Quote from Naaga on May 29, 2023, 12:01 am

As a school boy: He is immersed in Dark arts

One of the things we think we know about Snape as a schoolboy is that he was already a Dark wizard in the making, but within the books this rests solely on statements by Sirius, who hated him. Nor is there just an absence of evidence that he was very heavily into the Dark Arts at school: there is an actual presence of evidence that he wasn't, or at least that he wasn't generally considered to be. In some ways this is a pity, because the idea of Severus as a budding Dark magician is kind-of cool, dramatically speaking; but canon doesn't really support it.

JK Rowling did say in a Live Chat that young Snape loved Dark Magic and was "drawn to ... loathesome people and acts", and that this was a factor in Lily's failure to develop romantic feelings for him; but she didn't say whether he actually performed any loathesome acts himself and we see in the books that as at a point partway through fifth year, just after Severus was nearly fed to a werewolf, Lily accuses him of hanging around with somebody who does Dark Magic, but not of doing it himself - which suggests that if he did take up Dark Magic himself it was after this scene, and after his life was threatened. By the end of the school year Lily would have broken up with him, so there really isn't much of a window for her to have decided she was rejecting his suit owing to his newly discovered interest in Dark Magic - unless "drawn to ... loathesome people and acts" just means "was friends with Avery and Mulciber".

Nor does Sirius or anyone in the books accuse Severus of involvement in Dark magic, but only in the Dark Arts. The whole issue is less clearcut than it appears. The accompanying essay on Sectumsempra and the nature of curses looks at, among other things, what Dark magic actually is, which is never established in the books. We can say with confidence that it does not equate directly to "magic which is self-evidently evil", because we are told that Beedle the Bard - and by implication Dumbledore, who is said to have held similar views to Beedle - merely "mistrusted" Dark magic. Most obviously evil magic seems to be classed as Dark, but by no means all magic classed as Dark is obviously evil. On the whole, "Dark" when applied to magic seems to mean "transgressive" - which can mean anything from powerful spells which are blatantly evil or which break the fundamental laws of magic, down to minor artefacts or potions which contravene some arbitrary Ministry restriction - and the Dark Arts are some sort of mildly illegal wizarding technology which includes some of the things Hagrid uses.

Keeping giant spiders, for example, seems to be a Dark Art, since Harry sees them being sold in Knockturn Alley, and we are told that everything he can see on sale there is a Dark Arts item. Just like Hagrid and his pet Acromantula, a teenager who took an interest in Dark Arts might do so because he had a very high opinion of his own ability to control a dangerous force, rather than because he intended to do harm.

---

Within the books, then, the information that young!Snape was fascinated by the Dark Arts comes only from Sirius, and he does say Dark Arts, not Dark magic. Lily, even when she is furious with Sev, does not accuse him of practising Dark magic himself: only of associating with other Slytherins who do - and this is in fifth year, when if Sirius is to be believed Snape already had an established reputation as a Dark wizard in the making.

Sirius does seem reasonably honest, and he does say it twice (once in the cave scene in GoF, once when he and Remus are reassuring Harry about the bullying which he saw in the Pensieve), which gives it slightly more weight. We can take it that he believes what he is saying. But although Sirius is honest it's clear he isn't always right. He must know Dumbledore well, since they were in the Order of the Phoenix together, yet in the same cave scene he says Dumbledore would never have hired Snape if Snape had ever worked for Voldemort, which we know isn't correct.

Sirius can't speak about Snape without being gratuitously insulting ("Slimy, oily, greasy-haired kid"; "little oddball" etc.). True, Remus does not contradict Sirius when he says that Snape was "up to his eyes" in the Dark Arts, but we've seen that Remus will suppress vital facts in order not to cause a scene, and that he was prepared to go along with Sirius's boyhood bullying of Snape. Once Sirius is no longer there to sway him, Remus tells Harry that both James and Sirius had "an old prejudice" against Snape. JK Rowling herself has said on her website that "Sirius claims that nobody is wholly good or wholly evil, and yet the way he acts towards Snape suggests that he cannot conceive of any latent good qualities there." So, we know without doubt that Sirius's own author intends him to be a biased source.

Nevertheless, Sirius is so honest that even when he is trying to rubbish Snape, he admits that he (an Order member, but one who was arrested before Snape's past was investigated by the Wizengamot) is not aware of any accusation that Snape was a Death Eater. Since he is trying to rubbish him, we can assume he means no rumour, not just no formal accusation, because if there had been a rumour you'd expect him to say so. And if Snape really had had a reputation of being deeply involved in Dark magic, I would have expected there to be a rumour that he was a Death Eater, even if he hadn't been.

---

Sirius says that "Snape knew more curses when he arrived at school than half the kids in seventh year". This is a profoundly traumatized man in his mid thirties, trying to remember an impression gained when he was eleven about somebody he is deeply prejudiced against. Nevertheless, let's assume it's true and see what it tells us.

The logical corollary is that Snape knew fewer curses than half the seventh years, or the same number. So Snape is being accused of precocity rather than monstrousness. And we know he was precocious, because he invented Levicorpus in the margin of a sixth-form text-book, and yet Remus tells us that Levicorpus enjoyed a vogue at Hogwarts for some months during their fifth year. Ergo, Snape was using a sixth year text as a note-book quite early in fifth year.

[We can assume Advanced Potion-Making was a NEWT text when Snape was at school, because even Umbridge admits that the fifth-year Potions class he later teaches is quite far ahead for their age, yet when they start Advanced Potion-Making in sixth year the recipes in it are new to them. Ergo, Advanced Potion-Making really is quite advanced.]

Knowing a lot of curses does suggest a penchant for combat spells, but several curses are either on the Hogwarts curriculum or readily available in the library. When Draco uses Locomotor mortis on Neville in first year he announces that he's been looking for somebody to practice it on and the Trio all recognise it at once, which suggests that they've been taught it, or at least taught about it, in class. Hermione already knows Petrificus totalus in first year, which she presumably got from a book, and in fourth year they learn Reductor from a book with McGonagall's blessing, and are taught about the Unforgivables. A student it seems may know several curses and yet not know anything which the school deems unacceptable. And how many curses is more curses than are known to half the new seventh years?

At the end of sixth year, Harry - who is such a Defence Against the Dark Arts expert that he's competent to teach it - knows Reductor, Locomotor mortis, Petrificus totalus and Furnunculus. He knows of the three Unforgivables but can't yet cast them effectively. And he knows Sectumsempra, which is also considered a curse.

