take it over. So anything Draco might do in response to this order will result in his ruin and destruction, and his parents’ utter despair—oh right. That’s what you actually want.”

Further, Cissy’s husband was the former favorite. How often did she witness her husband successfully talk the Dark Lord into changing his mind? How often did Lucius make the attempt? Reread “The Dark Lord Rising” if you need to. Did it look like that particular corporate boardroom invited intelligent dissent? That the CEO invited his subordinates to overturn his cherished plans?

And even if Cissy did think that she knew some argument potent enough to sway the Dark Lord if only the right person presented it to him, what’s the benefit to the new favorite for trying?

The gratitude of someone on Lord Voldemort’s “To-be-offed” list? To be identified as the associate of someone disgraced?

Right. So. If Narcissa is to be believed: she had no purpose in coming to Spinner’s End except to ask Severus to convince the Dark Lord to release Draco from his “task.” She had no argument prepared for Severus to present to his lordship why it would be in the Death Eaters’ interest for him to do so. She had, further, no good reason to give Severus as why he should risk his own position to help her.

And, with her whole family in disfavor, herself risking execution for disobedience for merely opening her mouth, she ran to a man she barely knew but whom she claimed to believe loyal to the Dark Lord. And told him first thing that speaking of “the plan” was forbidden, so that just to listen to her was to implicate himself in her treachery against their master. When the obvious thing for a loyal servant to do at that announcement would be to turn her in. Either in hopes of scoring Brownie points, or in simple self-preservation—what if her approaching him were a test of his loyalty?

Brilliant plan, Cissy.

And then she capped this display of Slytherin cunning by bringing along a witness both devoted to the Dark Lord, and who despised and distrusted the very person she hoped to coax into treason?!

Because there’s nothing that will improve one’s chances of delicately manipulating the Dark Lord’s current favorite into risking himself by agreeing to try to derail one of the Dark Lord’s schemes like bringing along a spy prejudiced against your target. Someone who will, in fact, infallibly report back to the Dark Lord the most momentary appearance of disloyalty, the very smallest traitorous lapse of seeming to put Narcissa’s feelings or her family before the Death Eater cause. A witness who will pounce with malicious relish upon anything the favorite says that could conceivably be construed as lack of commitment to fulfilling the Dark Lord’s will as proof positive that her suspicions about the traitor had just been vindicated.

Yep, Bella’s presence is the thing needed to make Snape more receptive to Cissy’s blandishments.


Okay, fine, Cissy was desperate. It’s been nearly a month since Draco’s death sentence was disclosed to her, and she’s been brooding over it all this time. There she was, chatting with Bella about it (after all, her sister, even if the Dark Lord’s most fanatical supporter). Maybe she’d tried asking Bella to ask Him to commute the death sentence, and Bella of course fired up and asserted that if she had sons, she’d be proud to send them to certain death in His service. So Narcissa got the bright idea that Draco’s favorite teacher might be more sympathetic, decided to appeal to Snape instead, and blurted out her intention before remembering Bella’s insane distrust and jealousy of the man.

Bella showed her horrified disapprobation: “The Dark Lord said tell no one! And you want not just to disobey, but to tell that filthy half-blood who isn’t really loyal to our Lord, who’s either secretly in Dumbledore’s pocket or playing both sides? You want to tell someone who might be Dumbledore’s agent of our Lord’s clever plan to have Dumbledore killed?! Cissy! How could you think of such a thing?”

So, okay, Cissy was too worked up to have the wit to let Bella think she’d talked her sister out of it, then to approach Snape quite privately later. Which would be much safer for both of them, and would also greatly increase her chances (slim anyway) of success at sweet-talking him.

No, instead she announced her intention to Bella and rushed off instantly into the night, with Bella in hot pursuit to try to stop her from betraying the Dark Lord to that two-faced half-blood traitor.

Uh-huh.

Lose our head a bit in a crisis, do we, Narcissa?

Yes, we’ve seen you exhibit that trait elsewhere in canon.

Like, oh, like when a Chosen One was unexpectedly not dead at your feet, and you instantaneously determined how to use that to make a last-minute family alliance with his soon-to-be-winning side.

Fluffy blondes, oh right. Yes, that’s it.

