they/them a-spec queer autistic because my current special interest is harry potter, i want to clarify that i hate jkr and terfs and that trans rights are human rights - i dont interact monetarily with this interest and limit it to fandom spaces happy to chat but am awful at friendships :3 main is @treasureguardingdragon, i just use this blog when im scared of being perceived (anyone can still interact – it’s just my brain being silly)
Last night @sideprince pointed out to me that we never see/read that Snape threw the cockroach jar at Harry after SWM/Occlumency lesson:
And as Harry hurtled toward the door, a jar of dead cockroaches exploded above his head.
As far as the book is concerned, the jar explodes over Harry's head. Snape's collection of slimy unpleasant things line the walls, and the Pensieve is on the desk, or on an empty shelf behind/beside the desk. It is, ofc, entirely possible that Snape reached for a random jar and launched it at Harry, who was beneath the door, and it shattered above/around the doorway.
However, @sideprince suggested the much more interesting theory that Snape accidentally exploded a jar because he lost control, a display of accidental magic similar to the one we saw with Petunia and the branch in The Prince's Tale because he felt vulnerable and overwhelmed.
In this scenario the jar just happened to be on a shelf somewhere above Harry or flew off the shelf somehow and exploded if Harry was still in the process of crossing the room.
Obviously Snape using physical violence is unusual for him in the books, except in the case of self defence (i.e. in SWM where he's being ganged up on by James and Sirius) or the defence of others (i.e. using Sectumsempra to defend Lupin but accidentally hitting George).
And anyway I just ADORE the idea of Snape being overwhelmed and accidentally losing control of his magic (amidst a lesson where he's previously told Harry off for his supposed lack of emotional self control, God love him).
At some stage I'll try and ponder whether there's any other similarities on other occasions when Snape sort of loses it
(oh wait I just thought of one sort of; he unintentionally produced wand sparks toward the end of PoA I think?)
Trans Snape Week, Day 7: Post-Canon: Epilogue? Never Heard of It
It’s a little early, but it’s also technically Day 7 where I am and I may not be able to post properly tomorrow, so I’m going to finish out the festival now. I had a fantastic time–even if I was posting late through practically the whole week–and I hope that everyone else did too. I’m certainly casting my vote now for this to become an annual event.
That said, this only barely scrapes by in fitting the final prompt. I apologize. The opening bits in italics are from the beginning of chapter 11 of Order of the Phoenix.
Luna’s Loony Observation
Harry did not want to tell the others that he and Luna were having the same hallucination, if that was what it was, so he said nothing about the horses as he sat down inside the carriage and slammed the door behind him. Nevertheless, he could not help watching the silhouettes of the horses moving beyond the windows.
“Did everyone see that Grubbly-Plank woman?” asked Ginny. “What’s she doing back here? Hagrid can’t have left, can he?”
“I’ll be quite glad if he has,” said Luna. “He isn’t a very good teacher, is he?”
“Yes, he is!” said Harry, Ron, and Ginny angrily.
Harry glared at Hermione; she cleared her throat and quickly said, “Erm…yes…he’s very good.”
“Well, we all think he’s a bit of a joke in Ravenclaw,” said Luna, unfazed.
“You’ve got a rubbish sense of humor then,” Ron snapped, as the wheels below them creaked into motion.
Luna did not seem perturbed by Ron’s rudeness; on the contrary, she simply watched him for a while as though he were a mildly interesting television program.
“Be nice if Snape would vanish instead,” Harry muttered.
“Yeah,” said Ron wistfully. “Imagine coming back one year and finding out he’s really been sacked.”
“She’s actually a woman, you know,” Luna said abruptly, still staring at Ron.
Ron blinked. “What? Who?”
“Professor Snape. She’s a woman. Can’t you tell?”
“Um.” Ron looked at Harry, who looked back and shrugged, equally bewildered. “Right.” Ginny stifled her laughter with a fake coughing fit. Harry went back to staring at the horses, now even more convinced that he was hallucinating them.
“Can you imagine Snape as a woman?” Ron muttered to Harry so Luna wouldn’t hear him. “He’d be the ugliest woman on earth, that’s for sure.”
It wasn’t an image Harry dwelt on for long.
~~~
Accompanying headcanon for the ficlet (or, this ficlet’s pitiful attempt at qualification under the prompt):
Luna uses female pronouns for Snape from her very first day of classes. Because the Gryffindors don’t have potions with the Ravenclaws, we never see this in canon, but she always uses “ma’am” instead of “sir.” Snape assigns her the most downright disgusting detentions imaginable (from a potions master with Snape’s personality, can we imagine no we cannot) for a solid three years before eventually giving up in bewildered outrage and attempting to ignore it, to varying degrees of success.
After Snape survives the war and starts presenting as a trans woman and all that jazz (the fuck do you mean that isn’t canon, get out of here with your revisionist bullshit), Luna mails her a pair of dirigible plum earrings. She never wears them, but she keeps them tucked safely away with her things all the same.
The Sneep, Desperately trying to explain things to Lily:
He's trying so hard to make her understand why Remus Lupin must be a werewolf, but it's just not happening. (Ironically, he's so disheveled, he ends up looking more like a werewolf than Lupin.)
BONUS: The Sneep, Enthusiastically trying to explain Dementors to Lily once upon a time
Okay timetravel established severitus AU thats slightly crackish but its pingponging inside my brain and I thought id share it with you all. It started with me thinking how funny it would be if Lily and James see Harry and Severus' established Severitus dynamic with like zero context lmao
So it starts with Severus and Harry both timetraveling to just days before Godrics Hollow is attacked. To Lily and James, it looks like Harry just woke up one Tuesday morning absolutely inconsolable, wouldnt stop crying, they cant figure out what's wrong no matter what they do.
And then a random evening three days later, theres some thundering knocks on the door, and they open to see Dumbledore, with a tied up Peter Pettigrew at his feet, and most surprisingly, Lily's ex friend who shes not seen in years and hasnt spoken to in even longer who last time they checked was a death eater standing there right next to him. Severus with an incredibly wild look in his eyes, barrels past them into the house while Dumbledor tries to explain something about spies.
Lily's not listening because while it was shocking to see Peter all tied up, she hasnt slept in nearly 3 days and the most baffling thing right now is that Harry's ringing cries that havent stopped for 3 days now die down all of the sudden. And she turns around to see Severus cradling him with incredible gentleness shes never seen from him, and more shockingly, starts crying at the sight of Harry.
And then everything is chaos and nothing makes sense and all of the sudden your one year old son seems to be incredibly attached to this person hes never even seen before, whos now apparently your child's third parent.
Snape (and Dumbledore) in The Chamber of Secrets: conspiracy theory time
A coalescing of events meant that I saw this delightful gifset at around the point I reached one of the below sections in my sporadic reread of CoS, and I was struck by how differently the staff responded to Snape in the beginning of the book, when Harry first discovered Mrs Norris compared to how how they responded to Snape in this later scene.
TL;DR: Snape was always the black sheep of the staff, who modelled their feelings towards Snape off of Dumbledore's feelings - and Dumbledore didn't trust him until towards the end of GoF. I also lowkey think that Dumbledore suspected Snape of being involved in the Chamber opening - at least for a little while.
Included below is the section after which Harry has been found near a Petrified Mrs Norris:
Here, Snape is very much sidelined by his attitude to Harry, because although every teacher knows that Harry is not telling them the full truth, only Snape seems to want to actually get that truth out of him. The truth - the thing that Snape is after - comes second even to Quidditch.
Other key takeaways from the first interaction, for me, are some of the things I've outlined in my ramble here, which include potential parallels drawn between Snape and the Bloody Baron as pale, gaunt, staring, separate from the others owing to their intimidating and/or unsettling nature. 'Gaunt' is used to describe Snape here also, where JKR usually only uses it for ghosts - and, much more notably, Azkaban prisoners. 'Gaunt' in JKR's writing signals further that Snape is Other: outcasted, depressed, isolated, and practically sick, and trapped at Hogwarts as much as any prisoner might be in Azkaban. Whether he's trapped by his memories, his obligations, or Dumbledore himself, is up for interpretation.
Snape alone is described as standing in the shadows, apart from the other teachers, rather than alongside them. Notably, Harry, Ron, and Hermione are also apart from the teachers and sat 'outside the pool candlelight'- excluded by the fact that they are students, and Dumbledore and the others are authority figures, as professors.
The other authority figures - namely McGonagall and Dumbledore - do not have his back against Lockhart, and overall Snape's more aligned with Filch, as he (sort of) was in the first book, going to Filch instead of Madam Pomfrey following his injury at the teeth of Fluffy - the same Filch who is similarly 'othered' and not taken seriously in the wizarding world, but by virtue of being a Squib.
There also seems to be some continued dismissal of Snape and his position in Dumbledore's wording, right here, in this scene:
‘Professor Sprout recently managed to procure some Mandrakes. As soon as they have reached their full size, I will have a potion made which will revive Mrs Norris.’