[Harry also knows Impedimenta, but only once, in the US edition of GoF, is it called the Impediment Curse, and this seems to be an error. Everywhere else - including the same place in the UK edition - it's called the Impediment Jinx.]

So that's five curses he can perform, and three he knows of but can't really perform, most of them sanctioned by the school, for an Outstanding DADA student at the transition-point between sixth and seventh years. On this evidence, "knows more curses than half the seventh years" probably means "knows six curses". Indeed, we can assume fairly confidently that Severus didn't know any more than six or seven curses, because if even the most Outstanding DADA student starts seventh year knowing only eight curses, three of which he can't yet do, that means that if Severus had known more than six or seven he would have known more than almost all the seventh years, not just half of them, and Sirius would have said so.

Nor, of course, do we know whether he used those curses offensively, defensively or in a duelling club.

---

We also have to consider that the Marauders repeatedly hexed Snape, even by their own admission, and seem generally to have come out on top in their encounters (if they'd lost, Snape wouldn't have been so bitter about it, and James would have been able to produce a better excuse for attacking him than "he exists"). Evidently, they knew a lot of aggressive spells from an early age, too.

---

I suppose some people might interpret the scene in Deathly Hallows where a branch falls on young Petunia after she has mocked Snape as being proof that he was using curses even before he started at Hogwarts. But so far as I can see this scene is analogous to the ones where Harry unwittingly vanished the glass barrier at the zoo, or inflated his horrible aunt: a sudden involuntary, unconscious lash of wandless magic from a child who was angry and humiliated.

He may well have been taught hexes as quite a small child, though: whether or not he ever used them. Severus was born in 1960, in what looks as though it is probably the Manchester area. Out here in the real/Muggle world, from 1963 to 1965 that area was haunted by the paedophile serial killers known as the Moors Murderers, so Eileen Snape would have good reason to think that the Muggle world was dangerous and her son should be taught to defend himself.

---

What contemporary evidence is there that Snape was a Dark wizard? Lily accuses fifth-year Severus of associating with someone (Mulciber) who uses Dark magic, but not of using it himself. Nor does she accuse him of being involved in whatever Mulciber tried to do to Mary Macdonald, or even of witnessing it: she asks him if he knows about it, and since she will later say that her friends have been advising her to drop Severus, if he'd been present they would have made sure to tell her. Severus replies that whatever Mulciber did was just "a laugh", but since Lily says that Mulciber "tried" to perform Dark magic - that is, he didn't succeed in doing it - we don't know whether Severus means that Mulciber was trying to perform Dark magic which was meant to be amusing, or that Mulciber was joking and only pretending he was going to use Dark magic.

Assuming that Mulciber did try to perform a Dark spell (or use a Dark potion), we don't know if it was really bad or not. As an adult Death Eater Mulciber (a Mulciber, anyway) was famous for his use of Imperius, so it may be that he tried to Imperio Mary Macdonald - in which case, it was highly illegal, but how nasty he was being, and how appropriate or otherwise it was for Severus to play it down, depends on what he was trying to make her do - on which we have no information. It could be anything from magically-assisted rape to making her quack like a duck.

Nor do we know what the circumstances were. Mulciber could have been a bully singling out a victim for persecution, or a prankster like the Twins who scattered his hexes broadcast. He could have been a victim of bullying or other attack, defending himself against an aggressor. It could have happened in DADA class, or in a duelling club. In fact, given how inept teenage boys are at expressing sexual interest, it's entirely possible that Mulciber tried to provoke Mary because he fancied her. A friend of mine was mad keen on a girl at his school when he was about fifteen, and the only way he could think of to express his interest and admiration was to flick little pellets of rolled-up paper at her.

At any rate, probably all Severus knows about it is what Mulciber has told him, which will have presented Mulciber in the best possible light; and since, as we see, Severus has a great capacity for devotion to his friends, he will tend to believe him. In fact, Severus contrasts with Lily in this scene. Severus believes that whatever Mulciber did must have been OK because Mulciber said it was and Mulciber is his friend. Lily refuses to believe Severus's version of the werewolf incident, or even to discuss it properly, even though he's an old, close friend and even though what he's telling her is true. Severus's gullibility and willingness to make excuses for his friend Mulciber may be misguided, but it's more amiable than Lily's certainly misguided scepticism.

And whatever Mulciber did, it probably wasn't as bad as trying to feed somebody to a werewolf. Admittedly Lily doesn't know at that point quite how deadly what Sirius did was, but she won't allow Severus to tell her. And he, at least, knows that she is blaming him for hanging around with somebody who [perhaps] tried to pull a nasty prank, while she herself is associating with a would-be murderer. This presumably contributed to his tendency to play down whatever Mulciber did - and it's natural that he turns the subject away from Mulciber and onto the Marauders. Lily is complaining about something nasty done by one of Severus's housemates, which he evidently believes was intended as a joke (in one sense or another), so it's natural that his mind will turn towards the fact that only a couple of days ago, some Gryffindors tried to feed him to a werewolf as a joke - only he can't actually put it that way, because he's promised Dumbledore he won't tell.

---

Young!Snape writes long answers for his DADA OWL, suggesting his interest may be as much defensive as offensive. When Lily demands James tell her why he persecutes Snape, at which point coming up with a good answer would be strongly to James's advantage, James does not think to say "because he's a Dark wizard", which suggests that his evil reputation was not nearly as established as Sirius would later claim.

Of course, he may have developed a deep interest in the Dark Arts later, in sixth or seventh year. He had seen, after all, that the "Light" side were able to get away with attempted murder, and that James thought it acceptable to continue to attack him even after being promoted to Head Boy, so he would not see (it seems from his comments to Lily that he did not see) that practising Dark Arts was an obviously more evil thing to do than bullying people or trying to feed them to a werewolf. But we can certainly dismiss Sirius's claim that James persecuted Snape because he was famous for being heavily into Dark Arts, since we see James treating him with great cruelty in fifth year, at which point he clearly isn't regarded as a famously Dark wizard.

Sirius is not so far as we know a liar, so if he says James attacked Severus because Severus was into Dark Arts, that's probably what James told him - but James was a liar. We know this because he concealed his continued seventh year hex-war with Severus from Lily, knowing that it was something she would want to know about and would be angry about.

