#snape meta

[merryhaze]

[ollywander]

I’ve been wondering for a while if Snape’s persistence in chasing the Defense Against the Dark Arts job wasn’t only because of his interest in the dark arts themselves, but also self destructive or suicidal. Death in the line of duty isn’t suicide, so he can’t be called a coward for it.

On the other hand, he was terrified of death in the moment before he died. He didn’t have much zest for life, but who can blame him for wanting to cling onto it when death comes on so suddenly? He also hates not only to be called a coward, but to be a coward, and begging for a suicide job could be seen as an easy way out. I don’t think he is actually suicidal when the books take place. He tells Dumbledore when Lily dies that he wants to die, too, but it was in a moment of enormous grief, distress, sorrow, regret, mourning, et cetera. He may not be happy with life, but I think he does want to hold onto it for its own merit and not just because he has a mission to fulfill. That’s why I’m conflicted about his intense desire to teach Defense Against the Dark Arts even knowing the position is cursed, having experienced the loss of a teacher every year, and believing in the power of Voldemort to curse it. Surely he knows the curse is real. So why apply for the job each year knowing it could even get him killed, in addition to the assurance of it ending badly?

[noxlumosfic]

Nine chapters into an eleven-chapter severitus and it hits me:

If snape adopts harry, the entire thing that makes him a functional double agent falls apart.

Snape is a perfect spy because he has nothing to lose. His existence is joyless, controlled, stripped of anything that could give him away. His Occlumency holds because there is almost no warmth in him to leak. You cannot read a room that’s already empty.

Give him a child he loves, and that stops being true.

The traits that make him a good father, attachment, devotion, an interior reordered around one small life, are the traits that make him a bad spy. You cannot seal away a love that has remade you.

And it gets worse. The moment Voldemort returns and learns Severus Snape is raising Harry Potter, the order is obvious: bring me the boy. Or hurt him yourself, to prove your loyalty.

Severus won't.

That’s the cover, gone.

You cannot heal this man without disarming him. The thing that saves him is the thing that kills him. Giving him a reason to live is the same act as taking away the emptiness the war required of him.

[nocturnus33]

The Faustian Wand: A Goethean Reimagining of Hogwarts

If Goethe were to reimagine the world of Harry Potter, he would likely move away from the series' clear-cut morality. Instead, he would center his focus on the "demonic" (das Dämonische), that inexplicable, irresistible, and vast life-force that pushes exceptional individuals beyond the limits of conventional laws.

The Character: Severus Snape as a Faustian Figure

Goethe would likely be most drawn to Severus Snape. In Goethe’s literary universe, the most compelling figures are those who struggle with profound internal contradictions, possess an intense intellect, and are driven by an obsessive, often tragic, pursuit.

Snape embodies the archetype of the man who has tasted the forbidden fruit of dark arts and power, only to be bound by a past transgression or an overwhelming passion. To Goethe, Snape would not merely be a hero or villain. He would be a Faustian figure: a man torn between his worldly desires, his intellect, and a transcendent, albeit tragic, love. He would represent the Bildung, the lifelong process of education and self-transformation, that is never fully settled, as he remains trapped in the tension between his past actions and his desperate need for redemption.

The Approach: From "Good vs. Evil" to "Human Striving"

Goethe’s approach would fundamentally shift the narrative from an external conflict, such as Harry versus Voldemort, to an internal, philosophical exploration of the human condition:

The "Demonic" Force: Instead of Voldemort being a simple external source of evil, Goethe would frame him as a manifestation of the Dämonische, a raw, unchecked power that demands a sacrifice. The struggle would not be about defeating a dark lord, but about the protagonists grappling with the seductive, destructive potential of that same power within themselves.

The Shift to Bildungsroman: The story would become less about the school’s plot and more about the apprenticeship of the soul. Hogwarts would be reimagined as a site of rigorous intellectual and emotional discovery. Harry’s journey would be less about a destiny he has to fulfill and more about his development into a well-rounded human being who must reconcile his contemplative-artistic side with his practical-committed side.