‘I’ll make it,’ Lockhart butted in. ‘I must have done it a hundred times, I could whip up a Mandrake Restorative Draught in my sleep –’
‘Excuse me,’ said Snape icily, ‘but I believe I am the Potions master at this school.’
There was a very awkward pause.
‘You may go,’ Dumbledore said to Harry, Ron and Hermione.
But what I found interesting is that Snape's "I believe I am the Potions master at this school" could both refer to Snape dismissing Lockhart trying to bumble his way through a potion he's not capable or qualified to make, and refer to this moment of Dumbledore saying "I will have a potion made" where his phrasing is virtually omitting Snape from any responsibility or involvement in the process (as in why not say "Professor Snape can produce a potion to revive Mrs Norris" in the first place, since Snape's right there, and Filch is half a step away from losing his mind. To contrast, Snape even gets full credit for making the Wolfsbane potion, despite his somewhat strained relationship with Lupin in PoA).
I probably wouldn't have noticed if I wasn't busy obsessing over Snape, but something else I've picked up on during this reread of CoS is that nobody refers to Snape being involved in brewing the Mandrake Restorative Draught. Professor Sprout is credited with growing them, which is fair, and "Madam Pomfrey was pleased to report that the Mandrakes were becoming moody and secretive, meaning that they were fast leaving childhood", and Madam Pomfrey is also credited with handing out the Mandrake 'juice' to revive people at the end of the book - which is also fair, since she is the school nurse, and that's literally her job. But whose job is it to make the potion? I'd wager that normally it would be Snape, otherwise he wouldn't have been so sniffy with Lockhart about stealing his job.
Snape likes to feel useful, likes to believe that he is essential, and he likes people to know both of those things - just look at his behaviour in OotP, proud and bragging to Sirius and Harry about his job of collecting information on Voldemort. So, as usual, Snape's comment about being the potions master also plays into his characterisation as someone who's very aware of his position (and power) in relation to others, always asserting his authority as a teacher - but also constantly being reminded of the limitations of that authority, and his (often lower) position in relation to the others. We see a similar sort of thing unfold at the start of the book, when Snape is trying to expel Harry and Ron for crashing into the whomping willow. They've broken the law - not even just school rules this time - and so, they should rightly be expelled (to Snape's mind):
Instead, however, Snape is unceremoniously invited to leave his own office. Don't get me wrong, Dumbledore was very friendly about it - jocular, even - but if anything, that only served to undermine Snape's authority further. Plus, calling Snape 'Severus' (especially within the same sentence that 'Minerva' is referred to as 'Professor McGonagall') highlights Dumbledore's (and McGonagall's) more senior positions, their higher levels of authority, and Dumbledore's more paternalistic role toward Snape. By contrast, Dumbledore's use of 'Minerva' shortly after, to me at least, reflects a more equal, friendly-professional relationship - especially given that Dumbledore and McGonagall are closer peers in terms of age and authority (both having taught and held authority over Snape during his student years, and both being deputy headmistress and head of house/headmaster, where Snape is only head of house for the often-maligned Slytherin). It's almost as though it's Snape who's in trouble, not Harry and Ron.
As pointed out by this on Quora, which I agree with:
[Snape] and McGonagall have a teasing rivalry which may well be affectionate, but she and Dumbledore can’t seem to make up their minds whether to treat him as a colleague or a student.
The upshot of all of this is that Snape's authority is routinely ignored and removed entirely; far from Snape's view of justice, Harry and Ron receive one single mild detention from McGonagall - a very light slap on the wrist for breaking wizarding law, being late to school, and damaging school property - and, at the end of the book, not only are they not expelled for doing it again, putting themselves and others in danger when they could have gone to get a teacher* - but in fact they're again rewarded, with 200 points each, promising them the House Cup for the second time.
*Yes, I'm aware that if they went and got a teacher it would ruin the adventure of a kid's book - but I'm here for the Watsonian analysis, specifically Snape's pov.
So, returning to the moment Mrs Norris has been Petrified, Snape already perhaps feels that his expertise and his authority are being ignored and tested by both Lockhart and by Dumbledore, in front of his colleagues (who perhaps don't like/respect him very much) and the students (who definitely don't like/respect him very much); perhaps he even feels he's being overlooked for a task that he thinks he's undoubtedly going to be a part of. After all, he's the potions professor. Of course he'd be involved in brewing the potion to cure those who have been Petrified.
Or is he?
Maybe we're supposed to believe that Dumbledore trusts Snape from the moment he's turned spy (or, at the very least, from the moment that Snape vows to protect Harry, even once Lily is dead). But more and more I'm beginning to wonder if that trust developed more slowly, and wasn't solidified until Voldemort actually returned in GoF, and Snape risked his life in returning to Voldemort. I know it is, in part, to do with the vibe of the books earlier in the series, being shorter, simpler, and generally more light-hearted for younger children, and therefore less interested in the more complex aspects of any of the adults' lives - Snape is presented as a generic mean teacher, he's wrong, the kids love getting one up on him, there's less suggestion that he's a prodigy or a redeemed hero or whatever, he's often the butt of the joke, etc etc. But stick with me here.
After all, there's no inkling in Snape's memories of Snape or Dumbledore growing substantially closer before GoF - in fact, Snape's memories make it seem as though Dumbledore is largely disinterested in Snape in PS:
The office dissolved but re-formed instantly. Snape was pacing up and down in front of Dumbledore.
“ — mediocre, arrogant as his father, a determined rule-breaker, delighted to find himself famous, attention-seeking and impertinent — ”
“You see what you expect to see, Severus,” said Dumbledore, without raising his eyes from a copy of Transfiguration Today. “Other teachers report that the boy is modest, likable, and reasonably talented. Personally, I find him an engaging child.” Dumbledore turned a page, and said, without looking up, “Keep an eye on Quirrell, won’t you?”
Dumbledore doesn't even look at him here, completely disinterested in what Snape has to say. Sure, Snape is bitching about an eleven-year-old, but there's none of the level of familiarity that we see in Snape's memories - starting from the 'you're a braver man than Karkaroff' in GoF, and moving into the later books (and even then, half of Snape's life in GoF is Snape very much believing - but not wanting to believe - that Dumbledore would doubt him). There's also an argument to be made that Dumbledore is sort of Occluding Snape here, like he did to Harry in OotP, keeping Snape out of the loop in the event that Voldemort returns, so Snape can honestly say he had no idea that Voldemort was attached to Quirrel - but surely the great and talented Dumbledore could effectively Occlude Snape for five minutes? This wasn't the strange connection that Harry shared with Voldemort, nor would Snape likely try and actively use Legilimency on Dumbledore - and even if he did, we know who holds all of the power in that relationship, so I doubt Snape would even try.
Anyway, building on the idea that Dumbledore doesn't trust Snape very much: at the point at which the Mandrake is due to be prepared, the Slytherin password has been "pureblood" (and who knows what else), Harry & co point out that no Slytherins have been attacked, it's Slytherin's monster going around targeting Muggle-borns, it's Slytherin's heir, Slytherin's secret chamber. Dumbledore strongly suspects Voldemort's influence/involvement (given the similarities to Myrtle's death), and later suspects Lucius Malfoy's involvement - two people who had a not-insignificant measure of control over Snape in the past.
But, at the beginning of the year, it may not even have been clear to Dumbledore that Lucius was involved. Still, someone had to have set everything in motion - and Dumbledore obviously didn't suspect Harry. Snape is more or less narratively excluded from any hint of involvement in the Mandrake draught, despite being an expert on potions and their ingredients, and at the time when it is first mentioned, he's lurking in the literal shadows, stood apart from the other teachers, who may or may not know or have heard rumours that he has a dodgy past as a DE (given that the trial we see in GoF was hardly a private affair):
So at this point, Dumbledore can have only theories as to who - or what - Petrified the cat, and how they went about it. All Dumbledore knows for certain is that someone with some exceptionally advanced knowledge of the Dark Arts or Dark Magic could've done it, someone in the school, with a likely history of being aligned with Voldemort - and at the same time, Snape's hardly doing himself any favours here by trying to incriminate Harry, a literal child.
Side note: it is really funny to me that Snape spends the anniversary of Lily and James's deaths this year trying to get their kid into shit for killing a cat. Snape is so bitter and I love him.
It's not until the end of the story that Dumbledore is made more clearly aware of the diary, its powers, or Ginny's involvement, and pieces together that Lucius alone would've had the motive to both remove Dumbledore from the school and to frame a Weasley. Up until that point - if we assume that Dumbledore doesn't fully trust Snape - it's just as likely that Snape is working from inside the school somehow, perhaps at Lucius'/Voldemort's behest, to frame Harry and rid the school of Muggle-borns, now that Voldemort is becoming more active.
As always, Dumbledore would have many theories, "each of them as unlikely as the next".
A part of me wonders, then, if Dumbledore wasn't just hedging his bets, keeping Snape sort of distanced from the process of making the Mandrake Draught and instead giving the responsibility to Madam Pomfrey, just in case Snape decided to go back on his word or had been influenced by Lucius (or the memory of Voldemort himself) and sabotage the Draught.