In fact, we see James begin to bully Severus on the train on their first day at Hogwarts, for no reason except that he wants to be in Slytherin and has a friend who is a girl, and Rowling has said at interview that James's bullying of Severus was at least partly caused by his, James's sexual jealousy of Severus's friendship with Lily. So Sirius's statement that James attacked Severus because he thought he was a Dark wizard is either a lie, by Sirius to Harry or by James to Sirius (because James attacked Severus when he knew nothing about him except that he wanted to be in Slytherin) or, if true, it means that James simply assumed without evidence that anybody who was in Slytherin was a Dark wizard (because he attacked Severus when he knew nothing about him except that he wanted to be in Slytherin). Sirius, coming from an apparently Dark family who were all Slytherins, may well sincerely believe the latter; but either way, it cannot be taken as strong evidence that Severus actually was Dark.

---

Then there is the issue of Sectumsempra. We do not know whether young!Snape invented it or merely learned it, but he certainly used it. How unpleasant a spell is it?

Sectumsempra means something like "cut every time" - so Snape may have either invented or learned it because it could be read as "Sever(us) forever". It's his signature-spell, literally, and as such goes with the "Half-Blood Prince" tag: half genuine boast, half clever pun.

We don't know if Severus invented the spell himself or not, although Harry assumes he merely copied it and that may be Rowling's intention. The punning name and the fact that at the end of HBP he accuses Harry of stealing his own spells, plural, when Harry has just tried to use Sectumsempra and Levicorpus, suggest that he did. The fact that the spell was just written in his book without any workings-out, and the fact that Remus speaks of it familiarly as if it is a known spell, suggest that he did not: and it's possible that he learned it because of its already-appropriate name, rather than giving it that name, and that by telling Harry not to use "my spells" he is issuing a general warning rather than actually counting how many of his spells Harry has already used.

The separate essay Sectumsempra and the nature of curses looks at what we can derive from canon about the nature of Sectumsempra, and of curses in the Potterverse generally. Basically the canon evidence shows that Sectumsempra is indeed a curse, but that "curse" does not equate to "obviously evil spell", but rather to something like "strong, potentially dangerous spell". Some curses are actually taught on the Hogwarts curriculum. They occupy the same sort of position as knives and gunpowder do in the Muggle world - things which can be used as weapons, or as useful tools for tasks like quarrying and carving.

Canon strongly suggests that all curses which are capable of amputating a body part (whether deliberately or by accident) result in a permanent amputation: the affected body-part cannot be regrown. In addition, curses which are classified as "Dark" create wounds which resist healing and scar very badly, similar to the persistent wounds which Bill Weasley received from the Dark creature Greyback. If Sectumsempra causes an amputation, the affected part cannot be regrown (George's ear) but the open wounds it leaves can be closed easily (George's ear again), and even very severe gashes caused by Sectumsempra heal without scarring if treated promptly (Draco's injuries in the bathroom scene). Therefore, Sectumsempra is a curse, but not a Dark curse.

The name "sever forever" sounds superficially as if it is a curse which was designed specifically to cause permanent amputation but this cannot be the case, unless it is a very, very old spell - so old that it predates all other spells which do the same. From what we are told, all curses which can cause amputation, cause permanent amputation, and Sectumsempra can hardly be the first cutting curse ever devised, unless it is ancient. Therefore, causing permanent amputation is not something for which a curse would need to be specifically designed, nor is it an effect noteworthy enough in itself to be a spell's name.

If Severus did invent the spell himself, he might have given it that name purely as a joke: but if it's analogous to the Half-Blood Prince tag it ought to have a literal meaning as well as a punning one. I would suggest that "cuts every time" means "the knife that never needs sharpening" - especially as Staysharp is a famous British brand of kitchen knife, and JKR is fond of names which are puns on British products (Spell-o-tape, Ethelred the Ever-Ready etc.).

We know from its effects on Draco, and on the Inferi in the cave - where Harry slashes at his opponents with all his considerable might, and yet doesn't actually cut them in half or chop any bits off them even though in the case of the Inferi he is trying to - that Sectumsempra equates to a knife rather than a sword, albeit a knife which can be projected at a distance. The fact that it cuts fairly shallowly, even when swung with full force, suggests that, far from being designed to cause amputation, it's been designed not to, as far as that's possible for a cutting curse. That is, the shallow nature of the wounds may be a safety-feature, to prevent it from cutting bone, or it may simply be rigged not to do so. Otherwise, it's hard to explain how Harry managed to hack away at the Inferi as hard as he could, and yet inflict only flesh wounds.

Severus's use of it against James during the underpants incident, whilst perhaps a little over the top given that James wasn't attempting to injure him physically at that point, is understandable when you consider that James was part of a gang who had previously put him in extreme danger of his life, either deliberately or recklessly. And his use of the spell was very controlled - he only gave James a little flick with it, and we know that that was all he intended to do, because we're told that he pointed his wand straight at James; and also because James was in between Severus and Lily. We see from the incident of George's ear that if Sectumsempra misses its intended target it keeps going until it hits something else, like a bullet, so if Severus had taken a wild swing at James he would have endangered Lily.

---

We do not know exactly when Severus learned or invented Sectumsempra. It's written in a sixth-year textbook which we know he was using as a notebook in fifth year or earlier (because he worked Levicorpus out in the margins of it, and that spell enjoyed a vogue during fifth year). If he invented it, then the lack of workings-out surrounding it may mean he had come up with it before he started using that book, and copied it across - but you would think in that case that he would simply remember it. The encyclopaedic knowledge of potions which he demonstrates in class suggests that he has a phenomenal memory. So it is likely that he copied it from elsewhere, or invented it on the spot, at the point at which he wrote it down.

There are a number of imponderables - for example we don't know when he started to use Advanced Potion-Making. He could have been so precocious he was using it in first year, but as it's a sixth-form text it's more likely he was using it in fourth and fifth years. We don't know whether he intended Sectumsempra, a knife-spell, as a weapon from the first, or whether he initially used it as a tool, for chopping potion ingredients without bruising them or for sneakily snipping shoelaces, and only later designated it "for enemies".

But whether he knew it beforehand or not, there is at least a very strong possibility that he only designated Sectumsempra "for enemies" some time in fifth year, after Sirius tried to feed him to a werewolf. After, that is, he knew that his "enemies" might actually murder him.

