Inflicting the products of my fixation on Snape, Occlumency, Voldemort, Death Eaters, and general angst on Tumblr. oh I guess I also blog a lot about Israel and Jew stuff now?
But Harry’s anger at Snape continued to pound through his veins like venom. Let go of his anger? He could as easily detach his legs. . . .
This is the first Occlumency lesson. Harry is right, of course. Feelings don’t go away because you want them to. To let go of them when they’ve not been addressed or validated can be as hard as detaching a leg. And yet, it’s what Dumbledore asked Snape to do, and it’s what Snape had to do to survive the first war as Dumbledore’s spy. You have to ask yourself… how?
Trapped animals chew off their own legs to escape. It’s a sacrifice they make to survive.
If there’s one thing in a fic that turns me off it, it’s the idea that Occlumency shields are a thing, that Severus was so gifted at it because he’s got some power like Second Sight or being a metamorphagus. I always preferred to think of Occlumency and Legilimency as skills that can be learned, even if some have more aptitude for it than others.
Severus entered Hogwarts with the kind of life experience that primed him for developing these skills, and left it with even more. Occlumency is magical dissociation, a post-traumatic coping mechanism, and Severus has C/PTSD. More under the cut; tw: just general angst.
To survive, he would have had to develop a knack for telling how explosive and unpredictable people feel. Over his life, he faced at least two egregious examples of what Pete Walker, author of “Complex PTSD” calls “the Charming Bully”.
Especially devolved fight types can become sociopathic. Sociopathy can range along a continuum that stretches from corrupt politician to vicious criminal. A particularly nasty sociopath, who I call the charming bully, probably falls somewhere around the middle of this continuum. The charming bully behaves in a friendly manner some of the time. He can even occasionally listen and be helpful in small amounts, but he still uses his contempt to overpower and control others. This type typically relies on scapegoats for the dumping of his vitriol. These unfortunate scapegoats are typically weaker than him. […] He generally spares his favorites from this behavior, unless they get out of line. If the charming bully is charismatic enough, those close to him will often fail to register the unconscionable meanness of his scapegoating. The bully’s favorites often slip into denial, relieved that they are not the target. Especially charismatic bullies may even be admired and seen as great.
These would be James Potter and Tom Riddle, who are distantly related, I might add. Harry inherited the tendency to default to the fight response, but since he grew up the scapegoat and not the golden child, he never becomes quite as appalling, and after all, a fight response is normal when they are after you. Even so, Harry, who has both James and Voldemort inside him, triggers Severus to no end. It’s not a coincidence that the memories Harry sees when he is with him are largely horrible, and vice versa. There had to be happy or at least neutral or even boring moments, but these two detest each other, and they know they detest each other. Negative emotions and associated memories are so close to the surface they can’t be contained. This is the purpose of the Pensieve in this context - to contain the emotions. Since Severus knew what was in there when he pulled Harry out, my theory is that you don’t suddenly forget the memories you placed there, but rather you make them less fraught with emotions.
“Get up!” said Snape sharply. “Get up! You are not trying, you are making no effort, you are allowing me access to memories you fear, handing me weapons!”
Harry stood up again, his heart thumping wildly as though he had really just seen Cedric dead in the graveyard. Snape looked paler than usual, and angrier, though not nearly as angry as Harry was. “I — am — making — an — effort,” he said through clenched teeth.
“I told you to empty yourself of emotion!”
“Yeah? Well, I’m finding that hard at the moment,” Harry snarled.
“Then you will find yourself easy prey for the Dark Lord!” said Snape savagely. “Fools who wear their hearts proudly on their sleeves, who cannot control their emotions, who wallow in sad memories and allow themselves to be provoked this easily — weak people, in other words — they stand no chance against his powers! He will penetrate your mind with absurd ease, Potter!”
A lot to unpack here.
“Memories you fear,” “weapons”, “easy prey”.
Fearing your own memories, viewing your own lived experiences as weapons to be used against you, being easy prey… Severus could not be speaking louder of himself here. He is the one whose mind had been penetrated with absurd ease, he is the one who handed weapons to Voldemort, and he is the one who had to do the psychological equivalent of detaching his own leg – again and again – to survive.
I’ll argue that Severus developed a fawn response and a flight response, as fighting had never really worked out for him if it was possible at all. He had at least two more people I’d describe as bullies in his life, Tobias and Lucius.
Again from Pete Walker:
These [fawn] response patterns are so deeply set in the psyche, that as adults, many codependents automatically respond to threat like dogs, symbolically rolling over on their backs, wagging their tails, hoping for a little mercy and an occasional scrap. Webster’s second entry for fawn is: “to show friendliness by licking hands, wagging its tail, etc.: said of a dog.” I find it tragic that some codependents are as loyal as dogs to even the worst “masters”.
Remember what Sirius called him? Lucius’s lapdog. Bellatrix called him Dumbledore’s pet, Dumbledore said he dangles on Voldemort’s arm, the narrative compares Snape to a rabbit in SWM and Harry compares the Half Blood Prince to a beloved pet who had gone feral (yes, this does mean a lot to me on a personal level, yes my username is not a coincidence).