*

I mean, that Narcissa was an idiot who had inadvertently brought her sister along to sabotage her attempt to seduce Snape into trying to save Draco is a possible reading. Narcissa was naturally distressed at the danger to her son, and we all make mistakes, and Jo’s characters often behave rather inconsistently (and idiotically) anyhow.

We’ve complained about that.

But there’s another explanation that doesn’t require inconsistency. Or stupidity.

Severus had somehow gotten her word that she should come to him with that fatuous appeal, and to bring her sister.

And now look how the Spinner’s End chapter reads.

Snape warns Narcissa with his first words of the part he’s going to play. She grovels, non-specifically, waiting for a further cue. He alerts her to the presence of a second spy, one not sympathetic to either of the Black sisters. Then he invites Bellatrix to air all her concerns.

Which he doesn’t allay. He paints himself as the complete opportunist, not faithful to the Dark Lord like Bella, but not willing to risk opposing him directly for any reason. Firmly committed to convincing Riddle (and his more devoted followers) that he’s now loyal. (Or, at least. loyal so long as he’s quite, quite sure that Riddle’s in a position to punish anyone for being disloyal). And unwilling to take any risks he can possibly avoid. Including the risk of incurring the Dark Lord’s suspicion of his lack of loyalty.

And what is Narcissa doing while he’s reinforcing her sister’s (and Peter’s) image of him as a faithless, self-serving, heartless double-crosser? At the start,
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Narcissa let out a noise that might have been a dry sob and covered her face with her hands.
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She stays like that throughout Sev’s and Bella’s ensuing exchange of courtesies, looking up only when Bella started to drag Lucius’s failure into the catfight to interject, “Don’t you dare—don’t you dare blame my husband!”

Why is Narcissa doing this? Well, of course, that’s obvious: she’s overcome by her distress over Draco while they meander off to explore the more interesting, to them, byways of internecine rivalry.

Or… she’s thinking. Trying to figure out what Severus’s plan is, and to catch her cue.

But why hide her face?

All three people in that room have some skill with Occlumency, and at least two are good Legilimens

Professor Snape accused Draco of learning Occlumency from his aunt. But to teach Occlumency, one must be adept at both skills.

However, it’s possible Draco also learned from his mother. She may well be a Legilimens; we have evidence elsewhere that she must be an Occlumens. (On nowhere near Sev’s level, perhaps, but then, who is?)

What did the professor tell Harry in the first Occlumency lesson? “Only those skilled at Occlumency are able to shut down those feelings and memories that contradict the lie and so utter falsehoods in his presence without detection.” (OotP 24)

Which is precisely what we saw Cissy do when she was sent to check Harry’s corpse, and saw it wasn’t. And it’s not as though the feelings and memories that contradicted that particular lie were so void of emotional content as to make it easy for her to shut down. (Of course, the Dark Lord also did not subject her to a full interrogation.) But she definitely uttered a falsehood in his presence without detection.

So. What else did the professor tell us?

“Eye contact is often essential to Legilimency.”

Looking at Cissy’s eye contact throughout the Spinner’s End scene is fascinating.

Remember how we speculated about Dumbledore’s death scene, that two Legilimens-Occlumens staring into each others’ eyes could deliberately push images and feelings forward for the other to see, as well as “shut down” those they wished to conceal? Allowing at least a crude form of communication, undetectable to even the closest bystander?

Except of course to another Legilimens physically present, able to see into the principals’ eyes?

Of course, avoiding eye contact with a Legilimens one wished to deceive would become second nature. Anyone around Tom for long would pick up that habit; we saw in DH1 that all of them had. Only Severus (the deceiver!) met his eyes without fear.

But the reflex is itself a betrayal of one’s desire to hide secrets (or feelings).

Unless, of course, the refusal to make eye contact with one person could be disguised as part of a general emotional breakdown.

Let’s look back at a little incident near the beginning of the chapter, when Narcissa was hurrying to meet with Snape and Bella was trying to dissuade her. Cissy actually went so far as to draw her wand and hex her own sister. When, precisely?

When Bella tried to force Cissy to face her and respond to her arguments.

Hmm.

When they arrived, Narcissa presumably gazed at Severus when he let her in. Then when she sat down, she was stated to be staring at her hands. Note that her sister was at that time following her into the room. Bellatrix subsequently stationed herself behind Narcissa’s sofa, where she could look challengingly into Snape’s eyes—and did.

