#hp character analysis

[fannedandflawless]

The Dignity of Suffering in Silence: Snape as the Ghost of a Living Man

Severus Snape did not need to die to become a ghost. He already was one. Not in the dramatic sense—with clanking chains or flickering transparency—but in the far more tragic way:

He was present, but unreachable. He moved through the world, but nothing ever touched him back.

Not because he refused it. But because somewhere along the line, he decided he did not deserve to be held.

🕯 What Makes a Ghost?

It isn’t death. It’s what remains unfinished. A ghost is a person who still has something left behind—grief, guilt, longing—and no place to lay it down.

Snape had no grave for what he lost. No funeral for who he could have been. So he kept walking. Teaching. Protecting. Bleeding in silence.

He became a ghost of himself, not because he was weak, but because he had to keep going with no one to grieve him. Not even himself.

🕯 The Cost of Being Unheld

No one held Severus Snape. Not really. He wasn’t touched unless it was violence. He wasn’t spoken to unless it was demand.

He offered no softness because he received none.

And yet—he still gave. Still protected. Still fought for a future that would never welcome him.

He didn’t ask for kindness, because he believed that to do so would be indulgent. And indulgence was for the living.

🕯 He Did Not Haunt Hogwarts. He Haunted Himself.

Snape didn’t linger in the castle’s shadows because he was sinister. He did it because it was the only place where silence matched the volume in his mind.

He wasn’t afraid of the dark. The dark was quiet. The dark didn’t ask questions.

What haunted him was the memory of what he had done. What he failed to undo.

Every corridor was a past echo. Every student a reflection of someone he couldn’t save. He didn’t haunt Hogwarts. He haunted himself.

🕯 Silence Wasn’t Weakness. It Was Power.

He didn’t scream. He didn’t beg. He didn’t unravel in front of anyone.

Not because he couldn’t. Because he wouldn’t.

Snape held himself together out of strategy and survival. Because silence was the one thing Voldemort couldn’t extract, and Dumbledore couldn’t reshape. Because when the world gives you no permission to break, you learn how to endure beautifully.

🕯 The One Who Was Never Laid to Rest

There was no funeral—at least, none that was ever spoken of. No public farewell. Only a war, and then silence.

His portrait hangs at Hogwarts now—but it came later. After the world had rewritten the narrative enough to let him in. And even then, he does not speak from it. Not to us.

Legacy? Perhaps. But it feels uncertain—etched more in hesitation than celebration. His name, his work, his memory... handled like something delicate. Or dangerous. Not erased, but folded away, as if too many feared what it might reveal if honoured too loudly.

Perhaps that’s why he still lingers. Not in ghost-form. Not in frame. But in us.

In the ones who understand silence. Who dress in layers. Who never screamed, but should have.

He does not ask for mourning.

But he deserves to be seen.

He deserves to be laid to rest.

Even if it’s just whispered in quiet posts. Even if it’s just here.

[ashesandhackles]

Harry And Personal Conflict: A Meta On Evolving Dynamic With Ron and Hermione

One of my last metas on Harry was how his abuse at the Dursleys informed who he is as a person and a lot of his main personality traits. This time, I want to explore Harry's relationship with conflict, mostly in regard to his best friends - Ron and Hermione.

First things first, because of his abusive upbringing where he is constantly in conflict with his caregivers, conflict is seen as Bad Thing when we first meet him as a 11 year old. And it informs how he reacts to both Ron and Hermione at first. He instantly relates to Ron because Ron is an underdog - a boy who feels neglected and passed over in his large and boisterous family. Harry shares his own experience of neglect with Ron and they both bond instantly.

His initial impression of Hermione is that she has a "bossy sort of voice" . The bossiness is an important characterstic to his impression of her - she reminds him of an authority figure and he does not particularly take to her as easily as he does Ron. Before the troll incident, he is frequently annoyed by her interventions because "he can't believe anyone would be so interfering". It's her vulnerability and the fact that she may be in danger that makes Harry, and by extension Ron, go after her. And she pays it back in full with a demonstration of loyalty to them in front of people she wants to impress: teachers. This sets the tone of his friendship with Ron and Hermione.

There is sense of easiness to his friendship with Ron, especially in earlier books that he doesn't quite share with Hermione. This is a bit gendered as well, of course. His relationship with Hermione evolves as Ron's own equation with two of them changes, more specifically Ron's cognisance of his romantic feelings for Hermione. So how does this inform his relationship with personal conflict?

