Kat's HP creations and reblogs

Separating my HP stuff from my other blogs Main Blog @KHB-Writes Secondary @KHB-Reblogs

[thelostprojector]

"He called Lily, his best friend, a slur-" When my parents and my then best friend/now girl friend found me, after I was violated and was in the most humiliating position, I called and wished them worser things. Things I didn't actually mean. You'll don't understand, that when you are in such position the last thing you'll want is, people you love witnessing you in one of the most horrifying and embarrassing situation all powerless and violated. Lashing out is NOT uncommon. Because you were powerless in that situation, you take your anger, bitterness and pain out on people you love while trying to hold on to the scraps of dignity and self respect left in you. I don't why you'll act like you'll haven't hurt your loved ones with your words before. If you'll haven't, good for you. Some of us aren't that perfect and we get angry, lash out and say shit we don't mean. What matters is you ask them for forgiveness (if they deserve it) later after you calm down. Which Severus did. You'll shitting on characters for showing realistic, human reactions is wild to me.

[kyraneko]

The people we love are more able to hurt us than the people we hate, and while they may not be actual threats, when your brain is in that particular panicked, reactive space, there's no room for nuance and anything present in that space gets flagged as a threat and your immediate motive is to get them out of there, often by lashing out to chase them away.

Also even if they are loved ones and don't mean any harm, their witnessing of something you don't want them to see is a functional harm, and if they're forcing their proximity on you under the guise of care, that's an assault and a violation of agency and a mindfuck all crammed into one uncomfortable package.

Lily was: 1) witnessing his humiliation, after 2) inserting herself into the situation 3) badly 4) for primarily her own enjoyment of insulting James, all after 5) ignorantly helpsplaining her uninformed theories about The Prank and 6) dismissing his attempts to tell her some semblance of the truth as jealousy, obsession, and undue hostility talking, as part of a larger pattern of 7) downplaying her housemates' longstanding campaign of bullying and persecution of him.

Oh, and 8) objecting to his other friendships while 9) applying a different standard to, again, his longstanding bullies.

Like, it never ceases to amaze me how much stuff Rowling put in her stories without noticing, but Lily is absolutely not being a friend to Severus here, and while it's absolutely her right to cut ties and to have whatever problems she wants to have with him or anyone else, the fact is that she's dismissing all of the pain and distress he's in, championing his bullies, effectively gaslighting him about his own experiences, and subtly threatening to cut ties with him to push him to cut ties with his other connections.

And then she does an embarrassingly bad job of defending him, handing James two separate hooks to sink into Severus (an invited soapbox to announce what he finds objectionable about Severus, and an opportunity to sexually harass and extort Severus' friend in front of Severus, throwing Severus' inability to defend his friend in Severus' face.

The third hook, then, mocking Severus for needing to be defended by a girl, ends up being the straw that breaks the camel's back; his response is full of pent-up hostility towards someone who he really wishes wasn't doing anything she's currently doing, and who has demonstrably refused to listen to his priorities at all for the entire conversation.

It is a demonstrated phenomenon that inept allies often inspire more contempt and resentment than the actual enemy. If you go in to defend someone and you make such a hash of it that you embarrass them, they're going to be mad at you and they're going to be justified in it.

(The other half of the blood purity argument is that muggleborns are outsiders, who don't know how the culture works and therefore make asses of themselves. Draco's initial discourse to Harry on the matter had nothing in it about diluting pure wizarding bloodlines but was all about "they don't know anything about our world" and related concerns. As such, its use by Severus against Lily carries more connotations of ignorance, carelessness, and mucking up a battlefield she doesn't know how to navigate but insisted on directing anyway, than assertions about the nature of her ancestry.)

TL;DR Severus is a raccoon caught in a trap here, and Lily's come in and is trying to "helpfully" yank him free, causing more pain in the process, and OF COURSE he's going to bite her.

[rat-de-bibliotheque08]

I keep thinking about how, by giving his Triwizard winnings to the Weasley twins in Goblet of Fire, Harry acted like a true son of James. James was generous too, supporting Sirius and Remus financially without hesitation while they were serving in the first Order.

Sirius never cared much about money either. He opened his home to the Order without a second thought. And he never once told Molly that it was his house, so first of all, she had no right to boss him around; and second, Mundungus could come and go if Sirius didn't mind. It's a shame Sirius never put her in her place, because honestly, he should have.

Anyway, Harry is truly his father's son and Sirius's godson.

I'm also interested in the way Harry reacts to trauma: by giving away something valuable that's connected to the traumatic event. We see it in Goblet of Fire, when he gives away the prize money to the Weasley twins. And later, in Half-Blood Prince, barely learning that Sirius had left him Grimmauld Place in his will, Harry immediately tries to give it up and offers Dumbledore the continued use of it as the Order's headquarters.

Honestly, that was a sad moment. But I like that Harry does this twice. It really feels like a genuine part of his character.

[kalkaros-is-the-boss]

Honestly, looking at the story from the perspective of money and class opens up so many interesting possibilities. Biggest being that Harry doesn’t really have to think about money - another fact I’m sure he shares with his father - because he has it. Even Ron points this out with the vanishing gold, which Harry hadn’t even noticed vanishing.

Which makes me curious, do we know about James supporting his friends financially? We know his family provided a roof over Sirius’s head when he ran from home, but do we know more? I can’t recall any passage saying so. I don’t find it hard to believe that James would have, so it might be there. But, I also find it very possible that James had a similar issue - bit of a blind spot - that Harry also had. Which is that since they don’t have to think about money, because they have it, they also don’t really consider how it affects those who don’t until they see it directly in front of them.

With Harry, this shows especially in how he views the Weasleys. To him, they’re poor. Because he’s told so and because he can see that they have to think about money. But who tells him that? Mainly, the Weasleys themselves…and Malfoys. And yeah, compared to the Weasleys and Harry himself, the Weasleys are practically broke. But really, they’re poor in the ’can’t afrord luxuries way’ not the ’can’t afford essentials way’. (And like many have pointed out before, this is where Joanna’s classism really shines. All the characters who actually suffer from poverty, are portrayed as bad people.)

But this is where I actually think Sirius differs with Harry (and likely James). He seems to be aware of money and wealth much more acutely. Possibly because he knows what it’s like not to have it. That’s why he doesn’t lord it over Molly. Even if she drives him mad and he disagrees with her, he doesn’t use that angle, because then he would just be saying ”I’m richer than you, which means I am above you and you should do what I say”. And he doesn’t want to do that, because as much as he disagrees and even dislikes her, he does respect her.

Which makes it all the more facinating when he throws all that out the window when it concerns Severus. Then it’s his house. And that really shows how Sirius views wealth. Not as something that everyone should have access to, but as something the people he finds worthy should have access to. But there is something that Sirius finds more meaningful and inportant then wealth - which is very apparent in that same argument with Severus and why Severus kind of walks all over Sirius, because this is something he has - and that is the ability to be useful.