The next time our attention is drawn to Narcissa’s eyes, she’s hiding her face in her hands. She stays that way, except for that one flash to defend Lucius, while Snape taunts Bella that his cowardly life of ease and duplicity made him more valuable to the Dark Lord than her gallant stay in Azkaban. He finishes off his interchange with Bella with a flourish : “I have played my part well…. But through all these years, he [Dumbledore] has never stopped trusting Severus Snape, and therein lies my great value to the Dark Lord.”

One more thing. Snape has been sitting in an armchair, Narcissa opposite him on the sofa. Bellatrix, however, never took a seat. She started by standing behind her sister while they were all toasting the Dark Lord, but strode out and slammed her glass on the table when Snape invited her to say why she didn’t trust him. So, throughout Severus and Narcissa’s subsequent conversation, she’s probably positioned to see both faces. To meet either set of eyes, at least occasionally. Now watch.

“Now… you came to ask me for help, Narcissa?”

Narcissa looked up at him, her face eloquent with despair.

“Yes, Severus. I—I think you are the only one who can help me. I have nowhere else to turn. Lucius is in jail…”

She closed her eyes and two large tears seeped from beneath her eyelids.

“The Dark Lord has forbidden me to speak of it,” Narcissa continued, her eyes still closed. “He wished none to know of the plan. It is… very secret. But—”

“If he has forbidden it, you ought not to speak,” said Snape at once. “The Dark Lord’s word is law.”

Narcissa gasped as though he had doused her with cold water. Bellatrix looked satisfied for the first time since she had entered the room.

“There!” she said triumphantly to her sister. “Even Snape says so: you were told not to talk, so hold your silence!”

But Snape had gotten to his feet and strode to the small window…

Where he makes a show of checking for eavesdroppers, and yet somehow neglects to check again on Peter’s whereabouts. Don’t you just hate forgetting things?

“It so happens that I know of the plan,” he said in a low voice. “I am one of the few the Dark Lord has told. Nevertheless, had I not been in on the secret, Narcissa, you would have been guilty of great treachery to the Dark Lord.”

“I thought you must know about it!” said Narcissa, breathing more freely. “He trusts you so, Severus….”

“You know about the plan?” said Bellatrix, her fleeting expression of satisfaction replaced by a look of outrage. “You know?”

“Certainly,” said Snape.

What’s just happened? Well, of course, Snape’s upholding of the Dark Lord’s word as law was an inspiring display of his loyalty to his Lord, and a firm indication that he would put no other god (that is, Narcissa and her distress) before Him. Heartwarming, really.

But notice what this precious pair just slid in—speaking of the plan WOULD have been great treachery to the Dark Lord, IF Snape had not already known. But since he did, it is not. Because, after all, the reason Narcissa was not to speak was that the plan is so very secret, So if she’s not betraying the secret, she’s not betraying the Dark Lord in speaking of it. Best of all, since Narcissa was sure all along that one so trusted as Severus WOULD have known, no one can accuse her of EVER having shown any disloyalty to the Dark Lord in approaching Snape.

Completely burying the inconvenient little fact that, as Bella had pointed out earlier, “In any case, we were told not to speak of the plan to anyone.”

In fact, these two have just managed to twist Narcissa’s direct disobedience of orders into an expression of her perfect trust in the Dark Lord, and Bellatrix’s objections to it into disloyal doubt of the Dark Lord’s judgment!

Look: the Dark Lord’s orders didn’t really mean that Narcissa shouldn’t speak of the plan. Just not to anyone who didn’t already know it. This is a trivially obvious gloss upon his words, given that she was permitted to talk about it with her sister and Draco. However, Narcissa correctly intuited that the Dark Lord’s great trust in Severus meant that he MUST have told Severus about it already; whereas Bellatrix’s objection to talking with Snape (specifically) indicated her personal distrust of him, and therefore her disloyal questioning of the Dark Lord’s judgment.

And Bella completely bought the little sleight-of-logic here, and permitted her sister to go on to talk to Snape about “the plan.” If Snape’s already in the know by the Dark Lord’s choice, trying to keep the knowledge from him is demonstrating continued lack of faith in her Master’s judgment.