It might not even have been Dumbledore doing it on purpose (we're all susceptible to bias), and it might even have influenced by some of the other staff accidentally associating Snape with the Slytherin antics - until Ginny goes missing, that is:
And suddenly, from the reader's/Harry's perspective, Snape is not on the outskirts, but at the very front, leading the charge; far from being sidelined and ignored, he is quickly supported by the rest of the staff, including a very enthusiastic McGonagall. Granted, some of this is likely due to Lockhart's grating personality finally becoming the bigger evil than Snape's general shitty attitude when the fight has escalated, combined with the need to remove Lockhart entirely so that the staff - in Dumbledore's absence - can try and formulate a plan in peace.
But I also notice that it tends to be Dumbledore who belittles Snape first/the most, not the other teachers. McGonagall and Snape share what seems to be a friendly rivalry from as early as PS, and Quirrell tells Harry that Snape made himself unpopular with the other staff when he insisted on refereeing the match, suggesting that he hadn’t been especially unpopular before.
Returning to that Quora answer, though: "After he kills Dumbledore, though, most of them seem willing to believe him a traitor. Most of them come up with some variant of “Dumbledore trusted him and I trusted Dumbledore”. Only Slughorn speaks of his direct, personal relationship with Snape (“I thought I knew him”), and only Hagrid hangs on to the idea that Snape is doing as Dumbledore told him."
So they can't have been so close that they trusted him just on his own merits, even after working together for so long. I don't know about you, but I'd be surprised and doubtful even if my least-liked colleague ever turned out to have killed someone.
I think at this point it's also worth noting that my interpretation of this scene isn't only one of friendly rivalry over points (frenemy bffs), but also an infliction of McGonagall's authority over Snape, her assertion that he was in the wrong, in a workplace-friendly way:
Don't get me wrong, I think Snape was genuinely pleased to see her, and deep down happy to acquiesce - but it was also a power play on McGonagall's part, and they both knew it.
I've yet to do my reread of PoA, but I think it's fair to say that it's a book marked by Dumbledore's (and others') dismissive attitudes towards Snape, turned up to 11. All year Snape's warned Dumbledore about Sirius, and Lupin; he's humiliated in the eyes of his students by the Boggart incident; his experience with the 'prank' (which should be renamed 'the trick', because nobody ever called it a prank in the books) has been silenced, ignored, and diminished by Dumbledore since he was a child; despite being (almost) right, despite following the letter of the law, and despite attempting to save Harry, Ron, and Hermione, Snape is made to look as though he's absolutely insane in front of the Minister for Magic, his credibility damaged, his hope for justice or catharsis snatched away at the last moment, and his only personally satisfying moment includes making himself unpopular again by 'outing' Lupin, who appeared to be well-liked. We can gather from the ending of GoF that Dumbledore doesn't even care to explain to Snape the events of PoA in full until over a year later - despite Snape preparing to return to Voldemort's side, and already offering intel which Dumbledore doesn't seem to particularly care about, diminishing both Snape's preparedness and his sense of usefulness still further. No wonder he's got such a chip on his shoulder, come OotP.
Returning to my original point, then: it seems as though Snape was always the black sheep of the Hogwarts staff; the others were led, by and large, by Dumbledore's attitude towards him - and that attitude didn't become particularly positive until Snape began to 'prove himself' in GoF, and was quickly dashed at the end of HBP. As a result, I think it's perfectly plausible that the reason Snape is socially/professionally sidelined in CoS is because Dumbledore has yet to make up his mind about whether or not he trusts Snape, and lowkey thinks that Snape might be involved in opening the Chamber or sabotaging the Mandrake Draught. No matter what he tells Harry, or anyone else, he doesn't entirely trust Snape - and the amount that Snape is 'liked' by the other staff sort of increased when Dumbledore was briefly no longer headmaster in CoS. That sense of uselessness, and lack of social power and authority, feeds into Snape's insecurities in PoA, GoF, and beyond.
snape wakes up most nights with recurring nightmares about the shack, about being chased, about being caught. when he's on the brink of sleep he hears howls, and startles awake. not certain whether he's dreamt them or whether they were real, and unable to sleep anyway, he paces the corridors with his wand drawn
deepest winter, where the days are short and the nights are long, he has recurring dreams where he wakes up and goes about his day - he attends meals, he teaches, spends time in the staffroom. each night it's a new nightmare - despite the hour the werewolf is loose in the halls between classes. loose in the dining hall at breakfast. it transforms and traps him in the staffroom. it bursts through the door into his lessons. it's killed the students. blood pools on the flagstones.
he should brew dreamless sleep, but he doesn't have time. there are classes to teach, and papers to mark, classes to cover, and he makes two batches of wolfsbane at a time. despite how complex and long-winded it is to make, he checks them obsessively. they have to be perfect. he has to have a spare. he wears himself down with how often he tends them, and sleep-deprived and sick and distracted with worry already, he can't stop thinking that he's missed a step. that he's added something twice. that it won't work, and it'll be all his fault.
a girl screams in the corridor between classes. he sprints to the sound - it turns out it was nothing. she and her friends had tried a hair-growing charm, and it hadn't worked as planned. it's nothing serious. he sends her to the hospital wing but not before he docks a intentionally unfair fifty points for practicing magic in the halls, because he's sick and dizzy and his hands are sweaty and his heart is racing, and he'll stay that way for the rest of the day. worse, the students laughed behind their hands at him, at his overreaction. the students are always laughing at him now, ever since lupin's boggart lesson. he's a laughing stock.
lupin is always slow to take his potion. there's a known murderer trying to enter the castle. the murderer enters the castle, twice. he makes it as far as gryffindor tower. lupin knows something. lupin is having private meetings with potter. something is wrong, but nobody is listening. everyone, from dumbledore to lupin to the students, refuses to take him seriously. why won't anyone take him seriously.
Severus is so nosey I love it! It’s so funny 😭 like he’s not the type to be that’s none of my business and walk out, he needs to know the tea even if he pretends he don’t care 💀
I know right 😭 people use “ok but Snape kept trying to discover that Remus was a werewolf” as a reason to hate on him, like hello he’s so real, if I was a Hogwarts student and I had a classmate who I suspect is a Dark creature disguised in a wizarding school I would’ve tried to snoop around too 💀
Considering how Wizarding Society is all taught to think about werewolves - Severus was absolutely justified to snoop on Remus.
They are hated:
+ They learn about them as Dark Creatures in class. They learn how to identify and kill them.
+ Molly Weasley reacts to a werewolf bite victim 2 weeks after the Full Moon with 'should he really be in the same room as normal people???' - She literally KNOWS a werewolf and she still has this knee-jerk reaction to one, it is so ingrained.
+ Albus had to SNEAK Remus into school by planting a dangerous tree and making a tunnel that went all the way to a Hogsmeade house even Fred and George couldn't work out how to break into.
THAT IS SO MUCH EFFORT - the backlash would be HUGE.
They are feared:
+ They are pretty much forced to live on the outskirts of society, stealing - and killing - to eat. Not getting educated. They are known as dangerous even outside the Full Moon. (And are still contagious outside the Full Moon, too)
+ At that period in time Fenrir Greyback was making a name for himself as the most savage werewolf alive, being aligned with Voldemort - and biting children specifically as a form of 'recruitment'.
Most of that (other than the fear of Fenrir) is unfair... but they aren't unique to Severus or Death Eaters. It's the general common consensus.
Werewolves are dangerous, contagious Dark Creatures who steal, kill, are unpredictable, align with Voldemort and are after your children.
Severus is 16. He isn't going to unravel such a deep rooted social belief on a whim. He is going to suspect someone is a werewolf and go "oh shit that's really bad" - with a dash of delight that it was one of his bullies, so he can finally prove they are awful...
...Only to find out the Headmaster was in on it all along. Ouch.
But if he had uncovered Remus as a werewolf he would have been regarded as a HERO for it. Possibly turned his entire life around tbh
It's also interesting to think about Snape being curious of Lupin as an act of protection. One of the alternate interpretations of his cautioning Lily against the Marauders is that it wasn't about jealousy, but worry for her safety. He knows firsthand how little respect these guys had for others, and how casually they hexed and cursed people, ie. how much they harmed others with ease. Of course, from what we hear pass between Snape and Lily, Snape's friends weren't much better, but if you're looking at things from Snape's perspective, he dismisses his housemates' actions because of inherent bias - the way Lily dismisses the Marauders' for the same reason.
Snape could have wanted to confirm Lupin's lycanthropy in order to expose him, because he had no way of knowing that it was known by the staff. In fact, for all we know Madam Pomfrey didn't know why she led Lupin to the Whomping Willow every month, she just knew he had some kind of mysterious illness. We learn in PS from Hermione that it's unusual for wizards to be logical - in fact, we learn this when she solves Snape's potions riddle. So he could have easily thought that Madam Pomfrey was oblivious, and she well could have been if spotting patterns wasn't something she was good at or put effort into, like so many wizards seem not to.