Let's look at it Book wise.

Book 1-4: Since Harry tends to see All Conflict As Bad, when Hermione becomes his friend, he tends to ignore traits of her that he particularly doesn't take to. Specifically her argumentativeness - which he usually leaves Ron to deal with. For example, look at when Hermione drags him off to the kitchens in GOF. When he realises what this is about, he nudges Ron, and Ron does the protesting: "Hermione, you are trying to rope us into that spew stuff again!".

Often, you can say he is amused by Ron's more ..let's say colourful.. reactions to Hermione being overbearing. So when Ron and him are not speaking and Hermione gets a Quidditch term wrong, it causes him "a pang to imagine Ron's expression of he could have heard Hermione talking about Wonky Faints". It's that deeply ingrained into the dynamic.

While Ron acts buffer and protects Harry from stepping into a potential conflict ("skip the lecture", "don't nag" he tells her), Harry's world view remains quite the same. Part of Harry's growing up is integrating conflicting points of view and gaining nuance. For example, he can't understand why someone like Snape, who seems to hate him so much, can also save his life at the end of Philosopher's Stone. This is his first venture into trying to integrate two conflicting things about a person into nuance. Dumbledore gives him a very easily digestible story, one that appeals to his ideal of his father and Harry is sated.

Again, Harry's world view is tested when he finds out that he relates with Tom Riddle - for their "strange likenesses". He doth protest too much at Dumbledore's office: "I don't think I am like him! I am Gryffindor!". And Dumbledore offers him a wisdom nugget: "It's our choices which define who we are" (paraphrasing). Harry is uncomfortable that he empathises with Tom Riddle, his parents' murderer, at this point in the story.

In the first four books, his only proper personal conflict has been with Ron.

It is depressing to think about in these terms - but Ron is Harry's first experience of unconditional love (we can even put Hagrid here, but he is not the one who spends most time with Harry). And when Ron and him fight, Harry is so hurt by the prospect that he proceeds to abandon Ron before Ron abandons him. (the whole chucking a "Potter stinks" badge at him and making a jab about having a scar is what he wants, or the fight in DH where he yells "then leave! Pretend you have gotten over your spattergoit and have your mummy feed you up"). It's an interesting defense mechanism and he feels "corrosive hatred" towards Ron during these times because Ron and him aren't supposed to be like this. Ron is a certainty in his life. It's also why when Ron comes back, Harry either doesn't need him to apologise (as in GOF) or quickly forgives him in DH - although I do think Harry thinks the locket bit was punishment enough. But even without the whole locket, I think Harry has trouble holding Ron accountable in general beyond few slaps on the wrist - especially if Ron and he are on good terms.

5th Book: This is the transition point for Golden Trio friendship. Harry has come back from an immensely traumatising night at the graveyard and his PTSD isolates him from his best friends. This is also the point where Ron, especially after GOF, is aware of his romantic feelings for Hermione ("the perfume is unusual Ron", Hermione tells him in this book). So in this book, we often see Ron and Hermione on one side, with Harry on the other.

Ron is unwilling (quite like Harry in that respect) to engage him in a direct conflict, but he is also unwilling to shield him from Hermione's nagging in this book. This is why, OOTP is the book where you see Harry ignore or avoid Hermione and lie to her more than usual to avoid conflict. For example, he tells her that Snape thinks he can carry on Occlumency once he got the basics - that is categorically not what happened. Or the entire day he spends ignoring Hermione's warnings about breaking into Umbridge's office. (The description here is comical - about Hermione vehemently hissing so much that Seamus Finnigan is checking his cauldron for leaks. ) If he cannot lie to her or avoid her, at the end of the rope, he will treat her to display of his frightening temper.

Interestingly, OOTP is also the book that his world view goes through a tremendous upheaval: mainly, his ideal of his father and having empathy for Snape. It is unnerving for Harry to see Snape being the "boy who cried in the corner" when his father shouts at a cowering woman. Similarly unnerving is that his intense empathy for him - "he knew exactly what Snape felt when his father taunted him and judging by what he had seen, his father was every bit as arrogant as Snape always told him".

While he is placated that his father grew out of it, this memory of his father being a bully is something he cannot bear to watch again in DH. Few chapters later, he grins at Ron "sweeping his hair" back to make it look more windswept, just like his father - suggesting that Harry is beginning to integrate two conflicting things he knew about his father: from the people who loved him vs the people he was cruel to.

