#nominally

Pre Hogwarts

This started as a ramble, but I’ve decided to organise it slightly - this is difficult as Harry and Snape have slightly different circumstances that are similar in some ways but different in others, so I’ve just gone back to basics for each section here

Similarities

Both are young wizards about to go to Hogwarts 

Both come from unhappy homes

Both cannot wait to go to Hogwarts/escape their ‘family home’

Both have displayed unintentional magic as children

Both as children are in ill-fitting clothes, have poor haircuts (even if Harry's grows back; Sev’s apparently does not), and are scrawny and/or small. Sev is described as looking at odds with James ("conspicuously lacked" looking well-cared-for and adored, which I suspect would also apply to Harry, if the series wasn't half in Harry's POV). 

Depending on whether you take the mistreatment and neglect literally from PS or in a more Roald Dahl-eque way in which I suspect it was initially written, Harry did not have a happy home life until this point, and neither did Snape (a witch ‘cowering’ from a Muggle and Sev’s jacket despite the heat and the Pottermore article suggest and/or state physical abuse in addition to neglect)

As far as we’re aware, Snape is not used as a servant/slave within his own home

Differences

One of the main ways Harry and Sev differ would obviously be magical knowledge; Sev knows he is a wizard, knows a lot about the wizarding world - but Harry does not

Snape is not orphaned; he has both parents (for better or for worse), where Harry has none, unless you count the Dursleys

Both Harry and Sev are obviously neglected, but Harry is neglected intentionally

Harry is intentionally excluded, neglected and ignored - but Sev’s neglect seems less intentional and more… ‘the way of things’

Sev's family are so poor and/or neglectful that Sev doesn't have his own clothes (context clues like living in a dilapidated, small house in an old industrial area suggest they just don't have the option)

Sev’s family either has no inclination or ability to amend Tobias' clothes instead of Eileen's, and/or don’t have any family friends to borrow/take hand-me-down clothes from; they are his parents’ clothes. Harry is ‘fortunate’ in that he has Dudley to take clothes from. The obvious outcome being here that otherwise he’d be wearing Vernon’s old coat and Petunia’s blouse)

Harry is raised in a middle-class home with a reasonable enough income. He gets pocket money (probably paltry and inconsistent: “The Dursleys haven’t given me pocket money for about six years”, CoS) can sneak out and eat at night, get cake (however gross) from his neighbour as she tells him about her cats. He eats with the Dursleys, plays with Dudley's toys if he's left alone, and gets gifts (even if they are pathetic). Harry’s neglect is wilful - and malicious

I get the idea that the Snape family are so poor and so unhappy that their neglect isn't even intentional, it's just how their lives are. they're steeped in it, living in a dilapidated area, poor, in an unhappy and volatile marriage

Sev is described, even as an adult, as being skinny - so maybe that's just how he's wired - but maybe (almost certainly given the other context clues and the era) he's also underfed as a kid

If we reach into parallels with the other 'abandoned boy' (voldemort), sev's mum was possibly similar to merope gaunt - unhappy, and either unwilling or unable to use magic to defend herself or sev against tobias (this conjecture is all from hazy memory; obviously i haven't read that far yet).

Overall ideas:

Neither Sev nor Harry have warm family figures. Far from Molly's checking that her gaggle are in order on platform 9 3/4 the Dursleys leave Harry there alone - and Eileen doesn't seem that bothered when Sev is about to leave (nor does he seem that bothered that he's about to leave her - he's more interested in Lily). But Snape’s lack of familial closeness seems a consequence of their situation, rather than an intentional choice, as it was with the Dursleys and Harry.

Sev (unlike Harry) doesn't really know 'how the other half live' - as far as we can tell, he has no access to the average family dynamic of the Dursleys (and they do seem happy with one another, they love Dudley, and would be living their 'ordinary' dream life if Harry wasn't there to complicate it). To add to that, I get the idea that Sev genuinely doesn't really understand why Lily likes (or loves) Petunia; he has no concept of why a family member’s opinion might count. There's not much love to lose in his family, and like Harry, he can’t wait to leave - there’s nothing holding him back. 

Unlike Harry who doesn’t know anything yet, Snape knows he's a wizard and has known all his life. He knows a lot about the wizarding world, either from his mother or her books; he tells Lily about it. Sev loves (as Harry comes to love) magic, and what it represents: escape, freedom, control over his life - and a certain amount of positive attention and interest from Lily which he is so clearly lacking elsewhere. 

But (sort of like Harry), his house at Spinner's End doesn't seem like the sort of place where magic was used like The Burrow, for example, or Malfoy Manor where Draco already flies ("doesn't your dad like magic?"; he’s alone in his room shooting down flies). It’s also not apparently used for defence/retaliation by his mother, if the shouting scene with Sev's father is any indication.