His unconscious fawn response might have been his undoing, drawn as he was to figures like Lucius and Voldemort. As an adult, I think he utilized the skills he had developed to survive in order to stitch these people up, and involuntary dissociation and fawning became Occlumency, which to me, is his signature magic. Harry needed only to banish Voldemort from his mind; Severus could not settle for this. He had to give Voldemort something, and knowing how to fawn meant knowing what to give him and how to draw himself in such a light that Voldemort would believe it. We see how he wanted to be seen by the Death Eaters: a self-serving coward who sought to hide behind Dumbledore’s apron, playing his pet. But that’s Pettigrew, not Snape. Imagine the self-immolation, the self-violation, it must have taken to convince everyone that you’re an ersatz Wormtail! Snape is a man and a prince, and the text recognizes this as Harry calls him, in the end, Dumbledore’s man, the bravest man, and as that chapter is called “The Prince’s Tale”. Voldemort thought Snape was nothing more than a “good and faithful servant,” and that his last words were “My Lord”.
But Severus had an unequaled gift for Occlumency, specifically against Voldemort, because Voldemort could not legilimens what he couldn’t feel; and he couldn’t feel love, grief, guilt, and remorse. This was Severus’s secret weapon, which would not have worked against Harry - who can feel these things, and who is also Lily’s son. I can prove it. The first time Harry gets the hang of Occlumency is after Dobby dies:
His scar burned, but he was master of the pain; he felt it, yet was apart from it. He had learned control at last, learned to shut his mind to Voldemort, the very thing Dumbledore had wanted him to learn from Snape. Just as Voldemort had not been able to possess Harry while Harry was consumed with grief for Sirius, so his thoughts could not penetrate Harry now, while he mourned Dobby. Grief, it seemed, drove Voldemort out . . . though Dumbledore, of course, would have said that it was love. . . .
Harry learned to dissociate, though fortunately in a healthier way than many of us ever get to.
Of course, Snape was a good and faithful servant… to Dumbledore, which brings us to the flight response. The chapter wherein he escapes after killing Dumbledore is called “Flight of the Prince”. He should be fighting, he had just proven that he can cast a killing curse, and yet he flees. He can literally fly, in fact: He, Lily, and Voldemort are the only ones we see pulling this off.
As a child, we see this too: He copes with his home situation by reminding himself “it won’t be long and I’ll be gone.” He is thrilled when he imagines Hogwarts, his escape; he follows Lily out of the carriage instead of confronting James and Sirius head-on (which might have saved them all a lot of pain eventually). But this doesn’t work out, we see that in terrifying detail. The next attempt at an escape is joining the Death Eaters, but this too doesn’t work out.
He can’t flee anymore.
“Severus, you cannot pretend this isn’t happening!” Karkaroff’s voice sounded anxious and hushed, as though keen not to be overheard. “It’s been getting clearer and clearer for months. I am becoming seriously concerned, I can’t deny it —”
“Then flee,” said Snape’s voice curtly. “Flee — I will make your excuses. I, however, am remaining at Hogwarts.”
Shortly thereafter:
“Severus,” said Dumbledore, turning to Snape, “you know what I must ask you to do. If you are ready . . . if you are prepared . . .”
“I am,” said Snape.
He looked slightly paler than usual, and his cold, black eyes glittered strangely.
He was ready, and he was prepared. He didn’t fly; he walked toward what might well have been his end with open eyes, armed only with the strength of his mind. Before Voldemort killed him, he looked pale, again, and terrified.
“I sought a third wand, Severus. The Elder Wand, the Wand of Destiny, the Deathstick. I took it from its previous master. I took it from the grave of Albus Dumbledore.”
And now Snape looked at Voldemort, and Snape’s face was like a death mask. It was marble white and so still that when he spoke, it was a shock to see that anyone lived behind the blank eyes.
I ask myself if this was the moment he realized he had been betrayed, that by giving Dumbledore a painless death he had secured his own. Maybe he wasn’t pale because he was scared; maybe he was pale because he was shocked. He was at his absolute limit, Occluding with all his might when he could have easily saved himself. The dam is about to break. All the memories he feared, all the weapons, the entire content of his heart is about to spill through - literally.
He fawned for Voldemort, the worst of all possible masters, but in the end, he was Voldemort’s undoing. All the ways in which he was weak and powerless against Tobias, James, Lucius, et al., proved to be part of goodness and source of his power. It doesn’t surprise me in the least that Snape is so loved. I’ve never actually seen such love for any other fictional character. He represents a kind of courage that many of us need to get by, lest we simply become evil or give the fuck up (“I wish I was dead”). A kind of courage rarely celebrated. The more time I’ve spent in the fandom in general and in the Snapedom in particular, the more I am convinced of this.
Reblog to add: we only see Draco occlude, but at a very traumatic time in his life when he is about to break (and does), and his teacher is Bella, who survived Azkaban. I always believed some form of Occlumency is what Severus was talking about as a better way to resist dementors, and I think Sirius used something similar too, perhaps unconsciously, by obsessing over his own innocence, thus surviving the place as well. (Thanks @dementedlollipop for the insight here)
Not to make too fine of a point of it, but I wonder how much of a fawn response we see in the relationship between Severus and Lily, and in the hilltop conversation with Dumbledore, where he shrinks at Dumbledore's disapproval and immediately promises to give anything. This is why it really is a stellar character moment when he actually resists and argues with Dumbledore, and disobeys him. He wasn't just a follower, and had his own code.
no country where it's legal to hit children should be allowed input on anything internationally. the UN, WHO, World Bank, whatever should be allowed to just go "interesting opinion but you think 'they're small' is a reason not to protect someone from assault so overruled"
no country where it's legal to hit children should be allowed input on anything internationally. the UN, WHO, World Bank, whatever should be allowed to just go "interesting opinion but you think 'they're small' is a reason not to protect someone from assault so overruled"
so hard to be sex positive in a "women and even men should be able to healthily masturbate and enjoy physical pleasure" kinda way while also being very very anti sex industry is hard sometimes.
