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Heyo, I'm a snape supporter but I think I missed part of the book? I saw some quotes from anti-Snapers talking about the time he intercepted mail from Lily to Black, took the letter, ripped the photo of Lily and her family and only kept the part of Lily in it. Thoughts on the context and thoughts in general?

Deathly Hallows, Chapter 33: The Prince’s Tale

“And next, Snape was kneeling in Sirius’ old bedroom. Tears were dripping from the end of his hooked nose as he read the old letter from Lily. The second page carried only a few words: ”…could ever have been friends with Gellert Grindelwald. I think her mind’s going, personally! Lots of love, Lily.“ Snape took the page bearing Lily’s signature, and her love, and tucked it inside his robes. Then he ripped in two the photograph he was also holding, so that he kept the part from which Lily laughed, throwing the portion showing James and Harry back onto the floor, under the chest of drawers….”

——Whilst I do remember the scene happening, I don’t remember reading that Severus was crying during it.At the end of the day, it’s one of those scenes that people will take depending on their original opinion of Snape.

Anti’s will always only see Severus being creepy, being entitled to a woman who was married to his enemy, stealing something that didn’t belong to him (as the letter was to Sirius), and above all, leaving behind the portion of James and Harry on the floor as some sort of metaphor to his animosity towards the two.

But I don’t care about the anti’s. I’ve zeroed in on two things:

1. He’s crying.Severus Snape, a man who was best known for how stoic and angry he could be, has let his guard down. It’s a moment of intense vulnerability for him - imagine what would happen if someone walked in on him. I never saw it as creepy or entitled. His best friend is dead and this is the closest he has to seeing her handwriting, her affection, her laughter again and it doesn’t belong to him, but he doesn’t care, he doesn’t fucking care because it hurts so much and he’s clearly still grieving that he cannot stop the tears from forming. 

And not a single tear, but “dripping off his nose” is literally a step away from full on sobbing as he sees the face of the only person he really cared about/cared about him. It’s emotional, it’s vulnerable, it’s heartbreaking. It’s probably the last photo of Lily ever taken, the oldest she ever got to to be.

2. “Sirius’ room.”This is something I definitely didn’t notice the first time I read the passage. I had assumed Severus had taken these items shortly after Lily’s death when he was still immediately grieving. But Sirius’ room was in Grimmauld Place, a safehouse no one had access to until after Black escaped Azkaban - and there’s absolutely no way for Snape to have access to the place (let alone Sirius’ room) until after the events of OOTP.

The man never stopped grieving.Or more accurately, never learned how to grieve.

It’s obvious Severus never got over Lily’s death (as that’s his entire plight in the series), but this scene especially, makes me realize that he never knew how to deal with it. The wounds never stopped hurting not because he was obsessed, but they never stopped hurting because no one ever taught him how to take care of himself, how to accept it, how to make peace and move forward instead of just living out of spite.

It’s sad.

He’s sad.

He’s desperate for anything to make him feel remotely like Lily made him feel - my guess, is alive - that he’s willing to search Sirius’ room for it. If someone else had just taken a chance on him - really taken a chance on him (side note, this is why I really love Mentor!Snape/Severitus’ because Harry is such a kind-hearted soul who loves wholly and forgives fully, and Snape is already dedicated to keeping Harry safe, that I truly believe Harry would be such a good person for Severus to have in his life) he could have built up a life with reasons, people, things to live for, and not just a mission that kept him a step away from suicide on his worst days and numb on his best days.

That scene is Severus at his most raw, emotional, and vulnerable. It’s a scene/a side of Severus we’re not supposed to see. And it’s such a human moment, that I don’t understand how someone can read this scene and think, “What a fucking obsessive creep.” But like, some people just lack sympathy and human understanding, so whatever.

On another note, while this would have had to happened after the Order of the Phoenix was started again, it would have to be before Deathly Hallows since Moody warded the house against Snape after Dumbledore’s death. My best guess is after Sirius died (there’s no way he would let Severus wander alone) and probably after the designated place was changed to the Weasley’s, but imagine if he had just snuck away upstairs while everyone was having dinner and Molly went upstairs to round up her kids and stumbled across this.

Imagine Molly Weasley, who can’t help but fuss over everyone who clearly needs a mom, walking into Severus curled up on the floor, sobbing over a photograph.

If your still doing snape asks

50 35 41 40 🕺

thank you for the ask, anon!