But (un)intentionally, depending on how you interpret Sev's actions with Petunia and the branch, Sev has displayed magic when he was angry or afraid, much like most magical children - and much like Harry.

Harry's examples are ‘sweeter’ at that age, on the whole: he shrinks an ugly jumper, grows his hair back, and jumps/flies on a roof, and removes glass from a snake enclosure in a comical scene. Sev drops a branch on someone, and they are genuinely upset and leave. (Some of this might be to do with the lighter tone of the earlier books as well).

Seeing as Petunia was fine enough to run away after the event and Lily stays friends with him, it can't have been an enormous branch. Sev seems guilty, so I'm certain that whilst he did want to retaliate (and for something to happen to Petunia), I'm not certain that he actually intended it to (or perhaps he did; I wouldn't blame him. I also really enjoy the idea that he's in control of his magic enough to cause it on purpose; I get the idea he's quite powerful, because of his learning to fly unsupported later in his life, which is no mean feat by this universe's rules, and his skills in wandless magic like Legi/Occlumency, spell creation, etc). [side note: that then opens up a can of worms for me bc how powerful is Lily if she can float/fly at nine, Harry can either Apparate or float/fly in primary school, at presumably a similar age - but those were accidental, brief 'flights' I suppose compared to Voldemort and Snape showing sustained flight during the battle of seven potters and jumping out of a Hogwarts window and flying away - but i digress).

So, while Harry’s no doormat, Severus is possibly more spiteful and reactive at that age; he's defiant when he drops a branch on Petunia, he's shooting down flies when he gets his wand, he's making disparaging noises to James, he's accusing Petunia of spying, and all of the other things people say to suggest he's always been a terrible person. I think, given the glimpses into a stressful, poverty-stricken and loveless home, possibly also abusive, that's essentially all he knows when threatened. Harry seems overwhelmingly polite to Hagrid in early PS - but then Hagrid has always been kind and almost reverential, which in turn would affect how a person responds. We mainly see Sev respond to Petunia in a similar context, and he’s nice enough to Lily, if a bit awkward and lacking in Harry’s politeness. 

I can see Sev, with his more ‘prickly’ upbringing, being more like Tom here in the same situation of not knowing he was a wizard - and acting more like ‘I knew I was special’ than ‘no, sorry, you’ve got the wrong guy’. But again, that might be because of the intersection of his personality and his upbringing - Harry, too, was defiant and neglected, though I get the feeling Sev’s general situation was more violent somehow, so it could’ve gone either way.

Diagon Alley

The next place where Harry and Sev's differences would be readily apparent would be in Diagon Alley. This is less about their similarities vs differences and more of a series of general rambles and speculation. 

Would Snape have even gone to Diagon? By which I mean, would he wear his mother's old robes to school, or get new ones? Did he have her old books? Would she have saved them for 11+ years? (books, maybe; robes, possibly not).

Assuming Sev went to Diagon, as all/most young Wizards do, I imagine that despite Sev knowing about magical culture he's rarely actually seen it in action because of my point above about his father not liking magic/anything much and his mother not using magic to defend herself - so he’s definitely not seen it on that scale. He'd be every bit as blown away as Harry was by the wonders of Diagon Alley, the shops, the brooms, the pets, the books - because his dream is finally coming true! He's on his way to Hogwarts!  

…Until it came to the buying. Young Sev has no vault overflowing with gold. He has no option to realistically contemplate buying a solid gold cauldron like Harry does, even if he might like to. He probably doesn't get a pet as a lovely going away (or in Harry's case, birthday) gift from a parental figure, and there’s no mention of a pet when Sev’s on Platform 9 ¾. Eileen would have had to save, or keep some money back/hidden, for all of that, given the state of his home and Muggle clothes.

tangent: by the time they reach the train, and even in diagon itself, sev is more of a ron than a harry. but how poor is the weasley family really if they always get plenty to eat and a lovely large home and all of their school supplies and brooms at home for so many kids on a single income, even if most stuff is secondhand? maybe i'm just biased bc I grew up poor and it was just me and mum and stuff Just Was secondhand, it's not the end of the world even if ron's embarrassed by it.

it's suggested in later books that ron's never (or rarely) owned a galleon. seven galleons then (assuming the prices are similar in sev's generation) seems a lot then for a wand; 9 galleons for a new book (advanced potion making apparently cost that, HBP); possibly it was eileen's own old book, and I know the curriculum doesn't change much if harry's still using it and the book was printed in the 50s, but in CoS, with lockhart's book(s), and the weasleys talking, suggest they'd have to have bought at least a few new books each year, so we can assume sev would need to do the same and otherwise he’d be borrowing old books. not to mention the potions ingredients, the robes, etc. I assume Sev got his own wand but what if he used his mother's old one (especially if she didn’t use it much - which would be nice/interesting, as another parallel where he takes predominantly after/aligns more strongly with his mother/female figures which was discussed in several other metas).

