Hey there, love the whole mini-series of analytical Snape essays, especially the "Resentment Was the Flame, Not Rage" one. But I do strongly disagree with one part of this essay/analysis/character piece and that's the one about the relationship between Slughorn and Snape, which I think in the books, was the actual opposite. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that Snape tolerated Dumbledore for Slughorn's sake.
Slughorn never invited him.
Of course he didn’t. Severus was too strange. Too quiet. Too poor. Not enough sparkle. Too much shadow.
The Slug Club had its own unspoken criteria—wealth, bloodlines, charm, spectacle. Students who looked good on parchment. Students who would make Slughorn look clever for spotting them early.
Severus?
Brilliant? Absolutely.
Gifted in Potions? Unmatched.
But charismatic? Well-connected? Someone you’d seat beside a Ministry official and expect pleasant conversation? Not even slightly.
And so Slughorn passed him by. He didn’t forget Severus existed. He simply didn’t find him useful. Not at the time.
Years later, when Severus stood as the Half-Blood Prince—respected, feared, untouchable—Slughorn knew what he had missed. He never said it aloud. But the way he skirted Severus' name in conversation, the way he praised others more loudly… it was telling.
He had overlooked a boy who became a man too powerful to patronise. And Slughorn, for all his charm, was not a fool.
And Severus? He tolerated Slughorn for Dumbledore’s sake. That was all.
I wholly disagree with this part of the analysis regarding Slughorn and Snape.
A common Snape related fanon that I dislike is the common fanon of Slughorn not having a good relationship with Snape, which is completely untrue. In the books, Slughorn and Snape have a mutually positive relationship, with Slughorn regarding Snape as his best student, the one he considers the gold standard of Potions student excellence, and Snape is comfortable enough with Slughorn in a way that he never is with his Hogwarts colleagues, former professors, or anyone. I could actually go on and explain how I think Slughorn played an influential role in Snape's life, especially in regards to the friendship between Severus Snape and Lucius Malfoy. In fact, here I go.
The fanon of Slughorn having never recognized Snape and his Potion brewing skills and never inviting him into the Slug Club. It’s something that’s often assumed in fanon but the books suggest something else. Keep in mind, Lily and Snape were most probably Potions partners for their first 5 years in Hogwarts, so I doubt that Slughorn was clueless about the Potions prodigy/genius in front of his eyes and the way that Harry used his Potions ingredients would most probably remind him of how Lily and Severus prepared their ingredients. And the Potions essays he assigned would've clearly shown to Slughorn that Severus Snape was a certified Potions genius worth cultivating and supporting.
I think it’s hinted that Snape WAS part of the Slug Club, even if it isn’t explicitly mentioned. Slughorn didn’t choose the members of the Slug Club solely on academics but other factors like influence, wealth, relation to famous people, etc. But having good academics and extraordinary skill was a good way for those without a remarkable background in the Wizarding World like Lily and Severus to distinguish themselves. Contrary to popular belief, Snape and Slughorn had a pretty positive relationship, all things considered. It’s unlikely that he was overlooked by Slughorn; if anything, it was the opposite. Lily (deceased + halo effect) may have been Sluggy’s favorite student but Severus was Sluggy’s best student, the one that he held to be the gold standard when it came to Potions student excellence.
Not only does it fit with what we see in the relationship between Slughorn and Snape in the books but it would also explain a lot on how and why Snape developed such an oddly close friendship to Lucius Malfoy.
If Lucius was already a Prefect by the time Severus got Sorted, then he would’ve already been at least 4+ years older than him. At most, he would’ve graduated from Hogwarts at the end of Severus’ Third Year. And it’s unknown if Lucius even had any interest in Severus as a First Year, with him patting Severus on the back could be something he did for every First Year Slytherin that got Sorted. Severus was certainly friends or close colleagues of some sort with Lucius at some point in later life. We don’t know whether this friendship began at school, but Sirius needles Snape about being “Lucius’s lapdog” and Snape reacts badly. This could mean that there was a sexual relationship between them - widely expected at boarding school, although if it happened at school it would have to have been at least technically abusive, since Lucius must have left school when Snape was thirteen - or that Sirius has a history of annoying Snape by implying a sexual relationship with Lucius even though there wasn’t one. Or he could have been Lucius’s “fag” - a junior boy at some boarding schools who acts as secretary and valet to an older boy, something like an officer’s batman, in return for protection and patronage.
Either way, Snape may have been under Lucius’s protection for his first two years at Hogwarts but it wouldn’t really explain why they would continue to have a relationship after Lucius graduated or why Lucius would regularly sing the praises of Snape’s skills and talents at the Ministry, as mentioned by Umbridge during the teacher inspections. Does Lucius Malfoy sound like the type of person to sing anyone’s praises? (There’s also the fact that in HBP, Narcissa is basically throwing herself on Snape and crying into his shirt while Snape holds her hands in his, with some strongly hinted tension between the two that suggests something intimate. The fact that she knew the way to his house, in a pretty poor area of a Muggle town, like she’d been there plenty of times before and knew the route by heart. You also don’t ask someone to agree to take an Unbreakable Vow or have said someone agree to it, without some deep trust and connection.).