35. do you have a snape brotp?

snape and lucius malfoy.

i don’t subscribe to all the fanon which surrounds these two (i don’t - for example - accept the headcanon that snape is draco’s godfather) but i see no reason why we should doubt that narcissa’s description of snape as ‘lucius’ old friend’ is sincere.

something i see a lot - especially from writers whose interest is in the characters aligned with the order - is the idea that the death eaters are all out for themselves and (outside of some fanatical outliers, such as bellatrix) that they have no genuine loyalty either to voldemort or to each other.

not so, i fear. i really dislike the idea that the death eaters all turn on each other after voldemort’s death (i prefer to think that they frustrate the shacklebolt government profoundly by refusing to talk) and i really dislike the idea that they didn’t have profound, real friendships among themselves.

it’s obvious in canon that becoming a death eater offered snape a community he truly felt welcomed by for the first time (and i think it speaks highly of him that he was nonetheless prepared to lose that when he turned against voldemort) and, part of that, is that i think it’s important to believe that his friendship with lucius was real.

after all, he’s upset when harry names him as having been present at voldemort’s resurrection in goblet of fire…

40. other than lily, who do you think impacted snape's life the most?

lord voldemort.

i don’t just mean in that voldemort’s decision to go after lily is the trigger for snape upending his entire life, but also that voldemort is evidently the first person snape ever meets who takes him seriously. it’s clear from canon that voldemort is the only person the teenage snape knows who takes and active interest in improving his life - snape must become a death eater because voldemort offers him a chance to transcend the restrictive class structure which rips opportunities away from poor half-bloods unless they have a slughorn-esque patron, and also because voldemort understands and validates snape’s attitude towards and interest in magic and experimentation [and, indeed, that he shares this].

voldemort is obviously fond of snape (he must recognise so much of himself in him -feral working-class children with muggle names and disappointing dads need to stick together, after all) and he appears to have offered him intensive training - in the dark arts, obviously, but given that voldemort describes himself in goblet of fire as someone who dabbles with inventing potions, why not that discipline too - which the adult snape makes use of throughout his teaching career.

plus - the adult snape clearly models how he speaks and comports himself (so, all the things about his demeanour which we most enjoy) on voldemort.

[seriously, they have near-identical speech patterns, they get a lot of the same movement and dialogue descriptors, which is cute.]

41. do you think that there is a side to snape that he doesn't let anyone see? what do you headcanon this "secret personality" to be like?

my hottest take?

what you see with snape is - generally - what you get.

i really dislike the preternaturally emotionally repressed snape of fanon (and of the films - as i’ve written elsewhere, i think alan rickman played the character terribly…). the canonical snape is emotionally expressive, disinclined to pretend he likes or agrees with things he doesn’t, and someone whose feelings can often be read on his face. he keeps some things bottled up - of course - but i don’t think that, for example, his romantic partner is going to discover that he has a secret soft side (or, indeed, a secret capacity to be utterly horrible) which would sound completely, incomprehensibly out of character to anyone else they mentioned it to.

50. had snape lived, would he continue teaching at hogwarts?

ok so my other hot take… yes.

the standard wisdom in the fandom seems to be that snape loathes teaching, that he only stays in the job because he is compelled to by dumbledore as part of his spy duties, and that he feels imprisoned by hogwarts. and, obviously, the fact that he’s someone whose adult life is so relentlessly miserable in all other aspects supports the idea that he’d be miserable because of his professional circumstances too.

but…

the idea that snape hates teaching seems, to me, to stem from a misunderstanding about the narrative purpose he serves as a teacher in the series. because, while he’s certainly a cruel teacher - in keeping with his children’s literature archetype, the mean schoolmaster that the child reader can delight in seeing undermined - he’s also a good and committed one. his classes achieve extremely high results (he is able to insist on a pass rate from every pupil; he can fill his newt classes to capacity without having to lower his grade requirements), he is interested in improving the standard curriculum by modifying the potions he teachers, he clearly does take care to lead his classes through the theory of the subject (harry and ron just don’t listen to him), and he seems to take pride in his job (he’s pissed off when lockhart tries to muscle in on his turf, he delights in lording his professional expertise over umbridge).

all of which is to say… he’s back to sweeping around that dungeon the second the venom’s out of his bloodstream. slughorn’s delighted - he can retire for a second time and try and get a pineapple endorsement deal on the strength of having fought in the battle of hogwarts.

I just realized why Snape was so crazy in the Shrieking Shack, third book

He thought Sirius was the reason Lily died.

Snape has always appeared collected that far in the series and it always struck me as odd that he has such a huge and bloodthirsty reaction and then calmed down towards Sirius in OOTP.

Has everyone already known this?

Couldn't Snape be ambidextrous?

That’s very possible! Maybe ambidextrous with a preference for his right hand? Because seeing him use his right hand twice in situations where he needs fine motor skills (and I think especially in crisis mode when he is healing Dumbledore) to me indicates at least a slight preference for his right.

How DARE Snape take away Lupin's chance to teach children about werewolves- about HIMSELF and make the kids write an essay on how to KILL HIM. Like imagine Remus coming back to his office after the full moon and being greeted with a stack of papers to mark on how to kill him. And people still call Snape the hero of slytherin.