First of all - to me, he’s the most relatable character in the series, with all his flaws and whatnot. I will honestly say that I wouldn’t have answered this way if anyone had asked me about it 17 years ago, when I first got the books in my hands. However, sometimes understanding and realisation come with time. They surely did in my case. (Plus, the series was never the same in my eyes after I started working as a teacher.)

Second, Severus is so human that it’s almost scary. I sometimes think that many people (if not all) notice some bits of themselves in him (on conscious or subconscious level). Some of them accept the truth and perhaps try to change if they notice Severus’ worse traits in themselves; some others hate that truth so much that they project on Severus their own self-hatred.

Third, on my worse days, when things get to me too much, Severus is like the light in the darkness. If he could go on, so can I.

Fourth, Severus is like ogres and onions - he has layers. Many of them. You may take one layer after another, going deeper and deeper, and there still is no guarantee that you will know the real man as there are so many aspects of him. Some he shows, some he hides and some other he uses as a smoke screen to hide something else. And all of this is something that definitely appeals to me, because I like solving puzzles and I easily get bored with characters (and people) which I can see through easily.

I think Snape got away from Rowling, yes–like many of the best characters do–but I also think that Rowling is herself conflicted about Snape.  On the one hand, she’s said that she based him on a teacher she disliked, out of “revenge,” much to the teacher’s dismay–see the post on John Nettleton that was floating around.  On the other hand, if you read the post on John Nettleton, you discover that he was a good teacher who employed her (newly dead at the time she was writing) mother as a lab assistant, and went out of his way to make the lab and school accessible for her (she was disabled).  I found myself wondering if Snape’s love for Lily was based on Nettleton’s kindness towards Rowling’s mother.  According to the article that was floating around, Nettleton remembered Rowling fondly and thought she was a bright student, but apparently that’s not how Rowling perceived the situation.  Obviously, I don’t have enough information to speculate as to why they’d perceive the situation so differently, but Nettleton was apparently a bit socially awkward and Rowling was a child, so that could certainly explain it.  

Leaving biography aside, Rowling seems… very conflicted about Snape.  Her interviews are a bit contradictory at times.  Apparently, the “Is Snape a hero?” answer changing was because someone explained to her that in the US “hero” means “someone who does heroic things,” while apparently in the UK “hero” means “role model.”  And she’s very determined to insist that the character is gray, rather than black or white.  But there’s something in the tone of her answers sometimes that makes me feel like she simultaneously loves and hates him and has trouble sorting those feelings out.  

But generally, yes.  Characters get away from authors.  It happens to me all the time, and that’s when I think the good stuff happens.  :D  And I believe that he very much got away from her.  

From what I read, John was a really severe teacher. He was an enthusiast of the field, had a lot of ideals about teaching and really wanted to help his best students to suceed. But that also means he pushed them. He’d see Rowling, a good and quiet student, and pressure her to answer questions in class. Being exactly like that when I was in school, I can only imagine how terrifying it may have felt for her. He was also very strict and critical with students who seemed to not be willing enough to learn, because (as the article I was referencing put it) he thought “people ought to be interested”, they ought to learn, he didn’t understand why it might be necessary, or possible, to persuade them into acting on their own best interest. He didn’t know how to be persuasive, so he was abrasive (sounds so much like the behavior of someone we know towards, let’s say, Neville, doesn’t it). Also, it is mentioned that John was going through a really bad time while JK knew him, to the point of people around him at work being wary of him, because they never knew when any contact could cause him to suddenly lash out. He was both described as a great teacher and as a scary, intimidating one by ex-students. Interestingly, even though she had problems with him and his teaching style, JK also voluntarily took optional evening-classes in Astronomy with him.

So I just get that apparently JK had really conflicting feelings about him, gratitude, admiration, fear, anger and whatnot. And of course she was an adult writing the books but whatever memories and impressions she had of John was through her perspective as a child, that probably helped lend some grandiose features to the character. 

Albus comes back from a conversation with Ron and Hermione to tell his siblings “Dad was teasing us again. Hogwarts never had an interhouse spelling competition, and even if they did, Auntie Hermione says that “floccinaucinihilipilification” isn’t a word they’d give to First Years.”

“Oh.”

beating stick

First of all, he had no safe space. He was abused at home and then he left to a boarding school, where he thought he could finally be accepted and valued, but then he was abused there too. 

And he was put in a house he used to dream about, just to learn that he had to find a way to mingle with some people who 1) were from rich and powerful families and 2) were pureblood and despised those who weren’t… while he, well, was neither.

He had a total of one friend who loved him for who he was, without second malicious interests or power struggles. And 1) he lost this friend mostly due to his own doing and 2) she ended up being murdered due to an information he provided.

Now struggling with unbearable guilt over what happened, he then decides to become a spy and this one decision perpetually screwed any chances he had to ever form a meaningful relationship ever again.

The last point is what really made me write this post. I’ve seen people talk about how everything would have been different to Severus if only he got over Lily. Like if he still became a double agent, but had let go of his feelings for Lily, thus being happier and less of an asshole to his students and just a nicer, probably healthier person overall.

And that makes no sense, not only because the reason he couldn’t get over what happened to Lily was that she had such a unique and fundamental role in his life (as one of the few chances he had of knowing love) that the guilt and grief he felt was too great; but also because his role as a double agent prevented him from forming new connections with other people.

He had to constantly stand in an ambiguous position with both enemies and allies. He had to play enemy to his allies and ally to his enemies, so he couldn’t truly connect with any of them, not fully. He had no chance, not if he was to play his vital role at winning the war. He had no chance of a “normal life”, of making new friends, finding new lovers. The sacrifices he had to make in order to somehow make up for what he saw as his mistakes with Lily were part of what prevented him from ever forgiving himself and starting over.