A Focus on Nature and Harmony: Goethe, who was also a scientist and observer of nature, would likely weave in the philosophy that magic is a living, flowing manifestation of Divine Energy. He would focus on the aesthetic harmony of the magical world, where the pursuit of knowledge is a sacred act of uncovering nature’s mysteries. Characters would find their moral footing through reflection and the balance of intellect and feeling rather than just following the rules.

In a Goethean Harry Potter, you would not just see a boy fighting a wizard; you would see a soul attempting to balance its own "storm and stress" against the necessity of civic duty and moral clarity, all while navigating a world that, much like in Faust, is essentially a reflection of his own inner depths.

[inthemoodforblastt]

re this ask you answered:

do you think snape could be bigoted in some ways?

how do you think lily factors into this? obviously he only had negative associations with his father, but what about lily?

do you think in 2nd and 3rd year he would have struggled to reconcile the de ideology of stripping people down to their blood status (eg mudblood) with the multifaceted girl he knew? also do you think how petunia treated lily had any impact on snape’s radicalisation?

Not necessarily. I think Petunia treated Severus pretty badly, didn’t she? And she looked down on him because of the way he dressed. So that’s one more distinction showing that Muggles looked awful from his perspective.

I think Severus simply saw that Lily wasn’t a Muggle. Lily had magic. I mean, I think it’s pretty logical. If all the non-magical people around you when you’re a child are bad experiences, then objectively they become negative reinforcement, and your only friend and the only person who treats you well turns out to have magical powers, then you don’t see her as a Muggle. You don’t see her as part of that group you associate with negative things. You see her as part of your group and part of your society.

Lily is going to go to school with him, and Lily is going to study magic because she has powers. So I think from his perspective she simply wasn’t like them. And he even says it, he tells her that she isn’t the same. And objectively, she isn’t. She’s not like them because she has powers and they don’t. And she’s going to leave behind her identity as a Muggle-born girl, and leave behind her Muggle identity the moment she enters the magical world and marries another person with magical powers and lives in Godric’s Hollow.

The problem is really Rowling’s worldbuilding, because Muggle-born children never really keep their Muggle identity. They become witches and wizards, leave their original world behind completely, adopt magical culture, marry other witches or wizards, and that’s it.

We see it with Hermione. As the books go on, even though her parents are objectively good people, she’s an only child, and they care for her deeply, she spends less and less time with them. It reaches a point where she doesn’t even spend holidays with them anymore after already being away from home for most of the year. She completely leaves her roots behind. The same thing happens with Lily. Lily marries James, who’s pure-blood, and they move to Godric’s Hollow. They don’t even live in a magical house inside the Muggle world. That doesn’t happen.

So yes, that’s obvious. Severus doesn’t see her as a Muggle. Severus sees her as a witch. So it has absolutely nothing to do with that. In fact, Petunia — the Muggle — is the one who speaks badly to them. And it’s not that she treats Lily badly, it’s that she treats him badly. Petunia despises him from the very beginning, before he even opens his mouth. So of course that’s another negative reinforcement for him.

So, I mean, it seems obvious to me that if people in Slytherin insulted Muggles and talked about the dangers of Muggle culture and about Muggle-borns bringing “Muggle-ness” into the magical world, he would have felt threatened —deeply threatened— because he probably saw that everything negative he knew from that world was something that would follow him into the other world, the one where he at least had a chance.

And I’ll say it again: it was a chance being given to him by his classmates. It wasn’t a chance his teachers gave him, because the teachers completely turned a blind eye to the bullying he was experiencing. And it also wasn’t protection guaranteed by his other classmates, because those classmates were the very people bullying him. The only people with whom he felt protected were the Slytherins. And Lily, even though she was his friend, hung around with people who either bullied him directly or justified the bullying and laughed along with the bullies. So I think, if anything, the conflict Severus had to reconcile wasn’t that his friend was Muggle-born, it was that his friend associated with people who validated the mistreatment he was experiencing.