6th Book onwards: It's interesting to me that his better appreciation for Hermione comes after OOTP (one, because she is the one who challenged the whole Ministry plan and she followed him into a trap knowing it was one anyway) but also the timing of it is in line with Harry having a more nuanced understanding of his father. He struggled to hold conflicting information about him into one cohesive person - the boy who was a bully vs the man who joins Order of Phoenix to fight a war he could very well have sat out. The pedestal crashing helped Harry gain nuance (he thinks of his father and mother with pride in HBP - of them walking into an arena with head held high). HBP also sets up his deeper understanding with Snape in DH. There is lovely meta by about this by thedreamersmusing. Read it here. HBP is also the book he feels "sorry" for Voldemort and also feels "reluctant admiration" for him - both of things he is less defensive about.

And this nuance informs his relationship with conflicts - especially the kind he has with Hermione. He is more confrontational with her and does not lie or sneak around her as much as he did in OOTP in the Half Blood Prince. ("Finished? Or do you want to see if it does back flips?" He asks her when she takes the book from him to check if it's jinxed. Or the "I hope you enjoy yourself" he calls out irritably when she declares intention to find out who HBP is. And "do you want to rub it in Hermione? How do you think I feel now?" He tells her when she says she was right about HBP).

The fact that he is willing to be confrontational with her is a big step in his character - a step up from his unregulated outbursts in OOTP, which is a function of him not knowing how to put his anger across in normal ways. He is also more willing to stand up for her in front of Ron too - "You could say sorry" he tells Ron bluntly. This is in contrast to his more quiet standing up for her in POA: "Can't you give her a break?" Harry asked him quietly. In POA, he lets the subject drop after Ron flatly refuses. Here, he presses on more : "What did you have to imitate her for?" "She laughed at moustache!" "So did I, it's the stupidest thing I have ever seen".

His relationship with Ron is an interesting contrast to his relationship with Hermione, which functionally teaches a very important lesson for an abused child who thought all conflicts are bad: That his friendship with her is challenging, and frustrating, filled with conflicts but their love for each other isn't disputed. It's a very important thing for brain development in general - to hold conflicting information in one space. The defense mechanism abused children do to avoid this is called splitting.

So, Ron allows Harry to be the age he is: a teenager and it's foundation for his further development, and Hermione teaches him how to be an adult, and therefore, spurs his growth. (In esoteric terms, if you look at Ron and Hermione as proxy parents - Ron is the Mother archetype, the one who offers unconditional love. Hermione is the Father archetype - one who demands best of him, and guides him).

Additional reading: Harry, Prongs and Prince - Harry's Inner Struggles For Forging An Identity. By u/metametatron4

Harry Identifies, and Reluctantly Admires Snape Even Before The Prince's Tale by thedreamersmusing

[barnabasthebarmy]

hot take: harry does not desire normalcy.

ok yes he doesn’t like the fame or the attention or the hero-worship, but that does NOT mean he wants to be “normal.”

listen. there’s no fucking way this boy would be happy without running off to solve murders or uncover corrupt schemes or jump inside burning buildings to save children. he lives for the thrill and for the fight. he lives for changing the world so it’s what he thinks is right. it’s part of his personality.

it’s why his career as an auror makes so much sense. he’d LOVE his job be fucking amazing at it.

his dream isn’t just to settle down and have some kids with ginny. that’s part of it, but as long as there’s still evil in the world, he absolutely will not be fine with just sitting around.

harry’s hero arc doesn’t just depend on him being the child of the prophecy. it depends on his own personality. prophecy or not, dead parents or not, boy-who-lived or not, harry still would have been HUGELY involved in the war.

[james-effing-potter]

You know, it really bugs me that there are people who criticize Sirius’s behavior in OotP.  What, they think they’d do so much better in his situation?  They think they could even begin to HANDLE his situation?  Let’s review, shall we?

One of his best friends betrayed them all and got his brother in all but blood killed along with another one of his close friends.  Said best friend then proceeded to frame him for not only those deaths, but also the murder of nearly fifteen innocent people.  He was thrown in what is essentially a torture prison that makes you go insane without a trial for crimes he didn’t commit, knowing that everybody he’d ever cared about was either dead or thought he was a traitor and a murderer.  He stayed there for 12 years.