Ahh but porn has always existed!! Look at cave paintings! Okay. Masturbate to cave paintings. I really want you to masturbate to cave paintings. If it's the same thing, you should have no issues masturbating to cave paintings. I'm dead serious when I say I have no issues with anybody masturbating to cave paintings, or even written smut or anything that doesn't rely on the rape of real people and profiting off of it. I'd be fine with hentai if so much of it didn't try to up the shock factor as much as possible to get people hooked on various fetishes.
People have masturbated forever, and they didn't need HD violent videos to do so. You can do it with your mind, or a nice lil story, I promise. Make your own horny cave painting, idgaf
This is exactly the distinction that gets lost in the "discourse." Being anti-industry isn't about being anti-pleasure or anti-human nature; it’s about being anti-commodity.
The "it’s always existed" argument is such a lazy reach. There is a massive structural chasm between a cave painting and a multi-billion dollar tech industry that uses predatory algorithms to keep people scrolling through increasingly extreme content. One is a human expression; the other is a profit-driven machine that relies on the financial desperation of real people.
You can be 100% in favor of people having healthy, liberated sex lives while still recognizing that a massive, unregulated industry built on the extraction of labor from vulnerable populations is a net negative for society.
Promoting imagination or ethical, non-human-based media isn't "puritanical" it's just asking for a world where someone's survival isn't tied to being recorded for a stranger's subscription fee.
Let us be clear, sweetie: Severus Snape is not some angry little man on a forum crying because no witch would date him. No, no. Severus Snape is a man who once held love in his hand, fumbled it—dropped it—and then decided he should never touch anything that delicate, again.
He didn’t become celibate out of bitterness. He became celibate out of penance. The man took his heartbreak and turned it into a lifelong funeral march with no coffin, no flowers, just black robes and regret.
You think he couldn’t find someone else? Please. He’s tall, mysterious, clearly got cheekbones sculpted by rage and repression. He could absolutely ruin the right person—in the best way. But does he flirt? Does he date? No, darling. He broods. With purpose.
Because Severus Snape isn’t single. He’s emotionally widowed. Lily Evans didn’t just die—she became the ghost he takes to bed every night. And he? He became her silent mourner, carried grief like someone who never got the chance to be anything to her. Never kissed her. Never claimed her. But oh, he remembers her like a vow.
This man wears grief like couture.
No one else gets close. Not because they’re unworthy—but because he refuses to let himself be chosen again. It’s giving martyrdom. It’s giving “I could destroy you with how much I feel but I won’t.” It’s giving “touch me and I might unravel in front of the tapestry.”
He doesn’t need pity. He needs a mirror that tells him, “She never loved you. But you loved her. And you helped seal her fate.
It wasn’t rejection that broke you—it was living with the belief that you had no right to be loved after what it cost.”
But until that day?
Snape remains the widow of the living.
Alone. Unkissed. Unhealed.
And absolutely unforgettable.
—
Related Post: The Virgin Theory: Severus Snape, and the Sanctity of Unlived Intimacy
"Opposing genocide isn't antisemitic," while technically being a true statement, implies that you have said "I oppose genocide" to which Jews have said "That is antisemitic." It is making a link between Jewish concern about antisemitism and support for genocide. Regardless of whether you think Israel's conduct in the Gaza Strip meets the threshold for genocide, you are implicitly encouraging your peers to connect Jews/Judaism with genocide. So, antisemitic
Labeling a war - rife with war crimes as this one might have been - a genocide, despite the fact that the population in question is now roughly the same size as before the so-called genocide - is not "opposing genocide". If it has any effect on genocides, it's in that it distracts from them.
If not antisemitism, then I have no idea what could motivate such behavior, and I don't care. Also, a willingness to accept negative claims about Group X without criticism is a form of prejudice, and dismissal of concerns about how such claims might affect members of said group is also a form of prejudice. The commonly accepted term for anti-Jewish prejudice is "antisemitism," and if the shoe fits, wear it.
You’re watching a YouTuber that discusses online radicalization, at some point they get radicalized in the opposite direction. You sigh and move on. You’re watching a YouTuber that discusses online radicalization. At some point they get radicalized in the opposite direction. They show no self awareness that this has happened. You move on. You’re watching a YouTuber that discusses online radicalization. They have excellent insight into how distrust and misinformation lead to conspiratorial thinking and how the internet as we know it today is designed to feed these impulses. At some point they get radicalized themselves. You’re watching a YouTuber.
In his last video on Creationism, he went on this lovely little rant:
"Religious fanaticism is such a driving force of like, all of the big, terrible words, you know? Like we're literally watching it right fucking now. I don't know what are we on? Are we on year fucking like 80 of, you know, genocide in Palestine? Are they doing that because of fucking evolution? No, it's not because of the faith. It's because they're a fucking evil empire, dude. Do you think the conquistadors did it because they were Christian? They thought they were doing it because they were Christian, but it was because there was an evil empire telling them that those people were the fucking savages. So they sent them to fucking do horrible shit. And then they did the horrible shit."
