Do you have any headcanon about Severus that isn’t common? I don’t mean an unpopular opinion, but rather an idea you don’t usually see.
Well, I don’t know whether it’s really like this or simply my own impression, but I’ve always seen Severus as a person full of dualities. His life is marked by never fully belonging anywhere: he’s a Slytherin, yet his best friend is a Gryffindor; he wants to join the Death Eaters, but the person he has the strongest bond with is a muggle-born girl; he works as a double spy for the Order, where nobody appreciates him, while harming the Death Eaters, where he is valued, even if only on a utilitarian level; his life unfolds in the magical world and his entire universe is there, and yet he continues to live in the muggle house of his childhood. It’s as if he never completely belongs anywhere, as if he’s always out of place, always caught between two worlds.
And this is directly linked to his own nature as a half-blood. There’s one thing I really dislike, and that is equating a half-blood like Harry whose two parents were wizards and whose two parents belonged to the magical world (we know that muggle-borns gradually sever ties with their origins over the years)— with someone like Severus, who is literally half muggle. Not only in terms of blood, but in terms of cognitive and social development. Severus was born in the muggle world, had a muggle father, grew up among muggles, lived in a muggle environment. His entire upbringing was muggle, with magical education from his mother, yes, but everything else was still muggle. There is a duality in him that never disappears —the duality of being half and half— and that later reflects itself in every other aspect of his life.
For example, the duality between having adopted manners, education, and ways of presenting himself as someone impenetrable, someone with perfect control over his thoughts and emotions, and then losing his temper, exploding, behaving like a child, and spitting words because he’s furious. Severus is half wizard, half muggle; he’s a man with an education but also a working-class kid; he’s someone with a great deal of self-control but very easy to anger. He is many things at once, and specifically many things that are diametrically opposed. And I think people tend to latch onto some of these traits and not others, and often don’t go deeper into the nuances of both sides.
Why does he continue to live in the family house when that house carries so much trauma? Why, being someone whose life is rooted in the magical world, does he keep returning to the muggle world so consistently? I think that is the foundation of everything else; it’s what lies beneath the surface. And I think it’s incredibly interesting to explore when you’re portraying the character in a fic —something that isn’t done very often, or at least not that I’ve seen— this constant balancing act between all his halves.
I think he carries a lot of internal rejection (which is understandable, not only because of his past, but also because magical society has absolutely no respect for muggles) toward everything that has to do with the non-magical world. But at the same time, it’s part of who he is, because he grew up there. And I think a very interesting perspective is seeing how he might reconcile himself with that part of him, which actually becomes very present when he lets his guard down. Because when he explodes and stops repressing himself, that side of him as a rough, lower-class kid is what truly comes out, and it’s fascinating.
And I really think people should recover that aspect more, because to me it’s one of the best things about the character.
