Tumgik
#Snape Meta
superfallingstars · 4 months
Text
snape is such a fun character to make headcanons for because i feel like there’s so many ways you can go with it. like, i’ve seen a lot of people say that snape doesn’t take care of himself, like not eating well or washing his hair (lol), and i think that definitely makes sense considering his martyrdom/guilt complex and being raised in poverty. but i’ve also seen people imagining that snape is like really good at cooking and baking, which makes sense with him being a potions master but also kind of conflicts with the other point of view. i think the happy medium is that snape knows how to cook and bake but wouldn’t take the time to do them for himself, only for other people. however there’s a secret fourth option that i want to know people’s opinions on
i like the idea that snape actually does take care of himself, but he’s just kind of bad at it. like i think he tries to make his hair look decent, but it just gets greasy really fast and he tends not to notice until it’s already in pretty bad shape. and i also kind of like the idea of snape not only cooking and baking for others, but also for himself – not out of any real love or care for himself, but as a way of chasing success and distancing himself from his childhood and from poverty. like i can just picture him at the malfoys trying some fancy hors d’oeuvres and being like, oh, so this is how the other half lives. i want to get good at this. and there’s something wonderfully ironic (and let’s be real, kind of pathetic) about the idea of snape carefully preparing a charcuterie board of expensive delicacies to eat by himself in the dungeons or the drafty old sitting room in spinner’s end.
in this case, his hair and his eating habits are really symptoms of the same problem – he’s trying to run away from his past, but he just keeps failing. he tries to fit in with the upper class and the purebloods, to the point he acts like them even when he’s alone, but there’s always something that betrays him as an outsider, whether it’s his body, his loneliness, or the fact that he still lives in his childhood home. no matter what he does, no matter how hard he tries to escape himself and his memories, he just can’t succeed.
…almost like how even when he’s trying to be a good person, he still has to kill someone he cares about to be one. he’ll never be free of his past, he’ll never be firmly on one side or the other. he’s just kind of doomed.
basically the takeaway here is that any headcanon can be true if you frame it the right way. also we should read way too much into everything forever. ok byeee
433 notes · View notes
iamnmbr3 · 2 months
Text
Tumblr media
I have a lot of feelings about this scene. Because from Harry's POV at this point obviously Snape is the mean bully who's always picked on him for no reason and it's gratifying to see Sirius standing up to him and putting him in his place. And at this point in the story that's kind of what we as readers see too. BUT with the additional knowledge we gain about Snape throughout the rest of the story this hits so different.
Think about Snape, who spent years being tormented and humiliated by Sirius and who has carefully rebuilt himself from that, but who still has all the open wounds and trauma from it lurking just beneath the surface. Think about how he's so used to Sirius hurting and humiliating him that the second Sirius stands it's a reflex to grab his wand. And he's not just holding it. He's balled his fist around it - an obvious sign of stress from someone who usually masks it so well - because this isn't just another duel. This isn't even like facing Voldemort.
No matter that Snape is much older and more capable and more powerful now. When it's Sirius suddenly Snape is 15 again and all those memories and feelings of powerlessness and humiliation come rushing back.
250 notes · View notes
casasupernovas · 7 months
Text
i know legilimency according to snape is not simply mind reading but im gonna say it is, and i wanna talk about it.
we know snape can use this. he uses it on harry when he lies to his face about sectumsepra. i think pottermore also confirms he can do it. there's also a throwaway line from the very first book when harry says he feels like snape can read people's minds.
according to the wikia, snape used it when harry was trying to fight him during the 'flight of the prince' which is why he was able to deflect his spells so easily which is so. damn. COOL.
but remember when i said that when snape is talking to voldemort before he dies, his face is described as a death mask? like he already knows he's going to die? what if he could read voldemort's thoughts?
i feel like voldemort is good enough to deter this.
however.
throughout the entire conversation...snape's eyes are constantly said to be flickering towards nagini the whole time.
360 notes · View notes
giosnape · 9 months
Text
Let's talk about Severus' childhood.
Do you all think Severus went to primary school?
We know from books that children from wizarding families were often educated at home by their parents.
I don't think this is the case for Severus because of his dysfunctional family and I don't belive Eileen was psychologically stable for her son's upbringing (in my headcanon she suffers from depression).
So we would have seen in the second half of the 1960s a little Severus attend the Primary School at Cokeworth❤️
What kind of child would he have been at school?
I imagine him quiet, shy, introverted and studious.
In my heart as a pedagogue, I hope he met teachers who supported him as much as possible, understanding that he had a difficult family situation.