And that is the driving force really behind Sirius giving it for the Order. Of cource some of it is genorisity and necessity, but for the largest part I find it to be this burning need to be of use. For Harry, it’s mostly the fact that he really doesn’t want it. Generosity too, but mostly he just wants to be rid of it. He doesn’t want to own it. He hates it and everything it represents to him.

Something that really has to be taken into account when analysing the generosity of James, Sirius and Harry, is that they can afford to be generous. Harry can give his winnings to the twins because he doesn’t need to consider if he needs it. James can afford to be generous and support his friends because it doesn’t make a dent in his wealth and his parents have no issue providing for another mouth - and they’re his friends (which is a very weighty point when it comes to James, I’d say), and Sirius can afford to be generous with his house, because it’s a massive house and no one is living there. They all can afford to be generous with their wealth. Characters like Severus or Remus can’t afford to be generous with their wealth. All they have to be generous with, is their time and their lives. Which they all end up needing to give, of course.

[kyraneko]

Harry is a Discworld witch at heart.

He helps. He does the hard work. He stores his wealth in other people.

He sees Ron going without a wand that's meant for him because there's no money, he sees Ron pretending he's not hungry when the candy trolley arrives, he sees Molly sweeping the corners of her vault in the hopes that a spare coin might have rolled there, he sees Fred and George scammed and stolen from by an adult who gained their confidence, and he wants to help, and he helps every way he's allowed to.

He doesn't really have an opportunity to deny help to someone, though, so it's difficult to compare him with Sirius, who does have the opportunity to deny Severus something on occasion and takes it eagerly every time: both the "it's my house" situation and the displayed, planned for, and attempted interrupting of Severus' authority as a teacher (he interferes in Severus' occlumency conversation with Harry, outright tells him he'll intervene if Severus misuses, to his view, the extra lessons as a means to harass Harry, encourages Harry to complain about any "hard time" Severus might give him, and makes an attempt to go to Hogwarts to take issue in person with Severus' ending of the lessons) are calculated refusals to extend to Severus the usual considerations given to another member of the Order of the Phoenix.

Of course, it's largely all he's got, at the moment.

Harry, meanwhile, despite being denied access to the Order and its information, and generally being condescended to by Molly Weasley about it, has his tantrum-pitching moment and his black moods, but he still helps clean, and he doesn't react to Molly or Sirius (who eventually agrees with her) the way Sirius reacts to Severus.

[lucynda]

Something I find really interesting is how a lot of people in hp fandom assume that the only bad muggles Severus interacted with were his dad and Petunia.

"Snape is so awful for being prejudiced against muggles when Mr and Ms Evans were so good to him" like dude, we don't know how Lily's parents acted. We have no clue if they ever met Severus much less if they liked him. They could have been mad that this poor, dirty boy is hanging around their daughter for all we know

[sideprince]

Chances are that a surly, uncared for child in 1970s Midlands England wasn't treated well by most of the people he came across. People would have been dismissive of him at best and suspicious of him at worst. A kid who wore funny, ill-sized clothes and showed signs of poverty and neglect would have been considered a troublemaker, not someone in need of care of help.

A lot of the HP fandom is US-centric and projects its own culture onto the HP world. The lack of curiosity about the actual culture of the country the story takes place in (and that the author - horrific bigot that she is - grew up in) really deprives that part of the fandom of a lot of information and perspective about characters. I do wonder sometimes how much of that lack of curiosity is self-serving, though - ie. that it's harder to project your own uwu or vitriolic headcanons and everything in between onto characters you've contextualized.

[dufferpuffer]

Perhaps my favourite non-British cultural assumption is that the world of HP is supposed to be some sort of nice, reasonable place - but fails at portraying that? Rather than being a cartoonish dark satire?

The world of HP hits similarly to Monty Python skits: a bunch of British folk straight-faced treating the absurd, whimsical, unfair, unjust, shocking and grim as regular tiring life. But in HP the skit keeps going. It's the world they live in, not just for laughs.

Blaming the story for showing horrible things while having characters treat it as banal... I mean thats the genre, isn't it? lol

A lot of the fandom is US-centric (or at least their media literacy is more reflective of US cultural origins than UK) - but I think it's more of a modern internet-culture thing, twisting a narrative to re-frame aspects of a character to make them more morally tidy, rather than accept that they are too wonky a shape to fit into a tidy square hole.

Sanding down imperfections to a personal ideal - not for narrative purpose but for internal moral comfort.

But the moral-texture of the world is inherently rough - otherwise the absurdity doesn't hit right. If the people aren't as rough as the landscape then they stand out really strongly.

Re-framing Snapes background to make him worse, to blame him for not being supported, is done to make Lily more morally smooth. It takes the rough nuances of their situation to try and force it into a 'pure girl, ungrateful boy' shaped hole.

I say thats a more general internet than US-centric because even separated from all location or time-period context... A little kid in mis-matched clothes with a yelling, cold father... being called 'Boy' (!!!) by more privileged kids... That should read pretty clearly from a US-centric lens, too. It's lost British nuance but it hasn't lost its meaning or weight.

There is always going to be wiggle-room in interpretation. Whether Lily's parents were neutral, polite, suspicious, dismissive or never even met him... whether they were more like Lily or more like Petunia... the strongest thing that can be read from them in canon is that they weren't notable to Severus at all.

Which overall suggests they were like everyone else: Muggle kids who didn't play with him, parents who didn't show love, little girls who teased him, no adults who helped. Lily's family offered no meaningful support to someone struggling and the scraps she gave weren't enough to lift the pressure.

[rijsamurai]

And the winner is… love!

Cedric Diggory / Harry Potter / Cho Chang

[inthemoodforblastt]

https://www.tumblr.com/apostlesflames/816199776130449408/if-you-observe-really-closely-and-i-mean-really?source=share

Hey, idk if you follow this blog or vice versa but since I follow you my feed fetches me a lot of anti marauders/marauders critical posts. This one i read stood out to me but since I mostly read your metas I just wanted to know your two cents on this essay ? I mostly agree with this but the "classism" part that you also bring up a quite a lot confuses me just a tad bit could you elaborate ? I just want to be educated on classism as a whole, as snape fan I feel like i should be well aware of my stances.

Thank you and that's all

Yes, we are mutuals hahahah Honestly I think a lot of people misunderstand what people mean when they bring classism into discussions about Snape and the Marauders because they immediately reduce it to “poor person good / rich person bad” which is not really the point.

The issue is more that class affects the way characters move through the world, the kind of social power they have access to, how protected they are from consequences and how others perceive them. And in that sense the Marauders vs Snape dynamic is absolutely shaped by class whether people like it or not.

James and Sirius are both wealthy pureblood boys from extremely influential families, they’re charismatic, socially admired, academically gifted and institutionally protected. Even Sirius, despite his dysfunctional upbringing, still carries the social capital that comes from being a Black. They move through Hogwarts with confidence because the system is built in a way that favors people like them socially.