We can surmise that werewolves are more or less immune to direct magical attack, otherwise Severus, with his wand, would not have needed to be rescued from were-Remus, without his wand; and James, with his wand, accompanying Severus, with his wand, would not have been in so much danger from Remus as to be considered heroic. At the same time, purely physical things do affect them, even if those physical things were created by magic. Snape in the Shrieking Shack in PoA magically-generates cords with which he intends to "drag the werewolf", and were-Remus has to physically wrench his paw out of the manacle conjured by Sirius: he doesn't just pass through it or melt it away.

Even though Sectumsempra cuts by magic, the wounds it creates are physical ones which behave more or less as if made with a physical knife. It seems entirely possible, therefore, that Severus learned or invented Sectumsempra after the werewolf attack, or re-designated it from tool to weapon at that point, because he knew it was something which might actually stop a werewolf - whereas a purely magical weapon, such as Petrificus totalus or a Stunning spell, would have no effect.

If he did come up with it as a weapon earlier, though, it may have been because he comes from what looks like a very rough area. He might have learned it (or invented it, if he did) because he could use it to defend himself against Muggle attackers in a way which wouldn't leave obviously magical lesions. As a small child he would have grown up in the shadow of the paedophile serial killers known as the Moors Murderers, who operated in the north Derbyshire/south Lancashire area where Spinner's End is probably situated, so a little paranoia would be natural.

---

Much has been made of the fact that when Snape caught Harry using Sectumsempra he said "Who would have thought you knew such Dark magic?" But in PoA, Snape also described the Marauder's Map as "plainly full of Dark Magic".

If Snape is always accurate about such things, then Sectumsempra is seriously Dark but so is the Map (a surveillance device which answers as if it could think although - as Arthur said - you can't see where it keeps its brain, and which is activated by swearing a solemn oath of wrongdoing). In that case, young!Snape was indeed working Dark magic but that fact does not set him apart, because so were the Marauders. On the other hand, if he was just being melodramatic when he said that a parchment found in Harry's possession was obviously Dark, he may equally well have been grandstanding when he accused Harry of using a Dark spell.

It's possible that both Sectumsempra and the Map may be Dark, because in DH we see Snape apparently sense the curse on the Peverell ring, which suggests he has some sort of psychic "feel" for such things. But if so that means that the Marauders too were working Dark Magic - and if they, who claimed to hate Dark Magic, nevertheless worked it without apparently intending to,the definition of Dark Magic must be quite wide and vague.

We certainly see that despite their assuming the high moral ground over "Dark wizard" Severus, the Marauders were quite happy to allow were-Remus to roam the countryside, despite several near-misses which put villagers and/or students at potential risk. We are told that werewolves are classed as Dark creatures, that scratches inflicted by a werewolf, even when not transformed, cause cursed unhealing wounds and that the bite of a werewolf turns the victim into a Dark creature in turn, if it does not kill them. But they were quite happy to risk causing Dark injuries to innocent bystanders if it suited the interests of a friend of theirs - just as Severus was willing to excuse whatever Mulciber tried to do.

---

So, we have a spell which acts as a small-to-medium-sized knife, which could be used as a tool as easily as a weapon. It is classed as a curse by Remus (a DADA teacher, so he knows his stuff), but that doesn't prove it's an evil spell, since some apparently quite benign spells (such as Petrificus totalus) are classed as curses, although they are taught at Hogwarts. It creates normal, physical cuts of shallow-to-middling depth, except that if it amputates a body-part it stays amputated. This last feature seems be common to all curses, rather than a special design feature. The fact that, amputation aside, Sectumsempra does not cause permanent scarring suggests that it probably should not be classed as truly Dark. And it doesn't cut bone even when used with some force, which suggests that it's actually been designed with a built-in safety factor to prevent it from causing amputation.

On the face of it, it seems no nastier than the Reductor curse, which also could be either a tool or a weapon, which probably also causes permanent amputation, and which Harry was freely permitted to learn in fourth year, or than Diffindo which can also cut flesh if you want to use it that way. The only evidence that it is considered Dark Magic depends on comments by Snape himself which apply equally to the Marauder's Map.

Whether he invented it or not, it's not a particularly bad spell, and the spells which do have workings-out, which we definitely know he invented, are all humorous and fairly harmless: rather less spiteful or dangerous, in fact, than a lot of the Twins' bright ideas. Indeed, the fact that a book which is full of young!Snape's home-made spells and notations contains only one mildly nasty curse, which he may well not have invented, is pretty good evidence that he wasn't particularly Dark or unpleasant. If "Dark wizard" equates to "evil wizard", you would expect that a serious Dark wizard, or even Dark wizard wannabe, would come up with something a bit more wicked than making toenails grow.

Furthermore, in his tirade to Harry at the end of HBP Snape says that James used his own spells, plural, against him, and we certainly see James use Levicorpus. If he's speaking accurately then either Snape's spells were so mild that James, who was supposed to hate Dark Magic with such a passion, regarded them as acceptable for his own use - or Snape's spells were Dark and James was a hypocrite who also used Dark Magic when it suited him.

---

So, other than an off-the-cuff comment by JKR during a Live Chat, the evidence that young!Snape was heavilly involved in Dark Arts rests on his use of Sectumsempra, which is itself not an especially bad spell, and on the word of a biased source (Sirius) who got his information at least in part from a known liar (James). Other equally good, contemporary evidence - the nature of the spells which we know for certain he invented and which James found acceptable for his own use, James's failure to come up with a good excuse for persecuting him, and the fact that Lily only accuses him of having friends who are into Dark magic, not of being into it himself - indicates that his involvement was not as deep or notorious as Sirius claimed. Sirius says that young!Snape arrived knowing more curses than half the seventh years, but even if this is true we've no reason to think that this amounts to knowing more than six curses, or to knowing any curses not sanctioned by the school.

We know that young!Snape used Sectumsempra, whether or not he invented it, and we know it is classed as a curse, and like any curse if it causes amputation, that amputation will be permanent. That aside, it functions as a simple kife, which could be either weapon or tool. We don't know when he designated it "for enemies", but we do know that the first time we see him use it was after his life was threatened by someone immune to magic.

