SlytherPuff

Hard working, Loyal, Ambitious, and Cunning. This blog is anti-JKR and anti-terf

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✧*｡ ( `ᗜ´) ~ (`へ´ ) ✧*｡

Happy Birthday Severus Snape!

[ieatbreadz]

Playing doll dress up and Severitus are my Barbies

I’ve missed doing inking like this but it takes so long (total time 20 hours)

[sideprince]

“Snape?’ said Black harshly, taking his eyes off Scabbers for the first time in minutes and looking up at Lupin. ‘What’s Snape got to do with it?’ ‘He’s here, Sirius,’ said Lupin heavily. ‘He’s teaching here as well.’ He looked up at Harry, Ron and Hermione. ‘Professor Snape was at school with us. He fought very hard against my appointment to the Defence Against the Dark Arts job. He has been telling Dumbledore all year that I am not to be trusted. He has his reasons … you see, Sirius here played a trick on him which nearly killed him, a trick which involved me -‘ Black made a derisive noise. ‘It served him right,’ he sneered. ‘Sneaking around, trying to find out what we were up to … hoping he could get us expelled …”

-Prisoner of Azkaban, Ch. 18

Have I not noticed this before or just forgotten it? Because it seems like it should be more common knowledge, given it's canon, than it is.

Snape wasn't being nosy. He was hoping to get the Marauders expelled. A kid getting bullied four-on-one by privileged kids who, as we know from canon, hex others for fun and only ever get a slap on the wrist in the form of detention, wants to get those bullies expelled? Of course he does. He wants to catch them out doing something they would surely have to experience more serious repercussions for.

Snape was frustrated and bitter because the abuse he experienced at home from his father was continued, in a different form, at school, and by people using magic - the one ability that he had and his father didn't. He was traumatized and still experiencing trauma, presumably living in survivor mode like most abuse victims do. Sirius, of course, doesn't know this. He's justified his bullying of Snape to himself, as he and James have likely justified bullying others on a whim as just harmless fun (though I'm sure students like Bertram Aubrey, whose head they hexed to be twice its size, weren't amused - ref. in HBP ch. 24). Sirius is retaliating against Snape's attempts to get him and his friends expelled, ignoring his own role in motivating Snape to do this, and he preys on the frustration and determination he's planted in Snape with his bullying to lure him to the Whomping Willow and down the passageway.

Of course Snape goes. He's desperately looking for an egregious enough offense he can prove the Marauders guilty of to get rid of them, and finally have some peace at school. A few months later he'll sit under a tree by the lake, minding his own business, when these same boys will target him out of sheer boredom (and seeking a girl's attention) to torture and humiliate him. They'll feel untouchable then. Because Snape did discover something about the Marauders when he went to the Whomping Willow, but not what he needed to - he discovered that Lupin was a werewolf, and that he was at school under Dumbledore's protection. Sirius knew he was going to the Willow, he even warned James, which means the two of them didn't transform into animagi, and thus Snape never knew the thing he could have used against them to Dumbledore: that they were running around the countryside with a full-grown werewolf, endangering students and the local population while performing dangerous and regulated magic without permission. That Lupin had betrayed Dumbledore's trust and protective measures for a bit of fun.

It's hard to blame Lupin - a lonely kid with a condition that sets him apart from society would be hard put to reject friends of any kind, let alone ones who are willing to keep his secret, not to mention learn complex, dangerous magic to keep him company during his worst times. Of course, given that James and Sirius are written as fairly selfish, entitled, privileged kids at that age, it's likely they did this more for themselves and the thrill of it, especially if the ease with which Sirius used Lupin as an unwitting weapon against Snape is any indication. But Lupin probably doesn't see this, or want to acknowledge its implications if he does, because just having friends is more than he expected from his time at school.

So Snape discovers Lupin's secret thanks to Sirius, whose main motivation was to cause Snape harm at Lupin's expense in retaliation for Snape trying to get them expelled, yet it escapes him that this kind of callous, casual cruelty that he's capable of is the reason Snape keeps trying to do this in the first place. But Snape doesn't discover the part of the secret that could get the Marauders expelled, and instead he walks away with the understanding that they are untouchable under Dumbledore's protection. Dumbledore, meanwhile, only knows that he's protected a disabled student, because he has no idea what his friends are doing, or that he's eschewing the protections put in place for his and others' safety and they're helping him to do so.