From the beginning, little Severus will have studied and done his homework on his own, without help from anyone, demonstrating from an early age his profound intelligence.
A small but.
What if he attended the same school as Lily, but they were enrolled in two different sections? ❤️
A side note: I hope that in those early years he was not bullied for his unkempt clothing, because the class was from a lower class background and therefore it was normal to meet boys with threadbare clothes.
Tumblr media
367 notes · View notes
Text
Severus started life with nothing, so he thinks that everything needs to be earned.
He earned Lily's friendship by telling her about magic.
He tried to earn his place in the wizarding world by studying hard, inventing new spells, etc.
He earned his place within Hogwarts, and Slytherin doing whatever he needed to do - befriending people like Mulciber - keeping Lupin's secret for Dumbledore.
He earned his place among the Death Eaters by spying, then earned his way back to Dumbledore's trust by defecting.
He earned his forgiveness, and his redemption by doing "anything" Albus asked.
470 notes · View notes
tanginawrites · 1 year
Text
The Marauders didn't stop bullying Snape after the prank. It actually got worse.
A lot of people are surprised to realize that the scene in Snape's Worst Memory happens after the werewolf prank. When first reading OOTP, people generally assumed that SWM showed escalating tension between the Marauders and Snape that up led to the prank. But in DH, we see Snape and Lily talking about the prank before SWM. This means that the Marauders are still singling Snape out and targeting him after prank. Why?
My theory is that the bullying actually got worse after the prank. Because the only way to hold their friend group together was for the Marauders to double down and rally around blaming Snape for what happened.
Think about it: How did that incident not tear them apart? Sirius not only exposed Lupin's secret – he also attempted to use Lupin as a weapon against Snape, and he could have gotten James killed in the process. That's a huge betrayal.
But Sirius isn't mature enough to take responsibility for it. Lupin isn't self-confident enough to confront Sirius about it. "James would-consider-it-the-height-of-dishonor-to-mistrust-his-friends Potter" isn't going to be the one to lay blame on Sirius or break up the group. But it's too big an issue to ignore. The only way they can get over this is to put it all on Snape. It was just a joke, and Snape is an idiot, and James is a hero.
If you compare the two incidents that the books show us of the Marauders bullying Snape, you can see that totally different dynamics are driving the bullying. This shows how and why the bullying got worse after the prank.
The first bullying incident we see is on the Hogwarts Express, when James and Sirius engage in verbal bullying of Snape, with one small attempt at tripping him up as he leaves. This bullying is a form of bonding for James and Sirius and forms the basis of their friend group. This is an example of bullying driven by Peer Group factors (source), and this sort of bullying is generally done to:
to attain or maintain social power or to elevate their status in their peer group.
to show their allegiance to and fit in with their peer group.
to exclude others from their peer group, to show who is and is not part of the group.
What we're seeing here is that the soon-to-be Marauders are in new environment and they're defining their peer group and establishing social hierarchy, trying to establish their status. The Marauders continue in this pattern of Peer Group bullying throughout their school career, as evidenced by the detention records Snape has Harry transcribe in HBP. The Marauders seem to have thrown out hexes in a scattershot way to establish superiority over other students and look cool. This casual, incidental sort of bullying is likely what Snape experienced for the first several years of school.
But what we see in SWM isn't bullying to maintain Peer Group dynamics. This bullying isn't just flinging a single insult or a clever hex. James and Sirius hunt Snape, they deprive him of his wand and ability to escape the situation, and they repeatedly hex him until Lily (temporarily) stops them. This incident is extremely personal. This is an example of bullying driven by Emotional factors, and this type of bullying is done when the bullies:
have feelings of insecurity and low self-esteem, so they bully to make themselves feel more powerful.
don’t know how to control their emotions, so they take out their feelings on other people.
may not have skills for handling social situations in healthy, positive ways.
What we're seeing here is all the fraying edges of the Marauders' friendship. Sirius has just damaged their group, but he can't apologize or address it without accepting blame, so he has to take his emotions out on Snape. Punishing Snape is a way to exorcise his guilt. And it's actually imperative that he bully Snape into silence, because he is the one who has revealed Lupin's secret to Snape and put them all in jeopardy. Lupin can't confront Sirius about the betrayal of trust, and likewise he can't confront his friends here. Not only does Lupin not have the emotional security for handling this situation, he also can't risk putting himself in front of Snape in this moment, lest Snape scream "Werewolf" instead of "Mudblood." James is here trying to work through his own insecurities – in bullying Snape he is defending his friends, but James is also trying to get Lily's attention. James offers to change his ways if she'll give him a chance, because James needs to reassure himself that he is chivalrous, that he is a hero.