Psychologically, I think that’s the most logical reaction. And he was probably making excuses to himself for why he tolerated having a relationship with someone who existed in an environment where he was being directly attacked. And realistically, it’s not that Lily could have stopped the bullying —that’s obvious— but she probably could have done more, like reporting it to teachers or physically standing up to people. Not that she had to do that, because it wasn’t her responsibility, but I think that from the perspective of a teenager who had grown up surrounded by violence and had learned that violence was something people often used and something used for self-defence too (Remember, Severus defends himself with violence. Remember, the Slytherins use violence. ) He knew violence could be used, but his friend didn’t use it to defend him. So I think that realistically, for a boy in his situation, the logical thought process isn’t: I’m hanging around people who hate people like my friend. He would also think: Well, my friend hangs around people who hate me.

So I think that for him there was a certain internal logic there, like: Why am I being criticised for hanging around these people when my friend hangs around hers? We’re friends and friendship should matter more than that. He could also tell himself things like: Well, Lily was raised among Muggles, so it’s normal that she defends these things, but maybe one day she’ll see everything wrong with the Muggle world and understand. Or: Her sister treats her badly and she’s always complaining about how badly she treats her. Maybe one day she’ll realise that’s a Muggle thing and that Muggles are the problem.

I think that could have been part of the reasoning too, and honestly it seems logical to me, especially for a child his age, because we’re talking about young kids here like 12, 13, 14 years old. Their brains aren’t fully developed yet. They can’t really see much beyond things; adolescence tends to involve very black-and-white thinking. But I don’t think he had some huge internal conflict over it. I think it would’ve been perfectly logical for his housemates to ask him why he was hanging around her or what the hell he was doing with her. I wouldn’t find it strange if they said things like: But this girl is just using you. Because realistically, her friends are friends with the people who are tormenting you.

And that probably makes a lot of sense. Because if I’m in a group and one person in that group is being bullied, and that person is friends with someone who in turn is friends with the people cheering that bullying on, I’d ask: What the hell are you doing? This girl is making a fool out of you. I would say that, even if it wasn’t my best friend or someone extremely close to me. If it’s someone I know and interact with, I’d say it.

So I think you’re looking at this conflict from a completely mistaken perspective here.

[noxlumosfic]

Lily Evans appears in the Harry Potter series almost entirely through Severus Snape's memories. What we actually have of her—what she says, what she does, how she behaves toward him—is limited to a handful of scenes.

This post looks at those scenes closely, in order. The order matters.

The Hogwarts Express The first scene we get of Lily and Severus together at Hogwarts is the only time she chooses him cleanly.

James and Sirius mock Severus on the train. Lily doesn't argue, doesn't negotiate, doesn't try to manage the situation. She gets up and leaves with him. "Come on, Severus, let's find another compartment." He is the priority. Everything else can wait.

She will never do this again.

The Corridor

The next time we see them together it is fifth year. It is Severus who says best friends—his word, his frame, his need. Lily confirms it—"we are, Sev"—but the confirmation lasts exactly two words before the but arrives. He is asking about the relationship. She is already onto the grievance.

Her complaint is legitimate. Mulciber used dark magic on Mary Macdonald and Severus dismisses it as "a laugh, that's all." That defense is weak and Lily is right to push back on it.

But then the Shrieking Shack comes up.

Lily tells Severus he is being "really ungrateful" to James Potter. This is the only thing she says about it. She goes straight to the social transaction—he was saved, therefore he owes gratitude.

Gratitude is a cold frame to apply to your best friend's survival. For most of us, the emotional response would come before the social accounting. For Lily it doesn't.

Severus's read—that James was protecting himself and his friends, not playing hero—is almost certainly correct, and Rowling never contradicts it. Lily doesn't engage with it as an argument. She calls him ungrateful and when he raises his werewolf theory she goes cold.

The obvious defense is that she is protecting Lupin's secret, but she is not close to the Marauders at this point, and the text gives us no reason to think she knows. The secret was closely guarded enough that Severus only figured it out through his own investigation.

This is the most unguarded window the text gives us into where Lily actually stands. Best friends. Nearly died. Ungrateful. Cold. Not the coldness of someone whose warmth has turned. The coldness of someone for whom it is simply no longer present.

