Fanon Vs Canon: Snape Edition
Snape has a thrilling, sexy voice.
Sadly this is all down to Rickman, although there's nothing in canon to say Snape doesn't have a sexy voice. We aren't told. He is typically described as snapping, snarling, hissing, whispering, shouting, even howling - but his voice is also at times described as icy or silky, so it could be Rickmanesque, at least some of the time.
The idea that Snape's voice is curlingly sarcastic may be both true and misleading. It's Pottermore canon that Snape comes from the Midlands, and many people from the Midlands speak with an accent called the Midlands Drawl, which is said to sound sarcastic to outsiders even when it isn't meant to be. Snape may have become genuinely sarcastic in part because everybody just assumed he was being sarcastic anyway, and he might as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb.
Fwiw John Nettleship, Rowling's Chemistry teacher on whom Snape is mainly based, was a superb, award-winning baritone singer in the slightly operatic Welsh manner, but he came originally from Nottingham and had a soft and strangely furry speaking voice, described by an American friend as sounding like Wallace in the Wallace and Gromit films.
The werewolf "prank" occurred at dead of night.
It is almost universally assumed in fanfic that the werewolf "prank" - in which Sirius tried to trick Severus into coming into dangerously close contact with Remus in his were form, at full moon in the Shrieking Shack or in the tunnel leading to it, and James had to intervene to save him - happened in the middle of the night, with the participants sneaking about out of bed after hours. The very common fanon idea that Severus was punished after the incident and Sirius wasn't is based on the assumption that Severus was wandering around the grounds after bedtime. However, all we actually know is that since James is said to have rescued Severus from danger, it probably happened after moonrise, with Remus transformed or about to transform, and it certainly happened after Remus was sent down the tunnel to the Shack to await moonrise.
We do not know for sure when the werewolf incident happened, except that it happened after Sirius turned sixteen (on 3rd November 1975, according to one of Rowling's Tweets, which fits with her website statement that he was "about twenty-two" when he was sent to Azkaban early in November 1981), and before the underpants incident in mid to late June 1976. When Harry complains about James's bad behaviour in the underpants incident, Remus says that James was only fifteen. This is untrue - he was sixteen by that point - but it could be taken to mean that the werewolf incident naturally preys on Remus's mind and that James had been fifteen at that time, making it prior to his birthday on 27th March.
Also, Severus ambled out from his DADA OWL and sat down near the Marauders without any wariness. He could have been so wrapped up in re-hashing his exam questions that he didn't notice the danger he was in, but I would have thought that the fact that he had just been answering an exam question about werewolves would have brought the Marauders to mind. That he was nevertheless not looking out for them in any wary way suggests to me that they had left him alone for a substantial period, and therefore that the werewolf "prank" had happened a considerable time ago and they had been punished sufficiently to make them behave themselves for a while.
That pushes the werewolf incident back to early spring or winter (and gives Sirius the partial excuse that the "prank" happened around the time he split from his family, when he was probably under a great deal of stress). The full moon is full because it is directly opposite the sun, meaning that moonrise of the full moon happens around sunset - and sunset in a Scottish winter happens pretty early. If the "prank" occurred in the middle of winter, moonrise on the horizon would have been around 4.30pm, although if it was rising behind the mountains its appearance would have been slightly delayed. The werewolf incident could have happened as early as about 5.15pm, if the moon has to clear the mountains and become visible for Remus to transform, or 4.30pm if it only has to clear the unseen horizon. It could have happened after lights out, but there's no reason to assume it did.
It is however a fairly safe bet that when the three Animagi ran with were-Remus, they did so after curfew and probably after bedtime. We're not given any reason to think they ever left Remus to roam unsupervised, and once he was released I doubt that they would be able to get that particular genie back into the bottle until moonset when he had transformed back into a boy. Once they had released him, they would have to stay with him all night. It would surely be a great deal less likely to attract suspicion if they went into their common-room and then up to bed, and then snuck out again under the Invisibility Cloak, than if they failed to show up to go into the common-room in the first place.
Snape was motivated mainly by revenge.
That's one of the most common Snater argument where they argue Severus only turned to light after Lily's death and motivated by revenge. That's completely wrong reading of his character. Severus turned within one year before Potters' death and his primary motivation was Guilt not revenge.
The Evans family treated young Snape very warmly.