Looking at the way the bullying dynamics change and escalate in those two scenes, I think it’s clear that Lupin’s line, “Snape was a special case. I mean, he never lost an opportunity to curse James so you couldn't really expect James to take that lying down,” is an understatement.
Snape was a special case because he knew Lupin’s secret, which would always make him a potential threat. The Marauders would always take any opportunity they could to reinforce that Snape was powerless to do anything to them. And they’d continue to take out all their emotions about the prank on Snape rather than confronting each other.
429 notes · View notes
sctumsempra · 1 month
Text
going insane and i need to infodump about severus snape’s patronus being a doe for a second. i personally don’t think it changed, or lily necessarily influenced it- i think it’s always been a doe, casting the charm in dumbledore’s office was meant to show that he and lily were supposed to be viscerally aligned with each other and he knows he fucked it up and that’s why he’s spent almost two decades trying to atone for what he did. on a representative level, the doe symbolizes peace, protection, and innocence, and no three words could possibly represent severus snape more.
all he wants is peace: a peaceful life for himself, a peaceful world, a peaceful school. everything he’s ever done has been to create as much peace as possible. some of it can be considered misguided from a black and white moral standpoint, but it’s what created peace for himself. for example, aligning himself with the purist views of his housemates made him less of a target for bullying- he’s not a pure blood, and they’d know, and having powerful ambitious students on your side instead of alienating yourself from everyone means you have at least a semblance of protection from harm some of the time. he becomes a double agent for dumbledore to help bring about peace from voldemort’s reign. it might not have been peaceful for him per se, but it was still with the intention of peace in some form. he tries to give other people peace- he takes a vow with narcissa to protect her son because she’s crying and scared for him, and it gives her peace. he doesn’t throw draco under the bus to save his skin when voldemort accuses him of being the elder wands owner, giving draco and narcissa peace even if they weren’t aware. it’s either for himself, or for others.
he’s the most protective teacher at the school- would mcgonagall have thrown herself in front of three kids facing a wolfsbane-less werewolf? would flitwick take the burden of an unbreakable vow to protect draco malfoy from voldemort? would any of the DADA teachers have run towards the sound of a screaming woman? he consistently vows to protect everyone and everything he can. and, leading into his innocence, when he realizes he’s only been protecting harry for him to die, it breaks him.
he’s not necessarily innocent in that his hands are clean and he’s never done anything wrong in his life, but he’s innocent in that he’s naive. he trusted voldemort enough to be drawn into the death eaters, he trusted dumbledore enough to be manipulated into his bidding. it feels like he forgets that dumbledore screws him over constantly, dangles things in front of him and takes them away, makes crude assumptions, and has left him to fend for himself essentially their entire relationship. the times that dumbledore abandons him- physically, mentally, metaphorically- he gets very upset. like it’s new information to him that dumbledore treats him like shit. from an abuse perspective, he probably had to spend his childhood mentally erasing what his parents and home were like so he could feel safe and normal, so the constant ebb and flow/back and forth of his and dumbledore’s relationship is familiar to him. when dumbledore draws him back in with whatever method, he’s right back to behaving as dumbledore wants, doing what dumbledore wants, and believing what dumbledore believes. the times that he remembers that dumbledore doesn’t care that he let the guy who’s tried to kill him or assault go, or that dumbledore thinks he wants only lily saved because he desires her romantically or sexually, or that dumbledore has only been using harry and, by extension, him (as he’s been the one protecting harry) to play the long game of destroying voldemort are the times that he’s emotional in the books. he cries, he’s vulnerable, he raises his voice, he begs and he pleads and he defers. he doesn’t do that any other time, other than when he found harry watching his memories. he trusts and he forgives (or he forgets, or he feels safer pretending he doesn’t care what’s been done to him/how he’s been treated.) a doe is perfect for him. reducing it to something like tonk’s patronus being changed as soon as she’s in a relationship with lupin or that it’s only a doe because of lily evans completely erases his entire way of thinking and behaving and being.