It's hard not to see Sirius as manipulative in all this. He bullies fellow students, and goads Snape, the one he targets most, into a life threatening situation. He does this as payback for Snape refusing to cow to the abuse Sirius and his friends heap on him - because abuse is what the kind of bullying we see Sirius and James do to Snape is. And the kind of 'I'll teach you to question me' attitude Sirius is reflecting by doing so in sending Snape to the Willow is typical of abusers. He knows how to get away with it, too. Perhaps he warns James about Snape going to the Whomping Willow because James wants to tranform and get up to their usual adventures, and Sirius wants to protect him - because if Snape sees that they're animagi, he'll have something more consequential to take to the administration than hexing people in the hallway. Whatever reason he has, he tells James, who rushes to the Willow to pull Snape away from Lupin, whether for his own safety or to protect Lupin, or both. Sirius comes from a wealthy, privileged, posh family, and though he rejects their politics, he doesn't seem to reject the self-serving entitlement they have. This, unfortunately, feeds into his abusive behavior - he might justify to himself that bullying Snape is retaliating against the kind of evil he sees in his all-Slytherin, pureblood, upper class family at home, but it's still unfair to Snape and Sirius shows no reflection or self-awareness in targeting a fellow student who bears unmistakeable signs of poverty and a working class upbringing. As we see in Snape's Worst Memory, the Marauders target Snape two-to-one at the very least, and not one person in the crowd of students (which must include Slytherins) will defend him. However Sirius might justify his actions to himself, he has multiple unfair advantages, which he presses without self-interrogation.

Snape's frustration and hatred are a natural reaction to all this. He's being abused by a group of boys who have strength in numbers. They bully others too, but as Lupin says, "Snape was a special case." He's targeted more frequently and with more vitriol. His attackers only ever get a slap on the wrist, despite their frequent detentions doing nothing, it seems, to discourage their behavior, especially as James and Sirius often serve them together, so it was likely great fun for them. Snape's only hope of peace and safety is getting them expelled, and his abuse trauma from home is likely helping fuel his desperation to achieve this. He fails to do so, and despite almost getting killed, the powers that be - Dumbledore, as headmaster - betrays him (and all the other students, in his eyes), by protecting the boys who tried to kill him for trying to, in his mind, protect himself.

Snape wasn't being nosy, that's just Sirius' narrative - a self-serving one that conveniently sidesteps taking responsibility for his own role in all of this. The key words in the above quote aren't that Snape was trying find out what the Marauders were up to, it's a misdirect, the same way Lupin's idea that Snape was jealous of James' quidditch talent is. The real motivation behind Snape's actions, as we can only understand after reading The Prince's Tale, is that he wanted to get the Marauders expelled.

[nebulaparis]

SPOOKY SEASON!!!!

[justhereforkeefe]

Cutest little ghost ever

[ashlunes]

The fact that Parvati Patil canonically has hair tinsels and that it fascinate Harry is so underrated

[staypee]

Doing their nightly rounds. (Timelapse video below)

This was based on a twitter chat post a few months ago.

Please consider supporting me on kofi. | Commissions are open!

[o3tofu]

[blueboxfive]

Thank you @sevfan for this amazing commission! 😍🤣

Inspired by

[sneppu]

uuhhhhh scribble based off of something @thatlittlefangirl shared on da discord snerver

[barifee]

silly little cute headcanon: when Severus and Lily found out they have matching patronuses, Severus was happy that they had such deep connection, and Lily was ashamed of it and hoped that nobody from Gryffindor will find out

yeah i didn't kiss the brick before i threw it

[o3tofu]

Height

[shiba-sketch]

Severus scribbles (I love him a normal human amount)

[severedprince]

Snape doodles

[sideprince]

Hello hello, love your blog and all the meta! Do you have any thoughts or saved meta on Snape’s accent? I don’t remember us seeing any indications in book-canon about him having an accent that stands out in any way, but I’d imagine that a poor boy growing up in the midlands (or in the north, as we thought before Spinner’s End was revealed to be in Cokeworth), to have a strong regional accent. Since this is an obvious class marker would he have tried to tone it down or hide it as he got older in Hogwarts? Thoughts?

Hello! Thank you, I'm always surprised anyone reads my posts so that's such a nice thing to hear! I've actually been thinking about Snape's accent lately so I love this ask and also get out of my head.