So my take is that this will always happen when people make their living as commentators and opinion makers, online, where they need to come up with something new to say far too often to know what they're talking about, and where audience capture will invariably get to them.
When people get paid to do an activity, one day the pressure will be on to do that activity when funds are tight (they're always tight). This is true of "developing opinions" and of "sex work" and of all of it.
And we download our opinions wholesale from these people. And this is exactly what the discourse looks like. I sincerely think it's better to not have Opinions About Things than to get ours from people who monetize theirs, with no disrespect to content creators, who are ultimately doing their job to the best of their ability.
severus had a choice. yes, he deserves sympathy and yes, i hate regulus black, barty crouch jr and evan rosier- im not defending him. but severus could have fled britain or lived as a muggle or just not joined??
The thing with snape is that he had no support system in the muggle world nor the wizarding world, and any value the pure-bloods saw in him cuz of his genius was post probably lost after he got flashed and humiliated in front the whole school, I say he doesn’t have a choice because the choice was social suicide and being in poverty or joining a cult, one which excepted him and actually saw potential in him.
I doubt he had the money to go anywhere outside Britain, and while going to the muggle world might work it also means he has to hide his magic-the one thing in his life that actually makes him happy, having to throw away the one thing in life that actually gives you any power is hardly a choice
That anon is probably too far gone down the anti Snape pipeline at this point. "Just flee the country durr"
Yeah it would've been better for Snape to do that. It's so easy for people like anon and me to say that. I have no kids (tbf neither did Snape), no debts, no rich older men grooming me, no cult with its hooks in me, no shattered sense of self, no former best friend who left me and I feel crushed by guilt about it, no dreams of fixing the above by becoming awesome and powerful, no being stuck in the mindset that being awesome and powerful will somehow solve my life.
I can liquidate my pocket money grade savings and fuck off to parts unknown whenever I want, because I've got all these nifty things called privileges that Snape never had.
When we talk about Occlumency lessons and the memories Snape deposits in the Pensieve, I think most people (myself included) assume that Snape only puts three memories in there. But what if he puts three sets of memories in? As in, each strand of memory he pulls away contains a cluster of memories around a particular subject or train of thought.
Here how it’s described in the book:
Snape pulled out his wand from an inside pocket of his robes and Harry tensed in his chair, but Snape merely raised the wand to his temple and placed its tip into the greasy roots of his hair. When he withdrew it, some silvery substance came away, stretching from temple to wand like a thick gossamer strand, which broke as he pulled the wand away from it and fell gracefully into the Pensieve, where it swirled silvery-white, neither gas nor liquid. Twice more, Snape raised the wand to his temple and deposited the silvery substance into the stone basin, then, without offering any explanation of his behaviour, he picked up the Pensieve carefully, removed it to a shelf out of their way and returned to face Harry with his wand held at the ready.
-Order of the Phoenix, Ch. 24
Snape extracts three strands of memory, but we don’t know what they contain. They’re described only as a “silvery substance… stretching from temple to wand like a thick gossamer strand.” In comparison, here’s how the memories Snape gives to harry at the end of DH are described:
Something more than blood was leaking from Snape. Silvery blue, neither gas nor liquid, it gushed from his mouth and his ears and his eyes, and Harry knew what it was, but did not know what to do - A flask, conjured from thin air, was thrust into his shaking hands by Hermione. Harry lifted the silvery substance into it with his wand.
-Deathly Hallows, Ch. 32
Again, the memories are described as a silvery substance. There’s no mention of it coming out in bits and pieces, as if separate memories came out individually, but as a single amorphous substance which can be deposited into a flask by lifting it and placing it inside.
The stone Pensieve lay in the cabinet where it had always been: Harry heaved it on to the desk and poured Snape’s memories into the wide basin with its runic markings around the edge.
-Deathly Hallows, Ch. 33
Here too, where Harry empty those memories into the Pensieve, they seem to be described as a single substance – we know that the flask Harry empties held numerous memories from Snape in it, but they don’t seem to be separated in any way. They’re extracted, bottled, and put into the pensieve in the same way a single strand of memory would be. It seems very possible that Snape could have pulled away a single strand of that non-gas, non-liquid substance at the start of Occlumency lessons, yet it contained numerous memories instead of just one.
The way extracting and storing memories seems to be complex. In Half-Blood Prince, Dumbledore has the memories he’s collected stored and organized in individual crystal bottles. This implies that memories can be extracted both one at a time and also en masse, the way thoughts work - sometimes we think of a single experience, and sometimes we go through multiple memories simultaneously, jumping back and forth between each one. The Pensieve also holds multiple memories simultaneously, as we see in Goblet of Fire when Harry first falls into it and experiences several of Dumbledore’s memories. Those memories all follow the same theme - various Death Eater hearings after Voldemort’s fall.