also, in a self indulgent addendum, it’s a very feminine animal, and severus is consistently aligned with femininity. hermione calls the half-blood prince’s writing feminine. he wears his mother’s clothes as a child, and lupin encourages neville to dress his boggart as his grandmother. he’s quiet and docile and tries to be non-violent unless he’s pushed to his breaking point, and even then it’s screaming or crying or getting animated. he’s emotional and frequently painted as hysterical. he gets the “woman character treatment”: to the average viewer who doesn’t think about him long enough to understand otherwise, he only desires lily. the consensus is that he chases her, he only thinks about her in the context of attraction. the line about looking at her greedily is constantly understood to be lust, and not a desire for love or a desire for a peaceful relationship for once in his life (and a relationship that only ever seems to be platonic at that). he even backs off and all but disappears from her life when he’s asked to, while james (the one with the stag patronus, the classic triumphant male character) harasses her and pursues her and behaves in a way that makes his son decades later wonder if he forced lily into a relationship. he’s behaviorally aligned with what femininity in the eyes of misogyny is supposed to be. he keeps to himself, he’s quiet, he sacrifices every bit of himself for students and coworkers and superiors and expects nothing in return, he pushes his students to be the best they can. (i’d say nurtures with my whole chest, but as the narrative comes from harry, we can’t really be sure. in my view, his house won the house cup for several years in a row which was only interrupted by dumbledore awarding a fuck ton of points to his gryffindor prize pony, his classes are seen as high performing and advanced by even dolores umbridge of all people, he only tries to punish students albeit a bit violently after several attempts of getting them to understand why what they did was wrong, which seems to be pretty nurturing in comparison to what other teachers allow and do). whether he’s trans, or had been influenced more by eileen, or he was intended to be deeply complex and contradictory and that meant that he had to have these traits, or any other of the multitude of reasons for snape being an inherently feminine character, it’s there. his patronus wouldn’t be a stag, he wouldn’t be anything overbearing and he wouldn’t be anything aggressive. it doesn’t make sense with his soul and his personality and his life. the peaceful protective innocent/naive doe, however, does.
79 notes · View notes
shealynn88 · 8 months
Text
I love a soft, deeply wounded but basically good Severus Snape. But I also like the idea of him just truly being awful. Down to his bones, angry and lashing out and taking his pain out on innocent people, and then, also, contributing to saving the world. The thing about ‘evil’ is…it’s complicated and human. It’s short sighted. It’s not one thing, it’s not a whole person. It’s choices, little ones that add up. Goodness isn’t a single thing, either. Cruel people can do a right thing, or fight on the right side, and still be awful. The world is crazy like that. People are complex.
217 notes · View notes
shakespearean-snape · 8 months
Note
I’m rereading OOTP right now and I find that scene between Severus and Sirius in the kitchen to be highly relevant in the context of Severus as a feminine-coded character (and Sirius as a representation of toxic masculinity). Sirius is very outwardly aggressive in this scene in a conventionally masculine way, while Severus weaponizes his sarcasm and wit in a way that could be thought of as a more “feminine” form of defence. While Harry describes Sirius’s voice as getting progressively louder and angrier, he describes Severus’s voice as “soft” in contrast (as he usually does, which is also interesting in the context of Severus as a feminine man/GNC character). Sirius gets up and tries to intimidate Severus physically, and Severus grips his wand inside his pocket in a way that reminded me of a victim of domestic violence preparing to defend herself against her abuser.
I’m not sure how much of this was intentional considering how rigid JKR’s views on gender have unfortunately turned out to be, but I can’t help but read Severus as a feminine character, especially since he’s meant to act as a stand in for Lily in the same way as Sirius acts as a stand in for James. It’s very easy to read Sev as gender non conforming and/or LGBTQ, although given JKR’s own views it’s doubtful she meant for us to read him that way (but fuck her, she’s a massive transphobe, the characters are ours now, we can do what we like with them).
Note to self, start checking your inbox regularly. These changes to Tumblr are killing me because the notifications when I get messages or asks are hit-or-miss at best.
Anyways, this is such a great observation! I'm only just learning about coding and that that is even the term for it from reading about it from other Snape bloggers like @idealistic-realism00, @raptured-night, and @professormcguire since I only took the required English courses both my undergraduate years and beyond that my major was in sociology.
So, I'm not really any kind of expert but I do have a lot of personal experience from being biracial and queer myself just with learning to read between the lines and find representation for myself where I can and I think that is the case for a lot of people from less represented, marginalized backgrounds. We have a certain instinct for these things so even without any kind of formal study we sort of know the "codes" (for better or worse depending on what the author's intent is and if it's a negative dog-whistle or something more positive to get around censorships of the time) if that makes any kind of sense.
