bro autistic! snape stimming, any hc in specific???
something hand-centered (stealthy when around other people, all out when alone) really appreciate that even rickman snape is fidgety with his fingers
hummmmmmmmmmmmming when nobody’s around
pacing, lots and lots of pacing
also that thing he does during occlumency lessons? tracing his lips with his finger (he probably picks his lips when he’s really stressed ugh). maybe tracing other parts of his face, too (eyebrows? maybe tracing his fingers/hands?)
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 2/?
Fandom: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Snron, Severus Snape/Ron Weasley, Severus/Ron
Additional Tags: Autistic Snape, Autism, Soulmates, Background Drarry, Autistic Severus Snape
Summary:
Ron Weasly got a gene that has not shown up in the family for years. Then in his fith year he figured out that Severus Snape is his soulmate.
can you elaborate on severus being autistic-coded? that is so interesting
I have been planning to make a “masterpost” about this topic for a long time, but without having the books in front of me I’ll just list a few things that come to my mind, without a specific order, but I’m trying to start with young Severus.
His speech patterns: As a child/teen/young adult he can barely string a coherent sentence together. Doesn’t have to be an autistic thing, but it’s common. Adult Snape speaks very eloquently, almost to the point that it seems scripted. He gets annoyed when Harry interrupts him, which could just mean that he hates that Harry doesn’t respect him – or maybe he loses his train of thought otherwise. He also speaks in “barely more than a whisper”. Controlling the volume of our voice can be really difficult, we often either talk to quietly or too loud.
Snape’s Worst Memory, especially re: the Defense Against the Dark Arts exam. The Dark Arts can easily be read as Severus’ special interest (along with potions, perhaps). He wrote more than any of the other students, he is completely engaged with that task, his nose an inch from the parchment, and even afterwards he is still engulfed with his paper. He is absolutely obsessed, doesn’t even pay attention to his surroundings (well, until… Potter and Black).
(Also note the way adult Sev talks about the Dark Arts, he absolutely Loves that shit! What a nerd!)
Then we have the way he walks as a teenager: angular yet round-shouldered, twitchy like a spider. Autistic people can have an untypical gait. (Seems like another thing he consciously trained himself out of as an adult, again in a way that also seems a bit artificial almost. Adult Snape still walks weird, but “cool” weird.)
And we can see that he is an unpopular kid. Am I to believe that his peers hated him because they just knew he was an aspiring soon-to-be Death Eater? They just saw that he was a weirdo kid (almost exactly how Sirius describes him in GoF), an easy target, dude clearly doesn’t fit in (doesn’t want to? doesn’t know how?). Which was probably partly due to his apparrent:
poor hygiene. Executive Function issues can make maintaining proper hygiene difficult for us. Even in adulthood he still seems to struggle with it. There can be other explanations for his greasy hair, maybe he’s just like that, but maybe he just… “forgets” to do it. Maybe other things are more interesting. (I believe Rowling once said he “valued other things in him” or something along the lines.)
It also seems he struggled with social cues and misreading signals. Lily was clearly unhappy with him when they discussed their friendship, and Mulciber and Potter, but it seems he didn’t really care, vocal reassurance was enough for him to believe things were fine. Adult Sev doesn’t seem to comprehend that potions is hard for some, instead seems to genuinely believe that Neville is just an idiot boy who wants to make his life more difficult. Zero patience. He knows his craft very well but seems bad at teaching others.
He likes to keep the light in his dungeons very low, and when he moves to the DADA classroom he kept the sunlight out and used candles instead. It’s possible that’s just his aesthetic and part of his grumpy personality – but it could also be that he is very light sensitive. Maybe that’s also why he wears billowing robes: he could be sensitive to touch as well and tight fabrics can be very uncomfortable.
His outburst at the end of PoA is often read as him throwing a tantrum, snapping because he “didn’t get his way”, but it alo could be a legit meltdown. Dude had so much going on that year that at some point… well, it just has to get out somehow lol. I do know that a meltdown can look that ugly for me when I’ve been in a lot of emotional turmoil.
Tbh, his whole fixation on Lily is also so… typical. And people who don’t know better could call that “creepy” even though there isn’t typically malevolent intent behind it. It can be hard not to be like an excited loyal puppy when we meet someone who is nice to us, who is A Friend! Friend! And then he doesn’t let go? Ever? Absolute mood.
For me the greatest indicator that Rowling subconciously added autistic traits for him (I don’t think it was actually intentional) is the fact that John Nettleship, the person that served as inspiration for Severus, most likely had Asperger Syndrome.