It's often assumed in fanfiction that the Evanses must have been lovely people and would therefore have been kind and welcoming to the scruffy boy their daughter had befriended. In favour of this idea, we know that Snape was at their house at least once because he and Lily went into Petunia's room, and we are told that the Evanses were very taken with the idea of Lily being a witch and having special skills, so they might well have been keen on her having another magical child as a friend.
Against it, however, they were Petunia's parents as much as they were Lily's. Petunia may well have got her lower middle class snobbery and fear of what the neighbours might think from them (if not from them, then from whom?), and she made it clear she despised Snape for his poor origins and ragged appearance, and that she regarded Spinner's End as a very poor address. Somebody must have given her the idea both that Spinner's End was a bad address and that it was OK to look down on people for coming from a bad address, and it seems more like the sort of thing she would get from her parents than what she might learn at school. If what Petunia says is true her parents were also prone to playing favourites. On this basis, it's unlikely young Severus would ever have been flavour of the month: at best they might have tolerated him to his face and carped about him behind his back.
Excessivelyperky points out "... both Evans girls married up from their original station. There is no family so aware of their place and determined to keep it, I think, than the ones who live next to a rundown area - the distance might be a few blocks, but the social distance is sometimes measured in parsecs. The Evans parents might well have been terrified that Lily was going to end up in Spinners End if Severus and Lily had stayed close, not realizing Sev's upward drive and his escape hatch through magic. They might have been greatly relieved to see James on the horizon ... They were quite likely adoring of Vernon Dursley - a steady, somewhat older man who was already established in a good, middle-class job."
There is a questionmark about when the Evanses knew that Lily was a witch, and that she and Severus had something vital in common. I would have expected that the wizarding world would contact the parents of Muggle-borns as soon as their children started to manifest wandless magic, to prevent them from accidentally revealing the existence of wizards to Muggles. According to Pottermore Hogwarts has a "Quill of Acceptance" which writes down the name of every magical child born in Britain, as they are born, so there are people in the wizarding world who would know in advance which Muggle-born children they needed to keep an eye on. Yet when young Severus first speaks to Lily, she seems to be already well-practised at magic, and yet does not know that she is called a witch.
Also if Severus knew the Evanses well and they were good to him, that might make it less likely that he would become a Death Eater - although since this was the era of nuclear panic, when many Muggles believed that Muggles were about to destroy the world, he might think that wizards taking control and ruling over the Muggles was the only way to save them.
Yeah, I tend to lean into the "Evans family probably didn't like Snape too much" interpretation, given that Snape had a prejudice against Muggles and would most likely avoid associating with them. The fact that Petunia somehow knows who Snape is by sight alone indicates that she's either seen him before, or someone whom she trusts has told her what she needs to know about him. The most likely explanation is that her parents know of the Snape family, have interacted with them on some level, and have told their children information that would make Petunia think less of them. As Petunia felt that Lily was the favorite, she would most likely try to please her parents as much as possible, even adopting their beliefs, if it meant earning their love.
Yeah, I feel the same way. Children often learn things from their parents and an eleven year old Petunia must've inherited her classist attitude from her parents.
Snape hates Hermione.
Snape certainly seems to dislike Hermione a fair bit, and many elaborate suggestions have been made about this, to do with Lily and Muggle-borns and so on. But I don't think one should invent complex solutions when there are obvious, simple ones.
Hermione is able, but she's annoying. She's constantly waving her hand, wanting to answer questions, without understanding that when a teacher questions the class they want to know who knows what and get the less able students to engage with the lesson: they don't just want to confirm that a student who they already know knows the answer, knows the answer. When Snape does ask her, she parrots the textbook instead of showing original thought. [I've been told that that would be acceptable at a US school - but British students are expected to say what they thought, and why.] When he calls her a know-it-all he's being extremely childish, but we're told he's only calling her what her friends all call her, and his irritation is justified. She also writes essays much longer than she has been asked for, creating extra work for the teachers and showing that she doesn't know how to summarise what she knows, or identify the core of the matter.
The "I see no difference" scene is ambiguous - it's not clear whether Snape means "I see no difference between Granger's teeth now and Granger's teeth this morning" or "I see no difference between what Malfoy has done to Granger and what Potter has done to Goyle". But even if he does mean it as a personal insult, you have to think about how she appears to him.