And yeah, Snape was nosy! He saw something shady going on with someone he didn't trust, none of the staff seemed to know, so he took it upon himself to be nosy and find answers. He could have done it with the goal of taking his evidence to the staff, not just to expose the Marauders, but to protect the rest of the school. Sirius clearly knew what was going on but wasn't going to tell anyone - and as for his culpability, it would be a natural assumption for Snape to make that if Sirius had witnessed whatever was going on from where he told Snape to go, then it must be a safe enough place to observe from. There was no way for Snape to know he and James and Pettigrew were animagi, because he still didn't know by PoA. So if Sirius said, "go here at this time to see something crazy," Snape would assume that Sirius had done the same and wouldn't be thinking, "well he did it as a giant dog and not a 15 year old kid like I am too."
It's also interesting to think about what would have happened if the shoe was on the other foot. Would James or Sirius have foregone the opportunity to follow Snape and see what he was up to if they thought he was doing something dangerous or shady? Would that have been any more or less nosy or interfering? The complexity of all these characters is that they're still so young and immature when all this happens - and that we know so little of what really happened in canon - that their legitimate interests and motivations get mixed up with their biases and feelings. Which makes them interesting to parse out!
Agree with all of the above, with extra emphasis that it can't be understated how absolutely unthinkably insane the idea would've been that a werewolf would be welcomed into the school - a werewolf, one of the most feared and despised Dark Creatures in the wizarding world, who usually don't interact with society as a whole, much less attend the only wizarding school in the UK with the majority (if not the entirety) of the UK's youths all cooped up together, ripe for an incident. It's probably illegal in some way, but if not, definitely highly sketchy. Not to mention that that werewolf was, himself, still a youth - how likely is that, really? (Reasonably likely, perhaps, given Fenrir's MO - but how likely that a werewolf would then be invited to school, when all others are shunned, in a war climate where kids are being intentionally infected by one of Voldemort's followers?)
Recently I've been enjoying the idea that Snape had, really, no idea at all that Remus was a werewolf. Or, he had a vague suspicion - but dismissed it because it was every bit as wildly outrageous as it sounded, and Severus wanted to see what was actually going on.
"Severus was very interested in where I went every month."
Sev knows that roughly once a month Lupin disappears. Whether or not he's connected the dots to the full moon at this stage is essentially unknown - if he had, and he went down to the Willow fully expecting a werewolf, that was... equal parts mad, stupid, and brave. Mostly stupid, though. But otherwise, he just knows that... 'something's weird about that Lupin', which isn't 100% confirmed to Snape until after the Willow incident.
More of a reach, but Snape might not even have known/noticed for sure it's once a month that Lupin disappeared; Lupin might just be describing it like that to get his point across in PoA, since he probably didn't have a nice chat and a debrief with Snape about the whole ordeal over tea post-prank.
Snape might have noticed Remus' absence when they shared classes, but I doubt they were spending so much time together that he could pinpoint exactly when Remus was gone, especially when there's also weekends and holidays to consider, as well as Snape's own life getting in the way - homework, maybe spell creation, presumably some level of potions tinkering, differing classes, and - I assume - Hermione-eque amounts of time spent in the library.
"Snape had seen me crossing the grounds with Madam Pomfrey one evening as she led me toward the Whomping Willow to transform."
Again, Snape didn't necessarily know that Remus was going to transform; all he knew was that sometimes Remus looked rough and was absent from classes, perhaps he'd noticed that had to do with the moon cycle, and once he'd seen Remus being taken to the Whomping Willow by a teacher. But key to me here is that Remus was in the company of someone else. Maybe Snape saw Madam Pomfrey leave the Willow, maybe he didn't; but then Sirius drops some information about how to enter the Willow, and Severus perhaps thinks that it's safe enough to see what that's all about. Which leads me to...
"Sneaking around, trying to find out what we were up to . . . hoping he could get us expelled . . ." (Sirius)
"What about the stuff Potter and his mates get up to?" ... "They sneak out at night." (Snape)
"Why do you care what they’re doing at night?" (Lily)
Perhaps Snape reasoned that despite the timings of Lupin's bouts of illness coinciding with the full moon, Lupin couldn't be a werewolf after all - both Madam Pomfrey and the other Marauders seem content enough to go with him, and Wolfsbane isn't a thing yet. If Remus was a werewolf, they'd probably all be dead, Severus might think, if he were trying to be reasonable about it - not to mention the obvious safety and possibly legal issues involved with the whole thing. So, something's up with Remus - but all of the others are sneaking out with him. Maybe Snape thought they had the Marauders generation of a skiving snackbox or something, idk.
I also don't doubt the Marauders snuck out at night fairly regularly (full moon or not) with the aid of the cloak and later the Map - so how was Snape to know that that night was any different to any of the other nights they'd sneak around just for fun, not for a moonlight excursion? After all, he had no idea they were Animagi until... I think when Sirius transformed from a dog to a man in front of Snape's eyes in GoF. All it would take is Sirius suggesting that it isn't what Snape thinks, and he can go and find out if he's man enough, and he just needs to press the knot on the willow and follow the tunnel...
Exactly! I see posts sometimes where people give Sirius a lot of slack and Snape a lot of blame for going into the tunnel under the Willow, but even though he thought Lupin might be a werewolf it was so unthinkable that anyone in his position would have been just as curious. Plus, at that age there's such a drive to have adventures, uncover big dramatic secrets, while having no sense of your own mortality. I do think Snape had a pretty good idea that Lupin was a werewolf, though, partly because he was very clever and partly because of this exchange with Lily he has in the Prince's Tale chapter of DH:
‘They sneak out at night. There’s something weird about that Lupin. Where does he keep going?’
‘He’s ill,’ said Lily. ‘They say he’s ill -‘
‘Every month at the full moon?’ said Snape.
‘I know your theory,’ said Lily, and she sounded cold. ‘Why are you so obsessed with them, anyway? Why do you care what they’re doing at night?’
But the fact that Madam Pomfrey escorts him would have been confusing, or potentially damning of the school. After all, this was only a generation after the last time the Chamber of Secrets had been opened and a student died.
As for whether Lily ever found out, that's a fascinating question. I suspect James would have told her at some point? But I'd want to delve into canon more to work out that meta...
I did almost include that passage in my thoughts! But I thought it was getting long, so I axed it. But essentially it was just another rambly thing about how the conversation takes place after the Prank, so he's more than had his theory confirmed by then, and whilst this conversation could've been entirely their first conversation since the prank - it could also just the first conversation since about the prank.
So like, the Prank happens, Snape isn't allowed to bring it up, so they've maybe had other conversations but Snape's been in a mood for a week or so and won't say why, he keeps pressing the werewolf theory and (obviously) being all cryptic, and Lily's had enough of it, because it's absurd, and Snape sounds like he's bitter and making stuff up. Then she hears the rumour - James' version of events, of course, since only Snape is sworn to secrecy, apparently - and that's just the first time it's properly come up between them. Snape's livid that James is telling Lily/other people that James saved him, but to Lily, Snape just sounds hysterical, because it's an absolutely bonkers thing to say, much less believe.
Side note: Benefit of the doubt that Snape kept the full extent of what James et al. did to him from Lily, re: "relentless bullying"; Peter's eager anticipation at SWM; James and Sirius hopping on it like a hobby; Sirius effectively being described as hunting Snape like a dog hunts a rabbit or whatever; Remus automatically knowing to keep his eyes averted. So, assuming that SWM-like events weren't exactly uncommon, and Lily did know the full extent, "Why are you so obsessed with them, anyway?" is an absolutely wild thing to say to anyone, nevermind someone you've just assured is your best friend, who has recently been saved from something - and has simultaneously started high-key hinting that your classmate is a werewolf to the point you're sick of hearing about it 😂
Anyway, perhaps at first Snape's theory was something he mentioned in passing after, like, a third year DADA class (*in a ghost story kind of voice* "hey Lily, isn't it weird that Lupin disappears... once a month... at the full moon?" / "Stop being silly, Sev"). Like, a joking theory. It's obviously come up enough by the Prank that Lily's familiar with it, and as you say, Snape probably had his suspicions beforehand because he's smart - but he's also smart enough that maybe he reasoned it was entirely unrealistic.
Sick at the full moon?? A werewolf in school?? But... Madam Pomfrey escorting him?? Lupin and the other Marauders sneaking out at night, in general and on the full moon?? If they're anything like the Weasley twins, they're probably sneaking out at other times, as well.
That's muddied the waters of Snape's werewolf theory. I can imagine a young, nosey Sev going absolutely nuts with the not knowing, on top of disliking the Marauders because of their 'rivalry'. The whole thing was just a big mystery he had to get to the bottom of, with the added bonus of getting people he doesn't like into trouble/giving them their comeuppance (see also: Harry doing literally anything in literally any of the books. They'd have gotten along so well in another life).
More cartoon Severus since the last one was pretty well received. I drew this months ago but wasn't pleased with how he looked. Now... I guess it's better than I thought
Honestly, I think this perfectly encapsulates what Snape went through on a daily basis.