Thus the Dark Lord’s most loyal servant was made an accomplice to the entire subsequent, explicitly-forbidden discussion.

The Dark Lord’s most loyal servant and the Dark Lord’s most useful, implicated together with disgraced Malfoy’s wife if Tom should choose to regard this little conversation as treasonous. About the best protection from Tom’s wrath that Narcissa was likely to be able to get.

(And also, implicit assurance to Tom that no, this conversation really couldn’t have been treacherous, because self-interested Snape and fanatically-loyal Bella would not have gone along with anything actually disloyal ….)

Finally, notice that Narcissa was the one to feed Severus his lines here: “The Dark Lord has forbidden me to speak of it… He wished none to know of the plan. It is… very secret. But—”

Which Sev promptly turned (after loudly trumpeting his fealty) into that “had I not been in on the secret, Narcissa, you would have been guilty of great treachery to the Dark Lord.”

It really does look like they’re working as a team against Bella and Peter (and ultimately Tom), doesn’t it?

The rest of my original analysis of Spinner’s End is mostly unaltered, except that Narcissa was probably deliberately playing up her (sincere and well-merited) distress and fear while trying to work out what Severus was leading up to, rather than being played by him into finally demanding that Vow.

Remember the eyes. And remember that Bella was positioned so that much of the time she was watching their eyes, too.

“Certainly,” said Snape. “But what help do you require, Narcissa? If you are imagining I can persuade the Dark Lord to change his mind, I am afraid there is no hope, none at all.”

… Narcissa began to cry in earnest, gazing beseechingly all the while at Snape.

Snape said nothing. He looked away from the sight of her tears as though they were indecent, but he could not pretend not to hear her.

“That’s why he’s chosen Draco, isn’t it?” she persisted. “To punish Lucius?”

“If Draco succeeds,” said Snape, still looking away from her, “he will be honored above all others.”

The next time eye contact is mentioned is immediately before Narcissa first suggests that Severus might do the task in Severus’s place. They’ve beaten into the ground the idea that “The Dark Lord will not be persuaded, and I am not stupid enough to attempt it,” but they’ve not come up with any other scheme that might protect Draco. Look what happens next. Look closely.

“Then I am right, he has chosen Draco in revenge!” choked Narcissa. “He does not mean him to succeed, he wants him to be killed trying!”

When Snape said nothing, Narcissa seemed to lose what little self-restraint she still possessed. Standing up, she staggered to Snape and seized the front of his robes. Her face close to his face, her tears falling onto his chest, she gasped….

Note that in this position, they’re meeting each other’s eyes. While Bella is guaranteed to be unable to see either’s. For perfectly natural, unsuspicious reasons. And having done so, what does Narcissa gasp?


“You could do it. You could do it instead of Draco, Severus. You would succeed, of course you would, and he would reward you beyond all of us—“


And Snape’s response?


Snape caught hold of her wrists and removed her clutching hands. Looking down into her tearstained face, he said slowly, “He intends me to do it in the end, I think. But he is determined that Draco should try first. You see, in the unlikely event that Draco succeeds, I shall be able to remain at Hogwarts a little longer, fulfilling my useful role as a spy.”

“In other words, it doesn’t’ matter to him if Draco is killed.”

“The Dark Lord is very angry,” repeated Snape quietly. “He failed to hear the prophecy. You know as well as I do, Narcissa, that he does not forgive easily.”

She crumpled, falling at his feet, sobbing and moaning on the floor.


In which position no one present can see her eyes, and Bella and Peter can’t be suspicious at this fact.

They move on to the last part of the passion play. Severus tries to arrest her hysterics by making non-offers to possibly “help” Draco. Narcissa seizes on the non-offers as though she takes them for real, and Snape tries to slither out of any real commitment with that beautifully-crafted little, “I can try,”

She flung away her glass; it skidded across the table as she slid off the sofa into a kneeling position at Snape’s feet, seized his hand in both of hers, and pressed her lips to it.

While, perhaps, looking up at him. Eye contact again, shielded from Bella. And she says?

“If you are there to protect him… Severus, will you swear it? Will you make the Unbreakable Vow?”

“The Unbreakable Vow?”

Snape’s expression was blank, unreadable.