While it’s implied that the Pensieve shows memories in chronological order, we don’t know if a person viewing them is necessarily seeing the earliest one in a set. It’s possible that a practiced Pensieve user, or one who enters the Pensieve with deliberate intent to view a series of memories, is more likely to view those memories starting with the earliest one. When Harry went into the Pensieve and saw Dumbledore’s memories in Goblet of Fire, he was cautious and curious. We nevertheless have no way of knowing if there were earlier memories he didn’t see, or even if those memories were chronological order, but they seem to be. In contrast, when he goes into the Pensieve in OotP to view Snape’s memories, he’s being reckless and thoughtless. – he’s just had a fight with Cho, he’s been angry for months, and he takes it out on Snape by invading his privacy. It’s very possible that this attitude and approach to someone else’s memories affects how they’re viewed, and that he drops into the middle of a series of thoughts and SWM is just where he happens to land. Maybe it’s exactly because he feels this way that he does, because his own feelings of frustration and rejection connect with those in Snape’s memory.
It’s also possible that the order memories can be viewed in is determined by how they’re extracted and saved – in which case, if Snape was just dumping groups of memories into the Pensieve during Occlumency lessons, their order may not have been chronological, or there may not have been any order to them at all, as opposed to when he gave Harry the memories that we see in the Prince’s Tale, which may have been in chronological order because his life was flashing before his eyes as he was dying. Therefore it’s also possible that Harry dropped into SWM in OotP because Snape extracted a group of memories and the most triggering one was at the forefront. But if Harry hadn’t been interrupted, perhaps the memory would have shifted into other ones of Lily - Snape’s apology to her, their childhood memories, etc.
There seem to be multiple possibilities for how extracting memories and viewing them in a Pensieve works. When Harry sees Snape’s memories in The Prince’s Tale he sees the same one he saw in Snape’s Worst Memory. It’s possible that when he first sees it in OotP he just happens to fall into that part of a longer timeline of memories, or that he falls into a cluster of memories of which that is the most prominent one. All we know is that Snape put at least three memories into the Pensieve, but Harry saw this particular one. It’s possible that it wasn’t just three memories Snape put in there but three sets of memories. If that’s the case, it’s also likely that these sets are organized differently than what we see in The Prince’s Tale. If his motivation in extracting memories was to hide them from Harry in OotP (and by proxy, from Voldemort), and if in that moment he was in a measured and controlled emotional state, it would affect his choice of what memories to share. Perhaps these are a more robust set focused entirely on Lily, and presumably other areas of his life he doesn’t want Harry to have access to, whereas the set of memories he gives Harry in DH are about conveying Dumbledore’s message that Harry has to die and giving it context (to which Snape and Lily’s friendship is integral).
Obviously this is all conjecture and there isn’t much textual evidence to go on. Memories and the Pensieve have been a grey area of canon at best. Nevertheless I find the idea very compelling, that if Snape could hand over a whole series of memories as one unit in DH, it should be possible to extract them in groups as well as individual ones. In which case the question isn’t what specific memories other than SWM did Snape put in the Pensieve during Occlumency lessons, but what sets of memories? SWM may have belonged to a larger set of memories of Lily. Perhaps the other two sets have to do with his history as a Death Eater and might include his work as a spy, and his memories of childhood abuse that are personal and make him feel vulnerable? All Harry sees when he breaks into Snape’s mind is his father shouting at his mother. The extra-textual information given on Pottermore and approved by the author (boo,hiss) says that Snape’s father used to beat him with a belt… if Harry broke into his mind and saw the most vivid memories, would they be of Snape’s father shouting or of him being whipped? Wouldn’t it be the latter? Unless… it wasn’t accessible because it had been put in the Pensieve for safekeeping.
It’s possible it’s groups of memories, and an interesting idea, but I still think based on the evidence we have, it’s likely three distinct individual memories. Because Snape isn’t the only person we see extract their memories in canon; Slughorn does too.
Then, very slowly, Slughorn put his hand in his pocket and pulled out his wand. He put his other hand inside his cloak and took out a small, empty bottle. Still looking into Harry’s eyes, Slughorn touched the tip of his wand to his temple and withdrew it, so that a long, silver thread of memory came away too, clinging to the wand tip. Longer and longer the memory stretched until it broke and swung, silvery bright, from the wand. Slughorn lowered it into the bottle where it coiled, then spread, swirling like gas. He corked the bottle with a trembling hand and then passed it across the table to Harry.
It’s described very similarly to how Snape removes his memories in OotP, in that it’s a long silvery strand. But unlike with Snape’s, we know that Slughorn only gives Harry one memory—the one of him telling Tom about Horcruxes—because we view it shortly after.
Also, just the fact Snape pulled out three distinct strands. If one can pull out groups of memories at a time, and the only purpose of removing them was presumably to reduce the chance of Harry seeing them, why not just remove them all at once in a group instead of three times? It would be more efficient.
In DH when Snape is dying, my impression was they’re coming out all together in one mass because he’s doing it with more desperate, instinctual magic instead of deliberately with his wand—like he’s literally bleeding his memories as he dies, not really consciously selecting them. It’s the only time we see groups of memories like this; the rest are all distinct, singular memories.
Sadly we get no evidence from Dumbledore’s memories in HPB, which are oddly kept in bottles instead of him just pulling them out of his head at the time, as it might have given us more insight into the way they work (and I don’t understand why he’d go to the trouble of bottling them up in the first place. I’d say he was worried about dying before showing them to Harry, but he showed zero urgency about meeting with Harry in HPB, waiting several weeks between the first and second appointments. Anyway…).
