i don’t know how exactly to like… try to put across just how much severus snape must have practised being a person, once he left hogwarts, once he was able to.
like… the severus snape we see in the flashbacks in the books is…
jittery and tense, constantly on guard
as soon as james even said anything, he was already reaching for his wand, and i imagine he was kind of forced to be that quick for his guns at any point
“he walked in a twitchy manner that recalled a spider”
like… my point here is that not only are his clothes il-fitting, but so’s his body - he doesn’t know how to move in it, doesn’t know how to exude any kind of presence
no control to his speech at all, from what we can see?
he just throws out desperate curses and profanity when james disarms him and has him tied up
an even shorter temper than he has as an adult
the ill-fitting clothes only add to this idea that he’s like, an object of scorn rather than something to be feared
i know they give child snape a posh boy accent in the movies but british movies always give everyone a posh accent, and it would actually make sense for him to have a northern accent, given that he came from slap bang in the middle of the black country with a working class da
people absolutely look down on regional accents like this, and people are p much automatically looked at as uneducated if they don’t sound like a posh twat
but when we see him later on, he’s collected and controlled, walks with a smooth confidence and an easy grace. much of his speech is delicately poetic and very carefully measured, and almost rehearsed
almost rehearsed? no. i feel like he spends a lot of time working on scripts for himself and then working with them, rehearsing what other people might say to him and how he might respond, making little speeches for some things
and he’s very careful about his presentation and how it comes across, how he seems, the energy he exudes
like… he rebuilt himself, ripped himself apart and then kind of put himself back together, because he knew that he wasn’t good enough, that people looked at him and were disgusted with him, so he wanted them to feel something else instead. this kind of like… complete overhaul doesn’t come without work?
he probably spent hours and hours walking up and down in front of a mirror so that his gait came across in the right way; probably read out loud and forced his voice and his accent into something else, and then read it more, and more, and more, and just changed the whole thing.
severus snape as an adult is just… artifice built on top of artifice until it calcifies and turns to stone is my point