Snape meanwhile is visibly poor, neglected, isolated, badly dressed, socially awkward and comes from Spinner’s End which is coded very heavily as working-class deprivation. People underestimate how much this affects the way a child is perceived. Poverty is stigmatizing. Kids notice it, teachers notice it, peers notice it. And when you’re already weird and abrasive on top of that, it becomes very easy for people to dehumanize you or treat you like the “acceptable target.”

And I also think people massively underestimate how much easier it is to “make the right choices” when you come from privilege and already have options, support systems, social protection and a sense that the world will catch you if you fall. It’s very easy to preach morality when you’ve never experienced the kind of desperation, alienation or lack of prospects that pushes people toward harmful environments in the first place. Severus grows up with basically nothing: no emotional stability, no social support, no economic privilege, no real sense of belonging outside of Hogwarts and even there he’s ostracized. So yes, when the only spaces offering you recognition, protection or power are the “wrong” ones, it becomes much easier to fall into them, especially as a vulnerable teenager desperate to escape humiliation and powerlessness.

Again, that does NOT absolve Snape of responsibility for the choices he made later. But I also think fandom often judges him in a very classist way by completely ignoring the context he came from and the lack of possibilities that context gave him. Because at the end of the day, judging two people who come from radically different social realities through the exact same moral lens without accounting for structural differences is itself deeply classist. Pretending that a neglected working-class child and wealthy socially protected pureblood boys all had the same emotional resources, opportunities and margin for error it’s ignoring how social inequality actually shapes human behavior.

And personally I think fandom often reproduces really ugly classist biases without realizing it because people romanticize the Marauders’ behavior as “boys being boys” or “charismatic popular kids having fun” while framing Severus' bitterness as uniquely monstrous and unforgivable. There’s a tendency to view socially polished wealthy characters as inherently more human and redeemable than poor abrasive ones. Like, James hexing random people for entertainment gets brushed aside as youthful arrogance because he’s charming and beloved. Snape being bitter and hostile after years of humiliation gets treated as proof he was born morally rotten. That disparity does not happen in a vacuum.

I also think people ignore how much humiliation and social exclusion can radicalize vulnerable teenagers. Again, this is not me saying poverty made Snape a Death Eater because that’s pretty reductive. But extremist groups absolutely prey on isolated angry young people who crave power, belonging and recognition after a lifetime of feeling powerless and degraded. That’s just a real social phenomenon.

So when I talk about classism in relation to Snape, I’m saying the social dynamics at play are very obviously influenced by class, status, popularity and institutional protection, and I think pretending otherwise leads to a very shallow reading of the story. And a very classist way too.

[kyraneko]

Severus had poverty and social class and social power stacked against him, as well as exceptionally vicious bullying, institutional disregard for his safety, abuse/neglect at home, and the shattering of a foundational friendship.

One of the things about morality is that the universe does not offer each of us the same set of burdens, yet the moral judgment tends to focus on just the responses.

Possibly James would never have joined the Death Eaters under similar circumstances; we'll never know because he was never put in that situation. Possibly Severus would never have joined friends in bullying a rival outsider if he was born to wealth and privilege; we'll never know because he was never put in that situation.

Even their joining and fighting in their own respective armies is shaped by the fact that Voldemort turned out to be a bad guy and Dumbledore turned out to be a good guy, a fact not necessarily recognizable and certainly not controllable by the people joining their movements at the time. Severus and James alike were courted by someone who promised to uphold and defend and champion things they valued, and presented with permission to engage in real deadly violence toward the enemy.

Morality, in the place you're presented with it, is the most subjective thing on Earth. The hand you're dealt matters. It's not everything; there are people who can't be bribed enough to be good and people who won't do evil even when the situation begs for it, but most of our performance will depend at least in part on how easy it is or how rewarding it is to do either.

[slitheringghost]

hate people trying to put feminist spins on jily and acting like it’s about lily’s agency actually. “lily CHOSE james it’s her CHOICE” you can’t make that argument when their main scene together is james taking that choice away from her when he tries to force her to go out with him and lily saying she wouldn’t go out with him if it was a choice between him and the squid.

[kyraneko]

of course not being her I can't say WHY it wasn't a dealbreaker for her (personally the fact that he made "girl" into a slur when he mocked Severus for being saved by one, calling her unworthy of being a defender or protector, would've done it for me), but I tend to view her situation as a mirror of Severus' radicalization into the Death Eaters.

in that circumstances band together and give her a shove in James' direction. her fallout/schismogenesis with Severus neatly makes hanging with his enemies a more vivid renunciation of him, James' pretense of listening to her and not targeting Severus give her the impression that he's changed, and the topography of the developing war put her firmly on the same side as James. even the blood-purity bigotry made marrying a pureblood as a muggleborn ideologically attractive.

it also would have left her vulnerable to pressure, whether directly from James or diffused by him to the external situation, but that's almost entirely beyond the scope of canon.

but all sorts of cults, abusive relationships, and other high-control situations simply run on getting people in the door to places they wouldn't have walked in knowingly, and all sorts of humans are quite vulnerable to being swept along with their crowds and enticed by reasoning sympathetic to their views. looking around at what your life has become in dismay and wondering how the fuck you got here is unfortunately a situation which a great many people find familiar.

[slitheringghost]

On Bathilda Bagshot, Dumbledore, and sexism

On the note of the inherent misogyny of how Grindeldore is written (see this addition to my meta by @thephiesintheforest), I think the way Bathilda's age is emphasized before her death, and her death itself, in DH is pretty sexist but easy to overlook.

Most main male characters' arcs in HP come at the expense of dead women, but Dumbledore is potentially the worst, where we are introduced to three dead women in service of Dumbledore's arc in DH - Kendra, Ariana, and Bathilda - and all three murdered.

Particularly notable is this: notice how with Dumbledore, his age being a problem is a red herring - we are NOT supposed to take it seriously when Dumbledore is called old, it's a lie he tells to manipulate Voldemort & Co. In reality, it was only an extremely powerful curse by Voldemort himself that caused these reactions (though if even that actually caused him to slower is dubious). This is emphasized in the description of Dumbledore's movements swimming towards the Slytherin locket cave as being those of a younger man, even with the curse:

“Dumbledore has been a great wizard — oh yes, he has,” (for Bellatrix had made a scathing noise), “the Dark Lord acknowledges it. I am pleased to say, however, that Dumbledore is growing old. The duel with the Dark Lord last month shook him. He has since sustained a serious injury because his reactions are slower than they once were.” (HBP) “Is it love again?” said Voldemort, his snake’s face jeering. “Dumbledore’s favorite solution, love, which he claimed conquered death, though love did not stop him falling from the tower and breaking like an old waxwork? Love, which did not prevent me stamping out your Mudblood mother like a cockroach, Potter — and nobody seems to love you enough to run forward this time and take my curse. So what will stop you dying now when I strike?” (DH) And with the sudden agility of a much younger man, Dumbledore slid from the boulder, landed in the sea, and began to swim, with a perfect breaststroke, toward the dark slit in the rock face, his lit wand held in his teeth. (HBP)

And there is emphasis on how powerful Dumbledore is until the last moment - he’s heavily weakened by the potion (and the curse) but he still manages to save Harry and drive back the Inferi with fire.