Also, even if Lucius was a conscientious prefect who took an avuncular interest in Slytherin first years, you have to wonder why he would forge a connection with a much younger, half-Muggle, working-class boy when in later life he would claim to be strongly opposed to magic-to-Muggle marriages. This comes up in Beedle the Bard: Lucius wrote to Dumbledore demanding that all books which showed marriage between wizards and Muggles should be removed from Hogwarts in case they encouraged Draco to “sully the purity of his bloodline”. Even if Lucius’s interest was predatory, young Severus would be a peculiar choice of victim.
Let's put a pin on this because this will be relevant later. Now let's switch focus to Slughorn and his relationship with Snape.
We know that the Half-Blood Prince was using his Sixth-Year-standard Potions textbook by some time early in Fifth Year or late in Fourth Year, because he worked Levicorpus out in the margin (a spell which was noted to be one that the Prince labored over with several crossings out), and that spell became fashionable in Fifth Year. The fact that Slughorn uses him (Snape) as a yardstick of Sixth-Year Potions excellence, praising Harry's (borrowed) performance with "never had a student produce finer on a first attempt, I don't think even you, Severus – ", suggests that Snape may have worked out at least some of his improvements to the Draught of Living Death prior to the first time he brewed it in class - or, if he modified it on the fly, he already had a good knowledge of what sort of modifications might work, and then he ran it again later to produce the even better version Harry found in his book. The fact that Slughorn specifically mentions Severus rather than anyone else like say Lily certainly seems to suggest that Slughorn regards Severus as being the gold standard when it comes to Potions student excellence.
Yet, Spinner’s End doesn’t seem at all the sort of place which could hold a Potions laboratory, at least while there were still three people living there, and young Snape’s discoveries as detailed in his book sound as though they would have taken more work than could be done just by experimenting in class. The implication is that Slughorn allowed young Severus, and probably Lily, to have the use of a laboratory in which to do some out-of-hours research. Even if they used the Room of Requirement, the ingredients would probably have to be brought in and most likely obtained from Slughorn, since there there is no way in hell he could have bought the ingredients. The book yes, he could have inherited it from his mother. The ingredients? Nope. Someone had to give him the ingredients, and allow him to experiment with Advanced Potions - so he had also full access to the classroom or Slughorn’s private lab when no one else was there. So it’s very likely that Slughorn favoured Severus and facilitated his research. That they have a good relationship is borne out by the fact that in Half-Blood Prince, Snape comes to Slughorn’s Christmas party, mingles with actual students and allows drunk!Slughorn to fling his arm round him, without trying to gnaw it off at the elbow. In addition, after the killing of Dumbledore, when the staff are expressing amazement at Snape's actions, all the other staff come out with variants on a theme of "Dumbledore trusted him and I trusted Dumbledore's judgement": only Slughorn speaks of his direct, personal trust in Snape himself ("I thought I knew him").
Slughorn being able to fling his arm around Snape without Snape trying to gnaw it off at the elbow is a pretty strong example of how good/positive of a relationship they have. For obvious reasons due to his abusive childhood, Snape is very touch averse. JKR mentions Severus as a child wearing an oversized coat despite appearing to be hot and uncomfortable in it. This is a pretty specific thing to point out. Not the coat necessarily, but that he’s obviously hot, and uncomfortable, but wearing it anyway. It’s implying there’s probably an unusual reason for wearing it since it’s not the weather for it. Given the context she’s most certainly implying that Severus is wearing the coat to hide his arms. It makes me imagine that maybe Mum’s told him he’s not to go out with bare arms if they’re bruised- or maybe Toby told him, or Severus just started doing it on his own because he was ashamed of the marks, or because he’s heard of other neighborhood kids disappearing via social services, or whatever reason. My imaginings aside it’s still obvious to me that pointing out the coat was pointing out a sign of physical abuse. So the next part is about Alan Rickman stating he picked the extra long sleeves and buttoned up clothes to symbolize hiding secrets and that kind of thing. And it certainly fits, as he most certainly would want to hide his Dark Mark on his forearm by wearing long sleeves. In fandom Snape most often seems to be drawn in similar clothing. I’ve seen head canons also attribute his need to cover himself so thoroughly as a trauma response from James’ sexual assault. I like all of these. They all make sense. But consider- wearing long sleeves and a lot of clothing/layers to hide goes back even further than that. It goes back to wearing that big old coat when he was a kid. He feels safer and more comfortable wearing long sleeves than not. You see, they’ve kept his secrets for a very long time.
Touching people, letting people touch him, holding their hand, hugging them, etc. These are all actions that Snape would only allow and do around those he personally trusted, which could be counted on one hand. That’s why Slughorn, Narcissa, Lily, and Dumbledore (and maybe Filch, because he does show Filch his bare, injured-by-Fluffy, leg to him in PS) are people that Snape can be said to have trusted, due to the fact that he allowed them to touch him or showed vulnerable parts of himself that he wouldn’t have shown anybody else. So the fact that a drunk Slughorn could fling his arm around Severus and Severus doesn’t gnaw his arm off at the elbow or even flinch, seems to be a pretty strong sign that Severus and Slughorn have a pretty good/positive relationship with each other and that they both had a mutual trust with each other. And Severus’ trust is something rarely given if at all.