The other thing that struck me was that Harry wanted to buy a book of curses and jinxes (Curses and Counter-Curses: Bewitch your friends and befuddle your enemies!) for use on Dudley, but Hagrid dissuaded him - much like how Sev was described as knowing "more curses when he arrived at school than half the kids in seventh year" and maybe might want to curse his father and/or Petunia, but certainly learnt to curse the Marauders at a later stage.

The scene with Draco and Harry at Madam Malkin’s was also interesting to me when drawing conclusions for Sev. When comparing Harry’s experience on the Hogwarts Express to the robe shop, I’m curious how it would’ve differed or been the same. 

At Madam Malkin’s, Draco sees what he would’ve seen in Sev: a boy, small for his age, in hand-me-downs, with possibly weird hair - and Draco attempts to chat with him. 

Draco here, to an extent, represents any Malfoy (as we know, Lucius befriended Sev), and indeed any Pureblood, in the same situation - a boy raised in a wealthy magical family, with all of the experience of magic and privilege that comes with it. He wants a racing broom, he’s practically bored of magic, none of this is special. But it is special to Harry, and it’s special to Sev; it’s their lifeline and their escape. I’m not sure how much Sev would’ve appreciated or wanted to emulate that bored, over it attitude; on the one hand ‘no foolish wand-waving’ indicates that to an extent he’s not impressed with showy magic for the sake of it, on the other, he’s the Half Blood Prince. He’s done plenty of foolish wand-waving in his time, and finds it fascinating. 

Back to the conversation with Draco. Like Harry, Sev would not have played Quidditch (he can’t fly intuitively in the brief memory we see, being more akin to someone like Hermione or Neville in that regard); he would likely not have a broom already. He’s critical of ‘big Quidditch heroes’ - or is he jealous? He certainly enjoys Quidditch enough to have a rivalry with McGonagall, and that might be another part to why he ended up disliking James - maybe he really was jealous of James’ skill on the Quidditch pitch.

Then, Draco discusses houses. Here there’d be a slight difference between Sev and Harry - Harry has no idea, really, what house he’d be in - he doesn’t even know what the houses are. But Sev wants to be a Slytherin, he knows that already. Possibly because his mother was, furthering their similarities/alignment? It does seem to generally run in families, what with James “Gryffindor like my dad” Potter, Sirius “my whole family have been in Slytherin but maybe I’ll break the tradition” Black, and Draco “I know I’ll be in Slytherin because all of my family have been” Malfoy and, of course, the whole host of Weasleys). 

So, wanting to be in Slytherin would be a point in Sev’s favour, as far as the Malfoys were concerned, and wanting it (and possibly having a family member already in Slytherin) would be useful in that context, too, obviously.

But how would Sev react at this point to Draco’s personality? Harry is reminded of Dudley, and I’m not sure we have enough evidence to say whether Sev had someone similar in his life who bullied him (what his father did I would argue went far beyond bullying, and would be a much different dynamic). But Petunia would possibly have acted as a stand-in here, either as herself, or as a representation of the other Muggles in the area who knew ‘that Snape’ family from the poor address, for the reason of why Sev was otherwise friendless. I don’t think it’s a leap to imagine that Sev was unpopular with the other local kids.

Draco goes on to ask Harry whether his parents were “our kind” - to which Sev has a more ‘undesirable’ answer than Harry, because one of his parents was a Muggle. Draco talks of servants, and Sev probably wouldn’t have the same irritable reaction to that, as we don’t see any implication that he was treated in that way by his parents, unlike Harry. But also unlike Harry, Snape would be there with his witch mother (and not a “savage”), and knew about Hogwarts already. Unlike Harry, Snape might have been considered by Draco/the Malfoys/Purebloods as “the other sort” - the child of non-magical people. Draco asks for Harry’s surname, presumably to check whether he was of suitable stock (which Snape, with a Muggle surname, wouldn’t be).

Perhaps Sev would’ve similarly hated the snotty, biased, spoilt brat attitude.

Or perhaps, in this situation, he’d aspire to be like the Malfoys - to become the snotty, spoilt type. To be the bully, instead of the victim. Sev did eventually befriend the Malfoys, after all - but how much of that was an immediate friendship (unlikely, at that point, as Malfoy was older and what ~16yo wants to regularly hang out with an 11yo). We see that he’s possibly headed that way by 5th/6th year by aligning with Mulciber and Avery, but that was a new enough development that Lily commented on it at that point - but at this early stage, it’s made clear that Sev is ‘the victim’ of the bully, or the underdog, like Harry - and someone like Draco probably wouldn’t have thought much of him. (James and Sirius certainly didn’t, though not for these same exact reasons).