It was very difficult to watch because of just how brutal James and Sirius were.
I didn’t used to hate Sirius. I actually liked him, but I was also bullied terribly in high school and I cannot forget that. I swear some of my bullies used at the same tone. The same tone that lets you know the other person wants you dead. Not dead, but dead hands.
I think if Snape committed suicide the Marauders would’ve considered it they’re crowning achievement.
Thank you for a wonderful meta. And the link. I think you come of as being dismissive of both racism and the intersection between racism and pure classism. Or I'm British and I don't agree with that. But I am grateful for the discussion and answer.
I apologise if you feel that I was dismissive of racism. Having gone back and read your ask again, I hold my hands up - you stated that Snape has privilege based upon his ethnicity and sex, and not (as I read) that he was privileged because of this. The difference is subtle, but it’s there - and I apologise because your point is fair.
To clarify, I did not intend to suggest that race is not at all relevant, nor was I suggesting that class is the only attribute that people use to discriminate. I wholeheartedly agree that white people are inadvertently complicit in systemic prejudice without consciously recognising it - but I also feel that people do not give class (particularly when discussing UK society) the critique and analysis it deserves, and I was too quick to grumble.
Honestly, one of the most frustrating aspects of being a black reader (never mind being black and queer) of the Harry Potter series is unpacking all the ways that Jo’s portrayal of issues like racism and prejudice are so woefully inadequate.
I do know that she, like so many white authors, may have intended to do something good and I suspect that the extent of the Death Eaters and Lord Voldemort symbolising racism, prejudice, anti-Semitism, etc. has also been built up more over the years by fandom, the media, and on Pottermore as the insistence on the parallels have caught on but I fear it is more a cautionary tale for aspiring authors (and Harry Potter fans engaging in “discourse” really). If you want to write about discrimination and you come from a place of privilege you need to be informed and do a bit of research or even the best intentions can be unintentionally harmful.
Living in the UK my experiences all intersected based on my race, my class, my gender, and my queer identity in such a way that is rather complicated. I try not to be too frustrated with American readers that write meta in the fandom specific to matters of privilege when they exclude or downplay the issue of classism because as I understand American social and cultural politics things are very different there.
Still, I do wish more consideration was shown as so many social media sites can feel like they have an American-centric point-of-view that excludes other cultures or treats American culture as the default. In matters of fandom it can be challenging enough but when it crosses over to social justice you end up feeling shut out or given less of a space to have a voice.
Going back to Harry Potter, I find that the problem is that Jo did very well at writing about an issue she had personally experienced (so well anyone reading from the UK could likely catch onto the subtle and not-so-subtle indicators of it and find it all very familiar and meaningful) and that was the devastating effects that classism can have here. Where she fell short was writing about forms of oppression that she, as a white and cis-het identifying woman could not have had first-hand experience with.
We see the extremes of what racism or prejudice can lead to with her nod to internment camps in Cursed Child or the Death Eaters’ blood purity but when fans (primarily Jewish black and poc fans) of the series are critical or uncomfortable with seeing other fans (anti-Snape fans or otherwise) draw comparisons between blood purity rhetoric and racism or anti-Semitism we do have a good reason for it. Many of which @deathdaydungeon and @raptured-night do detail brilliantly in this discussion here so I won’t go into all of the reasons myself (although the issue of former oppressors become targets of oppression bears repeating and I would urge any fan to read the post I have linked for it does distinguish a key fault in comparing blood prejudice to real forms of prejudice or racism).
Instead, I’ll just say that the absence of any demonstration of systemic prejudice and discrimination; that there are no real examples of Muggle-borns like Hermione or Lily struggling for fair or equal representation at Hogwarts or Wizarding Britain overall (be it working twice as hard for fair grades compared to their pureblood peers or struggling to find gainful employment equal to pureblood’s on the merits of skill post graduation) or even against micro-aggressions (e.g. having their accomplishments taken as an exception to the general rule that Muggle-borns are somehow less innately talented with magic would have been a good start; for instance, McGonagall or Slughorn praising Hermione or Lily as extraordinary not for the merits of their work but the marvel they can do anything so well being Muggle-born) actually makes Jo’s intentions more harmful than helpful for those of us who have real experience with racism or other forms of discrimination as an institution within our society.
What Jo’s prejudice in Harry Potter does is draw a very clear line: “us vs them,” “good vs evil,” “right vs wrong.” The problem is that real discrimination is not so neat and tidy and this is a very privileged way of looking at it. The idea that so long as you avoid the extremes, like slurs (e.g. Mudblood in Harry Potter) or the hate crimes (e.g. internment camps or supporting genocide or segregation), etc. then you’re one of the “good ones” with clean hands and it isn’t your problem is not what we need to perpetuate. That vision of prejudice, racism, etc., eliminates the issue of privilege and discrimination as a systemic issue. It absolves those who benefit from oppression from responsibility by telling them that so long as they don’t do the extreme, obvious “bad thing” then they’re fine and don’t need to worry about it, which leaves those of us who are affected by oppression where we’ve always been fighting for our rights without much support. Jo’s prejudice is very black and white, with the exception of Snape.
We also see this in her best efforts to represent the lgbt community. I not only agree with @deathdaydungeon that Dumbledore was not written as a queer character in a way that represents those of us in the lgbt community but I find the interpretation of Lycanthropy as a possible symbol of the AIDs epidemic within the lgbt community during the 80s to be very disconcerting as well. Not the least because there has long been a stigma in the lgbt community that being lgbt is a stepping off point for paedophilia or bestiality or “sexual deviancy/perversion.”
So, of the two werewolf characters in her book that are meant to serve as symbols of the treatment of lgbt people during the AIDs crisis of the 80s, they either happen to be unquestionably evil and deviant (even something of a paedophile/child predator given the way Greyback stalked a young Lupin to “infect” him and years later in Malfoy Manor made those disturbing remarks about Hermione that hint to sexual assault) and the other, if we’re to go with the AIDs symbolism properly, “forgot to take his potion” (i.e. use protection) at a school and almost attacked underage students. Then there is the addendum of a majority of werewolves supporting Voldemort in the war. Under scrutiny, the lgbt representation for Harry Potter falls very short of what may have been the intended mark and Jo’s own cis-het limited understanding of complex issues do show up.
Again, I would argue that the exception to this might be Snape. There is some fascinating discourse already about the way that Snape’s character subverts gender and you also see a bit of gender specific prejudice connected to his character, including but not limited to examples of transphobia, sexism, and the enforcement of toxic masculinity tropes. The matter of male privilege is, as with most aspect of his character, complicated and blurred in Jo’s narrative in such a way I am not surprised that you’ll find a large portion of Snape fans that are fascinated by his character may identify as lgbt (classism also complicates a black-and-white conclusion of male privilege as well because of the impact of classism in the UK so you have to factor that in the way you would account for the way race, sexual orientation, etc. intersect with male privilege). The catching on of trans!Snape within fandom is a good example (there’s even been a trans!Snape week on his behalf).
This is honestly where I feel much of the anti-Snape discourse where the matter of privilege is broached not only tends to fall a bit short because it tends to oversimplify issues that are far more complex but it can even become problematic because the narrative is being dominated by people who often seem to me to be either white, American, cis-het, (WASPs even) or just generally very young and only beginning to dip their toe into social justice and not yet at a point where they have begun to unpack all the complicated nuances of it (not least the matter of intersectionality). This does trouble me because it can lead to a great deal of misinformation, not just about Harry Potter canon vs fanon but social issues that affect many of us in a very personal sense.
Social justice isn’t a game where you collect good person points for applying the terminology where applicable and it shouldn’t be treated as such (and I am not accusing your anonymous contributor of this just to be clear, so at any point where I use “you” just assume I am addressing a more general audience and not the anonymous person above specifically). The privileged “black and white,” “good and bad,” “right and wrong” outlook that some social justice advocates espouse is not only psychologically damaging in that it inhibits or does not allow for personal growth and enlightenment but it is harmful to those of us who are often sadly being marginalised within social justice discourse because those with privilege are using (unintentionally or not) allyship and black-and-white narratives to disavow from responsibility for systemic issues far more complicated than right/wrong thinking allows.
The most my mum can say of her ancestry is that she knows her family were once slaves that came to the Caribbeans and were entangled in the complex political web there between the Caribbean and the UK. Just as my mum’s blackness informed her daily life, it has mine, and it will my daughter’s (as much as that reality breaks my heart and I try to equip her with the wisdom and knowledge she needs to stand against it). My queer identity also informs my daily life and it intersects with my blackness and my gender. However, so does my class status here, in that I’ve been more privileged than some and less than others on a class specific basis.
So, when I or other bloggers write about the significance of class in Harry Potter or complain about American readers or younger UK readers overlooking the impact of class it isn’t downplaying or dismissing other forms of privilege for discrimination, which often seems to be the general assumption when these discourses come up. Other forms of privilege and discrimination do exist here, very much so (just read up on the xenophobic underpinnings of Brexit or the way race factored in the Grenfell Tower burning and you’ll see it does), but I think many American readers and younger readers in the UK who are still learning about these issues (and wouldn’t be as familiar with the era that Jo is writing about and the extremes of classism especially in the 60s-70s when Snape was a boy) could benefit by deferring a bit to the voices of those of us who are speaking from experience because class really really is a game changer here.