When he realized his godson was in close proximity to his traitorous ex-friend and therefore in danger, he found a way out, doing what no witch or wizard had ever accomplished.  It took him months of patience, perseverance, and failed attempts, but he finally got his ex-friend right where he wanted him, also getting a chance to prove his innocence to his other best friend and his godson in the process.  He made plans with his godson for them to live together.  He was going to clear his name, he wasn’t going to be alone anymore, he was getting another chance to be happy.  But then it all went to shit.  He was so close, but apparently so close is still too far, because his ex-friend got away and he had to escape with his godson’s help in order to avoid getting his damn well soul sucked out and go into hiding.

He spent the next year being the best godfather he could under the circumstances, writing letters to his godson and doing his best to be supportive.  When his godson was once again put in mortal danger, he came all the way back to the place he’d run away from just the year before and hid out in a freezing cave in the mountains living off rats just so he’d be close to hand if his godson needed him.  And that still wasn’t enough, because in the end, his godson was once again traumatized and almost killed, and there was nothing he could do about it.  Not to mention that his very best friend’s murderer had now returned and intended to go back to trying to destroy their whole world, including being hellbent on murdering his godson.

And then to top it all off, he had to come back and live in his abusive childhood home that he’d run away from when he was sixteen, told not to go outside under any circumstances and feeling trapped.  He wasn’t the kind of man who could just sit back when something needed to be done, but now he was being forced to watch the people he loved fight a losing battle in an attempt to keep the world from burning, and there was nothing he could do about it.  Not to mention that the one man he knew wasn’t sorry that his very best friend was gone was allowed to come and go from his house as he pleased, calling him a coward and useless and saying cruel things about his godson and his dead best friend.  He lived like this for months, getting increasingly restless and depressed and angry.  And then he received news that his godson was in trouble again and was told to wait there while others went to handle it.  But he didn’t.  Of course he didn’t.  How could he?  He wasn’t about to just abandon his godson when the kid needed him most.  Because if there’s one thing Sirius Black values above all else, it’s loyalty.

So don’t you dare say Sirius was being over dramatic or stupid.  This man was made of titanium, and he deserves only our admiration and utmost respect. 

Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.

TL;DR: Don’t you dare criticize Sirius Black until you’ve lived his life.  Only then could you possibly be allowed to speak.

[fannedandflawless]

The Devotion That Never Grew Up

I'll be honest: I've gone back and forth about what kind of love Severus Snape felt for Lily Evans.

Romantic? Possibly. If the stars aligned and they had actually dated, I think they could've made a rather beautiful, fiercely loyal, deeply bonded couple. The kind that doesn’t go around flaunting things but holds a private, searing intimacy only they can understand. And in that universe? Lily Evans would've received something akin to a first-prize wizarding world lottery ticket: an undivided, obsessive-leaning love from a man who would spend his life keeping her safe in silence. A kind of love built not on flowers and flirtation, but on fierce loyalty and unspoken sacrifice.

But that’s the thing. It didn’t happen. So if it wasn’t romantic in the traditional sense, and it wasn’t platonic in the easy, breezy, let's-grab-butterbeer-and-gossip way, then what exactly was it?

Because we know what it wasn’t: it wasn’t shallow, it wasn’t fleeting, and it most certainly wasn’t obsession in the reductive, toxic way some corners of the fandom like to claim.

So what was it?

Alterous Love?

The phrase that comes to mind most often is alterous. It’s the kind of love that lives between platonic and romantic. Not quite either, and far too deep to be dismissed as friendly affection. It’s:

"I want to be with you in the most important way, but I don’t know what that way is."

A desire for permanent proximity, not possession.

Love without lust, devotion without a script.

Alterous love is the feeling that this person matters more than anyone, even if I can't define how. It explains why the grief, the loss, and the guilt hit him like a full-body curse. If he had simply wanted her romantically, time might have dulled the pain. If it was purely platonic, the grief wouldn't have been embedded into the shape of his Patronus.

So what triggered it? Perhaps the moment she saw him as a person before anyone else did. Perhaps the moment she laughed with him without flinching. Perhaps the moment she chose to sit beside him on the train when no one else would.

Emotional Devotion?

Another possibility is emotional devotion—not romantic or sexual, but a kind of sacred commitment. A love that asks for nothing, but gives everything. One that doesn’t aim to win someone’s heart, but to carry their memory, their safety, their dignity.

This kind of love doesn’t seek to be seen. It survives being unspoken. It becomes identity.

Snape didn’t want Lily’s love back. Not really. What he wanted was for her to live. For her to not hate him. For her to know he tried.

But What If It Was Platonic?

Let’s consider the platonic route. Purely, truly platonic. The kind of childhood bond that could’ve remained a quiet but strong foundation through the years.