Snape's Worst Memory

This is the same year. Possibly weeks later. Severus is sitting his O.W.L.s—the text places us there explicitly, he has just finished an exam—when James and Sirius spot him across the grounds.

As James and Sirius advance on Severus, James is "glancing over his shoulder at the girls at the water's edge as he went." He is checking she is watching. This is a performance and Lily is the intended audience.

What follows is extended and escalating. Severus is disarmed. He is knocked off his feet. He is held by invisible ropes on the ground while James and Sirius mock his appearance, his hygiene, his exam performance, in front of a growing crowd.

Lily only intervenes when the humiliation tips into something physically degrading. But look at what her intervention actually is. Every exchange is between Lily and James. Go out with me and I'll leave him alone. She refuses. He returns to Severus. She tells him to stop again. He makes it about her again. Severus is on the ground between them, the occasion for a conversation that has reorganized itself entirely around whether Lily will go out with James Potter.

On the Hogwarts Express, four years earlier, she didn't negotiate. She didn't engage. She got up and left with Severus.

She doesn't do that here.

James hangs Severus upside down, "his robes falling over his head to reveal skinny, pallid legs and a pair of graying underpants." Lily, "whose furious expression had twitched for an instant as though she was going to smile," says: "Let him down!”

Rowling doesn't let her fully smile. But the twitch is there and the text makes sure we see it. Rowling was probably writing this as a signal that Lily finds James compelling despite herself—that his performance lands on her even as she tells him to stop. What she has actually written is a girl whose best friend is being humiliated in front of a crowd and who almost smiles at it.

Eventually, when Lily draws her wand, James backs down.

"You're lucky Evans was here, Snivellus."

This is not generosity. In the social world of a 1970s boarding school, being rescued by a girl is its own humiliation. James knows this. The line is one more blow on the way out: you needed her, you owe her, a girl had to speak for you.

"I don't need help from filthy little Mudbloods like her!"

"Fine. I won't bother in future. And I'd wash your pants if I were you, Snivellus."

Rowling probably thought this read as sharp and self-possessed—the cool girl walking away with the perfect line. What it actually is is a girl deploying her best friend's humiliation as wit.

The Apology

Severus has been threatening to sleep outside Gryffindor Tower until Lily comes out. She is in her dressing gown when she appears. She only came because Mary told her.

"I'm sorry." "I'm not interested." "I'm sorry!" "Save your breath." He keeps trying to find a way in and she shuts each attempt down before it can become a real exchange. When he says he never meant to call her Mudblood, that it just — she finishes his sentence for him. "Slipped out?" There is, the text tells us, no pity in her voice.

"I've made excuses for you for years."

Everything she says next is true. The wannabe Death Eater friends are real. The dark magic is real. The slurs are real.

But none of it is new. Those things were already real in the corridor when she confirmed the words best friends. They were already real at the lake when she watched the disarming and the jinx and the prolonged mockery. She knew exactly who he was and what he was becoming and she maintained the language of best friendship over the top of all of it—until he directed a slur at her specifically. That is when the moral inventory arrives. That is when the years of excuses are finally over.

"I can't pretend anymore. You've chosen your way, I've chosen mine."

The text gives us one last detail about how she leaves. Not with sadness. Not with grief for something real that is ending. With a contemptuous look.

What The Text Shows

None of what this post has described is hidden in the text. It is just easier to miss if you have already decided she is good.

And the narrative has always needed her to be good. Her goodness has to justify James's reformation and Snape's lifelong devotion. The story can't afford to look at her too closely—at the gratitude lecture, at the lake, at the almost-smile, at the contemptuous look.

Fandom, inheriting that framing, hasn't either.

[yearofthesnape]

While drafting some Snape dialogue, I suddenly ran into a question. To use "may," or "might"?