Please, to non-UK readers and younger readers still learning about these issues in our society, don’t be quick to marginalise those of us insisting upon the inclusion of classicism in your discourse by unintentionally engaging in what I tend to think of as the discrimination Olympics. Because intersectionality in social justice is more complicated than one privilege over-throwing another or one earning a person more oppression points than the other. Understanding the way these issues intersect is key, and you can’t do that if you ignore the way different forms of oppression are affected by culture or world region or race or gender or sexual orientation etc.
I’ll go on to say that for every anti-Snape blogger that I see who writes up condemning meta or hate posts comparing Snape and anyone who enjoys his character to Nazi sympathisers, misogynists, or racists (especially the ones tagging pro-Snape it so his fans will see or posting it on fan’s pages) are also engaging in problematic behaviours (they’re neglecting to consider the black, Jewish, queer, etc. fans who all have valid reasons for liking his character and undermining their own anti-bullying stance by engaging in bullying and triggering activities). There are valid reasons to like, dislike, or hate a character but have a care when it comes to making extreme comparisons to prove that your feelings about that character are somehow indicative of superior moral sensibilities. In the very least, if you are going to assign social justice objections to a character be certain you have a firm grasp of it and ask yourself if you’re not overshadowing the voices of people who may have more authority via personal experiences with the subject matter you’re discussing than you to be speaking on it, or who may have experiences different from your own that are just as valid.
I see a great deal of discourse surrounding blood prejudice as a symbolic form of racism and how Snape’s youth paints him as a racist in turn, yet I see very little of that discourse going a step further and exploring how Snape being a half-blood himself doesn’t stand as a commentary on the issue of internalised racism within black communities and the communities of other people of colour and how factors like imperialism, colonialism, and systemic discrimination contribute to that. There is also the very old trope in literature, specifically British literature, of assigning positive characteristics to “lightness” as an indication of goodness or desirability/beauty and “blackness or darkness” as indicators of savagery, barbarism, inferiority, ignorance, or even innate evil.
Shouldn’t we examine the way Snape, described with all his “dark” imagery, serves to subvert this trope in the way his character has been coded? I do think it at least merits some consideration, strictly speaking as a black woman who had to grow up reading about the the uncultured, barbarism or evil of anyone with a dark complexion or blackness to them (see Tolkien’s Orcs, Easterlings, or Southrons or Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes’ The Sign of the Four or Bronte’s Heathcliff, etc, etc.). Perhaps one disagrees, but then, I would assert that in the very least the readings of Snape as distinctly Jewish or Romani merit some discourse and we should explore how his being a Death Eater in his youth then a reformed Death Eater the remainder of his life influences this reading.
I see a great deal of discourse comparing Snape to the “nice guy trope” or accusing him of misogyny, yet as a queer person I fail to see where much of that discourse goes much further beyond those black and white comparisons to explore the issue of gender politics as it applies to Snape. In particular, the matter of toxic masculinity (his class may also intersect with this as would the regional culture of where he grew up in the UK slums) and how it may have been reinforced by characters who disparaged or questioned his masculinity (i.e. the Marauders or Petunia in canon), which also ties into the issue of Snape’s own gender non-conforming characterisation and the speculations it opens to instances of potential transphobia and misogyny on the part of other characters, not to mention the lgbt readings of Snape as ace/aro, queer, demi-sexual, bisexual, etc.
As a black woman I connected with Snape almost as much as I did Hermione, for all that her vague descriptions allowed me to eek out some sense of greater representation within Jo’s world (and I can’t tell you how chuffed I was when the casting for Cursed Child was announced and I saw who would be playing Hermione), and as a queer identifying person I connected with Snape far more than I ever did Dumbledore. My heart broke as a UK reader when I recognised the effects of classicism on his life and as a person who was bullied relentlessly for factors beyond my control I connected with Snape and found a kind of solace in the fact we were given an example of abuse and bullying that didn’t fall into the “noble victim” fallacy. The one where the victim is raised to a status of sainthood, and who serves as a source of inspiration porn for everyone to point to as an example of the ideal sufferer of trauma (often to play pain Olympics with so that other victims are made to feel less adequate if they don’t fall into a one-size fits all idea of recovery).
Trauma and mental illnesses can be messy and complicated and, speaking as a professional, there are no neat resolutions, no quick fixes, or permanent solutions. Trauma and mental illnesses are managed through time and with a positive support system that aims to replace maladaptive coping mechanisms with more healthy ones. People need to see more characters like Snape; ones who are messy and flawed and unable to cope with aspects of their past well into adulthood; ones who are more easily triggered (indeed ones who do in fact have triggers); whose trauma or mental illness has affected their personal lives and how they interact with the world around them right down to lack of self-care; ones who don’t have the support or understanding all of the time of the people around them; who find themselves in unhealthy environments or can’t get away from those environments for whatever reason; who are themselves a source of unhealthy or maladaptive behaviour without being inherently portrayed as evil; and, importantly, ones who are not so willing and able to just forgive those who have hurt them.
Say what you will, but there was something painfully realistic in Snape’s trauma and while I can understand why some readers would be triggered by it and even hate him because he serves as both a painful example of the complexity of abuse and mental illness (in that he stands as a character who does not allow for abuse or mental illness to be glamorised or softened and forces us all to face the sides of it, a reality to it, that we all often tend to prefer to avoid) and as someone one could project their own experiences with trauma and abuse onto I think there is something dangerous and damaging to antis shutting down discourse on Snape by accusing his fans of being abuse apologists as well. So, many may gravitate to him because of their own unique experiences with abuse or mental illness and as Snape’s class also factors into his own situation we have a very poignant message with Snape on the way classism in UK society can contribute to people, even brilliant people with so much potential as children, falling through the cracks.
Forgive the sudden tangent into psychology (I can’t ever seem to leave my work in the office) but all of this is simply to say that there are valid character criticisms where Snape is concerned, just as there are valid criticisms of Jo’s work as a whole, especially in her portrayal of prejudice. I personally feel that it’s possible to explore these things thoughtfully and with due consideration of the diverse experiences and opinions each reader may bring to the series. Unfortunately, specifically where Snape is concerned, the discourse on this site has devolved quite a bit into a toxic territory of what I often feel are very privileged black-and-white narratives that seek to enforce readings that fall into harmful pseudo social justice stances that fail to apply intersectional scrutiny or consider complexities that might make right/wrong thinking more damaging to marginalised communities than not.
Not to mention, the rampant bullying and purity politics are concerning to me and I worry how this lack of consideration for the diversity of Snape’s fans and their respective reasons for relating to his character could do real harm to people. There’s nothing noble, good, or heroic to me about a lot of people bullying and harassing fans of a character in the name of anti-bullying sentiments or anti racism, anti-sexism, etc. when those sentiments are ill-thought or clearly transparent excuses to engage in what is truly just your standard fandom-related nastiness.
You make a good point about werewolves and AIDs symbolism in Harry Potter (not that your entire post wasn’t a series of excellent points of course). Even the alternative interpretation of werewolves as an allegory for mental illness and ableist discrimination would be problematic and flawed. Not the least because there is an existing literary and historical basis for it already, which this article explores briefly wherein mental illness was linked to werewolves in order to, quite literally, demonize the mentally ill as somehow evil or afflicted by it.
I believe that Rowling also had some personal experience with mental illness (primarily depression) and at times her understanding of it is very poignant, such as during HP: HBP when we see Dumbledore’s raw struggle while he and Harry are attempting to obtain what they thought was Riddle’s Horcrux or when we see Snape’s PTSD assert itself throughout HP: POA, especially at the end of the book when he seems to be caught in a flashback and has been triggered by the situation with Sirius.
For that reason, I always disagreed with the reading of werewolves as a symbol for mental illness in her world and while I do have some criticisms for the effectiveness of the Dementors as symbols for mental illness, I do feel they function better than werewolves for that purpose. That being said, I do see where interpreting the stigma around werewolves as comparable to the stigma during the 80s AIDs crisis can be very flawed when broken down as well. Indeed, it doesn’t seem to work any better than werewolves being an allegory for the mentally ill.
The big factor, as I see it, is the loss of control where werewolves are concerned. It can make any symbolic connection problematic because it suggests that the person is dangerous and unable to help themselves. Where mental illness is concerned that plays into a very old and harmful stereotype and where the LGBTQ+ community is concerned it also plays into harmful stereotypes linking members of that community to sexually predatory behaviors.
If I’m being honest, I don’t see where I would have attempted to approach symbolism with werewolves and Lycanthropy in Harry Potter unless it was to deconstruct the classical symbolism connected to them already established. In the very least, if I were aiming to imply what many readers seem to feel Rowling was I would have given more thought to how I presented werewolves in the story because as you say, her examples actually undermine a positive message or intent.