For me, I always saw Sirius and Snape as two sides of a coin. There were some very obvious parallels and contrasts between them and this really goes to that in a lot of ways for me. Both Sirius and Snape are two men who made pivotal choices in their youths that very much define them and have led to a great deal of internalized guilt and impacted their behaviors as adults. Both Sirius and Snape find themselves confined to their childhood homes at different points, Sirius at Grimmauld Place with Kreacher and Snape at Spinner's End with Peter Pettigrew (both Kreacher and Peter are characters that also are known for betraying Harry and costing him someone he loves at different points and making a turn around in regards to Harry because of kindness or mercy he showed to them).
Where Sirius made the choice to make Peter the Secret Keeper with only James, Lily, and Peter knowing and it ultimately led to the death of the Potters and him being sentenced to twelve years in Azkaban, Snape also unwittingly delivered part of the fated prophecy that led to Voldemort targeting the Potters. Most interesting for me is that Snape's friendship with Lily and Sirius's friendship with James could be read as either platonic or a case of unrequited romantic feelings. There is the observation in SWM made by Harry that while Sirius was clearly a looker who attracted the attention of girls, his attention was fully on James and not on those admiring glances. So, when looking at Sirius's relationship with James through a comparative lens to Snape's with Lily they could be platonic friends or both Sirius and Snape could have had romantic feelings for their best friends while, ironically enough, Sirius had to watch James fall for and succeed in winning over Lily just as Snape had to do the same.
In the case of Snape and Sirius there is also a degree of regression and arrested development stemming from trauma (and both men at different points make the clear mistake of seeing Harry as a stand-in for James as a result of said trauma). Where Sirius spent twelve years in Azkaban able to hold onto his sanity against the Dementors in part because he knew he was innocent and the truth of what happened was a deeply unhappy thing for him, Snape spent decades in Dumbledore's service at Hogwarts (a place with its own unhappy associations for him having found it was not a refuge from life at Spinner's End with Tobias as he had hoped but another place where he would be bullied relentlessly, overlooked by his Head of House and housemates for being a poor half-blood with no status, subject to institutional failures resulting from yet more adult authority figures in his life not protecting him, groomed by Voldemort's followers and responsible for alienating his closest friend as a result) teaching children when clearly he does not have the temperament and, courtesy of his role as a spy, concealing his own truths and intentionally not allowing people to know the best of him. In a sense, both men had a negative public image that ran counter to the full truth about them and both of them died without being able to see those misconceptions vindicated (Sirius died still presumed by the Ministry and general public to have been the traitor who turned his friends over to Voldemort and murdered innocent people and Snape died knowing he had delivered information to Harry that would lead to his death and unsure of the outcome of the war with everyone thinking him a coward and murderer).
There's just, a LOT of parallels there between the two when you start to unpack them as characters. Even the fact that they both came from domestic dysfunction and unhappy home lives. It makes their mutual antagonism all the more of a tragedy because if not for Sirius's prejudice (which is arguably more understandable given his family and their long tradition of being sorted into Slytherin) against Slytherins and antagonism of young Snape on the train and the years of bullying and bad blood that followed, these two men had the most potential to understand each other. Alas, they do not, but it is their likenesses that makes their differences in how they clash all the more interesting because, as you noted, there are stark differences there. Sirius is all overt masculine energy; hot-headed and physically imposing while Snape is more strained, the ice to his fire.
Most striking to me was always the difference in how little respect Sirius showed to Snape's body while he was unconscious (further demonstrating how little Sirius has changed from the teenage boy who once stood with James and exposed Snape to laughing schoolmates) versus how Snape conjured a stretcher while still under the impression he was the one responsible for betraying the Potters (and the death of Lily). In that way, we get to see how Snape has developed as a person away from his past choices and learned from them. He may still regress, as he does quite plainly when forced to return to the Shrieking Shack and is confronted by Sirius and Remus there, but he isn't quite in the full state of arrested development as Sirius (but given his circumstances in Azkaban that isn't entirely surprising either; there is a tragedy to Sirius's character for all that there is as much of a darkness as there was in Snape during his time as a Death Eater and the fact so many Marauder apologists who double as "Snaters" refuse to acknowledge that outside of romanticizing the angst of it all while vilifying Snape is quite possibly an even greater tragedy, imo) which is why Sirius's death came in part due to his inability to move beyond his past and find it within himself to treat Kreacher with a modicum of understanding or empathy (in addition to his desire to be part of the action again and recapture his lost youth when it was him and James in the Order together) while Snape's death came only after he had to reconcile with the fact his original raison d'être for becoming a spy (to protect Harry for Lily as penance) ran counter to what was needed to defeat Voldemort for good and he still chose to stay the course instead of pursue his own agenda and act on his own self-interests.