But if it were truly just platonic, would his entire emotional being collapse the way it did? Would his Patronus — a deeply personal expression of one’s inner life—take on her form? Tonks’ Patronus changed when she fell for Remus, clearly out of romantic love. Snape’s Doe came from something no less absolute.

Which brings us here.

The Love That Froze In Time

The Lily Snape loved was not the fully grown woman who married James. It was the Lily who smiled at him with soft certainty long before Hogwarts, back when they met near the edge of the playground, in a world still untouched by houses or war—a world where the only judgment came in the form of Petunia's side-eyes and huffed disapproval. The Lily who sat beside him before he had a house, a name, a label. He loved her before he knew what love required of him.

That love never got the chance to grow up. It was frozen at the moment he needed her most and lost her anyway.

He didn’t just love her. He became his love for her.

Not possession. Not romance. Not even grief.

Devotion as identity. That is what remained.

⸻

The Match, the Silence, and the Frozen Flame A Severus Snape series, in three acts of pain.

🕯️ WHO LIT THE MATCH? 🕯️ Selective Loyalty and the Lily Problem 🕯️ The Devotion That Never Grew Up (You're here)

⸻ I’d written this a while ago, but crossing paths with @doeprince-blog—and the thoughtful exchange that followed—reminded me why I wrote it in the first place, and why now felt like the right time to let it breathe.

[fannedandflawless]

🍋 The Lemon Drop Theory: A Tactical Sweet Disguise

A curious inquiry sparked by how often 'lemon drops' seem to come up—frequent enough to make one wonder if there’s more to the sweet than meets the tongue.

It all starts with a fact that deserves more side-eye than it receives: Albus Dumbledore really loved offering lemon drops. As in, constantly. It’s his password, his go-to hospitality item, and apparently his personality in confection form.

But why? Why lemon drops? And why does he offer them in moments of psychological warfare disguised as gentle conversation?

As someone who believes no sugar cube is ever truly innocent in a magical world, I present:

🍋 Theory 1: Veritaserum-Lite (Emotional Disarmament Candy)

Lemon drops are sharp, acidic, and jarringly sweet. They jolt the tongue like they’ve got opinions. What better way to disarm someone than by giving them a flavour that says, "you weren’t ready, darling, and that’s exactly the point"? Emotional defence? Consider it cracked. Sugar-coated, of course.

🍋 Theory 2: Soft Power, Pleasantly Presented

"Would you care for a lemon drop?" Translation: "I’m about to drop a life-altering revelation into your lap, but I’ll cushion it with citrus."

It’s not hospitality. It’s stagecraft. Dumbledore doesn’t offer sweets—he performs them. It’s a moment, a prop, a cue in the script. You think you’re chatting with a quirky old man who likes sherbets, but really, you’ve just stepped into a monologue.

It’s all smoke, sparkle, and a bit of sugar. And it works.

🍋 Theory 3: A Dash of Potion, Perhaps?

I'm not saying he definitely microdoses lemon drops with Calming Draughts or Legilimency triggers, but… I'm also not saying he doesn’t.

Given his unnerving perceptiveness, one might wonder whether Dumbledore dabbled in Legilimency. What if the lemon drop is the signal? The opening of the door, so to speak? You accept the sweet, your mind softens, and then—bam—he’s reading the surface of your thoughts with a smile and a twinkle.

🍋 Theory 4: The Eccentric Armour

In a world of hexes, curses, and political assassination, Dumbledore’s weapon of choice is… citrus sugar? No. It’s imagery.

He wears eccentricity like armour. Lemon drops are part of the costume: the doddery genius with a sweet tooth who just happens to outmanoeuvre everyone politically.

It’s easier to underestimate a man who smells of sugar than one who smells of sulphur.

⸻

And yes, canon offers us breadcrumbs—lemon-scented, at least the ones I can remember without needing a Pensieve

Philosopher’s Stone (Chapter 1): McGonagall is appalled by the plan to leave Harry with the Dursleys. Dumbledore deflects the tension with a Muggle sweet. She refuses.

Various mentions: Lemon drops are his office password during Harry’s early years, reinforcing the motif of access granted through sugar.

⸻

Perhaps lemon drops are more than sweets. Perhaps they’re rituals. A theatrical flourish before revelations, confessions, and persuasion. A bit of citrus to say: "You’re safe. I’m odd. Let’s talk."

Or maybe—just maybe—they’re traps pretending to come in wrappers they never actually had.

Would you like one?