Actually, the issue of purity politics as they apply to Snape on this site does seem to be to be an extension of toxic call-out culture, which Tumblr’s social activism can veer into at times. It’s something I’ve both discussed myself and posted articles about extensively (they can be found here, here, and here). Ultimately, there seems to be a failure to disambiguate between necessary activism that forces an individual or individuals to assume some kind of responsibility or consequence for harmful actions and unnecessary pseudo activism, which aims to continue to punish, shame, and harass individuals who have already undergone positive transformations and shifts in their moral, ethical, philosophical, and/or social understanding.
It’s the difference between drawing attention to a blogger that has unapologetically been posting harmful content and going after someone for past views they no longer hold when they’re trying to use that negative experience to affect change and prevent other people from going down the same road. The notion that we’re all perfectly good or perfectly evil, that we must have clean slates, a flawless record, or even be good people who do only good things is not just naive, it’s harmful.
True, the harm we do to other people isn’t something we can ever just erase (in large part because of the impact that harm has made in the lives of those people) but if we persist with the misguided belief that once harm is done it’s a lost cause and no good you attempt to do, no changes you make, count because your harm is all that deserves focus then we’re promoting a self-defeating philosophy as social activists. The point of call outs, as with all components of social justice, is change (to combat harmful ideologies with consequences that stigmatize those ideologies so they’re uprooted from the accepted mainstream and open up more safe spaces for people to continue to challenge systemic oppression and dismantle it), so when we create an environment where change is not recognized or allowed we undermine our core purpose. The fact that Snape’s redemption, his growth, cannot be allowed or acknowledged without some form of a disclaimer due to his past or his faults is representative of a less fictional, damaging real world perception about moral absolutism I’m seeing in some social justice circles and it plays into the toxic call-out culture on this site.
On an unrelated note, your brief touch on the matter of gender coding and Snape as GNC really is such a ripe territory for exploration so I’m glad you mentioned it since I feel that we’ve only just scratched the surface of potential discourse there. I mean, witchcraft, wizardry, and magic are already steeped in historical sexism, misogyny, and gender politics in Western lore (among other things), as this article briefly explores, so seeing more of that symbolism explored through Snape’s character on this site is always interesting when I stumble across it. As was your mention of the coding of white/black and light/dark in English literature, since that isn’t something I believe I’ve seen as much discussed within the Harry Potter fandom like I have in other fandoms (Tolkien, which you cited, being one of them).
You make an excellent point about call out culture and thank you for those articles. I am currently working on a paper that explores a bit on the matter self-assessment and awareness of individual biases and triggers on the part of mental health care professionals. As I’ve said, I was bullied when I was a child and those experiences did leave their marks of trauma on me. Enough that I was adverse to certain personality types due to my negative associations with them to my childhood bullies.
I only became aware of this through fandom and my strong dislike of certain characters; when I began examining my feelings I realised that my aversion wasn’t just a simple case of disliking the characters on behalf of the characters. Objectively speaking they were not, as a whole, so dislikable that they merited the strong emotions I felt for them (other characters I loved had a combination of traits or plots that were not so far removed from the characters I hated, it was just the patterns which those traits manifested for those characters specifically that caused the aversion) and they weren’t even always characters universally hated; some were even beloved by most fans.
The more I turned over my response to those characters the more I came to realise that it wasn’t about the characters but rather the associations I had attached to those characters. Once I had this epiphany I began to question how often in my life I had unintentionally responded to non-fictional people in the same manner. Identifying these biases and triggers in myself has helped me in my personal life but on a higher level and far more importantly it’s helped me as a mental health professional, especially where a specialise in forensic psychology.
Often when working on my paper I find myself thinking of my experiences of self-discovery through fandom, Snape, and the polarising nature of his character on this site specifically. Mostly what troubles me is the language that I see used as regards his character. As I said above, I can understand there are valid criticisms and reasons why some might be adverse to his character but there are equally valid reasons why others might connect to his character.
Snape is a psychological quagmire and I do believe he’s an important one because he gives us something we don’t often see, in children’s fiction or otherwise, and that is an example of a person with an inadequate support system that does have maladaptive coping mechanisms in response to his trauma and is still not sorted neatly into the category of mentally ill and evil or the bad guy in contrast to Harry and his own abuse.
Snape is a grey character; he doesn’t allow for the trope of good/bad which is so often what you encounter in fiction when abuse or mental illness are portrayed. We’ve all encountered this dynamic; the Joker as the foil to Batman is a good example, and one mentioned in your article on werewolves. Mental illness as an explanation for behaviours perceived as “wrong” or “evil” has long been a leading source for stigma when it comes to mental illness. Today, every instance of a mass shooting that can’t be blamed on a person of colour committing an act of terror becomes a free for all among the press where speculations to the mental state of the shooter abound because we’ve so long linked the notion of extreme violence to some mental instability.
What Jo does very well, I think, is blur the lines and make it far more difficult for us to assign “moral absolutes,” as you phrased it, to quite a few of her characters. Through Harry we experience the dissolution of the black/white world view and the naivete of the more simplistic comprehensions of human nature; he’s an unreliable narrator because he has to be so that we can discover the complexity of the world ourselves.
Through his steady discovery of the fractures within the Marauders he begins to see more than just a group of friends with a strong bond and noble story; he sees the imperfections that made it possible for the group to splinter. Sirius is not just a fun-loving guy; his own experience with the unhealthy environment of the Black family has its influences in his nature. Remus is not just a kind and gentle man; his fears and insecurities due to his Lycanthropy can make him selfish and unwilling to act at times. James himself is not quite as noble as Harry has been led to believe, not all of the time, he’s also willing to engage in behaviours that Harry himself would not and it seems it is that fondness for what they dub ”mischief” that draws Peter to them; he enjoys running with the pack that makes him feel bigger by making others seem smaller at times. Thus, Harry is left with the uncomfortable sense that the Marauders were not evil but they’re not flawlessly beyond reproach either. Suddenly his father and his friends, even his mum, become more human and less a legend or idealised image in his mind.
It’s quite the same with Snape, only inversely. We have all his unpleasantness and ugliness laid bare to us through Harry’s eyes and like Harry we’re encouraged to believe that his unlikeability translates quite obviously to evil. Jo plays with this narrative trope and creates an expectation; she repeatedly dangles the notion through Harry in most of the books that Snape is somehow linked to the bad things happening that year only to snatch it away with a vague twist that never quite puts to rest Harry’s suspicions so that he’s left unsatisfied that Snape really wanted to save him because he was “not evil.” This continues until the final book when Harry is confronted with the undeniable humanity of Snape and he along with the reader are meant to feel the shock of it; one of those confusing, often difficult discoveries of the world we live in.
By the end, Harry existed in a world where his mentors and heroes could be flawed; good people capable of occasionally doing bad things and sometimes his enemies, both perceived and actual, could even be capable of good or at least helpful acts. That was the purpose of Peter acknowledging his debt to Harry; the purpose of Dudley extending his hand; the purpose of Draco’s nod of acknowledgement in the epilogue; the purpose of Snape’s memories and his tears; the purpose of the Marauders splintering; the purpose of Dumbledore’s machinations. Jo was reminding us that while there are irredeemable evils in the world, like Voldemort. which we must resist and even just unapologetically harmful and abusive people like Petunia and Vernon Dursley that we must contend with, there are also varying shades of right and wrong and good and evil in between all that we must navigate in this life.
People are complex and so is our relationship to each other. Perceptions can be wrong or only half informed or people can evolve beyond our perceptions of them. A person can be unpleasant without being evil or a person can be popular and still be an arse at times they can even be abusive or do harm. There are no easy answers, no real absolute truths, or black-and-white measures of human-beings or human behaviour.
What many don’t understand when they tell fans of Snape that they’re “apologists” is the toxic and harmful message they are sending. Mental illness, trauma, and abuse are not something you can approach with one-size fits all expectations. No, that does not mean that people have a carte blanche permission to eschew responsibility for their actions or behaviours but it also means that more of their actions and behaviours will be influenced by their respective experiences and understanding that nuance is important. It’s a bit like placing a blindfold on a group of people and asking them to find their way through an obstacle course; each person will have different levels of success and when you introduce the complication of changing the obstacles or adding more or less with different people this rate of success will be even more diverse.
So, when I see people comparing Harry’s experiences with abuse to Snape’s as evidence of his failure I cringe because it’s harmful language. Firstly because it’s falling into the big DON’T when navigating discussions of trauma; you never compare individual circumstances because people are individuals and experiences and responses will vary. Secondly, because it imposes standards of success for survivors of trauma wherein they are sorted into categories of “good victim” or “bad victim” based on a static series of criterion. Snape is not Harry and Harry is not Snape. They are each their own person, fictional of course, but nonetheless.
