Lost and found

how did Dumbledore manage to convince Severus to keep his mouth shut? and how did Dumbledore react when it was brought up or questioned later, when severus was already in his 20s or 30s?

Well, I think Severus was probably sick to death of everything they kept doing to him, so he had suspicions that Remus was a werewolf and was probably putting the pieces together, because he wasn’t stupid. And he was probably trying to catch him red-handed. I mean, I think he wanted to catch them as Animagi and wanted to catch Remus as a werewolf because, for whatever reason, he probably suspected more things.

So I think Sirius took advantage of that and maybe dared him to go. Or maybe he simply set him up somehow so that he would go there, and Severus went because, honestly, I get it. If I think I’m right about something, I don’t care if it’s dangerous or if it’s going to get me into trouble.

It’s like when you think someone is cheating on you and you know you shouldn’t go to that nightclub or that shopping centre, but you go anyway to cause a scene. You know it’s going to be terrible for you, but you go because that person has gaslit you and made you think you were crazy, and at last you’ll be able to say: right, I’m not crazy, this is actually happening. So I think something like that was probably going on in his head. Like, everyone is gaslighting me, saying I’m obsessed, saying it’s all nonsense, but I’m going to prove that I’m not obsessed and that everyone has been trying to make me believe I’m mad, when I know perfectly well what’s going on.

And I think that’s why he fell for it. It feels consistent with his personality type, and it also feels very human, because all of us would do it, lads, sorry. And if you wouldn’t, it’s because you’re not neurodivergent and you’re a normie, so I’m not interested in you as a person.

That said, I honestly think Dumbledore simply told him he had to keep his bloody mouth shut, and he obeyed because he wasn’t in any position not to obey Dumbledore at that moment. He had absolutely nothing. And I don’t know how he convinced him. I think simply by being an authority figure. In the end, Severus was a very vulnerable person at that point. Maybe he threatened him with consequences or something, I don’t know. Realistically, I don’t know. In my own personal interpretation I can make up whatever I like. I prefer to think that Severus simply gave up in that moment and realised that the one person who might have helped him—the headmaster of the school—was siding with his abusers rather than with him. And that no matter what he did, he wasn’t going to get anything out of it. And he truly needed to stay at that school, because that school was the only means he had of surviving in life. So he thought, fine then, to hell with it. And I’ve always thought he didn’t tell his Slytherin classmates or anyone else. What for? To create more problems for himself? It wouldn’t make much sense, honestly.

And you know something? I think he never brought it up and never threw it in Lily’s face either, because Severus isn’t that kind of person. In the same way, he never really threw things in Lily’s face. Severus doesn’t have the nerve to confront the people he genuinely cares about emotionally or reproach them for the awful things they’ve done to him. I think Dumbledore, at some point in his life, became a kind of father figure for him, filling a void he had there. He was the only person who truly knew him and the only person who had seen his worst side, and that tied Severus to him very strongly in many ways. And he wasn’t going to risk losing that. Someone who feels that lonely and truly is that lonely in the world is not going to risk losing the only person who really knew him completely and in every aspect of his life just to throw things back in his face.

For me, Severus is very brave in some ways. He’s brave about things that would be impossible for other people, and he has resilience for things many people would find unbearable. He endures them and carries through them with a lot of dignity. But I do think he has a major flaw: he isn’t capable of confronting people he has an attachment to, even when they treat him badly, because of fear of abandonment and all that sort of thing. So I don’t think he ever really said anything. What was he going to say? You let them nearly kill me when I was fifteen and did nothing.

Well, Dumbledore would have given him some excuse, would have gaslit him, would have used every bit of psychological manipulation in the world, and that would be that. I also think Severus at that stage knew Dumbledore well enough to know he wasn’t going to get anything from it. He wasn’t going to get the answer he wanted, nor the apology he wanted, because Dumbledore is a bloody egocentric narcissist, and Dumbledore fans say no, but yes.

Since you'll love bringing up Nazis, then I’m sure you’ve read plenty about how indoctrination, manipulation and grooming of young children are conducted and how they affect people. Nazis and the Hitler Youth didn’t appear out of the wild, did they? There were psychopaths, yes, but also brainwashed and groomed youth in those groups. That context never excuses the harm done, but ignoring why people are radicalized and focusing only on individual moral failure helps no one. Without addressing systemic factors, nothing changes.