But then, through the darkness, fire erupted: crimson and gold, a ring of fire that surrounded the rock so that the Inferi holding Harry so tightly stumbled and faltered; they did not dare pass through the flames to get to the water. [...] Dumbledore was on his feet again, pale as any of the surrounding Inferi, but taller than any too, the fire dancing in his eyes; his wand was raised like a torch and from its tip emanated the flames, like a vast lasso, encircling them all with warmth. (HBP)

Dumbledore gets to assert his agency as he dies - and he in fact dies very similarly to Lily: wandless, helpless, essentially begging Snape for mercy, his last words pleading "please", his last act being to save Harry. But with Dumbledore, this is all an act, because his death was planned beforehand (Although for various reasons I do think JKR intended something more with Lily's death too - i.e. see how she makes Lily the figure of Death / the true Master of Death).

Likewise, Grindelwald is emphasized as old and wasted away but he is still very lucid when Voldemort visits him, and gets to make a last stand and die with honor and intent.

In contrast, we have Bathilda Bagshot, whose death is simply humiliating. We only meet her in death, and the age and decay is emphasized at every point. And most notably, there's the constant diminishing of her intelligence and sanity:

“Unfortunately, the brilliance that Bathilda exhibited earlier in her life has now dimmed. “The fire’s lit, but the cauldron’s empty,” as Ivor Dillonsby put it to me, or, in Enid Smeek’s slightly earthier phrase, “She’s nutty as squirrel poo." (DH)

I get that Bathilda is naturally older than Dumbledore, she is Grindelwald's great-aunt after all, but like, there is no specific average lifespan given for wizards (JKR has even given multiple wildly different ages for Dumbledore). And the Flamels lived until 600, so (Nicholas Flamel also given a choice and agency when he dies).

True, there is some tongue-in-cheek stuff with her too - i.e. when Lily says “I think her mind’s going, personally”, obviously there is irony there, Bathilda’s mind is not going, her story about Albus and Gellert’s past is correct. But the rest of the references to her mind as deteriorated seem to be intended to be taken seriously (as far as I can tell, someone correct me if I'm wrong).

Lastly, on a similar note, Bathilda is literally the one who taught Albus, and yet appears only to highlight how brilliant Albus and Gellert are. And compare this to, for example, Voldemort as teacher to Bellatrix and Snape, and how that position as teacher (reiterated by his desire for the DADA job) highlights his own intelligence and immense power. It all fits the pattern of how women who are responsible for men’s successes are overshadowed and minimized and erased by history.

[vanishonichka]

Tom Riddle

[faalthien]

Drarry art in the year of the lord 2026??

[heartoftheserpent]

Hogwarts 1960-1990

Ok having just reread Half-Blood Prince for the audiobook I'm struck with a few things we know about the ways Hogwarts has changed over the past 20-30 years, based on information we have from the books, and honestly, I'm fascinated by the implications.

Goblet of Fire - Apollyon Pringle Whipping Arthur Weasley

So we know that Pringle was the caretaker when Arthur and Molly were at Hogwarts, and the corporal punishment was so severe that it was leaving permanent scarring for things like "being out of bed at 4am to take a walk with your girlfriend." So, this seems like everything in the past was more strict, except..

2. Half-Blood Prince - Slughorn Reports Filch

This is really interesting to me! Slughorn has not been at school for at least a decade, and he's worried that Filch isn't worried about the right things.

3. Order of the Phoenix - Snape's Worst Memory

One thing worth mentioning that I don't see brought up often in discourse about SWM is that no one, at any point, goes or threatens to go for a teacher. I can't think of another altercation of that level in the main storyline where a teacher isn't sent for or arrives partway through. Usually, whenever hexes start flying, it's broken up and everyone sent to the hospital wing very quickly. Speaking of which...

4. Order of the Phoenix - Snape's Worst Memory - 2

Snape, James, and Sirius use spells against each other that in Harry's time would have him in detention for several months. While James and Sirius were in fact often in detention, none of this is treated as being for Intense Crimes like Harry and Draco throwing Crucio and Sectumsepra at each other.

5. Half-Blood Prince - "Petty Crimes"

James and Sirius indeed are often recorded as being in detention for "petty crimes" like hexing fellow students, and McGonagall, Flitwick, Hagrid, etc. treat this fondly in their reminiscences as precursors to the Weasley Twins. It could be memory making them fonder, but I further think that Hogwarts was just generally rougher in those days. And my final point to that effect...

6. Half-Blood Prince - Ginny and the Bat Bogey Hex

I really can't imagine a current teacher congratulating a student on hexing another student and rewarding them about it.

7. Goblet of Fire - Draco as Ferret

Yes, it's obviously Barty in disguise, and yes, he's pretending to be Mad, but it's not like both Barty and Moody didn't go to Hogwarts. Tbh I think it makes the most sense that Transfiguration As A Punishment is something that would have been done decades ago, that Moody would possibly remember.

Okay, conclusion: This all really reminds me of how a lot of Brits I knew in college would reminisce fondly about how when they were young, all the cops were unarmed and it was a good Saturday night to go out and get so rowdy with their friends that they got into fights with cops, whereas these days that's not really DONE. I'm not sure whether the school governors had MORE control, LESS control, were MORE involved, were LESS involved, but it feels like back then, Hogwarts was a much rougher place, and students were expected to be able to take care of themselves, and not rely on teachers to take care of them. Corporal punishment was common, hexes were casual, littering was unimportant.

Tbh, it reminds me of the old boarding school narratives about how the boys were expected to fight, expected to lie about fighting, and expected to take their punishment without complaint, because it toughens you up for the real world.

[heartoftheserpent]

OH OH OH reblogging this from myself to add -

8. Chamber of Secrets - Albus sends Tom back to bed

This could be seen as preferential treatment to a Prefect, or knowing he has a good reason, but when we go up against Arthur being strung up and whipped for being out of bed, or even Harry getting detention for being caught out of bed in his first year, it seems very indulgent.

9. Half-Blood Prince - They'll All Be In Trouble

in general, being Out Of Bed seems to be much less of an issue in the 40s ("run along") than in the 60s (whipping) or the 90s (detention). Idk what to think about that.

[dufferpuffer]

This is a WONDERFUL collection omg thankyou

It reminds me, a little, of how cruel McGonagall can be in her punishments - and how lenient, when she feels like it.