The Hogwarts Express

And finally, on the train. Harry has experienced celebrity in glimpses by now, at the Leaky Cauldron and at Ollivander’s - but it’s on the train and the platform where everyone from the Weasleys to Draco wants to gawk and/or befriend him.

I’ve said already that by the time they reach the train, and even in Diagon itself, Sev is more of a Ron than a Harry. Harry knows what it is to have hand-me-downs and not be able to afford anything, but that’s Sev’s continued existence unless his family suddenly won the lottery. And whilst Harry bought a heap of sweets and got a delightful new friend in Ron, Sev and Lily were (as discussed above) compelled to leave his cabin because of James and Sirius… just as Harry was interrupted by Draco, Crabbe, and Goyle. But it’s James who overhears Sev and interrupts and then says, practically word-for-word, what Draco does in Madam Malkins’ (James’ “Who wants to be in Slytherin? I think I’d leave, wouldn’t you?” vs Draco’s “Imagine being in Hufflepuff, I think I’d leave, wouldn’t you?”). Now, Sev does this too, to an extent, making a small disparaging noise at James too for wanting to be in Gryffindor like his dad (to me, another hint that Sev wants to be in Slytherin because of his mum). But that was after James had already interrupted Sev’s conversation with Lily; otherwise, Sev was content to keep to himself.

And Draco is hounding Harry for opposite reasons. Draco is attempting to ‘befriend’ Harry. Harry is a ‘desirable’ connection - he’s rich, famous, of a good wizarding name, and if adult Snape’s speech to Bellatrix is any indication, possibly considered a ‘powerful dark wizard’ around which Voldemort’s followers could rally. He’s ‘got it all’. By comparison, Snape is undesirable - he has all of Harry’s social setbacks - he looks poor, he is poor, he’s raised by Muggles and has immediate Muggle heritage, he probably wasn’t raised with extensive/overly frequent magic use, and is a bit weird looking in general - and he has none of Harry’s desirable traits like a good name, reputation, money, family, or connections. “Prince” is not a famous name by the time Harry is in school, and given wizard lifespans, they probably weren’t a big name a generation ago, either. All Sev has is knowledge of the wizarding world, which might fool or impress someone like Draco for a bit. But it’s implied that Draco believes there’s a fundamental difference in how Muggleborns/those with Muggle families are raised compared to ‘true’ wizarding families (and there really is). But Sev was raised in a Muggle area, likely not using magic or being an active part of the culture since he’s so starved for someone magical to talk to - and he’s shortly going to be in a wizarding school, where Sev’s second hand knowledge (from his mother) essentially becomes inconsequential anyway.

All in all, Draco simply wouldn’t bother, if this were a different universe. And Lucius (and others in Slytherin) probably asked all of the necessary vetting questions that Malfoy did over the course of the time in the robe shop and on the train, and reached the same conclusion: Snape wasn’t worth their time. That is, until he proved himself an adept wizard, some time later in school. (To be clear if I haven’t already: Draco is just a stand-in in this ramble for general Pureblood/Slytherin beliefs, asking the sorts of questions and acting in ways that reflect those values).

What that all means is that Snape continued to face the everyday challenges that were essentially eliminated from Harry’s life once he reached Hogwarts; challenges which would’ve had greater impact in a house like Slytherin which has a reputation for blood purity and wizarding supremacy, and many people in it who hail from rich, well-connected Pureblood families who probably are all, one way or another, related by blood or marriage anyway. Lucius was a Prefect by the time Sev got to Hogwarts, and I think Draco became one, and those sorts of attitudes were shared by Draco’s Slytherin peers and not outliers. 

Some more conjecture now: I think it’s safe to say that instead of the jocular vibe of the Gryffindor common room, an unofficial but unquestioned hierarchy would inevitably develop in Slytherin and its members would be expected to fall in line. Much like how Crabbe and Goyle followed Draco, and Pansy and Blaise etc followed Draco’s lead, I expect most of Sev’s peers would be expected to fall in line under Lucius and later authority figures as well - to keep the peace in their fancy aristocratic families, to keep the peace in their dorms, and in the real world, with a war going on and Voldemort practically recruiting from the Slytherin common room. It would’ve benefitted Sev to keep his head down in these conditions, to join in, to butter up - because unlike Harry, Sev would’ve had to work hard to make friends (being generally awkward and ‘undesirable’ as a friend by Draco/Slytherin standards). Nobody from Slytherin came to his aid in SWM, possibly because of those reasons and/or because he’d spent years being openly friends with Lily who was a Gryffindor and a Muggleborn (and thus also undesirable).