âAlbus Severus,â Harry said quietly, so that nobody but Ginny could hear, and she was tactful enough to pretend to be waving to rose, who was now on the train, âyou were named for two headmasters of Hogwarts. One of them was a Slytherin and he was probably the bravest man I ever knew.â
bravest, harry says. not kindest, not the most good. not the tenderest or the most pure-hearted. bravest.Â
wail and moan about albus severusâ name to your heartâs content, but stop making posts bemoaning how harry should have named him after xyz bc theyâd be such better names and doesnât harry know that snape was a bastard and why would he pay homage to such a gigantic dick? harry never once said that he thought snape was anything other than a dick.Â
i swear to god, harry knows that snape is not kind or necessarily entirely good. harry KNOWS. but you know what? snape was brave as all hell and thatâs what harry respects about him. thatâs the memory harry gives to his namesake - snapeâs bravery, snapeâs unwavering courage under immeasurable odds. the best of snape was not his love for lily - it was his sheer, pig-headed, almost stupid guts. to walk in darkness every day for twenty years for the mere chance of righting a wrong he helped commit. to lie, bald-faced, to one of the best lie detectors in the world. to help and save people right under the darkest lordâs very nose.Â
harryâs choice to give snapeâs name to his kid is not some sort of thoughtless thing harry did bc he felt bad for the dude who was in love with his mom. harry has his own fucked-up, complicated relationship with snape, but ultimately he sees what dumbledore eventually saw - the courage that made snape suitable for gryffindor. that made him more than a scared boy grasping for power, a boy who got in way over his head and cost himself everything he loved in life. that made him say yes when an old man asked him to spy not once, but twice. (âif you are ready,â dumbledore says, âif you are prepared.â and snape looks back without blinking and says âi amâ in the exact way he said âyesâ twenty years earlier.)Â
so next time anyone feels an urge to mock harry for choosing snapeâs name, take a step back. acknowledge that harry is anything but stupid and so far from naive. that he has every single reason to hate snape, but chooses instead to honor him, to forgive him, to remember his virtues as well as his vices. to use his memory to soothe a scared, lonely boy.
(in the years leading up to albus severusâ birth, i imagine that harry sometimes dream of that night outside of hogwarts, the night that dumbledore died. that he remembers it so clearly - following snape and malfoy, flinging spells. screaming âcowardâ and the way that snape had lashed out then - and only then. that harry is full of bitter regret for not taking it back when he knew better, for not being able to say his apologies and wring some out of snape in return. and maybe, in some part of his mind, he hopes that snape is watching when he bends down to tell his son about his namesake, the bravest man harry ever knew.)
Also: Just because you give someone a name does not mean you have to like everything about them. Or that they will be anything like their namesake.
Some of the names I see suggested instead are rather ridiculous, but they are also emblematic of how closely they are reading and what they get out of the series.
As a kid, Iâm not so sure if I would have liked Harry for naming his child that. Itâs an awkward and cringy thing. But if you think about it, itâs kinda cringy to name your kids after your parents.
As an adult, though, I understood.
Itâs all about perspective.