The books seem to show Snape speaking the Queen's English (ie. the dialect spoken primarily in the South of England and considered by some to be "proper" English, those people being dismissive of regional dialects in ways I personally don't agree with). This can be deduced more from seeing how the dialogue of characters like Dobby and Hagrid are written than anything else. Hagrid is written as speaking with a thick West Country accent, with a lot of "yeh" instead of "you" and "ter" instead of "to" etc. You also see similar clearly denoted regional dialects with characters like Mundungus Fletcher (whose accent is Cockney):

“Blimey,” said Mundungus weakly ___ “Keep your ’airnet on!” said Mundungus

-Order of the Phoenix, Ch. 2

“Well, you’re a bunch of bleedin’ ‘eroes, then, aren’t you, but I never pretended I was up for killing meself -”

-Deathly Hallows, Ch. 11

Because we see these characters with their pronunciations clearly written into their dialogue, we're meant to assume the other characters speak the Queen's English, as no specific dialect is otherwise indicated. McGonagall is Scottish but it's never mentioned that her accent might be as well, and her dialogue doesn't indicate it is either. In fact, if you do a quick search on potter-search.com for the word "Scottish" the only instance that comes up in any of the HP books - which are set in the Scottish Highlands with McGonagall as a prominent Scottish character - is at the end of Deathly Hallows when the dragon the trio break out of Gringotts deposits them in the middle of a Scottish loch. It’s the only time the word Scottish is used in the whole series. I think that says a lot about JK Rowling as the writer and what her own biases are when it comes to writing representatively of the places her story - and its characters - inhabit.

I don't think Rowling put that much thought into Snape's accent and where he's from. The underlying message is that the Queen's English is the "default" accent and peppering her books with regional dialect in the dialogue of folksy characters like Hagrid gives them a bit of color, or that giving someone like Mundungus a Cockney accent denotes his being an untrustworthy criminal (and it's not exactly a revelation that she has unchecked internalized biases that show through her writing). But I also think that she wrote Snape with Alan Rickman in mind and that made her vision of him a bit conflicting, ie. she wrote his backstory as growing up in a Midlands slum and yet he speaks like the RADA trained actor she envisioned him as in her mind.

That won't stop me from coming up with meta about Snape's accent, though! I've been thinking about it lately, actually, because I see a lot of posts that talk about how he must have lost his accent at school to fit in with the other Slytherins, since there are, historically, many pure-bloods and Sacred 28 families in that house and he would have had a hard enough time fitting in as it was. I've always thought these theories made sense but lately I've been wondering if there could be an alternate reading of Snape's accent.

We don't really know much about Snape's mother but I've thought about how she might have come from a reasonably well-off wizarding family, or at the very least from a higher class background than she ended up raising her son in. Although most Brits grow up speaking with the accent of their region, some do grow up speaking how they're taught to at home if it diverges from other locals. The example that comes to mind is how John Lennon always had a scouse accent having grown up middle class in Liverpool, while Paul McCartney - also from Liverpool - spoke the Queen's English because his mother insisted on teaching him to speak it at home, despite their family being working class, in order to give him a leg up through the classist confines of British social classes.

So my own meta has lately been to play with the idea that Snape always spoke with the accent we see his adult self speaking with, because his mother wanted him to have a chance to do better in life than what she was able to give him (again, given how classist British society is, and was especially back in the 60s). It may also explain why he had so few friends as a child: if he was raised to speak the Queen's English in a working class slum, the other children may have ostracized him for it and he may have inadvertently alienated them.

The idea that Snape has always spoken with the accent he has as an adult is partly supported by the conversations we see between Snape and Lily as children, where Snape's accent isn't written in the regional dialects we see other characters having. There are a few minor moments where young Snape seems to have a Northern lilt, but it comes off more as something that slips into his speech than characterizes it, when compared to Mundungus or Hagrid (emphases mine):

‘We’re all right. We haven’t got wands yet. They let you off when you’re a kid and you can’t help it. But once you’re eleven,’ he nodded importantly, ‘and they start training you, then you’ve got to go careful.’ ______ ‘They wouldn’t give you to the Dementors for that! Dementors are for people who do really bad stuff. They guard the wizard prison, Azkaban. You’re not going to end up in Azkaban, you’re too -‘ He turned red again and shredded more leaves. Then a small rustling noise behind Harry made him turn: Petunia, hiding behind a tree, had lost her footing. ‘Tuney!’ said Lily, surprise and welcome in her voice, but Snape had jumped to his feet. ‘Who’s spying now?’ he shouted. ‘What d’you want?’

