If Your Still Doing Snape Asks

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.

This blog aims at reblogging Severus Snape-related meta posts. It's not here for discussion, debate, etc with the blog owner; it just seems like a convenient way to save those posts all in one place. Feel free to send post suggestions; some may or may not already be in the queue but i can't hurt! More discussion can be found in the replies and reblogs of a specific post, so check out the notes as well if yo'ure interested.

The goal is not to reblog art, though some might be reblogged if it's accompanied by meta. Ship-related meta may crop up at some point, but it's not the specific focus of this blog. No specific ships are endorsed or rejected.

JKR, however, is definitely not endorsed.

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Thank you for a wonderful meta. And the link. I think you come of as being dismissive of both racism and the intersection between racism and pure classism. Or I'm British and I don't agree with that. But I am grateful for the discussion and answer.

I apologise if you feel that I was dismissive of racism.  Having gone back and read your ask again, I hold my hands up - you stated that Snape has privilege based upon his ethnicity and sex, and not (as I read) that he was privileged because of this.  The difference is subtle, but it’s there - and I apologise because your point is fair.

To clarify, I did not intend to suggest that race is not at all relevant, nor was I suggesting that class is the only attribute that people use to discriminate.  I wholeheartedly agree that white people are inadvertently complicit in systemic prejudice without consciously recognising it - but I also feel that people do not give class (particularly when discussing UK society) the critique and analysis it deserves, and I was too quick to grumble.

/!\ Most reblogs are going to be long and this might be an issue if you're interested in the content, but don't want to have an unreadable dash and just want to save something for later reading, for instance.Therefore, most reblogs are tagged #long post. You can also go to your dashboard settings and toggle "shorten long posts" !

This blog aims at reblogging Severus Snape-related meta posts. It's not here for discussion, debate, etc with the blog owner; it just seems like a convenient way to save those posts all in one place. Feel free to send post suggestions; some may or may not already be in the queue but i can't hurt! More discussion can be found in the replies and reblogs of a specific post, so check out the notes as well if yo'ure interested.

The goal is not to reblog art, though some might be reblogged if it's accompanied by meta. Ship-related meta may crop up at some point, but it's not the specific focus of this blog. No specific ships are endorsed or rejected.

JKR, however, is definitely not endorsed.

Avatar & header credit:

Photo by Eleanor Brooke on Unsplash Photo by Jan Ranft on Unsplash

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 I'm honest I think the way the Deathly Hallows were made into a theme in the HP books is much more interesting than the whole Christ allegory, especially since it's a bit more original. I mean, sure, the Tale of the Three Brothers borrows heavily from the European storytelling tradition as filtered through the homogenized lens of the Grimm Brothers - the number three, the two older brothers being rash and unthinking and the youngest being wise, the outwitting of a dangerous foe, the lesson that brute force and bending nature's order will only end badly, etc. But there's still something interesting and original there, and I find that much more exciting than pinpointing how Christian tropes manifest in a children's story that follows them without building on them or raising questions.

What I find particularly fascinating about the Hallows theme is the way it connects to the characters, and how the three brothers and the objects they represent come to be reflected in three of the most key characters in HP:

Harry, Voldemort, and Snape are so inextricably connected, but even though the only moment they're all in the same place is when Snape is killed, it feels like Snape's the one whose journey to that moment is the most clearly laid out. It's the third time we know him to be in the Shrieking Shack: the first, when he's nearly killed by Lupin-turned-werewolf but escapes unscathed, and the second, when he corners Lupin and Black in PoA and is knocked unconscious sustaining a head wound. With each visit to the Shrieking Shack he inches closer to his own death metaphorically.

It's no secret that each Hallow is connected to or representative of one of these characters.

The Deathstick/Elder Wand is Voldemort: he's its penultimate wielder and even before possessing it, his own wand might as well be a death stick. He kills with impunity and without remorse. It's said several times in the series that ultimately all the death and destruction Harry, Ron, and Hermione fight against comes down to Voldemort; even the Death Eaters do what they do in his service. (And, while I take issue with the simplistic and naive perspective it conveys, the story makes it clear that as soon as Voldemort dies, the chaos he has wrought on the wizarding world is already beginning to be set right again.) Harry meets Voldemort in the forest at the end of DH in order to meet his death because it's Voldemort who brings it about.

The Resurrection Stone is Snape: we find out in DH that he has spent the entire septology haunted by the heartbreak and regret losing a loved one caused, and everything he's done has been in service of her. Though he never possesses the Resurrection Stone, he might as well - we see through his patronus that the memory of Lily is with him "always." Interestingly, it's also the Resurrection Stone that sets him on his final path - it's the stone in the ring that curses Dumbledore's hand, leading to Snape agreeing to kill him, and to him making the Unbreakable Vow. Killing Dumbledore draws him into Voldemort's trust even more, but also puts a target on his back. So, like the second Peverell brother, Snape's main drive is a departed loved one, his devotion to whom ultimately dooms him. The more he tries to keep her alive and honor her memory, the more she draws him to his death.