In short, Sirius's death was partly due to the fact he couldn't move beyond the past. While Snape's death came as a result of the fact he had grown enough as a character to set aside his past motivations and see things through because he had become someone who conjured stretchers even for hated enemies and risked his life to save all those who he could save (including Sirius and Remus).
Thanks for the ask and I'm so sorry it took so long to respond but it gave me even more to think about. The masculine vs. feminine coding just adds an extra element to Snape and Sirius's dynamic when it was already interesting to me and I've always had a lot of thoughts about how those two were written with so many parallels and points of contrast. Love this ask!
135 notes · View notes
pet-genius · 1 year
Text
Why stay in Spinner's End?
From a story-telling perspective, adult!Snape stayed in his miserable childhood home so that we would a chance to see it as the story unfolded in real time. But in-universe, it calls for an explanation. Maybe the place had fond associations, or maybe Snape just didn't see the point of buying a house he would need for two months out of the year, but neither of these feel very satisfying. Maybe it had to do with the vital need to seem credible? He had to pass himself off as someone who didn't grow from the social climber he had been, someone who would stay in Dumbledore's pocket for self-serving reasons when he never truly reformed. You can really only pretend to be one status-level above your "real" one, or the consequences can be dire in terms of personal credibility and respectability, and Snape had already skipped several steps in the ladder, in people's eyes, becoming a Hogwarts teacher at the ripe old age of 21, and enjoying Dumbledore's support. Sirius, for one, and McGonagall, and probably many others, struggled to understand it - but staying in Spinner's End might have been a way to signal to the Death Eaters that he had a pressing need to take whatever he was offered because look where he came from.
Or... it signaled to the rest of the world that he was not a Muggle hater because he stayed in his shabby Muggle house? That he wasn't just looking out for himself, because why stay there if he was?
Or maybe he was just antisocial, and knew people wouldn't be too keen to visit him there?
228 notes · View notes
st-severus · 2 months
Text
no one asked but that post about severus snape’s gothic fiction precursors might be one of fave metas actually
37 notes · View notes
hamliet · 7 months
Note
So, Harry Potter ask here:
This one might sound a bit controversial to comment on, I hope it doesn't bother you. What is your opinion about the narrative redeeming Snape, a former Death Eater (the blood supremacists guys), just because of his guilt and love for Harry’s mother. I see a lot of discussions on this topic (Snape himself is already a controversial character, so I guess it's no surprise there are so many discussions around him), remembering you I got curious to know what your thoughts on this subject.
No worries!
I see Snape as a character who is far and away the most complex character of Harry Potter. Now, HP's a fairy tale in principle, so most of its characters are not overly complex. But Snape is (and so is Dumbledore). But I think some people can have trouble processing complex characters inside fairly straightfoward, simple stories, which isn't necessarily the fault of the story.
While She Who Must Not Be Named has had a lot of "..." takes to her own works (and horrid takes elsewise), I do think she's not wrong about her statement on Snape: that he was a hero, and he was a bully, both at the same time. He just was. There's no excusing his treatment of his students. His heroism and sacrifice without any guarantee that he would be remembered as anything other than a traitor was brave.
So, not only is Snape complex, but he embodies the old adage "hurting people hurt people." His childhood is also extremely hard to read about--it sounds agonizing. Snape does grow up to bully others because he was himself bullied horribly--not just by his peers, but at home, where his father abused both him and his mother.
Another potential stumbling block for Snape's "redemption" is that it gets to the heart of what a redemption is. Is it actually a change in character? Or is it a change in how the reader perceives the character? Because technically, in universe, Snape's been redeemed since before Harry was born. It's just that our reactions to him change after the reveal in the last book. And, he was still hurting people while being a hero. (Antihero?) So, how should we feel about him?
I'm going to say that's exactly the question we're supposed to be asking, actually.
And to determine what asking that question gets us, let's look at Snape as a foil to other characters. Snape is a very good foil for Dumbledore, Harry, and Voldemort. Actually, these four all foil each other quite a bit, and it's in their foilings that we come to an understanding of the story's themes.
Like Dumbledore, Snape is somewhat morally gray. We're meant to ask the complicated questions at the end of the last book, which was all about wrestling with the legacy of heroes who turned out to be very flawed. Snape is cruel to Harry, but is ultimately determined to keep him alive no matter what because that is what Lily would have wanted. Dumbledore is loving and a good mentor to Harry, but does all of this while knowing that Harry would have to die in the end. Snape even calls Dumbledore out on this. Dumbledore also allows Harry to stay in two abusive situations--the Dursleys and Snape--for the ultimate benefit of protecting him... so he can eventually sacrifice himself.