She is happy to take enough points from first years that they face real social stigma for half the year, just for sneaking out of bed and maybe tricking another boy. She was also yanking Draco by the ear. Even without the scary Forbidden Forest detention - that is harsh.

Then the next year - she teary-eyed lets Ron and Harry walk without escort to 'go see Hermione'... despite there being strict rules put in place because the Chambers were open again. Very much like Albus letting Tom 'hurry off to bed' even though its 'best not to roam the corridors these days. Not since...'

Filch also loves 'the good old days' of hurting students. Fascination with torture - or actual distaste in recent policy change...? hm...

But something seems different since the early 1960s when Arthur was at school, at the very least. Kids aint getting whipped/hexed now. Even in the 1970s, when evidently teacher reaction to bullying was still very lax - Sirius and James were getting detentions, not hurt.

I wonder if Albus Dumbledore becoming headmaster between 1966 and 1970 (probably the later end of that) had anything to do with it.

tl;dr link page:

"It seemed impossible that I would be able to come to Hogwarts. Other parents weren't likely to want their children exposed to me. But then Dumbledore became Headmaster, and he was sympathetic." (Remus, PoA ch18)

Remus was bitten in 1965. Until Dumbledore became headmaster his parents deemed it impossible for him to go to Hogwarts.

If you take Pottermore into account - fair enough if no - it seems Remus was nearer Hogwarts age when Dumbledore broke into their house, gave him crumpets and said he wanted Remus to attend.

[kyraneko]

What's really fucking weird to me is that Filch talks a lot about the "good old days" when he was allowed to torture students, but Molly said Apollyon Pringle was the caretaker then, but Arthur isn't that much older than, say, Lucius Malfoy (who would have been in his second year the year Dumbledore first became Headmaster), and I'm assuming that Dumbledore was the one who ended corporal punishment by headmasterial fiat.

So when the fuck did Filch get his torture jollies in? Unless he was undercaretaker or something? Or "caretaker" meant more of a Hagrid type job (and Hagrid was Pringle's assistant after being expelled?) and Filch had the inside work and Pringle the outside, so as to catch Arthur, a year or two before Dumbledore ascended?

[amyart10p]

Draco ferret

[severusnaplet]

Can We Talk About the ‘Evil Bigoted Snape Gave a Werewolf Lecture to Hurt Remus’ Discourse—Because Y’all Are Missing the Point

People love to drag Snape for giving that werewolf lecture during Lupin’s year at Hogwarts. It’s often cited as one of the top reasons to hate him—because “Lupin was taking Wolfsbane and was harmless.” But let’s actually unpack that, because that logic falls apart real fast.

First of all: Lupin wasn’t harmless. He just wasn’t mindless.

Those are two very different things.

The Wolfsbane Potion doesn’t stop the transformation. It just lets him keep his human mind when he transforms into a physically dangerous, magically enhanced predator. He says it himself:

“As long as I take it in the week preceding the full moon, I keep my mind when I transform.” - Remus Lupin

So yeah, keeping his mind helps—but it doesn’t make him safe. He still has all the inherent physical dangers of a werewolf: the monstrous strength, enhanced speed, claws, fangs, and bite force that can overpower any human. And if he chose to bite someone? The potion wouldn’t stop the infection from being passed on.

Now let’s zoom in on Snape’s position here.

In order to be okay with Lupin teaching, Snape would’ve had to do something that’s completely antithetical to his character: trust a man he hates, a man he believes is both dangerous and morally compromised, to prioritize the safety of children. That’s just not who Snape is—and it’s not who he has been shaped to be.

This is a man whose entire personality is shaped by trauma. His childhood, his school years, the werewolf attack—all of it. And on top of that, he spent years as a true DE then a spy. He’s seen firsthand that danger doesn’t always come with red flags and scary music. Sometimes it’s quiet. Sometimes it’s someone you’ve known for years. like Peter Pettigrew.

Snape knows that betrayal doesn’t just come from cartoon villains—it comes from people everyone else thinks are harmless. People like Lupin.

From Snape’s perspective, Lupin isn’t just “a risky case.” He’s an unreliable and potentially compromised individual who is keeping a life-threatening secret from the entire student body. Add that to the fact that Snape:

Was nearly killed by this exact werewolf in what he believes was a targeted attack.

Has never had a personal reason to trust Lupin—only reasons to distrust him.

Genuinely believes Lupin may be helping Sirius Black, who everyone still thinks is a mass murderer.

Believes Dumbledore is biased toward this specific Gryffindor friend group and prioritizes them over basic safety.

Has spent most of his life at Hogwarts watching the DADA post destroy whoever fills it.

Yes, Snape trusts Dumbledore on a practical level—but he also thinks Dumbledore plays favorites. And when it comes to the Marauders? Snape has every reason to believe Dumbledore’s judgment is compromised. So what does he do?

He does the one thing he can do: teach students how dangerous werewolves really are.

Because in Snape’s mind, the worst-case scenario isn’t just some abstract “Lupin might slip up” thing. It’s this:

What if Lupin is working with Sirius Black?

What if they’re planning something on the full moon—when Lupin is transformed and no one can stop him? The least he can do is prepare the students for what they possibly could do during an attack. 

Snape doesn’t know the full truth. He doesn’t know about the betrayal swap. He just knows that someone from that group already betrayed the Potters. And even Sirius believed it could’ve been Lupin at one point—that’s why they made Peter the Secret-Keeper. So from Snape’s perspective? Trusting Lupin isn’t just a gamble. It’s asking for disaster.

And honestly, let’s not pretend we knew Lupin was trustworthy when we first read or watched this. He was likable, sure. But likable ≠ safe.

Also, let’s talk about this take that teaching about werewolves is “inherently discriminatory.” They’re cursed beings who become dangerous, contagious monsters once a month. Teaching kids to be aware of that isn’t hate. It’s survival. Especially when you’re a trauma survivor yourself, trying to protect students from the kind of danger that nearly killed you. The way the ministry treats werewolves is awful and the way they deal with them is both incompetent and discriminatory, but as I said, in my other post about analogies for discrimination, the difference is werewolves are actually dangerous (unlike other REAL oppressed groups).

Was it harsh? Sure. Snape’s delivery always is. But was it unjustified? No.

Because in the end, a werewolf did transform on school grounds. Near students. Uncontrolled. Alone. And it wasn’t because he was evil—it was because he forgot his potion after being emotionally rattled. That’s all it took.

What if that moment had come just a little later? What if he’d still been inside the castle when it hit? If this story weren’t aimed at kids, Lupin def would’ve been written as tragically killing someone. Easily. And again: not because he’s a monster in the moral sense—but because he’s a monster in the literal one.

You can be a decent man and still be dangerous. Two things can be true at once.

So yeah—was there some pettiness involved? Probably. He’s a petty guy. But that wasn’t the root of it. The root was trauma, caution, and a desperate attempt to do something to protect students in a situation he had no control over.