From what I have gathered of strict grammatical rules, "might" is used for past possibility (i.e. "She might have lived, if not for him") and "may" is used for present possibility (i.e. "He may yet be defeated"). That being said, people often mix the two, for emphasis. Using "might" shows that you think the thing you're talking about is unlikely. Sometimes that's formality: "if I might ask," more than "if I may ask," says that you assume you're not going to be permitted, which can show your politely deferential position. Sometimes that's skepticism: "He might succeed" is less optimistic than "He may succeed." Sometimes it's informality: "I might go to the park today," not "I may go to the park today," sounds less high-handed, more like you realize there are things that are outside your control that can affect you.

So guess what Snape, that curious blend of formal, skeptical, and informal, prefers?

"You might be laboring under the delusion that the entire Wizarding world is impressed with you, but I don’t care how many times your picture appears in the papers."

"But unless you watch your step, you might just find that my hand slips right over your evening pumpkin juice."

"It might be possible… for me to help Draco."

"I think that there is little chance of taking him once he is there, my Lord, unless, of course, the Ministry has fallen before next Saturday, which might give us the opportunity to discover and undo enough of the enchantments to break through the rest."

"But my Lord, he might be killed accidentally by one other than yourself —"

Snape generally uses "might" more often than "may" (he uses it 25 times as opposed to 11, even if you count "maybe" as a "may"). In the quoted instances above, if I'm understanding the rules correctly, one could argue that he uses "might" when the rules dictate "may" instead.

Once, he does use "may" when strict rules call for "might":

"Potter and his friends may have simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time."

All of these slips into less strictly grammatical speech occur during times of stress (confronting Harry Potter's misdeeds, actively hoodwinking Voldemort, etc.). Of course, nearly all Snape's quoted speech occurs during times of stress, so this may mean nothing. Might mean nothing? You know what I mean.

My own inclination pushes me towards "may" when I'm trying to enter the speech register Snape uses, so I had to intentionally rephrase to "might"; it makes sense that he finds it easier to speak of already-past possibilities instead of present ones, especially when operating under stress.

[danadiadea]

"Snape didn't respect Lily saying "no" because he went to apologise to Gryffindor tower"

Wanting to apologise when you lashed out at a person important to you during a traumatic event is normal. If he didn't try to apologise, those people would've been the first to say that's evil since he didn't show remorse, and didn't truly care.

Severus didn't try to intervene in the Gryffindor common room, follow after Lily when she ended the conversation, or stop her from leaving in any way, even just verbally. He wanted to apologise, and since the conversation seems to happen on the same day the SWM did, or at least to be their first personal conversation, there wasn't really a way for her to directly tell him they aren't friends anymore.

We don't know if Lily sent Mary to tell Severus that she won't go out, or if Severus met Mary independently when he arrived/she herself went out to ask what he wants/Lily sent her to ask what he wants and not nessesarily to communicate anything. We have absolutely no indication that Severus tried to force his friendship on Lily after she personally told him they are done. I headcanon he tried to apologise a few more times, but that's the matter of personal text interpretation.

Threatening someone to bring harm or discomfort on yourself – like sleep in the hall – if they don't talk to you is manupulative to an extent, and definitely unhealthy, but how the fuck do you want Severus' attachment to be healthy? I have no doubt that he'd actually go with that and sleep under Gryffindor common room, just as he claims. Genuinely, it doesn't seem like it's the most harmful or humiliating thing a person with his mindset would do to himself to make amends for something.

We never get an indication of Snily friendship from anyone but Petunia, and the grown up Marauders during their fits of victimblaming never mention it, and never frame Snape for being a nuisance to Lily. We also know that according to Marauders, on their 7th year Severus didn't communicate to Lily that her boyfriend still bullied him behind her back – something that we are told she didn't know about. We also see Severus respecting Lily's personal space before SWM, with her hanging out with her friends who apparently do not like him, and him not trying to approach her after the exam.

There is absolutely NO indication that Severus didn't respect Lily's "no" – unlike some other character, not giving names – unless you want to frame people feeling (rather unfairly one-sided) guilt and remorse as inherently disrespectful. At best we have an indication he was unhealthily codependent, which... yeah, no shit, he is a neglected teenager from abusive environment, keep dehumanising those for willing to do anything in order to not lose the shreds of human connection and acceptance they have.