If someone is horrible to you but ultimately determined to keep you alive no matter what, are they a worse person to you than someone who is nice to you and believes you must die, even if they are devastated by this?
This is why I really roll my eyes at people not understanding the purpose of "Albus Severus Potter" at the end. It's so dismissed and derided, but it's narratively perfect. (Especially in! A! Fairy tale!)
The names aren't about Harry and how he feels about these men. They are names that are significant symbolically for showing how Harry has reconciled these two complicated legacies, and will keep reconciling with them because their legacies are literally alive and living on (and the weight of having legacies and the question of whether you're seen as yourself is exactly what The Cursed Child explores.)
In the end, both Snape and Dumbledore achieved their goals: Harry is alive, and he died to vanquish Voldemort. All is well. Their legacies live on in a literal new life, who gets to decide for himself what his own legacy will be in TCC. Meaning, even if Harry acknowledges their flaws, he chooses to appreciate their lives. Instead of being kept in the dark, ignorant about his endgame and ignorant of his mother's history, he sees, and he gets to determine how he feels about it all. It's empowerment, not capitulation. It's maturity, embodying the macrocosm (appreciating the big picture) in the microcosm (a single person). (Also, yes, Dumbledore's "the greater good" struggles with Gindelwald tie into this idea, wherein via Snape and Dumbledore's opposite approaches/reasoning to protecting Harry, we see that the greater good vs the individual is not necessarily a dichotomy after all. So having a character literally embody both in the end is--perfect.)
Snape, Harry, and Voldemort all grew up unloved. The difference is that Harry is able to find himself surrounded by loving friends at a point. Snape is able to find one person to love. Tom Riddle isn't able to find anyone, and hence he becomes Voldemort. That shred of love inside Snape saves not just himself spiritually, but Harry physically. Because love is like that. It's the most powerful magic, after all.
As for the whole idea of showing Snape as redeemable thanks to love--I mean, listen, as someone raised in a cult, people need to realize that people inside these cults--even extremist, evil ones--need someone or something to motivate them to leave. They were a person before their joined the cult (unless you were brought up in it) and they're still a person. Giving someone ties to the outside is exactly how most of them will come to realize they have options. No, not everyone has to forgive them or be willing to extend a hand. We can't be everything to everyone. But if someone can, that doesn't mean they're excusing the inexcusable. They're just recognizing the humanity inside them. And even if no one does, the person in the cult can decide to love someone and leave. It's hopeful. It's a fairy tale, and love wins.
88 notes · View notes
iamnmbr3 · 2 months
Text
Tumblr media
The Occlumency scenes are so interesting but also so painful because you can see so clearly from the outside the tragedy unfolding. You can see how these characters talk past each other and don't understand each other at all. And you can see WHY. But you can also imagine them actually reaching some understanding. They come close in a way, but just miss it. And it hurts.
Like here. Snape actually does acknowledge Harry's progress and compliment him (even if grudgingly). But Harry doesn't hear it because of all his past experiences with Snape and all the enmity that exists between them and because as far as Harry knows Snape is one of the people - like the Dursleys - who mistreat him for no reason and enjoy tormenting him for the crime of existing. Thus he's predisposed to take anything Snape says as an attack and responds angrily.
This type of hostility of course confirms Snape's own biases and shows him that Harry is as unreasonable, self centered, unwilling to accept any correction or help, and disrespectful as he wants to believe any child of James's would be. And so Snape in his turn responds with hostility. And the cycle continues in this way as their relationship deteriorates still further over the course of the lessons.
They both fundamentally do not understand the other and are also unable to put aside their feelings of dislike. Even when Snape tries to motivate Harry he does it poorly, in a way that is not well received, because he does not understand (or at least cannot acknowledge) what Harry actually needs to motivate him or what kind of a person he is. Harry for his part sees Snape as just one more enemy who has taken an unfair dislike to him and is using his power to make him miserable - the kind of person who dominated his whole life before Hogwarts.
And I think part of this can be traced back to the fact that no one has ever told Harry differently. No one has ever told him anything about why Snape really dislikes James. And it's not mere ignorance. Since book 1 he has received information that actively distorts and obscures the truth.
59 notes · View notes
casasupernovas · 7 months
Text
so...snape fans have speculated where cokeworth is located in the england map or what it's equivalence would be. i've seen people speculate it's probably up north perhaps. maybe snape's a northerner.
however.
it's been stated multiple times that cokeworth is in the midlands. so we're thinking northampton, shropshire, stoke, birmingham.
but i prefer to think it's in the black country. mainly for these reasons:
1. cokeworth is an industrial town, even if spinner's end seems mainly abandoned, and the black country was the birth of the industrial revolution.
