dirty_muggle

Hello Folks! The Potions & Parchment 2026 Fanon Characteristics Surveys have arrived. This time we are doing one for Severus AND one for Hermione.

Fill them both in to represent where you stand on some current fanon traits and characteristics.

Surveys will be open for a week and are going out to a number of places to capture as broad a relevant cross section of people as possible.

I'll compile the data and present it shortly thereafter. We're keen to have you participate.

Hermione Survey:

That very morning

I was inspired by @lazarusquince request about Severus enjoying a cup of tea, but then it went really dark and sad in my head… :) I’m so sorry! It should’ve been nice and sweet!!

An old reddit post of mine that I figured I’d memorialize here. I always enjoy digging into data and imo this survey provides an interesting peek into how fans perceive Snape's morality and how that relates to their judgments about Snape's redemption.

This is by no means a perfect sample, survey, analysis, or write-up so take this with a grain of salt. But I think it’s a more interesting way to talk about the Great Snape Debate and I welcome the conversation that might spawn from this!

Takeaways:

No wonder Snape discussions are contentious: Almost evenly split on the redeemed question. (Petition for no stance on Snape's redemption to be labeled as "unpopular" ever again?)

Common ground: Both those who considered Snape redeemed and those who did not tended to recognize that Snape’s morality is dynamic and followed a U-shape. Almost everyone acknowledged that he reached his lowest point during his Death Eater years and improved so that at the end of his life, he had a moral rating that was similar to his pre-Hogwarts years.

A blank slate or a decent kid?: When rating Snape’s morality in childhood, those who considered Snape redeemed tended to rate him unambiguously positively, whereas those who did not view Snape as redeemed tended to rate him more neutrally.

Not blameless: When providing morality judgments for Snape’s actions as a Death Eater, there was no significant difference in morality ratings between those who view Snape as redeemed and those who do not. This suggests that those who view Snape as redeemed are not underestimating or excusing his actions as a death eater. (No more hurling “nazi apologist” about, how about it?) This makes sense; Snape needs to have done terrible things to be able to be redeemed from them.

Point of contention: The widest gap between ratings for those who believe Snape to be redeemed and those who do not is during Snape’s years as a double agent, corresponding to the end of Goblet through Dumbledore’s death.

More extreme ratings: Those who viewed Snape as redeemed provide a wider range of ratings on average than those who did not.

Methods and Results below.

Haven’t posted some Snape in a while so…uhm…hopefully this makes up for it. I’m not that great at animating lol

In your HP fic and a character says, "Oh my gods," are you indicating that there's a pantheon of gods in which the magical community believes? Worships? Are you referring to an existing religion? Because referring to multiple gods is so deliberate.

To be perfectly honest, I started doing it because I wanted to un-Christian the wizarding world a little bit more (there obviously is some sort of Christian faith in the wizarding world, given they celebrate the holidays and even Draco says singular “God” in canon). I like the idea that some people in the wizarding world still worship older pagan/celtic gods. Given how anti-Muggle so much of the wizarding world is, I can also see it becoming popular to worship pagan gods that Muggles no longer do and in the context of the wizarding wars, another small way to demonstrate your family’s wizarding heritage (“our family never stopped worshipping the old gods”). But at the same time the wizarding world is tightly connected to Britain’s Muggle culture and so still keeps the major Christian cultural traditions—but as with Muggles, many non-Christians celebrate Christmas and Easter in a non-religious way (in fact, what we see in canon of Christmas and Easter isn’t religious at all).

Happy (early) Birthday, @impishtubist!

Sirius finally changes out of his Azkaban robes into…something else. And Remus remembers he has a thing for *cough* daddies.

been trying to do a full month of potter prompts, here’s the first week!

Snape’s poverty is also of its era; the deprivation alluded to is difficult for anyone who grew up in the last 15 or so years to completely appreciate.  That’s not to say that people can’t read up about it, but it’s not quite the same as having that first hand experience.  There’s a specificity about it which means that if your experiences are of the Blair era onwards, and/or you grew up in a different social class, you possibly won’t quite grasp it - not least because, thankfully, society has improved a lot in many areas.  