-Deathly Hallows, Ch. 33

There's a bit of Northern in how he says "you've got to go careful" and shortens "do you" into "d'you" but overall his speech is fairly standard Queen's English. It sounds more like a kid trying to sound cool, the way the Weasley twins and even Ron often do (Ron saying "geroff" to his mum, the twins shouting "oy" to each other or saying "blimey" even though they all grew up in Devon and their speech is generally also written following standard Queen's English).

Young Snape's accent may also have been something that caught Lily's attention or just put her at ease - seeing this skinny, twitchy kid wearing odd looking clothes and looking uncared for and poor but hearing him speak with a more familiar accent and vocabulary would have made it easier for her to connect with him. We see from Petunia's dialogue as an adult that she speaks the Queen's English, so we can assume the two girls grew up speaking it at home. There aren't really any colloquialisms in her speech, and what little (and it's really so, so little) we see of Lily seems to show the same.

Some people claim that Snape’s Northern accent comes out when he's triggered, but I can't find examples of it. At his most triggered in the Shrieking Shack in PoA, he still speaks as he always does:

'SILENCE! I WILL NOT BE SPOKEN TO LIKE THAT!’ Snape shrieked, looking madder than ever. ‘Like father, like son, Potter! I have just saved your neck, you should be thanking me on bended knee! You would have been well served if he’d killed you! You’d have died like your father, too arrogant to believe you might be mistaken in Black - now get out of the way, or I will make you. GET OUT OF THE WAY, POTTER!'

-Prisoner of Azkaban, Ch. 19

Even in HBP when he's fleeing and Harry triggers him, his speech is consistent with hiw it’s written through the rest of the series:

'No, Potter!’ screamed Snape. There was a loud BANG and Harry was soaring backwards, hitting the ground hard again, and this time his wand flew out of his hand. He could hear Hagrid yelling and Fang howling as Snape closed in and looked down on him where he lay, wandless and defenceless as Dumbledore had been. Snape’s pale face, illuminated by the flaming cabin, was suffused with hatred just as it had been before he had cursed Dumbledore. ‘You dare use my own spells against me, Potter? It was I who invented them - I, the Half-Blood Prince! And you’d turn my inventions on me, like your filthy father, would you? I don’t think so … no!’ Harry had dived for his wand; Snape shot a hex at it and it flew feet away into the darkness and out of sight. ‘Kill me, then,’ panted Harry, who felt no fear at all, but only rage and contempt. ‘Kill me like you killed him, you coward -‘ ‘DON’T -‘ screamed Snape, and his face was suddenly demented, inhuman, as though he was in as much pain as the yelping, howling dog stuck in the burning house behind them, ‘- CALL ME COWARD!'

-Half-Blood Prince, Ch. 28

There isn't really much in these moments to suggest a Northern accent coming out. So in a radical departure from the fandom, I've been mulling over the meta that Snape always had the accent we see him with. It's not as unlikely as people think, and certainly not impossible.

[danadiadea]

people Severus canonically loves are Lily, Albus at least to some extent, Lucius at least to some extent, Draco as a Lucius variation, maybe Minerva and Narcissa to some extent as well, and he seems OK with Slughorn. none of them treated him nicely or were concerned about his safety and well-being. none of them showed him much empathy – except maybe Lucius, since we have very, very little info aside from them being friends and having a deeply concerning power dynamics when they were younger; but Lucius at the very least was a big part of Severus ending up among DEs (tho he probably did it with good intentions; still, if I were Severus I'd be resentful). so Severus can overlook it when people don't care about him. he only hates those who directly harm him and are violent towards him – like the Marauders, mainly James and Sirius had been. Severus accepts neglect, he forgives people for not being there for him or using him, but he protests when he is physically violated or targeted.

I wonder what it says about Severus' father, who is shown to be physically aggressive, and his mother, who apparently had been neglectful.

[glacierberries]

time travel snarry is the funniest thing ever, imagine you go back in time and this guy who used to be your strict teacher is now a hot goth femboy twink. and you kinda wanna fuck him.

[barifee]

ah yes my two neglected & abused halfbloods❤️ they would be besties if they had met as kids