2. the black country was known for steelworks, glassworks and cokeworks which is maybe where the town got its title from.
3. the black country suffered from high unemployment due to the closing down of a lot of industrial sites in the 60s and 70s which ties into the idea of spinner's end being practically desolate now, and also the strain on the snape's household's economic position.
4. petunia met vernon dursley and marries him. his job was being the director of a firm that made drills. which are made of steel. steelworks anyone?
5. which leads to my last and favourite theory; petunia marrying vernon who perhaps also came from the black country then decided to name their child after something close to home. a nearby town perhaps - dudley.
338 notes · View notes
giosnape · 9 months
Text
Tumblr media
I find this statement by Dumbledore to be full of prejudice and sheer obtuseness.
This is something that happens often on the part of the decent body and I find it unacceptable to say the least.
To be a professor, apart from instilling knowledge (and hopefully) sparking the spark and passion of knowledge in young minds, is to be a virtuous example.
(I am reminded of when Minerva locked the Slytherins in the dungeon during the final battle at Hogwarts 😖).
In this case, Dumbledore's statement in the GOF is bleak.
According to the Hogwarts Headmaster being sorted into the Slytherins means you don't have to be brave and dutiful.
For what reason?
Why does one have to be so sectional and prejudiced?
According to this reasoning if you are a Slytherin you are directly considered a Dark Wizard with no positive aspects so the blame automatically falls on the Sorting.
Severus should not be a Slytherin because he is an intelligent, capable, brave and loyal wizard.
He's in the right place because we need to clear this bullshit view.
Severus is a great and important member of the House of Slytherin 💚
260 notes · View notes
expectopatronum81 · 4 months
Text
Unpopular opinion thts gonna get me cancelled
At least according to the side I've seen, most, if not the entire snape fandom and even some of the marauders fandom believe that snape's vulnerability was taken advantage of by his fellow slytherins and tht he was brainwashed and manipulated into believing in voldemort's pureblood ideology and joining the death eaters. While this would have no doubt made for an interesting story, we actually have zero canonical evidence that this ever happened
We have no evidence to suggest that the slytherins were trying to recruit kids to become DEs in the first place. If he was indeed radicalized, wouldn't tht be an important thing to mention in his own memories? We don't see a single scene pointing towards that. The most we get is lucius patting snape on the back when he gets sorted, but consider this. Lucius had a prefect badge, so he was already in his 5/6th yr at hogwarts. What could he do in lyk 3yrs? And y on earth wud he care abt some random 11y/o kid? Again, there's a lot of room for creativity and interpretation here, but that doesn't make it canon. I personally always took that as lily and snape's separation, and the plot metaphorically pointing towards where they'll eventually land up: lily with the marauders and snape with the DEs. The rest of the prince's tale is snape making bad choices, but we still don't see a single scene of anyone trying to convince him of anything
Which leads me to believe that no one tried to, or even had to brainwash or manipulate him of anything, he got inflamed by their ideas on his own. He came from an abusive home and was bullied in school, he felt powerless all around. So when he saw what the DEs represented, power and honor and establishing a new order that placed them at the top, he wanted to be a part of it. In hbp when the trio r discussing the prince's book, they bring up an interesting point.
“If he’d been a budding Death Eater he wouldn’t have been boasting about being ‘half-blood,’ would he?”
“The Death Eaters can’t all be pure-blood, there aren’t enough pure-blood wizards left,” said Hermione stubbornly. “I expect most of them are half-bloods pretending to be pure. It’s only Muggleborns they hate...."
This is probably what snape tried to do. Voldemort talks about shedding his 'filthy muggle father's name and embracing his ancestry', so its possible that snape was enamored by this and wanted to do the same. He already hated muggles, presumably because of his abusive muggle dad (apparently snape never saw any other muggles in his entire life upto tht point to convince him that killing them wasn't cool), and he tried to use lupin's vulnerability against him by trying to expose him as a werewolf in a society that persecuted them to try and get the marauders expelled (yes sirius sent snape to the whomping willow but his bad intentions do not automatically erase the fact that snape was also in the wrong here), so it seems lyk he didn't even need convincing, he was right up their alley already
Even the author's comments validate this interpretation:
Tumblr media Tumblr media
Ofc, I don't mean to say that other interpretations are wrong or aren't fun to dive into and explore, I just think this one has more canonical evidence and aligns more with how snape was written in the original books
43 notes · View notes