Another example of Snape trusting Slughorn and vice versa is the fact that Slughorn addresses Severus by his first name and Severus consents to it. This is pretty significant because the amount of people who Snape would allow to touch him or even call him by his first name is something that can be counted on one hand. When did McGonagall or the rest of the Order ever call Snape by his first name? I certainly don’t recall that at all. The only people who’ve called Snape by his first name are Dumbledore, Lily, Slughorn, Charity, and Narcissa. The only people who Snape has allowed to ever touch him are Lily, Narcissa, Slughorn, and maybe Dumbledore. Someone calling Snape by his first name and/or actually touching and him being okay with it is very, very exceptionally rare. The fact that Severus Snape allows Slughorn to call him by his first name and touch him is evidence that he mutually trusted Slughorn and liked him and was undeniably close to him.
Slughorn likes to add promising students to his collection, people who are likely to do well. Sometimes it’s because they come from wealthy families but he also seems to have been very keen on Muggle-born Lily, so he doesn’t care about blood-status or family position (as much) if a student has obvious talent and potential. And Severus Snape had oceans of talent and potential. If the Marauders and Lily could be considered prodigies in Hogwarts, then teenage Snape was a genius that was honestly on the level of the likes of geniuses like Dumbledore, Grindelwald, Voldemort/Tom Riddle.
In fact, I believe that Slughorn played a role in young Severus Snape’s desire to get into Slytherin in the first place. A lot of people presume in fanon that Severus’ mother Eileen was in Slytherin. We don't know what House that Eileen was Sorted into (just like we don’t know if she was pureblood, half-blood, or even a Muggleborn witch or that she had any Prince family at all). She could've been a Slytherin or she could've even been a Ravenclaw or a Hufflepuff for all we know. Nothing is confirmed. We’re not told why Severus wanted to be in Slytherin - it doesn’t seem likely Eileen was a Slytherin, when Severus knows so little about it that he doesn’t know that Muggleborn Lily is unlikely to be Sorted there. I favor the theory posited by Whitehound (Claire Jordan in Quora), namely the theory that Eileen had told him that the head of Slytherin, Horace Slughorn, was an impressario who wasn’t blood-prejudiced and would advance the careers of clever little boys, even if they were ugly little guttersnipes like him, and especially if they were good at Potions. Snape’s whole career rather suggests that he was looking for a father-figure (Slughorn, Voldemort, Dumbledore) who wouldn’t abuse him, and Slughorn was the closest he found.
Everything falls into place if we assume that young Snape (and probably Lily too) was a member of the Slug Club, and entered Lucius’s orbit there as one of Slughorn’s rising stars: one to whom Slughorn granted special laboratory privileges. His unpopularity with the crowd in the underpants scene would then be due not only due to his being scorned and friendless as the favorite bullying victim of the Marauders, but to his being perceived, and resented, as a Teacher’s Pet - a male Hermione (sort of?) who hadn’t had the luck to make friends with a popular Quidditch star whose reflected glory might have given him protection.
This at the very least, explains why exactly someone of Lucius’ stature would even realistically be interested in a dirt-poor half-blood Slytherin like Severus Snape because I doubt he had much interaction with Snape when he was younger in Hogwarts. The Slug Club serves as a perfect avenue for explaining how and why Lucius (and by extension, Narcissa) took an interest in Snape and why they developed such a close relationship later in life. And it would explain why Snape and Slughorn have a remarkably positive relationship in HBP, because Slughorn recognized Snape’s talent and had him join the Slug Club.
Severus Snape's main role in the Voldemort Wars was that of a spy and a damn good one at that. Being charismatic and sociable, cultivating connections with the Death Eaters both before Voldemort's first death and in the decade leading up to Voldemort's resurrection, which would help vouch for him when Voldemort came back, all that would've been what Snape would have had to be good at to do what he did. You would have to be pretty socially aware and psychologically aware to be able to fool the greatest Legillimens in the world. Just because we don't see Snape's charisma in the context of Hogwarts doesn't mean it wasn't inevitably present in scenarios and context outside of teaching at Hogwarts.
These are the reasons why I think that contrary to popular fanon belief, Slughorn had a mutually positive relationship with Snape in the books, which was unlike any relationship that the surly snarky Severus Snape ever had with any of his former teachers or Hogwarts colleagues. Slughorn recognized and appreciated Severus and his talent when he was a student and it's a relationship that Snape reciprocates. And it’s also his relationship with Slughorn which served as an avenue for the young Snape to become closer to the older Lucius Malfoy.
So yeah, that's why I disagree with the common fanon notion that Slughorn and Snape weren't close, that Slughorn ignored Snape and his potential and didn't invite him to the Slug Club, etc. I think it's abundantly clear that Slughorn and Snape were actually close, that Slughorn saw Snape's potential and supported him which is also why Slughorn and Snape have an uncharacteristically mutually positive relationship with each other.
Thoughts, @fannedandflawless ?
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