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< The Library ~ Has anyone else finished the book???? |
| Owlbait |
 Posted: Sun Jul 17, 2005 12:41 pm |
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Joined: 01 Jul 2005
Posts: 92
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Verity Brown wrote:
I don't think it was a whole year. But we have been told explicitly (I think by Dumbledore in the trial scene in GoF) that Snape came over *before* Voldie's fall. The real question here, however, is how his claim to Bella that he had been sent by Voldie to infiltrate Hogwarts fits into the scheme. I don't think we have any reason to doubt this statement. And Voldie's basic interest in Hogwarts would have made such a plan desirable to him. The question is: was it Voldie's idea? or did an already converted Snape suggest it? And where does that event fit on the timeline?
Verity
My guess at the sequence (is this a ficplot coming on?) is:
Snape told to spy on Dumbledore, apply for teaching job (not sure if Snape or Voldemort's idea in the first place but they were probably both happy with the plan)
Snape asks Dumbledore for a teaching job. He is either refused or not answered.
Snape follows Dumbledore to his meeting with Trelawney. Learns about half of the prophecy, reports to Voldemort. None of them can know who it means, the babies are not yet born. Candidate mothers are pregnant by now, but don't know the sex or birthdates. There might have been others -- Aurors and order memebers -- who had girls, or a boy in early August or the beginning of July.
July comes along, two boys are born to parents who have defied Voldemort three times.
Snape would know which children have been born who qualified. He probably thinks Neville is the likely candidate, being pureblood.
Voldemort picks Harry as the likely candidate. Perhaps he intended to kill both babies but decided to start with Harry, after which he is incapable of harming Neville.
For some reason as yet unknown, but I have my theory, this upsets Snape to the core. He goes to Dumbledore and becomes Dumbledore's spy. He probably took his time about this. He may not have found out about baby Neville and Harry in early August, but it didn't take him a year or more.
Whenever he did go, it was too late to have him start teaching at Hogwarts in Sept of 1979. For that matter, he was not teaching in Sept 1980, so Dumbledore did not give him the job right away. Perhaps he didn't have an opening. Possibly Snape waited an entire year to go to Dumbledore.
For that matter, Voldemort waited an entire year to attack baby Harry - why? They were not in hiding till a few days before the attack - presumably tipped off by Snape.
Dumbledore tells the Potters they are targeted and must go into hiding. They make preparations to hide the house at Godric's Ford using Fidelius, with Sirius as Secret Keeper.
Late October they cast the spell, but Peter has been switched into the Secret Keeper job. Snape doesn't know this - but then neither do Lupin or Dumbledore.
A few days later, Peter betrays them and the Potters are killed. Our story begins. |
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| Owlbait |
| Posted: Sun Jul 17, 2005 1:21 pm |
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Joined: 01 Jul 2005
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Quote: No, he was calling himself that in his confrontation with Harry. While there's a certain sadness in a child of 11 or making up the title "The Half-blood Prince" there's something not too nice about a man of 38 or so screaming it at an adolescent, and using it as if it meant anything.
My first read of that was a bit off. I thought he was telling Harry "I am the half-blood prince" as in "you idiot, that was my book; I wrote all those spells". Doesn't look good for that interpretation, I admit.
Quote: 2. We all felt sorry for Snape at the end of book 5. The upending scene. Turns out he brought it on himself, making up nasty little hexes and stuff.
Quote: 3. Is he ever so evil? Make your minds up to the fact that he might be. He hates Harry. I do not believe that is remotely feigned. He's well in with Voldemort, the toady...
I can't believe Jo would work so hard to make him *look* so bad, while keeping it entirely ambiguous, if she did not have more tricks up her sleeve.
Quote: I'm betting if there is a redemption in book 7, it will be accidental.
I have to disagree. Tripping and falling into the path of an oncoming AK curse, thus saving Harry, does not constitute redemption. If he's going to get redeemed, he will either be shown definitively to always have been good (always meaning since going to Dumbledore) or experience a real repentance as demonstrated by some action, likely fatal, at the end.
Quote: Fandom should just deal with the fact that fanon has been smashed to smithereens. I still like the character, I'm just not prepared to whitewash his actions on the slenderest of evidence.
Hey, at least "Unforgivable Lessons" is still intact. Maybe I'll write that sequel :*) |
Last edited by Owlbait on Sun Jul 17, 2005 1:53 pm; edited 1 time in total
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| Melvacaea |
| Posted: Sun Jul 17, 2005 1:29 pm |
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Joined: 06 May 2005
Posts: 36
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| *despondently* You're lucky. Everything I have is AU from now on. |
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Severus' mind is his own. We can only speculate. |
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| sevfank |
| Posted: Sun Jul 17, 2005 10:01 pm |
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Joined: 17 Jul 2005
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Location: kansas
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Verity Brown wrote: I've always thought that Severus Snape must be pretty dang dark in spots. He *was* (and now must again pretend to be) a Death Eater, after all. A lot of SS-lovers treat that bit of information as if it meant the same thing as "I used to belong to the Communist Party." :~P
I dunno if you've read my story "A Merciless Affection," but I don't let anyone getting away with thinking of his past like that.
Verity
I just want to say what a great story it is!!!! Thanks for still believing in Snape. I hope you continue writing it just the way it is. I agree you have captured Snape as not a very nice guy but still has value even if you have to dig to get at it. |
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| PenAgainstSword |
| Posted: Mon Jul 18, 2005 1:24 am |
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Joined: 17 Jul 2005
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I seem to see that azazello keeps onto the comments about Snape being nutters for calling himself the Half-Blood Prince at the age of 38-40.
I just interpreted that as him telling Harry that he was the Half-Blood Prince because he knew that Harry did not know the identity of the HBP. I am leaning more toward that not because I am sticking to Snape, but because it seems to me more plausible.