Dumbledore was basically all he had, maybe the only person who knew where he really stood, who he really was and what were his true motives. And then he had to look him in the eyes and kill him.

And in all likelihood, he probably never expected to survive the war. Which means he would have known, with absolute certainty, that he would never be able to have a real, honest moment with another human being ever again. But he did it all anyway. Everything ever asked of him. And in that final year he did it without support, without allies; entirely alone. Oh, except for the cheery portrait of the friend he killed.

He had to play enemy to his allies and ally to his enemies, so he couldn’t truly connect with any of them, not fully.

Indeed, and it’s a shame that too few people who make the argument that Snape could have just “gotten over” Lily or developed healthier relationships seem to not understand the complex situation that Snape found himself in or the psychological ramifications of it all. Of course, in absence of the ability to create or maintain healthy support systems, Snape would remain stagnated (not unlike Sirius Black due to the time he spent incarcerated). The reason he wasn’t able to move on from the role he played in Lily’s death was not due to an obsession (just as Sirius’s struggle to separate Harry from James or behave like an appropriate adult wasn’t due to an obsession but to his own struggle with arrested development and the sheer magnitude of loss he experienced following the deaths of Lily and James), it was something far more psychologically crippling –he was stuck in a perpetual state of survivor’s guilt and everything from his environment being toxic for his mental health to the fact that his role as a spy inhibited him from forming any kind of support-system that might help him “fix himself” were all major factors in Snape’s neuroses. 

As an aside, the fact that most of the arguments surrounding Snape seem to be that after a certain age we should be able to just “get over” our respective traumas from childhood or any mental illnesses resulting from those experiences speaks to the continued ignorance and stigma surrounding mental health and human psychology.

Any early member of Harry Potter fandom will remember Cassandra Claire’s Draco Trilogy. Published from 2000 to 2006, many fans attribute popular Harry Potter fanon tropes to this early fanfiction series. However, what started out as an exciting epic quickly devolved into a massive controversy.

This Wank Wednesday, we’re taking a deep dive into the 2006 exposé that forever changed fandom. Fan critic Avocado, over a three day period, itemized the events around Cassandra Claire’s ban from FanFiction.net as well as the explicit plagiarism found in the Draco Trilogy. 

Teen!Snape doing some research probably.

I’m open for chibi commissions!

SADF 11: CONSTANT VIGILANCE

Yes, in my dumb AU, Draco is part of Harry’s friend group. Now they’re the Golden… uh… Quadruplets? Idk. I just want them all to be from diff Houses (Harry=Hufflepuff, Ron=Gryffindor, Hermione=Ravenclaw, Draco=Slytherin).

I mean, 

She didn’t know how terrible the bullying actually was (he couldn’t tell her what really happened at the Shrieking Shack, and the fact she didn’t understand why he was “so obsessed” with the marauders suggests he didn’t really tell her much about the bullying in general – also, let’s not forget she somehow had access to a distorted version of events once, that could have happened other times);

James and Sirius were her housemates, they were in the same year, she was around them daily, she was used to them and didn’t have a reason to see them as big threats;

She did what she could and she did help, it was effective. But then he clearly stated he didn’t need her help and called her mudblood. You know that’s not a light word, especially when your friend is the one saying it. Severus understood this, that’s why he tried to apologize. But we saw them fighting over his relationship with the marauders and his housemates before, their friendship ended in fifth year, it’s not like it happened out of nowhere, she’s just decided she had enough at that point. That really doesn’t seem “too quick” for me. 

I was actually more sympathetic to her as a kid, but as an adult, not so much.

I think people corner themselves when they stress to compare blood supremacy to racism as if it’s a one to one comparison. I say this to say, race relations and identities are more complicated than that, so Lily’s treatment of Snape makes even less sense in a racial context.

It honestly doesn’t.

None of her behavior is consistent nor does it read like the behavior of someone dealing with the stresses of “racism” and the complexities that comes with it. And that’s because it was written by a white woman who doesn’t understand nuance.

Even before this incident, Lily’s friendship was suspect, but then you add the racism angle and it’s just shitty. Snape is a “mixed” kid living with supremacist. He is being bullied by privileged people and was almost killed by one. She walked in on him being sexually assaulted.

Lily still reserved the right to be angry with Snape and end things, but controversial take: it shows a self centered ness that people refuse to acknowledge.

Yea, we were all teens once, but not all teens are self centered to the extent that lily was in this specific context. I’m not saying that lily was a bad person and that I’ve never been self centered in my life, I’m saying lily is flawed and made a poor decision. This is also not me saying she should’ve still be friends with him either.

Even though she didn’t know the extent of the bullying, she supposedly knew Snape. She was best friends with him; but consistently sided with his bullies and the naysayers over him. She refused to listen to his side of any story or consider his perspective. She watched as he was bullied, humiliated, and sexually assaulted and ADDED to his humiliation because he lashed out at her.

She was looking for an excuse to end their friendship because, in that situation, for the person people claimed she was, they do not instantly turn cold or have insults ready.

Lily should’ve spoke with him even if she had no intention to remaining friends. And how in the hell could she have not known the bullying was that bad if he was almost killed, oh, because he was snooping.

She even excused the marauders bullying vs the wanna be death eaters with, “they don’t use dark magic.” Hun, it’s still bullying.

She didn’t know he was almost killed. 

Stags and Does

severus: the last time i touched another person was in 1978. in hand to hand combat.

minerva: albus is literally hugging you right now.