---

Snape's swishing robes, lowering persona and dramatic introductions to his classes all suggest that he has a streak of dark romanticism a mile wide, and if he did take an early interest in the Dark Arts it was probably not because he was truly vicious but because he was a posy little proto-Goth. As the former proprietor of a small occult shop, I can personally testify that a morbid interest in curses is absolutely normal in boys of that age; and indeed we are shown that first-year Harry shares Snape's interest, and expects that Dudley would too.

Even Dudley, who never read anything, would have been wild to get his hands on some of these. Hagrid almost had to drag Harry away from Curses and Countercurses (Bewitch Your Friends and Befuddle Your Enemies with the Latest Revenges: Hair Loss, Jelly-Legs, Tongue-Tying and much, much more) by Professor Vindictus Viridian. [PS ch. #05; p. 62]

Also, Snape was an apparently dirt-poor, working-class half-blooded Slytherin at a time when Slytherin was full of future Death Eaters. A reputation as a super-cool Dark wizard - even if it was mostly air and fluff - and a proven ability to invent his own hexes were probably useful defences against his housemates, as well as against the Marauders.

In any case, a precocious ability with combat spells is seen as attractive and admirable - when it's Ginny's. Neither Harry nor the Twins are seen as Dark, despite the fact that by the end of Deathly Hallows Harry has cast Unforgivables six times, once with partial success and five times with full success, plus a seventh attempt (casting Crucio on Snape), which was interrupted, and the Twins were seriously planning to let off Garrotting Gas which, we are told, is undetectable, and presumably garrottes people. Ginny's comments sound as if it does so fatally. So what makes Severus's controlled and limited weapon so wicked, whilst the Twins' plan to indiscriminately endanger the lives of a school full of children as young as eleven is good-natured fun?

The Twins in fact do some quite appalling things - terrorize their little brother and persecute their older one; induce a toddler to swallow acid and to take an oath which could kill him (admittedly they themselves were very young at that point); beat a child's pet to death for fun; force a lab. animal to eat fireworks; conduct dangerous experiments on eleven-year-olds and Muggles; publicly jeer at an eleven-year-old for having been sorted into what they consider to be the wrong house; commit criminal blackmail; threaten to rape Zacharias Smith with an implement and shut Montague in a broken Vanishing Cabinet where they expect he may be trapped for weeks. He presumably has his wand, so he wouldn't die of thirst, but he could starve or freeze to death or just be destroyed by the damaged magic of the cabinet and he would certainly spend the time shut in a box which is probably too small to lie down in which is a known, and severe, form of torture - all of this to punish him for taking a few points. Rowling herself calls the Twins "cruel" and Snape only "rather cruel". Yet in the eyes of much of fandom everything the Twins do is all right because they have red hair and freckles, and everything Severus does must be wicked because he has greasy, black hair and sallow skin.

---

Note also that in HBP Dumbledore tells Harry that Snape "returned" to him when he realized the Potters were in danger, and in GoF we see a Pensieved memory of Albus telling the Wizengamot about how Snape "rejoined our side". This does suggest that Dumbledore regarded schoolboy!Snape as naturally of the light, and probably as a potential recruit for the Order.

---

Later, we see adult!Snape complain to Bellatrix that Dumbledore would never give him the Defence Against the Dark Arts post in case he was tempted back into his "old ways". JK Rowling said something similar in an interview, but this was before HBP and its revelation about the cursed DADA post came out, so she may well just have been planting a red herring. The fact that Dumbledore gives Snape the DADA post once he knows that, one way or another, Snape will be leaving the job in a year anyway suggests that his reasons for not giving Snape the job beforehand were to do with the curse, not because he didn't trust him. The last thing he would want to do would be to tempt Snape towards the Dark Arts just as he himself was about to die, leaving the safety of Hogwarts in Snape's hands; so it's unlikely he really thought Snape would be corrupted by the post.

The fact that Voldemort sent Snape to apply for the DADA post in the first place suggests that the curse would not apply to someone who was acting as his loyal agent, or at least, Dumbledore would reasonably assume that it wouldn't (although in fact Barty Jnr ended up Kissed). So Dumbledore's reasons for not giving Snape the post were two-fold. He didn't want Snape to suffer what might be severe consequences as a result of the curse, but he also didn't want Snape's true loyalties to be revealed, since he would expect that if Snape took the DADA post and then incurred the curse, that would tell Voldemort that Snape wasn't his man.

On the other hand, Bellatrix must find the idea of Snape as a Dark Arts practitioner to be feasible, if his explanation to her as to why he was never given the DADA post was to have any credibility. So he must have had at least some reputation for being into the Dark Arts when he was a Death Eater, or at least he didn't actually have a reputation for not being.

Quote from Naaga on May 29, 2023, 12:44 pm

As a school boy: He is a racist

When we see child!Severus interacting with Lily and Petunia, he tells Tuney he wouldn't spy on her because she's a Muggle - but this is a reasonable observation, since the very reason he's been spying on Lily is because she's not a Muggle, but somebody like himself. We would not think that the only Francophone child in a neighbourhood was racist for being preferentially interested in meeting another French child - somebody they could really talk to, who would understand them - for the first time. And he just says "You're a Muggle", albeit in a spiteful tone - he doesn't say "just a Muggle" or "only a Muggle".

It's obvious that in this scene he thinks being a Muggle is less interesting/worthy than not being, but no more so than you'd expect given that Muggles are defined as people who lack the skills in which he is interested. There's no suggestion he regards them as inferior in any other way. Later on when he is angry about Tuney he says "She's only a -" and then stops himself, and the next word might have been going to be "Muggle" - but it could equally-well have been "spiteful little cow".

Even if the next word was going to be "Muggle", there's no indication that he was any more racist than Hagrid, who calls Vernon "a great Muggle" (twice), and describes the Dursleys collectively as 'a family o' the biggest Muggles I ever laid eyes on.' Hagrid, clearly, means something rather more insulting than just "person without magic", but nobody seems to hold it against him.

When Lily asks Severus if being Muggle-born will make a difference to her at Hogwarts he replies by saying that it won't and "You've got loads of magic", so he seems to be interpreting the question as being about her magical ability. The fact that he hesitates for a moment before answering may indicate that he's aware she may encounter prejudice, and isn't sure whether he should tell her about that or not - but since he assures her that it won't make a difference, we know that if he's been raised with prejudices himself he's trying to overcome them.