So much of what JK writes about Snape’s background relies on shared culture, as opposed to being categorically spelled out within the text.  Harry’s neglect and abuse is explicitly written; Snape’s is alluded to - and the disparity in how she depicts the two means that many miss what’s really being suggested when it comes to Snape.

Personally, I find her handling of Snape’s background incredibly deft.  That shared culture means that many people read the passage where Tobias is shouting at Eileen, and those people nod their heads and say, “I know exactly what went on in that house.”

Snape’s background is a depiction of endemic unending poverty, domestic unrest (and implied violence), and abject neglect.  It’s also why so many readers leap to the conclusion that Tobias is violent towards Eileen and towards Severus.  That presumption seems to leave so many on the internet baffled at such certainty when it’s not actually written in black and white - but what they’re missing is that JK has used a social shorthand that everyone ‘in’ on the meaning understands.

Furthermore, it’s rarely discussed, but there’s a very good reason why Lily responds to Snape’s Mudblood insult by highlighting his poverty and neglect.  Snape’s ‘greying’ pants aren’t about him being unclean - white clothes ‘grey’ when they’re old, and that’s what Lily’s remarking upon.  (After all, it seems unlikely that the kids are responsible for their own washing - you would’ve thought Harry would’ve whined about washing his socks and pants, as opposed to his magical homework. Do we really think Snape wasn’t washing his clothes, or rather that his clothing was substandard to begin with?) 

Notably, Snape highlighted her otherness in the magical world, and she threw his otherness in society right back at him.

And that’s just looking at his comparison with Lily - she was loved by her parents, and grew up in a middle class home.  The only thing Snape has is his knowledge of magic…and that’s the one aspect he can bring to their friendship which impresses Lily.

James, on the other hand, has the full house - he grew up in a wealthy home, with parents who adored him, in a magical society.  The situation between James and Severus could not be more unequal - and it’s got nothing to do with dark magic.

It’s also an analogy for the grammar school system - which again, is lost on a lot of people, because it’s very of its time.  Snape is the kid who comes from the sink estate who passed the exams against all odds - and when he gets to the school, where he’s earned his place, he sticks out like a sore thumb.  He has the talent to be at Hogwarts, but not the social background.

On the flipside, James is the depiction of a kid who was always going to get to grammar school, who belongs at the grammar school…he also has the talent, but he has everything else as well - and he can’t fathom why someone from Snape’s background is sitting next to him.

That’s not a criticism of James - it’s an understanding of where his character comes from, and why he reacts so violently towards Snape, but he doesn’t react in a similar way to Sirius.  This doesn’t excuse his dislike, but it goes some way to explain it.  It shows why other characters like him so much - he’s fun, and clever, and nicely dressed, and confident, and sporty, and talented…but he can’t get past his outright dislike of Snape, which grows over the years and encompasses other issues (such as being jealous of his friendship with Lily).

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

If you throw something, you expect it to shatter. Crash. Smash. Ect.

"exploded" implies an internal force put pressure on it from the inside and burst out.

Or maybe it's just 2:10 and I'm completely mistaken. But as of right now, I do think the word "exploded" implies it was magic that caused a jar to break in Harry's vicinity. And actually! Actually, we SEE this sort of internal pressure that could explode something as accidental magic in a state of heightened emotion, specifically in a very similar state and level of anger and hurt, before! By Harry, who almost explodes his aunt. I'm pretty sure "almost explodes" or "blow up" are the exact words too. So we do have at least one explicit instance of accidental magic putting pressure within something (or someone) that expands outwards, and as such we can assume that then it could just be a way magic can manifest in anyone, not it just being from Harry (also, I also believe Ron and Hermione weren't even surprised that it happened, they were surprised Harry got away with it, which could support the idea that blowing things up with accidental magic is normal). Snape may have just had enough control to not explode Harry but the magic still caused an explosion near Harry.

It's also just another parallel between the two, blowing something/someone up when deeply violated by them.

And I think I spotted why we assume it was thrown too. The world "hurtled" is in the sentence too. "Hurtled" can mean to move fast, but also can mean something was thrown fast. And so with "hurtled" before "jar exploded", it's easy to see where you can accidentally associate the hurtling to the jar, and not just to Harry.