As in the Tale of the Three Brothers, death claims both the first and second brother.

It's the third brother who escapes death and meets him on his own terms through his use of the Invisibility Cloak. Harry literally wears it into the forest at the end of DH and throws it off to meet his death. Harry starts the story having escaped Death and working his way towards it on his own terms. When he dies, it's because he is ready and he chooses to - and once again, he escapes it. Harry is also closely connected to the youngest Peverell brother, being descended from him, and as per the Beadle the Bard's story, the cloak gets handed down from parent to child so Harry is its rightful owner.

Finally, there's the character of Death, whose parallel is, reluctantly but determinedly, Dumbledore. There's an irony in his ownership of the Elder Wand, in that he learned from the mistakes of his youth and understands and eschews its capacity for death and destruction. Even so, he becomes a character who plays a key role in the death of several other characters, not least of whom are Snape, Harry, and Voldemort. His main goal throughout the series is to bring about Voldemort's death. In the process, he sacrifices both Harry and Snape (not to mention countless others). Dumbledore is also the person who gives all three Hallows to their ultimate owner, Harry. In the process, it's from Dumbledore that Voldemort takes the Elder Wand, and it's through Dumbledore's actions that Snape is doomed by the Resurrection Stone, not to mention he's the one to give the Invisibility Cloak to Harry. When Harry escapes death as a baby, it's Dumbledore who leaves him with the Dursley knowing he will return for him later (or will do so through a proxy), sort of - but not quite - foreshadowing that death will come for Harry when the time is right. When Harry is killed by Voldemort, it's Dumbledore who meets him in Kings Cross limbo.

Interestingly, of these four characters it's only Voldemort who is not connected to all three hallows. Dumbledore has, at some point, had each in his possession, and at the end of the story Harry possesses all three and is the only person who knows where the Resurrection Stone is in the forest. Snape is the only person we see use the Invisibility Cloak without an invitation to do so from Harry (in the Shrieking Shack in PoA), and he's the only one aside from Dumbledore and Harry to be connected with the Resurrection Stone. Though he never does so, he was meant by Dumbledore to possess the Elder Wand, and it's the direct reason he's killed. There's an interesting parallel there, based on what Dumbledore says to Harry in King's Cross Limbo:

Harry is obviously the Specialest Boy™️ because he's the protagonist, so he's fit to unite the Hallows (which he never quite does - he uses the Resurrection Stone while wearing the Cloak, but drops the stone well before he physically takes possession of the Elder Wand and wields it). Dumbledore nevertheless has the Cloak for a decade between James' death and giving it to Harry, by which point he has had the Elder Wand for much longer. He takes possession of the Stone when he takes Marvolo's ring, and in the process experiences a parallel to the second brother's story (similar to Snape) as his efforts to reconnect to a deceased loved one instead sets him on the path towards his death. Snape, as stated above, is similarly connected to all three Hallows at one point or other.

As interesting as I find all this, I feel like these parallels and, really, this theme, could have been worked out more throughout the septology and been dealt with in richer, more wide-reaching ways. Maybe it didn't occur to Rowling (boo, hssss) until she was well into writing the series, whereas the Horcruxes clearly had, since Voldemort's inability to die is established in PS and the first Horcrux crops up in CoS. There's a clumsiness in the way Hallows vs. Horcruxes becomes the great dilemma in DH, and if the themes each represents had been established early on and been an undercurrent through the whole series it would have been more powerful.

That's not to say that the themes connected to each Hallow - death, loss, choosing wisdom over power - aren't overarching ones on their own. But Harry's contending with them against Voldemort's focus on that power and his fear of death alongside his cavalier implementation of it ends up being a bit flat, because Harry doesn't waver. It's one of the things Dumbledore points out when they discuss the prophecy, that because Voldemort killed his parents, Harry was never at risk of being seduced by all that Voldemort represents. So even though the themes are there, the tensions between them aren't really present in Harry - again, the protagonist - until the second half of the last book. Not until HBP do we start to see Voldemort's past and understand the parallels between him and Harry, and not until the Prince's Tale chapter in DH do we really see how Snape fits into this trio of "abandoned boys." The fleshing out of his character was sacrificed for the sake of the big reveal of his motivations and I think it would have been more interesting to have moments throughout the series that turned out to be foreshadowing along the theme of the Hallows, and not just ones that clarify his allegiances through the insight into his life.