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The things DD asked Snape to do were truly difficult in the way that they asked him to do evil acts, risk life and limb and more, and to be subject to the hatred of all who were good and nice. To betray and appear to betray all around him. One scene I thought particularly pivotal was right after that when Harry told Neville about the snake. There was that agonizing moment when he realized all that he was asking Neville to do and how his manipulation of a willing accomplice was just what Dumbledore had been doing to him, Harry, all along. That moment where he saw the depth of it and knew just how wrong it was but that he had to do it. That scene I found very stirring and it only further built up the one later where Neville actually did against certain death, what he was asked to do. The way Harry was there at the last moment to save him from the result took me back to COS where Harry plunged blindly ahead through Dumbledore’s manipulation and there, at the moment where all was lost DD stepped in (Via the phoenix) to rescue his ‘servant’ from certain death. I think Harry learned a lesson there, with Neville, about what it means to be trusted and the responsibility that comes with it that I am not sure DD every really understood.

That scene I found very stirring and it only further built up the one later where Neville actually did against certain death, what he was asked to do.

Yup. It points out the awesome responsibilities of leadership. There are people who will die trying to do what they're told to do. A leader must ensure that his orders really are worth dying for.

For a counter-example, there have been some recent stories about a new monument at Passchendaele -- a place where tens of thousands died to no good purpose, other than Haig's arrogance. He and his staff didn't even visit the battle area, and certainly didn't know about the hellish conditions under which their soldiers fought and died for no gain.

The way Harry was there at the last moment to save him from the result

I gotta go back and re-read that part.

I'm probably going too far, but the Argentinian writer Borges had a short story which portrayed Judas as the key Christian sacrifice. (I don't think Borges invented this, I think it's an idea that's been played with for centuries.) The idea is that someone has to commit evil, and then be hated by the world forever. It's hard to sign up for that kind of role. But if you love humanity, and if you know that the task of betrayal must be done, then you step up. Snape did it. Borges (for the sake of a story) said that Judas did it as well.

I don't mean to imply that there is any theological validity to this.

Anti-heroes are fascinating.

As you know I wasn’t particularly enamoured of Dumbledore’s plotting before this book and am even less so now. I don’t think he ever did really understand what he asked other people to sacrifice for him because I don’t think he ever outgrew his boyhood arrogance and feeling he knew better than others. Ariana’s death saved him from being the worst he could be, but he never still never got over that desire for power, for leadership, did he?

I think his attitude was like his father’s (extrapolating) “do what I have decided to do, accept the consequences for myself” without ever thinking about what the consequences meant for other people. Like how his father attacked those Muggle boys in revenge and ewnt to Azkaban, probably proud of himself - and left his family alone, his wife with a daughter she couldn’t manage, his sons without a father... Dumbledore did the same thing, didn’t he? It’s most clear when he asks Snape to kill him. He is obviously only thinking of using his own death to the best he can, maximising the good and avoid torture, and not about the fact that he is asking Snape to murder him.