You’ll undermine how, on top of brainwashing and grooming, chronic abuse can rewire someone to the extent that their morals get distorted. Snape's situation has a lot more to do with indoctrination, exploitation of existing biases (in Snape’s case, the fact that his abusive Muggle father and his witch mother clearly made him regard Muggles in a very negative light, and the Slytherins encouraged that feeling), the lie that the person in question is “special” and not like all the others (something everyone craves to hear), and the promise of escape from poverty and gaining influence that is sorely lacking.

You must also know that someone being manipulated and indoctrinated from a young age, or having their vulnerabilities and hopes exploited, cannot simply be written off as dumb, evil, or as someone who “shouldn’t have chosen that.” The psychology behind hate groups, cults, and gangs is much more complex than the “he should know better” line people keep using. If it was so easy, such groups wouldn’t be as successful as they are. You'll just love throwing that word around because you'll are way too lazy to wrack your brains and think critically and analyze what might have caused people to join it in the first place. You'll don't actually give a fuck about it though, don't you'll? Some of you'll just put up a false SJW bravado upfront just to get your egos boosted every-time someone praises you for how politically correct you are, being the next revolutionary icon and shit. Real SJW requires getting in the trenches, understanding harsh realities of the world and different mindsets of people and seeing all perspectives and roots of social issues.

The phrase “he should know better” sounds like something said by someone who’s never actually been in a position of inferiority and deprivation. It’s easy to judge choices made out of desperation and powerlessness, turn a blind eye to what led to them, and dismiss their efforts to change, even if those efforts weren’t for the best reasons.

The entire point of Snape’s character is about how kids who come from abusive and impoverished homes and bullying environments get groomed into extremist groups that take advantage of their miserable situations, and how, when that trauma is neglected, they stay stuck in that childlike mentality even as they grow up. It’s a realistic example of teenagers being coaxed into criminal gangs in real life. Whether you like it or not, it still happens and you not liking to admit it, doesn't make it less of a fact.

And people like James do not help that; they only solidify the hatred already existing due to the abuse Snape went through from the first Muggle adult in his life for 11 years, simply for being different. Snape has at least an explanation for why he grew up the way he did, whereas James had no real reason to be who he was, even at the age of 16.

Abused kids attach themselves to any place where they get acceptance and appreciation, and unfortunately Snape got that from the wrong crowd. For someone who’s been deprived of that their entire life, it means a lot, and they may be unable to think rationally. It’s easy for others to say what he should have done, but reality doesn’t always work that way. Such individuals are often afraid to lose the one place where they feel accepted.

James’s actions as a bully, the gist of them and some specifics, are canon. He was an extremely cruel and gloating bully who relished his victim’s helplessness and humiliation, although not quite the worst he could be - so far as we know he didn’t rape or rob anybody and he drew the line at killing.

Snape’s actions as a Death Eater are fanfiction, which is often much more highly coloured than canon, and people often become far more wedded to fanfiction, especially their own, than to canon.

Here’s what we canonically know about Snape as a Death Eater:

It’s extremely unlikely he joined before he left school in summer 1978.

At the end of 1979 or first week of 1980 (while Trelawney was being interviewed for a job she started in the second week of January 1980) Snape spied on Dumbledore at The Hog’s Head, overheard a fragment of prophecy about a mysterious warrior or weapon that was a threat to the Dark Lord, and reported it. We can be fairly sure he was already a Death Eater at that point, so that it was his duty to report a threat to his commander.

He definitely defected in December 1980, give or take a few weeks, once Voldemort decided the prophecy might refer to the Potters’ new baby.

Therefore, he was a real Death Eater for a minimum of 11 months and a maximum of 30 months. What little evidence we have - and it’s very thin - suggests he joined in summer 1979, making him a real Death Eater for about 18 months. The argument for this is that in summer 1996 he tells Bellatrix that on Voldemort’s return, in summer 1995, he had had sixteen years’ worth of information to give him. The Doylesian explanation is that Rowling can’t count, but within the story it’s not credible that *Snape* can’t count, or he would have blown himself up. So something significant to do with his supposed service to Voldemort, and from which he is counting, occurred in or around summer 1979: and his joining the Death Eaters is the only thing which we can be certain happened, and for which we do not already have a different established date.

The Death Eaters seem to be loosely based on the IRA - who rarely deliberately killed civilians, unless they got in the way of a military or political target. Everyone we know of that the Death Eaters killed during Vold War One, and whose identities we know, was either an Order member or an Auror or their immediate family, who may just have been collateral damage. The idea of the Death Eaters as indiscriminate wholesale killers is largely fanfiction: the canon support for it is very weak. In addition there were over four hundred of them out of a population of about ten thousand (including children), so they can’t *all* have been mass murderers or the whole society would have collapsed.