We know, because we see things from Harry's point of view, that Harry's gang generally have virtuous, even Quixotic reasons for the stunts they pull. But Snape doesn't know that. What he knows is that Hermione set his robes on fire in first year. He knows she was involved in stealing expensive ingredients for Polyjuice from his private store (because she ended up furry), and therefore that she was probably in some way involved in sabotaging Goyle's cauldron with a firework, causing his Slytherins to be sprayed with Swelling Solution, leaving Malfoy with a huge nose and Goyle with 11"-wide eyes which he had to hold in with his hands to prevent himself from being blinded, and which must have been agonisingly painful. Snape may have worked out that it was the Trio who drugged Crabbe and Goyle and stuffed them in a cupboard - from his point of view, what he is seeing is two Slytherins who have borderline learning disabilities being picked on by the Brain of Gryffindor.
Later Hermione was one of the group who threw him into a wall, knocked him out and then left him lying head-injured and unconscious for nearly an hour without seeking medical treatment for him, even though any period of unconsciousness due to blunt trauma and lasting more than ten minutes is considered potentially life-threatening, and Hermione at least should know that. We are shown, twice, that Draco's gang wait until Snape's back is literally turned before picking on the Trio, so Snape will probably see Draco's gang as innocent and the Trio as the Marauders redux, a swaggering Gryffindor gang picking on Slytherins for fun. The fact that they are friends and realtives of the Twins, who are a swaggering Gryffindor gang picking on Slytherins for fun, isn't going to help. He has no reason, therefore, to find Hermione anything other than annoying and unlikable.
This is aside from the fact that in some ways she probably reminds him, not of Lily, but of his boyhood self - a plain, brilliant, studious nerd - but unlike him she has loyal friends, parents who love her, and plenty of money.
Pure-bloods are wealthy and have manors.
To begin with, there's a lot of confusion about what a manor actually is, and fanwriters tend to assume it's a big house. A manor is a large estate which includes tenant farms and, usually, a comparatively grand house, called the manor house and used by the owners of the manor. The actual name of the manor house will sometimes be Something Manor House, but is more commonly just Something House, or e.g. Compton Hall or The Laurels. Most manor houses wouldn't be very big (and the internal evidence suggests that the Malfoy manor house is quite small): maybe two or three times the size of the Dursleys' place. A very big, very grand house with dozens of bedrooms would be called a "stately home": most, probably all stately homes have or used to have a manor attached, but only a small fraction of manor houses are stately homes.
It is common in fanfics to portray pure-blood society as glittering and wealthy, with each family having its own luxurious manor house. However, according to Pottermore a Cantankerus Nott in the 1930s produced a Pure-Blood Directory which listed the "Sacred Twenty-Eight" British families whose blood was still completely "pure" as at the 1930s. These are: Abbott; Avery; Black; Bulstrode; Burke; Carrow; Crouch; Fawley; Flint; Gaunt; Greengrass; Lestrange; Longbottom; Macmillan; Malfoy; Nott; Ollivander; Parkinson; Prewett; Rosier; Rowle; Selwyn; Shacklebolt; Shafiq; Slughorn; Travers; Weasley and Yaxley.
Rowling has said the Potters were Pureblood but were excluded from the list because their name was a common Muggle one - which is ridiculous since the list includes Black, Macmillan and Parkinson. Perhaps it's because Potter is a name for Muggles of the artisan class. Also, Garrick Ollivander, the proprietor of Ollivander's, is half-blood and was born in or prior to 1919, so the Ollivanders aren't "pure".
Of this group of pure-blood families, the Weasleys are poor and the Gaunts almost starving. The Ollivanders work for a living, and the Blacks' once grand house has fallen into disrepair. Hannah Abbott and Neville Longbottom will run a pub, not an estate. Shacklebolt has class and the Crouches seem well-off, but the Carrows are clearly at the bottom of the heap, and Yaxley regards the Malfoys as show-offs, what with their peacocks. Clearly, being a pure-blood doesn't even mean you'll starve with style. There may be other wealthy wizarding families apart from the Malfoys and the Blacks, but there's no evidence those wealthy families are especially likely to be pure-bloods. Nor do we see much of a social scene, although there must be some to justify all those dress robes.
Snape's appearance has some hidden, coded meaning.
A recent spate of online comments have proposed that Snape has sallow, greasy skin, long black hair, black robes and a large, hooked nose because he is a thinly-veiled anti-Semitic caricature. A well-known essay entitled Taming the Prince also famously claimed that Snape had long hair and wore a nightshirt because Rowling wanted to "feminise" him in order to get control over him (although why being feminine should make him more controllable is anybody's guess).
