Snape Appreciation Month Day 4: Severus Snape has a sibling
I think it would be really interesting if Severus had a muggle/squib younger brother, someone more like his father (while Sev is very much Eileen’s son).
I’ve been picturing Sev’s magic and his queerness (I hc him as closeted genderqueer and complicated bi) being intrinsically linked throughout his childhood and adolescence.
He takes after his mother, and Tobias would probably perceive his son’s magic and wizarding culture in general as being effeminate and queer. The boy wants to wear robes, he wears some of his mother’s old clothes, he spends all of his time reading, he’s quiet, he’s strange, he wears his hair long, he gathers flowers, he can’t hold his own with his fists. Once he goes to Hogwarts he gets even stranger and comes back enamored with potions and other things that are traditionally the realm of witchcraft.
Now, introduce a squib brother (let’s call him Thomas) into the equation and you get an even starker contrast between the muggle and the magical, the masculine and the feminine.
Tobias is still a shitty and abusive father. He encourages masculinity and “muggleness” in Thomas and pits him against Severus.
The Snape children have a complicated relationship, since they grew up being close out of necessity and Sev protected his brother when they were younger, but there is jealousy and resentment on both sides.
Severus is jealous of Thomas receiving approval from Tobias, getting along with the neighborhood boys, and being “normal,” even though Sev would never admit that he wants those things too.
Thomas is jealous of Sev having magic and the chance to get out of Cokeworth when Thomas’s own future looks alarmingly like Tobias’s.
It’s somewhat like Lily and Petunia’s relationship in that sense, and so Severus and Lily have another thing to bond over – a “normal” sibling who is resentful of magic.
This also creates an interesting parallel between Snape and Sirius – both of them have younger brothers who fulfilled the expectations of their families: Regulus by being a good little Slytherin and Thomas by being non-magical and gender-conforming.
Once Sev starts Hogwarts, he and Thomas grow apart even further.
Severus technically inherits Spinner’s End after Tobias dies and Eileen runs out on them, but he lets Thomas have it.
They’re not close, and there are irreconcilable differences between them, but they are still brothers and have a sort of an understanding.
Thomas lets Severus crash at Spinner’s End after DE meetings gone badly and doesn’t ask too many questions.
Severus keeps the house magically warded, lends Thomas money, and occasionally checks up on him to make sure he’s doing okay.
Thomas doesn’t know anything about the war, or Severus’s role in it. It’s safer that way.
A few weeks after the Battle of Hogwarts, Harry finds Thomas to give him Severus’s things and tries to explain everything that’s happened. It’s a strange, tense, confessional conversation.
Thomas still doesn’t really understand his brother, but mourns his loss nonetheless.
He can’t quite put a finger on what it is, but he feels the absence of magic from his life.
@snapeloveposts
