Well, I was convinced Dumbledore's dead...

...for good and Snape is truly on Riddle's side, but Charles has put some doubt in my mind.

He points out that when Dumbledore pleaded with Snape at the end, he didn't actually say "Don't kill me" or "Help me," but just "Please, Severus."

Charles' is convinced that if Draco Malfoy hadn't killed Dumbledore as instructed to by Riddle, Malfoy would die, and this is what Dumbledore and Snape were preventing. There was The Unbreakable Vow at the beginning of the book, after all.

This is a possibility, and though Dumbledore didn't much care for Draco, he'd definitely prefer to die himself if it'd save the boy's life.

OTOH, Dumbledore did say in his first "private lesson" with Harry that when he (Dumbledore) makes a mistake, it tends to be on a massive scale. (I'm paraphrasing, of course.) It's not outside the realm of possibility his trust of Snape will stand revealed as one of his few, rare mistakes in judgment.

Talk about opportunity missed, however! If I were Professor MacDonagall, now acting headmistress, one of my first official duties would have been to formally fire Snape, and expel Draco.

Actually, Draco's being in Hogwarts at all puzzled me. His father is in Azkaban, publicly revealed as a Deatheater, right? It's been awhile since the last book was published but I seem to recall, and what I've read in this book supports it, that Lucius Malfoy was shown to be a supporter of Riddle. So what the deuce was his kid still doing in Hogwarts? I'd have thought it'd have been made plain to his family that under the circumstances, Draco wouldn't be welcomed back.

And that's another thing . . . what's with "Lord Voldemort"? Oh, I certainly understand why he doesn't want to be known by the name of his nonmagic father - especially as the creep dumped his unborn son and his wife - but still, why pander to his vanity by referring to him with an unearned honorific? Being a follower of the Dark Lord, Voldemort, is far more appealing than being a follower of Tom Riddle, after all.

This was a good book . . . much better than the last one, which I didn't particularly care for and have never reread.