Btw, don't bash on eleven-year-old Snape fantasizing that he was a prince. You may have grown out of that at age twelve, but we must remember:
1) Girls mature faster
2) He was obviously poor from the looks of his memories and home and wished that he was better. His peers (all the purebloods in Slytherin), were mostly all money-loaded.
I don't think he's weird for having an imagination at age 11. I know plenty of little boys who play make believe and they are over that age. No, they are perfectly sane, before you ask. |
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| Kismet |
| Posted: Mon Jul 18, 2005 1:33 am |
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Joined: 17 Jul 2005
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PenAgainstSword wrote:
Btw, don't bash on eleven-year-old Snape fantasizing that he was a prince. You may have grown out of that at age twelve, but we must remember:
Yeah, but it was Snape's 6th year potion book that had "property of the half blood prince" written in it so he would have been 16-17 and not 11 when he wrote that. |
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| Delirium |
| Posted: Mon Jul 18, 2005 2:00 am |
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Joined: 20 Feb 2005
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Location: New York
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| Yup, as in the half blood of the Prince family...that could be ALL that he ever meant by that. |
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| Owlbait |
| Posted: Mon Jul 18, 2005 2:52 am |
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Joined: 01 Jul 2005
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Kismet wrote:
Yeah, but it was Snape's 6th year potion book that had "property of the half blood prince" written in it so he would have been 16-17 and not 11 when he wrote that.
I think you have to subtract at least a couple of years. Snape wrote that lift-you-by-the-ankle spell early enough for it to have been well known and in popular use by the end of his 5th year. He'd have had that book well in advance of taking the class. |
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| Delirium |
| Posted: Mon Jul 18, 2005 3:28 am |
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Joined: 20 Feb 2005
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Location: New York
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| The book was around 50 years old, if I remember correctly from when Harry checked the publication date. It's more than conceivable that it could have been his mother's second-hand book, which meant he could have been reading through it long before he actually required the book for 6th year potions. |
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| Lariff |
| Posted: Mon Jul 18, 2005 4:46 am |
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Joined: 28 Dec 2004
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Location: Calgary
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Hermione did say that the writing she saw looked like a girl's. It's always possible that snape's mum wrote in it as well, and they had similar enough writing for Harry not to notice. (I know mine and my mum's writing looks pretty similar).
I know that has nothing to do with the age HBP thing.. but maybe he was adding stuff to his mum's writings before NEWT level classes. |
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| Owlbait |
| Posted: Mon Jul 18, 2005 10:41 am |
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Joined: 01 Jul 2005
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Delirium wrote: The book was around 50 years old, if I remember correctly from when Harry checked the publication date. It's more than conceivable that it could have been his mother's second-hand book, which meant he could have been reading through it long before he actually required the book for 6th year potions.
I think we're supposed to worry from the date of the book that it might have been Tom Riddle's. It makes sense though, the son of Tobias Snape isn't buying brand-new books.
I'm interested in the handwriting thing. Isn't his writing during the Harry years described as 'spiky' rather than 'cramped'. What sort of personality change would result in a change of handwriting? |
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| Melvacaea |
| Posted: Mon Jul 18, 2005 6:13 pm |
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Joined: 06 May 2005
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| A deep emotional or psychological change. If he wrote that BEFORE he went to the Death Eaters, then that change from tortured student to powerful supporter of a bad dude and killing innocent people might have done it. |
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"One word removes us from the weight and pain of life -- that word is love." -Sophocles
Severus' mind is his own. We can only speculate. |
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| ashley_mc_3 |
| Posted: Tue Jul 19, 2005 6:32 am |
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Joined: 18 Jul 2005
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I didn't read that much into the line where Snape tells Harry that he is the HBP. I think he was just making a point and showing his disgust that James' son would be using his own spells against him, I know it would upset me if someone I hated that much did the same to me in any situation.
But even so I just saw it as his insecurities as a child, and let's not forget the fact that at 16/17 years of age, assuming it was then that he wrote it, you still ARE a child. |
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| Seamoor |
| Posted: Fri Jul 22, 2005 6:12 am |
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| Diana |
| Posted: Sat Jul 23, 2005 4:08 am |
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Quote: 2) He was obviously poor from the looks of his memories and home and wished that he was better. His peers (all the purebloods in Slytherin), were mostly all money-loaded.
I don't think we can logically assume that all pureblood families are money-loaded, or even most of them. The Malfoys, the Lestranges perhaps, although I lean toward them gaining most of their money from...the Blacks. Those are the only three families that we know to be pureblooded and money-loaded. Even so, with the exception of the Malfoys, valid claims could be made to dispute the fact that they have great wealth.
The Weasleys are pureblooded and dirt poor. And while before many could speculate that it was due to their love of Muggles and status as 'blood traitors' that caused Arthur to never exceed at the Ministry, book six clearly disputes this. The Gaunts were dirt poor and the most stringent purebloods around.
I think it is safe to say that the wealth of the wizarding world isn't as divided as we have all previously believed. Harry, for example, has a lot of money and he is a half-blood. His father a pureblood and his mother a Muggle-born. We don't know if the money he inherited from his parents was perhaps part of James' inheritance from his pureblooded parents or maybe Muggle money from Lily's converted at Gringotts. Or perhaps they simply earned everything they left Harry themselves. Hermione is another character who looks to be pretty comfortable in life. I'm not suggesting that her Muggle family is wealthy, but they are comfortable, I'm sure. I could go on and list other characters, but I think you get the point.
Of course, I can easily believe the point that Snape would wish he were better based on the fact that his peers had money where he had none, but then again, we can't say for certain that his peers had all that much either. Of course, compared to Snape's monetary situation as a child, I'm sure that almost all of them had more than he did. |
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