Snape himself never killed anybody prior to Dumbledore (or at minimum he never murdered anybody), but he did witness people being killed, and whilst he was a real Death Eater, i.e. prior to December 1980, he did not try to save them.

However, as a real Death Eater he was so low-key that even an Order member who hated him never heard even a rumour that he was a member, despite being known to have had school-friends who became Death Eaters.

Voldemort sent him to try to get the DADA post, which implies that something about him made him seem like a viable candidate. Given this, and his known skill-set, I assume that he was working as a curse-breaker: and that may well have been the capacity in which he served Voldemort as well.

Shortly before his defection he asked Voldemort, as a favour, to spare Lily, and Voldemort agreed to try to do so. This is the sole evidence that he had any standing as a Death Eater, when he was one. However, Voldemort may have felt Snape deserved a reward, since he had relayed the prophecy; and in any case Voldie wanted to recruit Lily, so it was a very easy promise to make, which cost him nothing (or at least which he *thought* would cost him nothing).

We know that by the end of Vold War One Snape had the Dark Mark, which indicates membership of some kind of inner circle - a great honour for such a young man. By that point, however, he had spent nearly a year as a quadruple agent relaying drips of genuine information, scripted by Dumbledore, with the specific purpose of getting Voldemort to trust and confide in him. We have no evidence that he had the Dark Mark before he defected.

We do not know what he may have done while he was a fake Death Eater, acting on behalf of the Order, other than relay information in both directions. We know that he didn’t actually murder anyone, and that he saved people if and when he could. Beyond that, other Death Eaters seem to defer to him, which might mean they find him frightening, but Bellatrix says he’s all talk and no action.

Snape brought James up for the first time in PoA, after Harry had a reckless escapade to Hogsmeade – when one of James' friends was Harry's teacher already, and Severus was surrounded by so many things that reminded him of Marauders outside of just Harry himself.

The person who initially, in the first book, had shared the information about the connection Snape had with Harry's father was Quirrel, then Albus added onto it – Severus did NOT have a say in this. Harry got to know that without his consent, and not from him. Maybe Severus would've preferred to never raise this issue at all, but the choise had been made for him.

Even two years later in PoA, Snape just says that Harry's father was arrogant, which is genuinely one of James' milder faults; and shares some factual information to override ALBUS ALREADY SHARING THIS INFORMATION IN A WAY THAT VICTIMBLAMED SEVERUS. Sorry for the victim daring to share their perspective after they had been victimblamed behind their back, and now its being thrown in their face, I guess.

Severus projects James on Harry, yes, especially when he is triggered; it doesn't mean that he talks about James all the time, because he absolutely does not. He didn't bring James up for 2 years in any capacity, and it took Sirius escaping, Lupin being hired and awfully shady, and Harry going to Hogsmeade despite several sourses of mortal danger, messing with Severus' slytherins, and then lying for it to be brought up; Harry himself admits that "Snape was trying to provoke him into telling the truth. He wasn’t going to do it. Snape had no proof – yet."

Anyway, Harry's attitude to Snape aside, Harry's the one who tries to insult Snape using what he believes he knows. What did people expect Snape to do, take the insult? Pat him on his head for his insolence?

Not to mention, this is all taking place in Britain- and unlike the USA I'm not going to sit here and expect them to share our values so I have no idea whatsoever what the teacher/student expected relationship is supposed to be aside from what I've seen in jokey videos comparing them- with British teachers being far harsher and US teachers being more friendly. Either way, in Britain, especially in the 90s, and ESPECIALLY in a world that's clearly more old fashioned, you do not get to talk to a teacher the way Harry does to Snape. There are boundaries and limits, which Harry crosses repeatedly in a way he does not do to the other teachers. And bringing up Snape's past in a way to shame him absolutely crosses those boundaries.

Snape correcting Harry is the mildest consequence for that action. Because Harry DID bring consequences upon himself for being disrespectful, and that's the natural consequences of him throwing what is already an incident portrayed to be an embarrassment for Snape into Snape's face.