And then Bella provides the final piece, the goading that turns what might otherwise be read as Snape weakly giving into Narcissa’s entreaties into a Really All Bella’s Fault attempt to prove that yes, Snape is Utterly and Absolutely Committed to the Cause, my Lord.


Bellatrix, however, let out a cackle of triumphant laughter.

“Aren’t you listening, Narcissa? Oh he’ll try, I’m sure…. the usual empty words, the usual slithering out of action… oh, on the Dark Lord’s orders, of course!”

Snape did not look at Bellatrix. His black eyes were fixed upon Narcissa’s tear-filled blue ones as she continued to clutch his hand.

“Certainly, Narcissa, I shall make the Unbreakable Vow,” he said quietly. “Perhaps your sister will consent to be our Bonder?”


See? “Fixed.” “Continued.” Their eyes had been “fixed” on each others’ from the time Narcissa first clutched his hand. Shielded eye contact, private communication, before Narcissa asked Severus to make the Vow.

So it really can be made to work, that Narcissa was Severus’s collaborator rather than Bella’s fellow dupe. Severus was performing a duet in this scene rather than an aria.

*

Actually, this scenario works (roughly) even without positing a message and Narcissa possessing at least rudimentary skills at Legilimency. She can still be read as consciously following Severus’s lead rather than being blindly manipulated, like her sister.

However, bringing Bella was a serious mistake if it wasn’t always part of the plot (for Bella to take the blame for goading Severus into accepting), and I hate to think Narcissa that stupid.

And the intense eye contact just before the two critical, outrageous requests (“do it instead” and “make the Vow”) really is quite strongly suggestive of private communication. Of course, if Narcissa was not a Legilimens, it would have been going in the opposite direction—Severus, you want me to ask you to do what? Speak up if that’s not part of your plan!

That works almost as well, and in fact makes Narcissa look even more intelligent, being so quick on the uptake. The only thing is, I’d then expect some hesitation before voicing the requests, to give him time to head her off if she’s not interpreted his plan correctly. We do see such hesitation before she asks for the Vow—kneeling before him, kissing his hand, eyes fixed on his, Narcissa says, “If you are there to protect him… Severus, will you swear it? Will you make the Unbreakable Vow?”

But we don’t see any such hesitation before she makes the first outrageous suggestion, “You could do it.”

Of course, maybe that just reflects Narcissa’s reluctance to put her good friend’s life at stake, even to save her son, while she feels no such tenderness about Dumbledore’s.

And realistically, whether Severus does or does not end up saving Draco by taking his place as Dumbledore’s murderer would not likely be decided in this room, by Narcissa’s suggestion and his response to it.

At least not by this suggestion.

But I’d still feel better if she’d checked in with him first before asking such a thing of him.

And of course, if we posit Narcissa to possess rudimentary skills as Legilimency, we have the mechanism by which Severus could have gotten a quite private message to her: by a simple meeting of the eyes at some casual encounter. He’d have presented, say, a mental image of a terrified Draco confronting Dumbledore, wand upraised; accompanied by a sense of repudiation, resolution, hope, and helpfulness. A second image of Narcissa crouched in obvious entreaty at Snape’s feet in Spinner’s End, with her sister there, furiously trying to hold her back.

If one could exchange words in such silent communications, of course, it would be even easier. But I think the canon, both here and in the scene on the Astronomy tower, works better if only images and emotions can be presented.

*

Just one thing more. I’m almost embarrassed to mention it.

I mean, I’m sure I’m just “overanalyzing the text,” as Elkins puts it, even worse than is my norm.

But it seems to me that Snape’s precise response to Narcissa’s suggestion that Severus might “do it instead of Draco” might, just possibly might, be considered to be the very tiniest bit ambiguous.

Let’s look at it again.

Snape caught hold of her wrists and removed her clutching hands. Looking down into her tearstained face, he said slowly, “He intends me to do it in the end, I think. But he is determined that Draco should try first. You see, in the unlikely event that Draco succeeds, I shall be able to remain at Hogwarts a little longer, fulfilling my useful role as a spy.”


I’m sure it’s just me.

There’s no way anyone could read any equivocacy into the antecedent of Snape’s first “he,” right? Or about who, precisely, might have wanted Severus “to remain at Hogwarts a little longer, fulfilling my useful role as a spy.”

Could there?