John Nettleship in December 1978, around the time he was teaching Jo RowlingSnape has an unhealthy skin-tone, long black hair, a big nose, snaggly teeth and black robes because he is lifted almost neat from John Nettleship, Rowling's Chemistry teacher, who had pale and sometimes sallowish skin, long black hair,
John Nettleship sunbathing circa 1980, grinning at one of his sons
a big nose, snaggly teeth and black robes. Rowling even draws Snape as wearing a cloak with a high "Dracula" collar which is the collar of a hippy coat John wore when she knew him. According to himself he did also have greasy skin and hair when Rowling knew him, even though he was fastidiously clean, because he was very run down due to chronic insomnia. The only things she's changed in Snape are eye-colour and the end of his nose: John's eyes were grey and his nose ended in a humorous blob, although it was slightly hooked in the British sense of being deflected down at the tip.
It's quite true that JKR has exaggerated Snape's nose and makes great play of him being ugly, even though John himself was very handsome in a bony, Goth sort of way (although he probably didn't look his best when Rowling knew him, owing to the afore-mentioned chronic insomnia). However, if JKR wanted Snape to be ugly then exaggerating how hooked his nose is is an obvious way to go, because it conforms to the traditional idea of a witch or wizard. Snape seems to be the only character credited with greasy skin but all his other stereotypically witch-like features occur in other characters as well, although not necessarily all at once.
Dumbledore's nose is repeatedly described as very long, and is also very crooked. Viktor Krum is described in terms very similar to Snape. McGonagall has jet-black hair and a long pointed nose and beady eyes (colour not specified). Madame Maxime has "a handsome, olive-skinned face, large, black, liquid-looking eyes and a rather beaky nose." Ron is another one with a markedly long nose, and Hagrid has black-beetle eyes. Sirius has long black hair, "waxy" skin and yellow teeth, although his eyes are grey. Madame Pince is a thin woman with sunken cheeks, parchment-like (so presumably yellowish) skin, a long, hooked nose and a shrivelled face, who "looked like an underfed vulture". Augusta Longbottom has a "rather bony" nose, although we're not given much detail on her appearance.
Also, we know that Rowling reads the St Trinian's books and/or watched the films, because Umbrage and Tonks are the names of teachers at St Trinian's. One of the St Trinian's cartoons shows the school welcomong a new Science Mistress who is a Snape-like witch on a broomstick, with a very large, curved nose.
As to why Rowling felt obliged to make Snape ugly when John was so handsome, you could base all kinds of psychological speculation on this, but it may just be a necessary plot point (or a cunning allusion to Cyrano de Bergerac, that famously huge-honkered romantic). Hogwarts began life as a series of stories which JK told to her classmates at Wydean, lampooning their own teachers - which is why most of the staff at Hogwarts are identifiably based on real people at Wyedean. So Snape began as a lampoon of handsome, Gothy John.
Harry, however, was probably a late addition, and the Marauders must have come later still. Then she needed the Marauders to have bullied young Severus in a vicious, spiteful way - and if he had been obviously handsome, as John was, it would alter the dynamic and make it clear that the Marauders were acting out of jealousy. That is, she's said at interview that James was indeed motivated partly by his jealousy of Severus's friendship with Lily, but if Severus had been handsome James's jealousy would have been too obvious, and Snape would probably have ended up less bitter and damaged than the plot requires him to be. And whatever the reason JK chose to uglify Snape, the basics of his appearance belong to a lapsed Anglican choirboy with leanings towards goddess-worship, not to some anti-Semitic caricature.
The goblins we see in the films, however, really are a grotesque anti-Semitic caricature - although that's the fault of Warner Bros, not of Rowling, whose canonical goblins are very different.
While we're at it, here in the U.K. the nightshirt is, like the kilt, generally regarded as a very masculine garment, since it leaves the genitals so readily available - and we know Rowling does think like that because there was that gag in GoF about the old boy who liked a healthy breeze round his privates. Evidently Snape likes one too. And even if you think Snape has a slightly feminine vibe that too comes from life: John was as straight as it is humanly posible to be, and quite fit and muscular when not dying of cancer, but he had a very slight, almost girly bone-structure and generally preferred female company to male.
Snape sprays spittle when he's angry.
This occurred only once in the entire series, it happened shortly after he had come round after being knocked unconscious for nearly an hour, and it's a known symptom of concussion - as is the ranting near-hysteria which accompanied the spitting.
In PS we see him spit on the ground, in a deliberate way, after Harry's Quidditch victory (which should have been a big clue that he was lower working class). But he'd just been nearly knocked off his broom, and may have been spitting up bile from fright. [Or maybe he chews tobacco - it would explain the yellowish teeth.]