I am likely forgetting some things here, but this is roughly it. I personally can only read Severus as autistic. And it doesn’t change anything about his character, just explains where some things are coming from. But of course there could always be other explanations for his traits and behaviour.
Edit: Forgot an important thing: He is definitely not very gender-conforming, which is also rather typical for autistic people.
I imagine that the people who didn’t despise him for it took advantage of him because of it. And Severus, already an outsider due to being different *cough* autistic *cough*, eagerly accepted the attention, praise, acceptance, and “love”.
A Thing for Neurodivergent Snape Week (Day 1). Putting it under a cut because it deals a little bit with little Severus’ situation at home.
Severus often tried to get as far away from the shouting as possible.
Their voices made his ears hurt as if two nails were driven into his skull and made him feel dizzy and so, so angry. He always needed to get away before he got one of “his moments” again, which always made him scream and cry and sometimes hit himself and cause his father to call him a freak and other horrible things – and if he wasn’t careful, Severus would make other things happen, too.
Sometimes, it was enough to hide in a dark corner and cover his face and ears and shake his head until the arguing was over, but other times he had to run away, run as hard and fast as he could – always careful to avoid all the other children in the neighbourhood, especially the older boys who liked to taunt him when they were bored.
His mother often said that he was “different” because he was a wizard, just like she was a witch, and that there was nothing wrong with it; and she told him stories about Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry where no “Muggle” would ever hurt him.
Muggle soon took on the meaning “dangerous” to him.
Severus didn’t understand why he had to attend Muggle school at all. He had started reading his mother’s secret books all by himself when he was five years old, but she said he had to go, and that people would come to their house and take him away if he didn’t. Even though he didn’t like living in their house, the idea of that scared him.
The only useful thing he learned at school was how to hide from people who wanted to pick on him. Sometimes, when he stood very still, it was almost as if people stopped seeing him altogether. He almost never spoke to anyone, but when he did, his teachers and classmates often didn’t understand him and even laughed at his mistakes. “It’s because they’re Muggles”, he thought bitterly, and it filled him with some pride that he was not like them.
These and many other thoughts raced through his head whenever he made his way through the dirty, narrow cobbled streets of Cokeworth.
When Severus had calmed down again, he often found himself near the river, in between some trees, far away from where he lived. It was his favourite place. The water was clearer here and the sunlight danced playfully on the little waves. He liked to lie down in the grass in between the flowers and listen to the soft noises all around him; the rustling of the leaves when a small animal crawled and slithered under them; a bird landing on a branch somewhere above him; the occasional car driving by on a street far, far away. The soothing shade of the trees kept him safely hidden from the harsh, bright rays of the sun, and he often started dreaming about Hogwarts with its many towers, its big lake, and the dangerous Forbidden Forest, and about the people there who were just like him; people who would understand him and who would welcome him and not make him feel unwanted. He would learn to control and wield his magic, and brew all the potions he had read about in his mother’s books, and nobody would call him a freak anymore.
It was day like this when laughter from the other side of the river disturbed his daydreams. There, completely unaware of his presence, were two girls playing in the trees.
His first instinct was to hide from them, but he kept careful watch from a safe distance. And then he saw it; magic.
On that afternoon his hope and joy overshadowed the dread of returning home, only to be soon replaced with a new dread of countless “what if”s. What if she would run away from him? What if he scared her away? What if she made fun of him? What if he said something stupid?
But she was not a Muggle. Some things, he thought, were meant to happen.
Over a year later, a more confident Severus is sitting next to Lily in an almost empty compartment on the Hogwarts Express, both of them watching the late summer sky slowly fade to shades of pink and orage. The taunts of the two boys on the other side of the train are almost forgotten, and the sweets Lily bought from the trolley nearly all gone – and Severus can’t help but let out a giggle.
“What?” Lily asks cheerfully.
“Nothing!” Severus grins. “I’m just glad that we’re friends.”
Lily tosses him the last chocolate frog, which narrowly misses his hand and lands, softly croaking, on his lap. She laughs and the sound, pleasant and soothing in his ears, fills him with warmth. “Best friends, Sev.”
autistic!sev whose special interest has always been the dark arts, but everyone always shut him up when he started talking about them and told him he was a bad person to even be interested in something s o horrible, until one day he met people who finally listened and wholeheartedly supported his interest and valued his skills and knowledge - and he didn’t realise that they were really bad people until it was too late and there was no way out