He assumes automatically that he will be in Slytherin, which means either his wizard family are Slytherins or he has a personal passion for Slytherin, yet he hopes Muggle-born Lily will be in Slytherin too - so obviously he has not been indoctrinated with any "Slytherin is the house for the pure of blood" agenda. Indeed, since his mother married a Muggle, it seems unlikely she was especially prejudiced against Muggles (even if she went off her husband in the end), or that she would fill her half-blooded son with pure-blood prejudices.

It is an anomaly that Severus is so keen on being in Slytherin, yet knows so little about it that he doesn't know that a Muggle-born would be very unlikely to Sort to Slytherin. I would suggest that he already had an interest in Potions and that his mother, who was not a Slytherin, had told him about the Hogwarts Potions master and head of Slytherin, Horace Slughorn, who had no racial prejudice and who could advance the career of clever little boys, even if they were plain and poor and half-blooded. Perhaps she'd been in the Slug Club herself, and Slughorn had been supportive about her decision to marry a Muggle. Severus's own home-life was obviously deeply unsatisfactory, so the idea of a father-figure who would encourage his studies must have seemed highly attractive - and if his mother didn't tell him otherwise, he would assume that Slytherin itself was as prejudice-free as its head of house.

So, the idea that he was racist as a pre-teen rests on the fact that he was more interested in making contact with a child who had magic than one who didn't, and that he may possibly have been aware of the existence of prejudice against Muggle-borns, although not of its true extent within Slytherin.

At the end of fifth year, Lily accuses Severus of calling all Muggle-borns Mudbloods, yet in the bullying scene, James does not justify his attack on young!Snape on the grounds of his racism, even though that would have been a perfect excuse to offer to Muggle-born Lily. All James could come up with was "he exists", at a point at which a good excuse would have seriously improved his chances with Lily. This suggests Snape was not a notorious racist, and was probably just using bad language he had heard from his housemates, who we know included many future Voldemort supporters.

By that point, if Lily is to be believed, he does often use racist language - yet he continues to be best friends with Lily, and we have not seen her accuse him of being racist before. After the underpants incident she seems to be assuming that he is a genuine racist who makes an exception for her, since she says to him "But you call everyone of my birth Mudblood, Severus. Why should I be any different?" But since she refuses to allow him to answer, we don't know whether his reply would have been the essentially racist "But you're special, you're not like the rest"; or "My mates in Slytherin all say it and I've just got into a bad habit"; or even "I only say that because my housemates would batter me if I didn't: I'm in enough danger already because I hang around with you". He is, after all, surrounded by snobby pure-bloods and junior Death Eater wannabees who know where he sleeps.

Calling Muggle-borns in general "Mudblood" could even be a bad-taste joke on his part. He made a joke out of his own half-blood status, after all, and Lily at least is well aware that he's a half-blood, and has tolerated his use of the expression for some time. It's not clear whether, by calling himself the Half-Blood Prince, he's saying "I may be only a half-blood, but at least I'm half a Prince" - or whether the Princes were pure-blood fanatics, and by proclaiming his half-blood status he's sticking two fingers up to them.

The fact that he had friends who were Death Eater wannabees, and later became one himself, might suggest that he shared their racist views: except that JK Rowling has said at interview that one of the reasons Snape joined the Death Eaters at all was because he thought doing so would impress Lily. That suggests he really wasn't aware of the full extent of their racism (if, indeed, they were all that racist - more of this anon, but the evidence for the Vold War One Death Eaters having a strong prejudice against Muggle-borns, as opposed to Muggles, is weak). And indeed, given that he's a half-blood, if the Death Eaters wanted to recruit him they would probably play down the racist angle.

[In any case the Death Eater agenda at that time seem to have been much less racist than it would become in Vold War Two. Hagrid, an Order member, knows of no good reason why Voldemort would not try to recruit Lily, a Muggle-born, and in fact JK Rowling said at interview that he did try to recruit her.]

It's clear, at any rate, that Lily had tolerated Severus using the M-word for some time, so if she thought he was being racist she didn't care much until he applied it to her. And clearly she gave him confusing signals, by suddenly making a hanging crime out of something she had tolerated before.

So why did he call Lily herself a Mudblood during the bullying scene?

To begin with, he fancies Lily and he knows James does too, so he wants to impress her and instead he has just been made a fool of in front of her, by a rival for her affections. He would have felt the way Harry felt when Cho walked in on him two seconds after Neville's pet plant showered him with Stinksap, except with a whole extra layer of humiliation and rage. And we know he tends to lash out when he's distressed.

Then, Lily smiled for a moment when she saw him hung up with his underpants on display. Possibly he had humorous legs, but even so it was insensitive of her to smile when he was in so much misery and humiliation, and it would have made him feel much worse and much more dishonoured in her eyes. He had reason to be angry with her, especially as she had been a witness to the whole of the bullying incident and yet hadn't intervened at once.

Some people take the fact that Lily's attention was on James rather than on Severus as proof that she was flirting with James over her supposed best friend's misery. Personally I think it's understandable she was watching James, since he was the one who was armed and threatening to hex her, but nevertheless JK Rowling has hinted that she was flirting with James in that scene, even if only subconsciously. That, again, would make Severus angry and bitter - at least as justifiably angry and bitter as Ron and Hermione were when they were hexing and insulting each other.

It is also quite possible that Severus's drawing James's attention back onto himself by shouting at him, and disowning Lily by insulting her to James, was an attempt to get Lily out of a risky situation - since James had just threatened to hex her. Severus knows that Sirius, at least, is a potential killer, and he seems to believe - rightly or wrongly - that James was in on the attempt to kill him, until he got cold feet. So as far as he is concerned, Lily is being threatened with violence by someone she refuses to believe is truly dangerous despite his warnings, so he will be angry about her taking stupid risks and ignoring his warnings, as well as protective of her.

And again, working-class, half-blooded Severus must already have been in a precarious position in Slytherin, and if he had allowed himself to be rescued by a Muggle-born Gryffindor witch his housemates would probably have punished him - and at least the Marauders couldn't get at him while he slept. Lily's intervention must have terrified him.

Why did he use the words "filthy little Mudblood" - which is, of course, much more racist-sounding than just "Mudblood" on its own?