[sideprince]

The thing about the werewolf lecture is that Snape didn't bring Lupin into it. He didn't name him, he didn't insinuate anything about him. He taught the students what werewolves were and how to recognize them. In short, he was empowering them with knowledge to enable them to draw their own conclusions and be informed, without pointing out or insinuating that Lupin was one.

From a Doylist perspective Snape is acting in character, as someone who's been set up as an unlikely and unlikeable protector but a protector nonetheless. From the moment it's revealed in PS that Snape wasn't trying to kill Harry but save him, the author is telling us that he isn't what he seems when he acts antagonistic. This is reinforced in the Shrieking Shack scene in PoA when he reveals himself from under the invisibility cloak to confirm that he did indeed think Lupin was in on the prank in which Sirius sent him without warning to face a werewolf - Snape is unaware of key pieces of information that we, the reader, learn in this scene, and is there because he thinks Lupin is meeting Black and Black is an antagonist at this point. And he's not wrong about the first part.

The author also reinforces the idea that "likable ≠ safe" in the next book, GoF, in revealing that Mad-Eye Moody, who had Dumbledore's, Harry's, and even Neville's respect, who was kind to Neville - even moreso than Lupin already had been - was actually a murderous death eater in disguise who killed his own father after keeping him imprisoned by an unforgiveable curse, and had imprisoned the real Moody in a trunk that was in plain sight of students and staff all year. This is one of the most chilling plot twists in the whole series, seeing someone experienced, clever, and most importantly likeable turn out to not only not be what they seem, but incredibly and lethally dangerous. Snape, who spent time as a death eater and is Dumbledore's most important informant on Voldemort, would be cynical and jaded enough by his experiences to view anyone he doesn't trust with the kind of caution Crouch Jr. reinforced the need for. I think he and Dumbledore share this insight - when Dumbledore realizes what happened, he doesn't look surprised or shocked, only furious. If we look at the previous books through the lens of what the author reveals in subsequent ones, then it makes sense that Snape was skeptical of Lupin if he saw him as 1. untrustworthy 2. conspiring with Black and 3. capable of immense harm.

But Snape is also intellectually driven. He doesn't force his own perspective on others, as we see when he tries to convince Dumbledore of Lupin's dubiousness through examples and reasoning. He uses the same approach by giving the students the werewolf lecture. When asked to fill in for Lupin, he doesn't spend the lesson trying to convince the class that Lupin is a werewolf, but instead passes knowledge onto them to enable them to use their own intellect and the information available to realize the truth.

Which begs the question, if Lupin wasn't a sympathetic character, would so many people in the fandom be angry about Snape's lecture? Setting aside the obvious Doylist intention by the author to give the reader a hint and enable them - as Snape does his students - to figure out the mystery themselves, do some fans find it problematic to inform people and allow them to think for themselves in order to come to a realization? Or do they find it objectionable only when it doesn't suit their personal perspective? Is it acceptable to keep people ignorant of something if it suits your own needs? While there's certainly room for debate about how discriminatory wizarding society is portrayed as being, we can see from Ron's reactions (Ron being the character who most often gives the reader information on wizarding culture) that there's a lot of fear and ignorance, while Snape gives the students information similar to what we would consider a scientific approach:

“Which of you can tell me how we distinguish between the werewolf and the true wolf?’ said Snape. ... No one made a sound throughout the rest of the lesson. They sat and made notes on werewolves from the textbook, while Snape prowled up and down the rows of desks, examining the work they had been doing with Professor Lupin. ... You will each write an essay, to be handed in to me, on the ways you recognise and kill werewolves."

-Prisoner of Azkaban, Ch. 9

Snape doesn't even do much lecturing, really, he has the students read the textbook and write an essay, an effective way of cementing knowledge through analysis. I don't think he intends for them to learn how to kill werewolves in order for them to attempt doing so, on the basis that he's established early on as having a defensive approach to conflict by teaching Harry and Malfoy "expelliarmus" which becomes a key spell for both of them later on in the series. Snape is also later shown to be an exceptional occlumens, and we see during his lessons with Harry on the subject that he prioritizes understanding and anticipating an opponent, again showing that he sees information as a useful and necessary tool for survival. Despite Harry's ability to see into Voldemort's mind, Snape only discourages him doing so and tries to teach him to protect himself from Voldemort doing the same - again showing that Snape's approach is defensive, not offensive, and based in understanding one's opponent and minimizing their ability to do harm.

Therefore I think it's reasonable to assume that Snape's goal in asking the students to write an essay on recognizing and killing werewolves is aimed at teaching them how immensely dangerous it would be to try to defeat a werewolf, should they come into contact with one, and just as he gave them this lesson in order to arm them with knowledge, he's also doing the same when it comes to letting the students draw their own conclusions about the best thing to do when faced with a werewolf (the same thing he did as a student when James pulled him out of the Shrieking Shack): get the fuck out of there.

When Lupin returns, he doesn't take the opportunity to cover werewolves. He doesn't even say that students would do well to hang onto what they've written so far, as they will be covering the subject later in the year. He scraps it altogether. Where Snape wants students to have knowledge and be informed, Lupin chooses to keep them ignorant. There's a lot of room for debate on what role the discriminatory and biased culture of wizarding society plays in this, but here Lupin also has an opportunity to present a different perspective and discuss the ethics of discrimination against werewolves as well as inform students of treatments like the wolfsbane potion, and he chooses instead to avoid the subject completely. Where Snape understands that knowledge is power and ultimately wants to empower his students, Lupin fears it, because he doesn't trust or respect the students enough to allow them to wield it.

[kyraneko]

This is very well-considered. I hadn't thought of the mindless-versus-harmless connotations, but from Snape's perspective, Lupin absolutely would potentially use his werewolf abilities to cause harm if given sufficient opportunity and incentive.

The potion does nothing to counter that.

And the werewolf lecture, or the attempt thereat (I suspect Snape just got frustrated at how the class was responding and just decided they weren't worth the effort to actually teach properly), would be a perfectly reasonable thing even in the absence of a known werewolf at Hogwarts: werewolves exist, therefore anyone in the class might someday encounter one, and some werewolves do in fact infect people deliberately, and some werewolves do in fact handle their transformation carelessly and so endanger others, and so knowing how to recognize and, if necessary, kill, a werewolf, is an important life skill if you do not want to be mauled and given a highly-stigmatized, inconvenient, painful, distressing, incurable condition.

Of the class, apparently nobody but Hermione makes the connection, and she elects to keep her mouth shut about it, whether by ethical considerations or by intellectual snobbery ("isn't it obvious?"), and so it functions, in-narrative, as a perfectly reasonable lesson, and Snape's motive for choosing it readily believable as a petty wish to do minor violence to Lupin's lesson plan (and/or lack thereof) and demonstrate that he is the one teaching the class and he'll do it how he wants, thank.