The biggest question to me has always been why Snape removed the memories in the first place, besides needing to for plot reasons, because from all three characters, we can see removing a memory doesn’t make you forget it. Snape knows to be pissed about what Harry saw; Slughorn laments what Harry will see after removing the memory; and Dumbledore knows what memories are in the bottles well enough to talk about them. Definitely a very large grey area!
Good point, I forgot about Slughorn! Though it’s interesting that his memory is described as long, while Snape’s is described as thick. I think Slughorn’s is long because he’s hesitant and barely willing, but there’s no description beyond that. Snape’s memory is described as a thick strand, and that he repeated the act, which implies all three strands he pulls from his head are thick. It’s possible this insinuates multiple memories grouped together, and it’s also possible the implication is that what he pulls from his head is more substantial and leaves less behind so it’s harder for anyone to get at it should they invade his mind.
*We may be reading way too much into something that the author might not have thought through all that much, but I’ve got to get my kicks somehow, I don’t know about you.*
Re: your point about Dumbledore, one of the reasons he keeps the memories in individual bottles is that they aren’t all his. He tells Harry that he got them from various sources - one of them is from Ogden, the Ministry official who visited the Gaunts, one is from Morfin himself, and one is from the house elf of that witch Voldemort takes Hufflepuff’s cup from. Dumbledore is thorough, and instead of relying on his own memory of conversations with these people, he gets their firsthand memory - on several occasions through great effort, because Voldemort went to such lengths to modify their memories. Something I’ve always wondered about is whether it’s possible to place someone else’s memory into your own head, the way we see these wizards do when they place their own memories back in.
Re: your point about Snape and why he removes the memories, I’ve always wondered if this was sloppy writing, or if the magic around memories is more varied than we see elsewhere. Or maybe it’s unique to Snape… he’s one of the best legilimens in the books if not the best, since he’s able to fool Voldemort completely. It’s possible he’s figured out a way to extract memories that diminishes their presence in one’s mind, or maybe it’s easier to compartmentalize and close one’s mind to protect certain thoughts if they’ve also been extracted. The language used in the books is “extract” not “copy” which implies that even if something is left behind, it might be diminished or partial. Then again, the memories are described similarly to ghosts - white and physical but not tangible. So maybe the extracted memories are imprints, like ghosts are.
I do still like the theory that the reason Snape extracts memories three times, even if they’re clusters and not individual memories, is because the process of extracting them and the way the pensieve works reflect how thoughts work in a person’s brain. Some people can only entertain a single thought, while others are able to mentally multi-task. Even most people who can do the latter can’t think disparate thoughts easily, though. What I mean is, if you think about your childhood besty you can remember a bunch of things about them in quick succession, but you’d have a hard time mixing in memories of the job you had in your mid-20s or what you cooked for dinner every night last week simultaneously. However, if you weren’t thinking about something else you could probably rifle through various memories of that job even if it spanned several years, or you can probably easily think through dinner last week in one go, it’s just harder to do both at the same time. It’s not hard to group memories like that for most people, but if you had to concentrate on all three kinds at once it would take a lot more energy and focus. It can potentially be done, but why would you try, when it’s so much easier to go categorically, the way the brain works?
Finished the fic about Sev's second summer break!!!!
https://archiveofourown.org/works/31885153
I just looked, and I've been at it very intermittently since 2021. Whew! Fleshing out and exploring (one version of how) the Princes, the Snape family, Cokeworth, and a whole bunch of other factors might have shaped history never got simple, but it never got boring either - I hope reading it will be as enjoyable (?) as writing it. Eeep!
Are we talking about the same fucking guy?? Like Snape as in Severus Tobias Snape???????????? This dude was doing fucking OVERTIME protecting harry from corrupt fucking adults either attempting to harm or manipulate him why the fuck would he of all people take advantage of him like that
if someone so as much as STARED at harry in a creepy way, girl version or not, and snape was present…that pdf would be fucking OBLITERATED, SILENCED, TORN APART, RAVAGED!!!!!! he would literally torture that dude????? if they even thought about trying something in his vicinity or not snape would be there with a fucking battle axe
the dude was literally putting his life on the line for him and if you don’t think he’d absolutely massacre some offender over him then your crazy..even crazier if you think he’d be the one doing such a thing
“bbbbb-but he liked his mom🥺” Who the fuck came up with the logic that if you like someone romantically then you’ll turn into a predator??? actually fucking braindead and such a disgusting, pathetic, HARMFUL, and biased claim to make like how does one come to this conclusion
NO PROOF THAT HED EVER BE SO FUCKING DISGUSTING!! NONE!!!!
i feel like this should go unsaid like???
and this also extends to the rest of his students too. like yeah he may be an asshole but if some offender tried some shit with ANY of them they’d meet a very painful fate. Like those are HIS STUDENTS. HIS KIDS. fuck are you talking about???😭😭😭😭 Yeah he was a bully for a teacher but he always showed up when they were in danger, he’d be the last person to harm them like that????????
anyways here’s high cortisol snape making sure his bumass kids don’t die of hypothermia!! fav scene from this game no i haven’t played it for longer than ten minutes
“my dad thinks my mom is hot so he must be sexually interested in me” <- does putting it that way show you how stupid this is???
and YES. My guy loves his students. He’s always pissed at them because they’re in his classroom messing around with stuff that could ACTUALLY KILL THEM. But we see time and time again in the books that he’s more than willing to put his life on the line for the kids he’s in charge of.
