#levicorpus

Yeah, I do too.

I dislike how Snaters be like: Y’aLl hAtE jAmEs BeCaUsE hE uSeD lEvIcOrPuS oN sNaPe, BuT sNaPe WaS tHe OnE wHo InVeNtEd ThAt SpElL sOoOoOoOo.

Like, no sweetums, the spell itself is not (inherently) bad, it only becomes a problem depending on how it's used. Harry used it on Ronald without an issue. Jim-Jam and Sirius, on the other hand, used it to humiliate and sexually assault Severus. Severus didn’t invent it for sexual assault, thank you very much.

In fact, all of the spells Severus invented were meant to protect him in some way. It’s hard to run if your toenails are over a foot long (Toenail-growing hex), it’s hard to cast a spell if you can't speak (Langlock), it’s very hard to eavesdrop if you can’t hear what the person is saying (Muffliato), etc.

And it’s possible that Levicorpus might also have been a prototype for self-levitation spell and unsupported flight. "Levitate the body".

But the Marauders (who were so hopelessly obsessed with him that they stole his own spells) used it as a Dangling Hex, and used it to sexually assault someone.

And if it’s not, then he definitely invented it so he could use it on himself (only when he’s wearing trousers underneath ofc), so he could float above them or something, or he could’ve used it on them so he could have a head-start and run away.

a scenario in my head is severus looking more into his lupin-wolf theory, he hears the marauders loud asses outside the library, but when James kicks open the door there’s nobody there. it’s a tease scene of the marauders talking amongst each other while just BARELY figuring out where Snape is, not realizing he’s above them.

So --- imagine that Sev has just developed Levicorpus and its counter, perhaps in an attempt to achieve unaided flying like Lily. Perhaps he even worked on it with her. It somehow spread from there to the whole school despite being non-verbal. Perhaps, aided by Death's cloak, James stalked them - or perhaps Lily told him about it. Or maybe Sev himself wanted to impress someone else with it. It's all very plausible.

But now I'm thinking... he might have realized that he had accidentally developed a spell that could be used to stop someone from running after him, and that could only be undone with a specific counter. Only Severus could put them down, which would go some way toward neutralizing the 4:1 factor (since otherwise, he could have just used Petrificus Totalus).

What if Levicorpus wasn’t meant to just suspend somebody in the air by the ankle, but was meant for auto-levitation, and revealed to be not perfected enough? What if Levicorpus was a failed innovation that led to the birth of another spell?

Think about it.

Levicorpus—that comes from "levitation" and "corpus" which means "body". This spell says "levitate the body".

Then, this spell focuses on the ankles. It turned out bad, and it seems to be Snape’s mistake in engineering Levicorpus, because the upper part of your body risks falling over (precisely what happens when you cast the spell), but the idea has some merit: I’m sure you’ve watched series where a character focuses their magical power on the feet to fly. It’s not like Mobilicorpus, which makes you whole body fly at an awkward angle and may not be appliable to oneself. If you want to fly, you might want to set a levitation spell on your ankles so you can "walk" in the air, and choosing the ankles might be a way to get more stability instead of the feet which you have to bend to walk.

And we know this is Snape who invented it, Snape, who had a friend capable of a bit of levitation as a kid (Lily) and who learns to fly at some point (DH). Wouldn’t he want to discover a way to fly like Lily did? A way to fly without brooms, him who seems to suck at it? Wouldn’t he want to impress people (Voldemort?) by showing how he invented a Charm to make yourself fly?

This sustains the theory that

1) Snape’s spell wasn’t meant to attack people (not even in self-defence!) but was just a way to impress and innovate,

2) Snape used it on himself for tests (or even animals, or dead animals etc, and the spell was stolen only because someone could have stolen his book for instance) because he wanted to fly and not make the others levitate,

3) the thoery that Snape is the one who taught Voldemort how to fly instead, after perfecting his spell.

NB:

We can wonder if Levicorpus derived from Mobilicorpus...

Have you thought about how easy it is to cast Levicorpus non-verbally? Harry can’t master non-verbals until 6th or 7th year (if he ever does) and yet it only took one try for him to cast Levicorpus without saying it. Has Severus designed it this way with a certain goal in mind? 

To me it seems it was a way to cast a spell he invented non-verbally (so he could keep it to himself) but considering his 5th year level in terms of magical prowess (or before). It is also quicker to cast a spell non-verbally and, as it’s said in HBP, it allows the caster an effect of surprise. In short, the advantages of non-verbals--and it ought to be related to how he had to defend himself quickly from the bullies.

What she means: In the order of the phoenix movie, they use the levicorpus spell regularly. But in the books, Harry doesn't learn the levicorpus spell until he reads it in the half blood prince's book, even though he saw his dad use it in Snape's memory. Why would the film writers choose to introduce it as a regularly used spell when it was something specifically invented by Snape years before? This also completely takes away the opportunity for the movies to recognize that some spells are trendy and can come and go. There are so many other spells that would have been just as interesting to film, why use levicorpus?