[dufferpuffer]

Severus POV:

Dementors have been put in the school specifically to keep Harry Potter safe from a mass murderer hunting him. Nobody likes it, there are issues - but as long as Harry stays in the castle he should be okay. The dementors are a good thing, stopping the murderer from getting too close most of the time.

Then someone has been teaching him the rare, difficult spell used exclusively to repel dementors from their vicinity. Someone you suspect might not have Harry's best interest at heart. Someone you know acts pleasant to get peoples favor - but has a sadistic side that almost got you killed. Someone who will lie through his teeth in order to look good. Someone who was close friends with the guy who betrayed Harry before. They've both come to the school at the same year.

Now Harry can be naughty and sneak out, keeping the dementors that are supposed to be keeping him safe away.

He must have felt fucking insane having Albus not take his concerns seriously lol

[kyraneko]

Not exclusively. They can also send verbal messages (and apparently, find the person being sent said message).

Admittedly, no one arranges for Harry to find out about this for several books yet, and also admittedly, Harry is absolutely learning the Patronus charm for dementor-repelling purposes (albeit they are more quidditch-based than Snape troubles to consider).

So: Lupin (untrustworthy) is teaching Harry (foolhardy, rule-disdaining) a spell that primarily repels dementors, allowing and perhaps encouraging Harry to escape the castle (dangerous).

Poor Severus. He absolutely deserves to get to pop off that massive tantrum at the end of the book.

[dream--shrine]

Snape and Lily: finding their place in the wizarding world

If Lily cared for Severus why did she marry James?  If Severus cared for Lily why did he join Voldemort?

The parallels I examine here are the motivations behind the choices Snape and Lily make at the end of their time at school and just beyond.

Lily is hardly mentioned at all in the narrative. We mainly see her through other people’s perceptions of her, and circumstantial clues.

Often I see the two of them compared as like, Snape made a bad decision that was ultimately understandable due to a desire for self-preservation, based on his circumstances, VS Lily said fuck you to her best friend of ten years and fell instantly, deeply in love with someone she had openly hated almost as long for no other reason than just being callous and cruel, that her decision of who to marry had no thought behind it other than “James was hot and rich”. I think this does her a huge disservice and that the motivations of the two best friends are much more similar than people give them credit for.

NB: I’m approaching this with my interpretation of book canon, where I got the impression James is not a great person and we don’t see any direct evidence of his having changed after leaving school besides people saying “He’s changed”. Certainly he has some red flags for abusive behaviour, for the purpose of this meta I’m just addressing why she might have chosen to marry him and not trying to say how James was as a husband either way. He might have been a great guy, who knows. Ultimately I’m asking why choose to forgive Snape for the choices he made at 18 and not Lily, when those choices have very similar driving forces.

Timing We don’t know exactly when Snape takes the Dark Mark but probably sometime soon after leaving school. However the foundation building towards this decision certainly happened while still at school.

Similarly Lily marries James probably the year after leaving school, having finally agreed to date him in seventh year. We actually don’t know if they got married before having Harry. Certainly sometime within Harry’s first 8 months - 1 year of life at the very latest, since there are wedding pictures of a big party that would have happened before they went into hiding. But considering the conservative nature of the wizarding world, and the probable attitudes of both their parents, its more likely they got married either the year after school or early in her pregnancy (before showing) at the latest. 

Foreknowledge Would their experiences at school be indicative of life after leaving?

Was Lily misled about the worst parts of James? Yes, canonically. (Lupin and Sirius both admit this to Harry in OotP.) James was on his best behaviour during their seventh year, and they were still chaperoned at Hogwarts under the eyes of the teachers and all their friends, with separate dorm rooms. 

Was Snape misled about the worst of Voldemort? Likely, at least to some degree. Sirius says his own family didn’t really see the full picture until it was too late, including Regulus, which seems to imply there was some level of obfuscation. Certainly the DEs would have on some level tailored their approach to recruiting to what these vulnerable young people wanted to hear. And Snape’s motivations would have been different to a blood supremacist like Regulus yet they both joined up around the same time.

Was it to their benefit not to dig too deeply into any doubts or fears they may have had about James/Voldemort? Absolutely, yes, in order to keep going with their choices.

Background Both Lily and Snape came from a “less than” background compared to their peers in the wizarding world:

Class/Wealth We know in detail about Snape’s disadvantages. I think there’s a misconception that because Lily did not come from the same level of abject poverty as Snape did, that she was in a much higher class than he was. But their worlds were close enough that they met on the same playground, and Petunia knew of Snape’s family. The distinction Petunia makes between them isn’t the exact same as the one James makes.

Blood Status Lily was Muggleborn in an increasingly intensifying wizarding war where her blood status made her place very precarious. Snape was a half blood with one Muggle parent which in this blood quantum system seems to place him only one step above Muggleborn.

Merit I think sometimes it’s easy to conflate Lily with someone like Hermione since they’re the characters both singled out for being Muggleborn as well as studious and high achieving. But Hermione’s parents are well off (no issues shopping for supplies, buys Crookshanks, ski vacation, etc). Lily has a far more precarious situation. She seems to have both worked hard and had natural aptitude, was a prefect and Head Girl, member of the Slug Club. She was working very hard to make a place for herself in the wizarding world and yet I think both she and Snape were astute enough to recognize that the WW is not a meritocracy (I have read some great metas on this), especially by the end of their tenure at school. Snape went to Hogwarts thinking one thing and would have been disabused of this notion soon enough. He doesn’t appear to have striven for public recognition the way Lily did, maybe believing he would need to rely on himself alone to get ahead, but I think this is a parallel where they both realize they need to do something beyond being smart and talented alone.

Familial Support The wizarding world appears to be fairly conservative when it comes to families. Women always take their husband’s last name, at least in the Hogwarts class that we’re privy to. They have children quite young. Outsize importance is placed on family name and dynasty. Neither Lily or Severus has familial support within the wizarding world. And no family is a very lonely place to be when you’re just becoming an adult.

It had to be very tempting to be offered an instant, rock solid place in the wizarding world. A pureblood name, a family, status. A place in the DE, even at a very low level, maybe a promise that merit would mean something there.

Could they both have made a different decision, yes, of course, they could have gone out into the unknown world without protection and rely on themselves alone, but that doesn’t sound very appealing as an adult and certainly not to someone barely past childhood.

From the prevailing attitude at the time (widespread fear among even established adults and families) it seems like they might both view the chance of being a casualty of the war as pretty high for either of them without making the choice they did. They’re both looking for protection, belonging, certainty in an uncertain time. Both are trying to cement their place in the world, not slip through the cracks. 