I have no doubt that Snape would commit great violence if a predator was around. Like even if he WAS an asshole that hated his students through and through, most adults are naturally inclined to attack those who hurt kids. Like the meanest, nastiest adult would still probably beat a predator to a pulp if they caught them touching kids.
so even if Snape truly was just The Worst, I still find it hard to believe he wouldn’t break somebody’s teeth over something like this. Even the thought of someone hurting kids like that is enough to make someone who is in a perpetual state of irritation and mild anger over said kids want to protect them. It’s practically instinctual.
As for the Hogwarts Mystery screengrab omgggg I love that game. I picked Slytherin just because I knew that would mean could possibly get scenes with Snape being just my head of house. I needed to see him in his natural state. And it’s great. I can’t wait to get to this scene. I have so many screenshots
OH MY GOD YOURE SO RIGHT ABOUT THE FREUD SHIT?? like genuinely you have to be just as deranged to come to such a conclusion about snapes character.
the second thing you wrote reminded me of that one fanart where snapes pinching harry’s ear and telling him off for almost dying like eight hundred times.
snape would be set to azkaban for what he’s to to a fucking pred if they were in the vicinity of any of his damn students. I agree with you, hating child predators is like one of the only thing *most* of humanity can unite over. I don’t gaf how ugly snape can be, you WILL catch him with a wand in hand if such a dangerous person was present.
i love scavenging the internet for snape centered hogwarts mystery screenshots. “it’s cold” “…obviously” SNAPE FUCKING CHUD I LOVE THIS BUM TEACHER IDC HES SO FUCKING FUNNY THAT CUNT
Harry is already a boy who looks like the boy who sexually humiliated Snape. If Snape had the inclination, well, he already had the motive to take advantage of Harry or hurt him in that way.
Basically people enjoy triggering real life victims of real life abuse for the sake of a point they made up and has no basis whatever.
I started using Head and Shoulders ten years ago for itchy scalp and dandruff, and then for ten years I have not had itchy scalp and dandruff, so I thought “why do I still buy shampoo to combat itchy scalp and dandruff when I do not have itchy scalp and dandruff,” so I stopped buying the shampoo for itchy scalp and dandruff and can you guess I have now? Can you predict what currently afflicts me? It’s alright if you can’t because apparently I fuckin couldn’t either
Cutting something out of your life because you think you don’t need it any more only to realize that it was in fact working as intended and preventing a problem that will return should you stop doing this is a good experiment to run periodically with something small like dandruff shampoo, lest you start to think it would be a good idea to do this with like let’s say public health and the social safety net and vaccines
I had a liver transplant when I was 14 and like six months later I was chatting with my surgeon and he said “there’s gonna come a time, probably when you’re a teenager, where you’re gonna think, ‘I feel great, why am I still taking all this medication? I haven’t needed it in years.’ and you’re gonna want to stop taking all this medication. Guess what’s gonna happen then? You’re gonna go into rejection and your liver is gonna start failing, and you’re gonna be dying again, and we’re gonna have to find you another liver. So don’t do that.” And I said “why the fuck would anyone do that?” and he said “people are stupid.”
every once in a while when I get annoyed by a pharmacy or don’t wanna get out of bed to do my drugs I think “ugh, this is dumb, why do I do this?” and that conversation slams into me like a truck and I remember that I am, in fact, stupid
Compulsive repetition and cycle-breaking - the importance of Albus Severus Potter, or: Harry's last and greatest protector
There is a lot of trauma to go around in HP, and tragically (and realistically), it keeps happening.
Harry is repeatedly orphaned, first from his parents, then from Sirius and Dumbledore - his actual appointed parent figure if anything should happen to his parents, and Harry's "last, greatest protector" according to his narration of the funeral.
Dumbledore's formative trauma is his role in his sister's death thanks to dabbling in Dark magic and the subsequent cover-up, and within his attempt to pay his karmic debt and stop another Dark wizard from taking over, he finds himself endangering god knows how many children under his care: Snape nearly died as a student, and many of the children he watched grow up and then recruited into the OOTP died as well. The seemingly incongruent triumphant look in his eyes when Harry tells him about the blood Voldemort took might be the moment his own pattern breaks for the first time - he is still fighting for the Greater Good, but thanks to his machinations over the years, he had given Harry a chance to survive his part in Dumbledore's crusade. I think this arc concludes when he fights for Draco's soul unto death - it serves a strategic purpose to cement Snape's position, yes, but also, he died having saved a child in his care from the fate that had tormented Dumbledore himself even after an actual century.
Snape's traumas are many, but the formative one is catalyzing Lily's death. He then finds himself - again, but worse this time - forced to push the trigger on his only friend's death. The pain this causes him is evident - he wails like a wounded animal in the immediate aftermath and even risks going to Sirius's house to find something that would keep him going.
I'd like to propose that Snape might have known that Harry's best chance at survival - i.e. Snape's best chance at redemption - would be Harry's Lily-like self-sacrificing act.
Pensieve memories are unfalsifiable, but there might have been an element of choice in when to end them, and it's possible Snape always knew he would have to use a Pensieve to persuade Harry to believe him. The conversation that ends in "Always" couldn't actually have ended like that, because nothing is actually resolved: Dumbledore does not convince Snape that Voldemort's defeat is more important than Harry's survival. The height of the conflict between Snape and Dumbledore is the least natural point to end the scene. Tellingly, Dumbledore's eyes are closed throughout the entire explanation of Harry's supposed ultimate fate. Snape and Dumbledore were both legilimenses, and legilimency requires eye contact. I strongly believe closed eyes, then, indicate "there's more".