And even if Snape started it by saying Harry's as arrogant as James.... So what? Harry IS arrogant, that's a genuine flaw of his. He IS arrogant, because he thinks he knows better at age 13 than the adults around him, including the one who he's been told is trying to protect him. He's not listening to Dumbledore because he believes at his tiny age that he knows better than Dumbledore, a wizard venerated for his knowledge. He's arrogant, that's why he refused to believe that he could be tricked by a vision from Voldemort. Arrogance doesn't just come in the form of "everyone look at me I'm so great" like it did in James, arrogance can also be in the form of hubris, of assuming you know better than the people whose literal role is to know better- and Harry constantly behaves like he knows better. Of course, in the genre of a fairytale, the children do know better sometimes, and the adults are foolish, however in the world of Harry Potter this isn't quite the case and we see that Harry tends to involve himself in situations the adults were already taking care of. And when it comes to certain bits of information, like say a certain teacher not being evil, Harry thinks he knows better than Dumbledore. DUMBLEDORE. THE GUY WHO CAN EVEN INFLUENCE THE MINISTRY BECAUSE HE KNOWS MORE THAN THEM. HARRY THINKS HE KNOWS MORE THAN THAT GUY.

Yes, children can be arrogant. That's true. But Harry's not in a position where that's safe. His literal life is constantly in danger, and the adults can only do so much to protect him when he's actively out to disobey them and avoid their protections.

Honestly, I’ve said this a lot: I don’t think Severus’s worst actions are that bad, and some people in fandom throw their hands up at that, which I find super childish. Because, honestly, the worst he did is pretty low on the scale.

I mean, what did he really do? Say a name in a moment of stress? That’s not that serious. I find getting scandalized over someone saying a name during a traumatic moment ridiculous. It seemed ridiculous to me as a kid reading the book, it seemed ridiculous when I reread the series, and it still seems ridiculous as an adult. Is it wrong? Of course it’s wrong, no one’s denying that. But every questionable act depends on context, and not all acts are equally bad. Calling someone a name? Girl, that’s barely a blip on the scale.

Then there’s the whole joining a terrorist organization thing. Yeah, that’s bad, but I’m not going to judge a resource-less teen for affiliating with people he saw as a refuge, a way out of social exclusion. I find it really problematic when fandom expects me to harshly condemn a fictional character for something I literally don’t harshly condemn in real life. That’s not my problem. People thinking “I wouldn’t do that” or acting holier-than-thou? Whatever. I’m not changing my opinion because Kelsy from Iowa, who says is anti-fascist, says there’s no excuse for an abused teen at risk of exclusion to get sucked into a criminal organization indoctrinating vulnerable teens. Kelsy from Iowa is an idiot, and anyone who thinks like her is too.

Is joining a terrorist group wrong? Yes. But doing it at 17 with zero options is not the same as doing it at 37 or at 17 but with lots of choices. That’s why context matters. That’s why when judging crimes or probabilities of recidivism, context is key. Haters love to say excusing this is just fan obsession but no, genuinely, I see it this way. I work with people who’ve been in prison multiple times, some for violent crimes, and I see them as fundamentally good people who were pushed into situations by shitty circumstances. So if I see it that way in real life, why wouldn’t I see it that way for a fictional character who literally hasn’t harmed anyone because he doesn’t exist?

Then there’s the whole “bitter asshole” thing —which I don’t condemn— because I’m a bitter asshole, and anyone over 30 with a job they hate and emotional damage has major bitterness. And compared to the teachers I’ve had, Severus is a saint.

I was homeless. I was homeless as a child and as an adult. That shit sucks believe it or not.

The uncertainty. The ever-present grimy feeling from lack of access to running water. Having nothing to your name. The shame you feel is asking your fellow man for the bare minimum. Just so much shame, man.

"Unhoused" is so clinical. A technical term. Sure, its not incorrect, but it doesn't properly convey the emotional and psychological impact homelessness has on you.

You say "house", I think of a structure.

1) No, we don't have any confirmation that Severus had known that Remus was a werewolf prior to The Trick, I have a meta on this here and here and here. This is a wildly popular but very textually weak interpretation of a dialogue between him and Lily. Nothing actually indicates that he even had a solid theory, much less had known for sure, that Remus was a werewolf prior to the murder attempt. He most likely had shared the "theory" with Lily after the Trick, since their conversation is taking place at least a day or a few after it had happened. What he says, exactly, and Lily's reaction very much don't imply that this is something he was talking to her about often, or for a long time — if you actually can read, and if you dont think Lily was a profoundly stupid person unable to make basic logical connections, which despite not really liking her, I do not.

2) Aside from the little fact the information that Severus had seen Lupin going into the shack with madame Pomfrey coming from Black and Lupin themselves – which is a deeply trustworthy source on what Snape had seen and had thought, because who would know if not them, right🥺🥺🥺🥺 –, we have every reason to think that Severus trying to report Marauders to the teachers had everything to do with James and Sirius, whose presence there was NOT approved by the staff. We don't know what Sirius had told him or had made him believe, unfortunately, but if it was the implication that James and Sirius did something illegal in the shack, then Severus had every reason to go see what are they doing or storing there. James, Sirius and Peter DESERVED and HAD TO to be punished, this is absolutely a reality accurate sentiment. They did forbidden, dangerous things that could easily result in someone else's, not just Snape's, death or maulment. We don't know what information Severus had, but we know that there WERE illegal things secretly happening in the shack, that weren't just Remus being a werewolf – not that it's a small thing in itself, considering how irresponsibly it had been handled.