There are times when we see the words "filthy" or "filth" used as a definite racial slur - a literal suggestion that somebody's blood is dirty. Draco refers to "Mudblood filth", so when he calls Hermione a "filthy little Mudblood" he probably intends to imply that she's filthy because she's a Mudblood. Tom Riddle refers to his "filthy Muggle father". Bellatrix calls Harry a "filthy half-blood" and Hermione "lying, filthy Mudblood", and offers to cut her to see how filthy her blood really is, so she definitely means "filthy" as a racial slur.

Then there are cases which are more ambiguous. Walburga Black's portrait rants repeatedly about "filth", "filthy half-bloods", "children of filth", but she also says "Mudbloods and filth", implying that these are two different things in her eyes. Yaxley calls Muggle-borns "such filth" but it's not clear whether it's a specific racial slur or a more general insult. Marvolo (and sometimes Morfin) Gaunt raves about "filthy Muggles" and refers to "a filthy, dirt-veined Muggle", which is clearly a racial slur, but he too also says "Muggles and filth" as if they were different categories of things, and at times he speaks as if he thinks Muggles are literally dirty, not racially, metaphorically dirty: "grub on the floor like some filthy Muggle"; "I expect you've wiped the Muggle's filthy face clean for him". Kreacher calls Harry a "filthy friend of Mudbloods".

Then there are plenty of cases where "filth" and "filthy" are used and they emphatically aren't racial insults but general swearwords or derogatory remarks, equivalent to words like "bloody", "fucking" or "rotten". Lee Jordan calls a cheating Quidditch player a "filthy, cheating b --". Sirius calls Peter a "cringing bit of filth". Harry refers to Snape's "filthy hands" (and doesn't mean that they are dirty). Filch calls Peeves a "filthy pilfering poltergeist" and the students "filthy little beasts". Both the real Moody and the false one, for separate reasons, call the Death Eaters "filth". Blaise Zabini calls Ginny "a filthy little blood traitor". Ginny calls Ron a "filthy hypocrite", twice. Viktor refers to Grindelwald's "filthy sign". One Death Eater calls another a "lying piece of filth". Bellatrix calls Greyback a "filthy scavenger", and Travers refers to "filthy gold". And JK Rowling herself called somebody a "filthy, filthy liar", apparently in jest.

So, when Severus calls Lily a "filthy little Mudblood", it's ambiguous whether he means it in the extremely racist sense of "person who is contaminated and dirty because of their Muggle blood", or just "rotten little Mudblood". The latter case would still be racist, of course, but much less so, since "Mudblood" is an expression in common currency and the person using it is himself half Muggle. Lily probably heard it as "contaminated and dirty"; but since the only other time we hear Snape call someone "filthy" he's describing James, a swaggeringly upper-class pure-blood, it's very likely that he just meant it as a generic insult like "rotten" or "bloody".

Quote from Naaga on May 30, 2023, 1:24 pm

As a school boy: He hangs around with Future Death Eaters

Given his precarious position in Slytherin and his persecution by the Marauders, Severus needed all the allies he could get. Yet the Marauders repeatedly attacked him four on one and nobody apparently came to stand with him. The Marauders probably used the Map to get him on his own: but that wasn't the case in the Pensieve scene, yet he was isolated. So his Slytherin friends were either not present, not in his year, or not good friends.

Of the crowd we're told he hung around with, Bellatrix and Lucius, at least, were a lot older than him. Lucius was born between September 1953 and September 1954 (he was 41 in mid-September 1995), while Snape was born in January 1960, so Lucius was more than five years older than Sever us, and Bellatrix was born probably in the autumn of either 1951 or 1953, depending on whether or not you accept JKR's doodle of the Black family tree as canon (see accompanying essay on Birthdates in the Harry Potter universe). One wonders whether they were befriending or exploiting Severus: it's quite possible Lucius abused him.

Sexual relationships between boys are common at British boarding schools, and even commoner in people's idea of British boarding schools. The two concepts are so linked in popular belief that JK Rowling may well be hinting at it deliberately. Sirius certainly seemed to be digging at some sore point when he called Snape Lucius's "lapdog", although if young Severus was Lucius's victim and Sirius knows it, Sirius is being exceptionally vicious even for him.

On the other hand adult Lucius probably regards Snape as a friend, and Narcissa certainly does, so if there was a sexual relationship Lucius at least doesn't see it as having been abusive. But if they did have such a relationship, Snape would have been so much the younger that even at best there would always be a strong suspicion of exploitation.

As for Avery and Mulciber, we know Severus hung around with them, and like Remus he made excuses for his mates' dodgy behaviour; but they probably weren't very close friends, since we know the Marauders were still persecuting him four to one after he started hanging around with them. Lily accuses him of wanting to join Voldemort like his "precious little Death Eater friends" - but she doesn't allow him to answer, so we don't really get to know if she was right at that point.

If we accept JKR's interview comment that Snape joined the Death Eaters partly to make himself look cool, thinking that that would impress Lily, then we must assume from this that he didn't expect the Death Eaters to be actively murderous towards Muggle-borns. Presumably they played down any racist agenda because he was a half-blood - and they must have known that he was, since his parents' marriage had been in the Daily Prophet. And indeed, JKR has said that the Death Eaters actually tried to recruit both Lily and James when they left school, and Hagrid, an Order member, thinks it's surprising if they didn't, which argues that at that stage the Death Eaters really weren't officially prejudiced against Muggle-borns, or certainly not in a way which appeared to be life-threatening.

We are told that, for years, young Regulus (who was about two years younger than Snape) "talked of the Dark Lord, who was going to bring the wizards out of hiding to rule the Muggles and the Muggle-borns". So there was an awareness that Voldemort's plans would result in the Muggle-borns possibly being second-class citizens, but also that he meant to make magic publicly known and acceptable to Muggles, which would have advantages for Muggle-borns as well as pure-bloods. And there's no suggestion Regulus thought mass slaughter was on the agenda, so presumably Severus didn't either.

And in any case - who in Slytherin at that time didn't hand around with future Death Eaters? There seem to have been so many that it would have been extremely difficult for any Slytherin not to hang around with future Death Eaters.

Quote from Dark Angel on May 30, 2023, 2:23 pm

Quite frankly, what else was the kid supposed to do? Snape would share a dorm and common room and classes with these kids for seven years. He is already being bullied by the Marauders, if he antagonized his own house he would be turning his life into a living hell wih his own hands and I think he was already pushing his luck by being friends with Lily who is not only muggleborn but also Gryffindor and thus belongs to their rival house.