“Precisely. If there comes a time when Lord Voldemort stops sending that snake forth to do his bidding, but keeps it safe beside him under magical protection, then, I think, it will be safe to tell Harry.”
“Tell him what?”
Dumbledore took a deep breath and closed his eyes.
This is followed by the explanation, including the dialogue:
“So the boy . . . the boy must die?” asked Snape quite calmly. “And Voldemort himself must do it, Severus. That is essential.”
So: Harry must know why he is dying, and it must be done by Voldemort's hand. Harry must also find out, and then sacrifice himself, at a very specific moment. If the only important thing is "dead Harry," this could easily be achieved. The specifics are essential.
Dumbledore opened his eyes. Snape looked horrified.
Snape's admonishment, and the "Always" exchange, follow.
After this conversation occurs, Snape kills Dumbledore, and immediately after that he duels Harry and does not let him come to harm, saying "Potter belongs to the Dark Lord".
In Dark Lord Ascending, we see that Snape made sure Voldemort would know he alone must kill Harry. I posit that it was not merely Voldemort's ego, as he could have sent anyone (and indeed he used Narcissa as a human shield to make sure Harry was truly dead). He is uniquely bad at killing Harry. Yet he says:
"But I know better now. I understand those things that I did not understand before. I must be the one to kill Harry Potter, and I shall be."
This must have come from Dumbledore's spy, then sitting beside Voldemort as his most valuable servant.
Snape is still capable of producing the Doe Patronus, which represents Lily, and he is still serving Dumbledore despite having been used by him for years at that point.
It might mean that Snape understood that his personal quest for redemption is not as important as the entire world, but this insight is already served by his choice to die, sending Voldemort to battle with a wand that won't answer to him.
And anyway, if Harry must die, why is it so important that he sacrifice himself willingly? Why is it so important that Voldemort himself do it? A final confrontation between Harry and Voldemort or one of his cronies would have happened at some point, and Harry would have died, and Voldemort's last vestige would have died with him. Snape was not a stupid man, and not an unquestioning follower. The idea that this is actually rather a strange thing for Dumbledore to insist on must have occurred to him at some point. The self-sacrifice element was Harry's chance to come back, and this was why giving Harry the memories was imperative. Presumably, this knowledge also made it worthwhile to Snape to explain himself and his actions as thoroughly as he had, because really - only a couple of the memories he gave Harry are strategically important.
Snape dies because of the prophecy he had delivered. Lord Voldermort says:
"It cannot be any other way,” said Voldemort.
"I must master the wand, Severus. Master the wand, and I master Potter at last."
Snape is why Voldemort is interested in Harry, and he dies for this, and because of this. Voldemort thinks he is due to win at any moment.
But Harry - Harry, who had spared Peter Pettigrew, who had by then amassed so many tragic deaths - can feel pity and mercy, even for Snape. In the shrieking shack, where Harry had proved his mettle once before, Snape is slowly dying and Harry shows his compassion to him, the compassion Snape must have missed so much, lacked so painfully. He gets to look into Lily's eyes knowing that perhaps he might not have failed her.
He dies redeemed, even - especially - to the boy who was his main victim. Snape had both orphaned him and mistreated him as a student, but he was Harry's true latest and greatest protector. His pattern is broken, his trauma is resolved, and Lily's sacrifice is not wasted.
And Harry understands him. Snape's main victim reveres him, symbolically makes Snape a member of his family who is worthy to be mentioned in the same breath as Dumbledore. Harry's cycle is broken in that he has his own family, he commemorates his dead, and he forgives and understands even the man he had once hated as much as he did Voldemort himself. In Harry, Snape and Dumbledore broke their patterns, and in forgiving them and understanding he has always had protectors, imperfect as they were, Harry breaks his own. That is the true end, why the epilogue works, and the way to get from repeated loss and trauma to "all is well."
I don’t care how you spin it, being fat is, with very few exceptions, not good. This is coming from someone who is fat and is working at losing weight, because I know that being fat is detrimental to my health and wellbeing. Sure, there are some people who can be fat while being healthy, (say, professional powerlifters for example) but for the vast majority of people like you and me, being fat is shortening our lifespans, causing bone structure issues, and generally being an inconvenience to us and those around us.
Some people are just naturally heavier than others, but that’s one thing. Being fat is another. If you’re going around talking about “fatphobia” or whatever, you’re encouraging and reinforcing unhealthy behavior. There’s a reason that the world is not built with fat people in mind, and that’s because being fat is bad, and should very much be discouraged.
Again, I am fat. I am trying to lose weight and not be fat anymore, because being fat is really bad for you. Body positivity related to weight needs to stop, flat out.
I don't know, man. If I didn't already know what "body positivity" refers to, I would naively assume it's an ideology of loving and appreciating our bodies because they're so much more than fat or thin or attractive or unattractive or whatever. Everything we do and feel and experience is thanks to our bodies. We need to encourage people to love their bodies and among other things, treat their bodies well with good nutrition and regular exercise.
I don't know what's that clusterfuck we got instead.