To me, I have sympathy for someone as disadvantaged as Snape joining the Death Eaters regardless of his later redemption. This eventuality was a result of a lot of factors mostly beyond his control. And I feel the same for Lily. She was doing the best she could with the information she had. We don’t have any sense of her interiority in canon so we don’t know her feelings or thoughts. We don’t know what James said or did to convince her he’d changed. In canon we certainly see he had people willing to stretch the truth or lie for him. And once out of school we don’t see any evidence of other friendships for Lily besides James and his friend group (this itself is a red flag to me but I digress).

The difference between Snape and Lily’s stories is that he’s given a chance to live almost twice as long as she does. She dies at 21, he at 38. So we see what he does with the time given to him, how he redeems the misguided choices he’s made, starting right before the time she dies, motivated in great part by his relationship to her.

But Lily isn’t given this chance. She dies before any story much beyond childhood even starts. So we don’t get to see how her life would have played out. And I am not saying she would have had to make any different decisions later in life to deserve redemption. I’m saying both she and Snape deserve that initial sympathy for making hard choices, maybe wrong choices, when they are still kids. And that the reasons behind their choices show how similar they are, and reinforce why they might have gotten along so well in some ways, and been unable to understand each other in others.

The end!!!! If you made it this far thank you for reading all that!! Hope it made any sort of sense at all. I wrote this for the Sneta Fest Day 3 prompt "Relationships/dynamics/parallels", and I hope I stayed close to the parameters.

[kyraneko]

The concept of "place" in a society that has moved on much less from British historical worldviews and power structures than the modern muggle one, that has no such modern conceits as perceived equality, that has strong preexisting networks of familial influence and power, that has a historic caste system based on ancestry, that has had multiple dark lords show up and threaten to overturn even the dubious security outsiders are afforded in the wizarding world within living memory, is really more invisible to us than it would be to the characters.

People like Lily and Severus are extremely precariously positioned, and both James Potter and Voldemort, respectively, offer them real benefits in terms of safety, belonging, and support. Arguably, vital benefits, especially with the threats they canonically face.

[seriousbrat]

@said-snape-softly I just wanted to post this because it's so good!

I think it's an interesting contradiction with Snape, because as a teen to me he reads as aspiring to those things-- popularity, success, privilege-- but resenting them simultaneously. As you say he's very much not a suck up-- even though this would seem the most expedient route to success, he simply isn't built for it. Whether he's too proud to try it or simply incapable.

The vibe I get from teen Snape is that he assumes he'll eventually ascend just on the basis of his talent-- kind of like the trope where the downtrodden nerd says 'someday you'll all be working for me!'

I think Snape values the 'pull yourself up by your bootstraps' mentality and identifies with this himself, while disparaging those who take what he sees as the easy route-- either by sucking up or by simply coasting on the privilege they're born with. As a teen he might have felt there was nobility in ascending based on merit (as opposed to the contemptible 'easy' route), maybe as a way to cope with the fact that he wasn't being recognised and that someone like James very much was. The most he ever ascribes to James (who we are told was actually clever and talented himself) is a "small" amount of talent at Quidditch, and even that's pretty ungenerous haha-- Snape is 'brainy' and James is 'brawny,' and it has to be that way in Snape's mind.

I think you're completely right that this is what led him to the Death Eaters, whom he may have idealised as an environment in which he would be recognised purely for his talents. Of course, the internal DE hierarchy doesn't strike me as being a meritocracy lol, at least not entirely, but they're also not above using someone for their purposes (e.g. Greyback.) I've no doubt Mulciber and/or Avery recognised the potential in Snape, and after a lifetime of being overlooked this must have felt pretty good. And, truthfully, Snape does eventually ascend in the ranks through his ability and usefulness to Voldemort.

So he may have seen one route to success and recognition-- Slughorn's, which depends on connections, schmoozing, charisma-- as closed to him, and the route presented by the Death Eaters as more viable for him, and morally superior in a way.

What's also interesting though is that Snape's favourite student, Draco, is literally the definition of a suck-up and someone who coasts on their privilege, all the things he derides about Harry and James-- while Hermione, who he treats terribly, is hardworking and diligent and talented despite her lack of connections. I've talked about this before but I always see his favouritism of Draco as stemming from a few things-- some lingering fondness for the Malfoys, perhaps, and also an interest in remaining close to them for strategic reasons. But also maybe compensating for the fact that, while Snape was at school, a student like Draco would have looked down on him-- so in my mind as an adult he hasn't fully shed that subconscious need to be recognised.

[sideprince]

#personally i do think he was briefly in the slug club but mostly because of the glow of lily's personality haha#and then he stopped being invited once they fell out#i also do think slughorn likes to spot and cultivate talent himself (and then claim credit for it haha)#so I can see him trying this on snape initially and then giving him up as a bad job because of how unlikable he was lol

What's funny is I think the opposite - that he wasn't in the Slug Club until his last year, maybe partway through his sixth (if at all), after Lily cut him out of her life. I imagine that would have isolated him more and the budding DE's in his dorm (Mulciber, Avery, whoever else) would have capitalized on that. We know that Avery's dad was an OG DE, so by the time he was in his last couple years of school it's possible he understood how indoctrination worked and was targeting Snape. Presumably, as Slytherin - and Slug Club - legacies, the budding DE's would have also been members, and once they were more visibly hanging out with Snape and taking him under their wing I can see Slughorn inviting him to the Slug Club.

[kyraneko]

Slughorn's criteria for "membership" is just weird. Extremely patchy. Situational in the extreme. Prejudicial, in a word, and more engineered towards exclusion than consideration.

Examples: on the train, he courts Marcus Belby until Belby says he doesn't see much of his uncle Damocles, the inventor of the Wolfsbane potion---and not for personal aversions, but merely because his uncle and his father "don't get on." Slughorn then instantly gets cold and cuts Belby out of the distribution of food: the dismissal is clear, and he doesn't bother to inquire further into whether Belby himself has any interest in potions, or any other talents. No, his father didn't give Belby a connection with the famous, accomplished uncle, so Belby gets shunted aside without ceremony.

At the same time, Ginny Weasley garners an invite by casting a bat-bogey hex in front of him, apparently a complex piece of magic indicating talent.

Harry is courted for being Harry. Draco is dismissed for, arguably, his father's fall from grace. Ron is overlooked, even after an impressive display on the quidditch field. Hermione, despite claiming even less connection to the magical Granger family than Belby had to his uncle, is welcomed warmly.

He's just really astoundingly haphazard about who he invites in and who he doesn't, and I suspect it has much to do with his own personal preferences and aversions.

He values potential, but he doesn't look for it very hard.

I think it much more likely that he dismissed Snape, even perhaps so far as assuming that Lily was behind Snape's potions talent, and only considered him worth anything after he and Lily parted ways and Snape's potions successes were obviously his own. And after Snape more clearly had the patronage of Lucius and the like. And after Snape had risen to achieve his own position as Potions Master and Head of Slytherin House.

[juderuo]

Quick sketch as I freak out about my style.

Severus would eat up the goth scene and he fs would have a nicotine addiction.

[toshsato]