For Snape, James and Sirius are clearly his main perpetrators, not Remus who's mostly an enabler – he even refers to Remus as "that Lupin" when he talks about him to Lily, a clear contrast to how they talk about James Potter, so there is absolutely no reason to think that he actually was obsessed with Remus – other than the words of people who justify their own crimes, abuse and inaction. That would also give him every reason to think that going to the shack isn't dangerous for him, if it isn't dangerous for James and Sirius (and Peter, yes yes, idrgaf about Peter since he'd do whatever James and Sirius do at school).

3) We get this sweet story from Black and Lupin, and even they fucking admit that it was a "trick", an *INTENTIONAL* acton on Sirius' part meant to deceive Severus. Lupin says that Snape "of course" tried to get into the shack, not indicating that from his perspective and to his undeserstanding, Snape would have any reason to fear for his life. Sirius says that getting killed would "serve Snape right", so we see that it was something he either directly intended, or accepted as a possible outcome.

Absolutely nothing in the words of the murder attempter himself, and his other victim, who most likely in order to remain friends with him tried to rationalise away any indication that Sirius actually would use him as a murder weapon (we have no reason to think that he wouldn't, out of compassion or care for Lupin, considering that James and Sirius had no problems letting Remus out of the shack where he could maul any random villager, and they didn't really think about what can be the outcome for their "friend". if Sirius had issues with Remus potentially murdering someone, he would've said "no, I dont want remus to get into trouble", not "im bored, wish it was full moon") try to sell that it was irrational for Snape to go into the shack with the information that Sirius had given him – and we know for a fact they are both fucking victimblamers, whitewashing their actions not only here, but in later books, too. So if they don't entirely, maybe there was no room for taking that further, huh?

It's only the words of the people already proven to be liars about Snape's history that tell us Snape wanted to know what was going on in order to get them into trouble, in order to snitch/sneak, and not Snape himself, and Snape says the group played a "joke" on him that nearly killed him. Of course, he wouldn't say he got himself into that situation with intentions of spying, but from his words alone, it seems like the Marauders were the aggressors/instigators in the werewolf incident rather than them pulling the prank in response to Severus.

Not only that, but the other instance of the Marauders acting violently against Severus has them instigate it out of boredom, while Severus has no interest in them. So it's more than likely that Severus didn't even do anything but rather Sirius was just bored. Hence, later on, when we hear Remus and Sirius' side, Remus is lying through his teeth to pin the blame on Snape as much as he can.

Another evidence for that is the fact that Remus frames it as Snape wanting to get them in trouble specifically rather than just learn their secret. Remus turns Snape into a sneak, a snitch. And a snitch is one of the most despised people ever. Look at how much people hate Cho Chang (those who watched the movies specifically) because she snitched on the others. It's not the worst thing done in the series by any means, and yet it's completely despised even when someone has a good reason.

And having Snape be a potential snitch turns the blame on him even more than just him being nosy, even though it makes zero sense for him to snitch. If Snape saw Remus coming with madam pomfrey, why would he assume that there's something going on that's against the rules? Madam pomfrey's a member of staff. And with the added context of the Marauders constantly bullying him, and everyone else, why would he have even bothered reporting them when it would have been obvious by that point that there was nothing anyone would do? Why would Snape risk getting their attention by hunting them down? And if I remember correctly, all of this went down during the year they were taking their OWLs, and so why would Severus be wasting time on the Marauders and not on revision, especially when we've seen how much he took his exams seriously fron the other memory of the Marauders where he doesn't even pay attention to anything because of his focus on the exam.

So in my not so humble opinion, the likelihood that Snape was actually out to report whatever the Marauders were doing in the shrieking shack is next to none, and the only thing corroborated by both sides is that Snape was tricked. But what really happened is anyone's guess, because for all we know James and Sirius could have easily just physically forced him into the Shack and ditched him. Note that Severus calls it a "joke" and not a trick, and you could call pushing someone into somewhere a "joke" more than a "trick", whereas Remus, who has every reason to downplay what happened, calls it a "trick" which also has the added bonus of implying Snape was stupid and got fooled.