Snape's friendship with his classmates is also exaggerated. They seem to let Snape stick around when he makes himself useful to their pranks or whatever it is they are up to. He probably made himself popular with his invented spells but if they actually were his friends why didn't anyone come help him during the lake incident? There seriously were no Slytherins? No prefects who could have intervened? It seems to have been quite a crowded place, not some abandoned classroom. Why was Snape alone in the first place? I remember from my school days, we used to try and find our friends first thing after an exam to compare answers or complain about how difficult or u fair the questions were, why didn't Snape seek out the company of Mulciber and Avery?

I don't want to get into the implication  of Lucius using little Snape for his own pleasure...please don't ruin my childhood and because it is supposed to be a children's book I refuse to believe that theory. Lucius was a prefect and probably tried to show of his natural leader skills by doing his job well. He probably also noticed that little Snape may have no name but he's got brains. Sirius says Snape knew more Dark spells than the seventh years when he got to Hogwarts, he's a potions prodigy and able to invent his own spells. This kid will be useful. Lucius probably saw him as some sort of investment and charity case. Snape probably ran after Lucius like a puppy and was more of a little errand boy to get into Malfoy's good graces. He probably figured out he'll need good connections to survive Slytherin and afterwards the real world. There's even a possibility that Eileen may have advises him to stick with someone from a powerful pureblood family.

 

Quote from Naaga on May 30, 2023, 2:46 pm

Snape's friendship with his classmates is also exaggerated. They seem to let Snape stick around when he makes himself useful to their pranks or whatever it is they are up to. He probably made himself popular with his invented spells but if they actually were his friends why didn't anyone come help him during the lake incident? There seriously were no Slytherins? No prefects who could have intervened? It seems to have been quite a crowded place, not some abandoned classroom. Why was Snape alone in the first place? I remember from my school days, we used to try and find our friends first thing after an exam to compare answers or complain about how difficult or u fair the questions were, why didn't Snape seek out the company of Mulciber and Avery?

Actually Snape's Slytherin mates may've left towards common room or something, they had given an exam. Snape may've remained to check up his answers while also waiting for Lily. From canon it is evident that Slytherins stick together so Snape could've been genuinely alone at the time of SWM.

Snape told Draco that ‘You were certainly alone tonight, which was foolish in the extreme, wandering the corridors without lookouts or backup. These are elementary mistakes –’ in HBP which meant that Snape actually kept others around to protect himself. Remember Snape told Harry that James never attacked Snape unless it was 4 vs 1, so it could've been bad luck in SWM when no other Slytherin was around. Marauders also had access to perfect surveillance map alongwith the invisibility cloak which they could've used to ambush Snape whenever he was alone, so no amount of backup could protect against well planned ambushes.

Quote from Dark Angel on May 30, 2023, 3:16 pm

Quote from Naaga on May 30, 2023, 2:46 pm

Actually Snape's Slytherin mates may've left towards common room or something, they had given an exam. Snape may've remained to check up his answers while also waiting for Lily. From canon it is evident that Slytherins stick together so Snape could've been genuinely alone at the time of SWM.

Snape told Draco that ‘You were certainly alone tonight, which was foolish in the extreme, wandering the corridors without lookouts or backup. These are elementary mistakes –’ in HBP which meant that Snape actually kept others around to protect himself. Remember Snape told Harry that James never attacked Snape unless it was 4 vs 1, so it could've been bad luck in SWM when no other Slytherin was around. Marauders also had access to perfect surveillance map alongwith the invisibility cloak which they could've used to ambush Snape whenever he was alone, so no amount of backup could protect against well planned ambushes.

Or, Snape's advice to Draco is something he learned after being tormented and targeted by the Marauders, it does not necessarily mean that he followed that advice as a student. I see it as something he learned in  retrospect.

It is l mentioned that Snape faced the Marauders 1 vs. 4 but there is never an indication that that was only due to the Marauders having the map (which didn't exist in the early years) and invisibility cloak. If the Slytherins stuck together, Snape should have learned his lesson after one or two ambushes and made sure to never be caught alone. Anywhere. He is smart enough to have realized that somehow he is being monitored even if he were not able to point out how exactly the Marauders are doing it.

He was alone at the lake and he was also alone during the werewolf prank which I still can't wrap my head around. Dude fully expected to find a werewolf down there and was given a hint by Sirius Black of all people. That's not suspicious or dangerous at all. I think the only reason why he would go down there alone fully expecting a werewolf or an ambush, was because there was no one else.

It seems others only accept his company when he makes himself somehow valuable, be it as a guide into the magic world, a partner in crime, a Death Eater or a spy.

Quote from Naaga on May 30, 2023, 3:25 pm

It could've been possible that Snape didn't know Lupin was a werewolf when he went to willow or he didn't expect marauders would be mad enough to try killing him with a werewolf. He was being relentless bullied and he was desperate to find something big enough to get marauders expelled.

I agree that his advice to Draco was a learnt one, perhaps he used to be alone pre SWM and past it learnt the lesson of unity and sticking together with others for protection.

Quote from Dark Angel on May 30, 2023, 3:41 pm

Quote from Naaga on May 30, 2023, 3:25 pm

It could've been possible that Snape didn't know Lupin was a werewolf when he went to willow or he didn't expect marauders would be mad enough to try killing him with a werewolf. He was being relentless bullied and he was desperate to find something big enough to get marauders expelled.

I get that he was desperate but it was still a reckless and stupid idea to listen to Sirius and not bring any back up if there had been anyone who would accompany him. Whatever Snape expected to find, it would be a good idea to have a second witness and/or someone who could help get him out of a shitty situation.

That's why I think Snape never had any real Slytherin friends to begin with. No one cared enough to step in or they simply believed that if Snape couldn't defend himself against some mudblood loving Gryffindorks, he deserves whatever he's getting for being so weak.

Quote from Motanul Negru on May 30, 2023, 8:39 pm

Eh, Lucius Malfoy is enough of a heel without having him rape younger students while he's at school. Though it does sound like something Sirius, young or old, would love to throw in Snape's face, and in more explicit terms than "lapdog" if Harry wasn't around.

And Snape's advice to Malfoy does read a good deal like his rant to Harry about people wearing their emotions on their sleeves being easy prey for the Dark Lord, during their Occlumency lessons. White Hound and others have, of course, pointed out that he's likely referencing his younger self.