There are plenty of people who, like Snape, lacked the necessary support systems and fell through the cracks; they made mistakes, hurt people perhaps, and went down a dark path but for one reason or another found their way out and made a change. When antis focus on the choices of Snape’s youth and ignore his sacrifices or dismiss his journey towards redemption by highlighting his imperfections (even inventing a few fanon ones) and compare him to Harry what they are saying is that forgiveness, change, self-betterment, growth are all out of the reach of every “imperfect victim.” Every addict who continues to struggle with their addiction (and may even slip) but tries to carry on, every reformed criminal who no longer wants to live that life, every former gang member that has since learned the error of their choices, every mentally ill person or abuse victim who can’t bring themselves to forgive those who hurt them or may still be bitter or struggle with projection and other maladaptive behaviours and defense mechanisms. You’re saying to them that any good they may do, any attempts to find redemption or any growth they may experience is all an exercise in futility because they can only be defined by their past choices and their imperfections. You’re telling them that they, like Snape, are undeserving.
It is very possible for people to evolve beyond the choices of their past and we must allow them to. We also must learn to distinguish between what is undesirable and what is unacceptable. Snape can be a nasty person, caustic and unpleasant without being evil; he can find redemption without finding perfection. Perhaps, had he lived, he would have grown to be a nice man who does good things and not an unhappy and unpleasant one who does good in spite of his state of being. I would say that we may never know but Cursed Child certainly seems to imply as much.
Finally, I would just like to close by pointing out that the idea circling that “Snape was a grown adult and he should have gotten over it and been better,” is also beyond harmful. We cannot, indeed we must not set age limits on mental illness or psychological trauma. There are plenty of adults who struggle to cope, that is what mental health care professionals are here for. Perpetuating the idea that adults should somehow be above responding to trauma or mental illness in ways that we find disagreeable only contributes to the current stigma around mental health. Please, stop with that. Adults are not “too old” to struggle with their mental health.
(I would also like to mention that since my original post has been reblogged and added to I also edited the original content to include links to these great entries on Snape’s coding here and here and I wanted to include them so they can be referred to in this discussion as well).
What do you think of the neo-nazi description for Snape? (To be honest I'm so tired of people ascribing values of real life events to a fictional text. There are simply not enough parallels to label someone a Nazi or terrorist, whatever Rowling may have intended.)
I agree with you; it makes me uneasy because I think the writing in Potter about this specific issue is not deft and nuanced enough for it to be analysed and critiqued rigorously. Nazism, and similar right wing facist offshoots are very dangerous concepts and ideologies, and I think that using the term constantly can reduce its currency and impact.
This is why Godwin’s Law was important as a concept - as Godwin himself said, he was attempting to force people to scrutinise why they instantly leapt to comparing the person they were arguing with to Hitler. Such a statement shouldn’t be an unthinking process - and the more you do it, the more ridiculous it sounds, and there’s an argument that in doing so, you inadvertently reduce the real life horrors that were endured during that time period; Hitler and Nazism almost becomes a joke, which is unconscionable and utterly disrespectful when you consider the incredible loss of life on both sides of the war.
I also fear that we also lose sight of genocide as a problem - that too many in the West are happy to think of genocide solely in terms of the Holocaust and WWII, without thinking of other countries, other conflicts and wars. There appears to be an assumption that it no longer happens, and won’t ever happen again, which is naive at best and ignorant at worst.
In fairness, I do appreciate that JK had these broad ideas in mind when she was writing the series, but just because that’s what the writer had in mind, it doesn’t mean that we have to critique using the same lens. It bothers me when I see the rise of far right politicians, and I think that we’re so used to hearing accusations about Nazis that people won’t take it seriously when they need to… The boy who cried wolf, and all that.
I think there is a crucial factor when unraveling the blood prejudice in Harry Potter that often is overlooked by the fans attempting to compare it to either Nazi anti-Semitism or racism. Rowling’s concept frames the divide between the Wizarding and non-magical world in very complicated terms that make such comparisons problematic because we know from her lore that Muggles once persecuted and attempted to harm magical people and the isolationist policies (via the Secrecy Act) are in reaction to that history. Moreover, if Pottermore’s estimates of the size of the magical community in the entire UK is to be believed then the ratio of non-magical to magical people positions magical people as very much in the minority.
This is an issue when attempting to argue that the prejudice against Muggles and Muggle-borns in Harry Potter is comparable to real life examples of racism or anti-Semitism because magical people were historically targets of discrimination, prejudice, and even violence according to Rowling’s lore where we cannot argue white slave owners, Imperialists, or Nazi’s fit that framework. In addition, Rowling falls short of demonstrating an issue of systemic prejudice or privilege (i.e. wherein the governing institution and laws are written so they benefit purebloods and support the continued discrimination and disenfranchisement of half-blood and Muggle-born witches and wizards) where non-pure-blood witches and wizards are concerned (indeed I would argue she demonstrates systemic discrimination far more towards those beings that are classified as “magical creatures” and not wizards or witches).
At best, what we are shown is a very black-and-white demonstration of some wealthy and well-connected families being prejudiced, and their opinions are widely framed as unpopular among the greater majority of the wizarding community so they are clearly defined as ”wrong” or unacceptable to the reader. Importantly, the issue of the Death Eaters becomes a matter of classicism, where those families like the Malfoys are able to thrive not because of their prejudices being supported by the majority or the governing laws of their world, but in spite of them because of their wealth and affluence. So instead of blood prejudice being presented as an institution, what we have are a handful of individual families abusing their class privilege to threaten and intimidate government and school officials because of an absence of systemic advantage they can use to further their cause, and for the most part everyone (government and school officials along with our protagonists) seems to reject their beliefs and behaviors.
Ultimately, because she has presented magical people as targets of prejudice who went on to create their own community (one with a minority population) who adopted isolationist policies and regarded Muggles with a wary caution or suspicion that allowed for the fostering of more prejudiced views when I see people attempt to argue any of the Death Eaters were the equivalent of racist Klan members or Nazis I cringe, since the narrative becomes this clumsy thing where we fall into the “victims of oppression were/are oppressors too.” It’s the same shallow logic that leads to the “reverse racism” debates or the age old “homophobes are secretly just closeted lgbt people” because it overlooks the true reach of how anti-Semitism in history allowed for the events of the Holocaust to transpire or how racism is a systemic issue entrenched in the laws of many nations in order to privilege white people.
This argument becomes even more of an issue where Snape is concerned and to an extent even Voldemort/Tom Riddle. There is a reason many Jewish and Rromani fans of Harry Potter read Snape as Jewish or Rromani; he was coded in such a way that those readings are quite valid (indeed the arguments for it are rather strong). Attempting to compare blood prejudice with Nazi anti-Semitism is uncomfortable in-and-of-itself for all of the reasons I have given but even more so where Snape is concerned because these readers who turn to Snape as a form of representation are being bombarded in the Snape tags by anti-Snape fans (many of whom prove to be Goyim and Gadjo) with a very shallow understanding of the Holocaust, Nazis, and anti-Semitism accusing them of liking a character who is “like Hitler/a Nazi.”
Similarly, I have seen complaints from fans of color who are very unhappy with “Snape was a racist; you like a racist character and support racism” cropping up. Not least because the argument again requires a clumsy argument that attempts to compare blood prejudice with systemic racism and further than that fails to closely examine or even discuss the matter of internalized racism, which is what we must look at where both Snape and Tom Riddle are concerned due to the fact they are half-bloods. In Riddle’s case, we have a witch (his mother) conceiving Tom by essentially drugging a Muggle man with a Love Potion that violated his consent and ultimately led to her and Tom’s abandonment. We have Tom growing up in an orphanage during a very interesting historical period in our (i.e Muggle) history. In Snape’s case, we have yet more sociopolitical context in the Muggle environment he grew up with, and his Muggle father is heavily implied to have been abusive while a case can be made for Eileen to have been neglectful. Then we have Hogwarts as an institution that, in one way or another, was unable to compensate for the lack of familial support systems and may even have failed to address issues key to both men’s development.
Without unpacking all of these issues as well, simply stating Snape or the Death Eaters or blood prejudice is comparable to Nazism, Hitler or racism falls short, can be problematic, and even can give the impression of an insincere concern for real world issues and I should hope that no one would want to make light of real-world issues of social injustice, especially those which stand as gross crimes of humanity, just to feel vindicated about a fictional character. That would be shameful. If all one wants is a reason to hate a fictional character there is no need to reach for issues that do not fit simply to “force/guilt/shame” another into accepting their view as the only right one. Just hate the character; you’re allowed to feel what you feel without having to do backbends to prove why they’re the Devil and you’re a good or better person for hating them.
However, if one wants to have a sincere discussion of what Rowling’s Death Eaters reflects in terms of prejudice and how it might compare to real world examples then they need to be aware of important nuances and complexities that go into such discourse because it can and will affect the intended message. That racism and prejudice are not always interchangeable terms; that internalized racism or prejudice exists as intracommunal issues; that there are problematic stereotypes, perceptions, and fallacies when it comes to matters of discourse on race, prejudice, or oppression; and the way race and prejudice intersect with systemic discrimination and oppression are all some of the many details an individual must navigate when comparing fictional examples with real world examples. To do anything less is to do a major (generally offensive) disservice to those realities and lived experiences. Godwin’s law, indeed.
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