Cringe Culture Is Dead & I Am Free

Eileen was a pure-blood witch. A Slytherin. In her fifth year, she was captain of the Gobstones team and the mother of Severus Snape.

Knowing a bit about her story, I can’t help but feel sorry for how she might have ended up. I don’t understand what could have led her, being part of the Prince family, to leave it all behind for Tobias Snape. Love, I suppose.

I don’t want to see her as a complete victim, but I can’t help feeling pity. Eileen was not an important figure in Severus’s life, and that says a lot. Knowing how little affection he showed, the fact that he never mentioned her seems very telling of his relationship with his parents.

In my opinion (and in my headcanon)Eileen wasn’t a present figure for her son. I like the headcanons that portray her protecting him from Tobias, but I don’t think that was entirely possible. Perhaps she wasn’t like her husband, but she also wasn’t someone Severus cared for… or loved.

She was probably just as neglectful, or simply someone who chose to ignore her own child’s existence.

“Don’t worry, Dumbledore”, said Snape coolly. “I have a plan …”

Huh! This description of the young spy’s composure, though of course filtered through Trelawney’s perspective, isn’t very far removed from how he is described in his younger teen years (sputtering, protesting, becoming incoherent when emotional — far from socially deft). It’s markedly different from how we see him operating during the course of the HP timeline; intimidating Quirrell in Philosopher’s Stone, talking his way out of a death sentence in Goblet of Fire, and having the time of his life running circles around Bellatrix in Half-Blood Prince. I’m certainly not the first to note that at some point, Snape had to put quite bit of effort into this transformation. I had always envisioned a 90s-movie makeover/training montage during years 6/7 and into his first years of service with the Death Eaters in which he cultivates a more aristocratic and confident facade, learns skills like Occlumency, and develops the social aptitude which seemed to elude him as a younger teen; I always had a hard time imagining Snape trying to establish credibility with the Death Eaters without quite a bit of work on his end to conform.

But this description from Trelawney has made me consider that Snape might have picked up a lot of these skills later than I originally thought — towards the end of the war and into his first years as a professor. Interesting possibility. While I’d always considered his sink-or-swim brand of instruction to be borne of his own brilliance and lack of a safety net while he was in school, this could add some more color as to why his instruction (particularly of Occlumency) is so focused on self-preservation; perhaps learning the skill quickly was literally life or death for him once he defected and began working as a double agent for the Order. 

Of course, it could be that he did indeed develop these skills before or shortly upon joining the Death Eaters, but Dumbledore’s presence has a way of making Snape’s hard work evaporate. After all, Dumbledore — and his trust — have the ability to get under Snape’s skin even years later when he’s fully accustomed to his role as a spy...!

The scene above shows him trying to prove himself, I'd say, although I'm a bit on the fence about whether he was there of his own accord or Voldemort sent him there. I can see both options; Voldemort being slightly annoyed by Severus and sending him to apply for a job at Hogwarts, promising him to make him his spy in the castle, just to get him out of his hair for a while, and Severus going there to prove he can be useful and stumbling upon what had to feel like the holy grail for him back then by pure accident. I do headcanon him delivering the prophecy as the event that finally got him the Dark Mark, though. It seems to be the only notable thing he did during the first war.