[HPforGrownups] Serpensortia -- Scars

[Porphyria]

No: HPFGUIDX 35386

On Serpensortia, I asked:
> > Is serpensortia a curse? I thought it was a conjuring of some sort.

And Elkins replied:
> I don't know.  I'm very hazy on the distinction between curses and
> charms and hexes and jinxes and spells.  Not to mention
> conjurings.  ;-)

Well, from what I've made of the Lexicon (thank you, Steve), I get the 
impression that curses have a direct, physical, harmful effect on the 
cursee (as do their lesser equivalents, hexes and jinxes), whereas 
conjuring creates something new out of thin air. Charms would sort of be 
the exact opposite of curses in that they have a positive or neutral 
direct physical effect on the charmee.

I'm inclined to make the distinction because, really, I'm wondering why, 
of all things, that Snape/Draco would choose this particular spell to 
use against Harry in a duel. It doesn't harm Harry in any way, and Snape 
never had any intention of allowing the snake to harm Harry; he steps in 
with the purpose of dispelling the thing immediately after Harry proves 
to have no idea of how, magically, to deal with it. If Snape merely 
wanted to see Harry terrified and humiliated (and I won't say that he 
doesn't), it seems like they could have picked a proper curse that 
actually would hurt him, or at least make mushrooms sprout all over his 
face. And wouldn't that be more entertaining? After all, Draco has Harry 
at a disadvantage; Snape knows that Lockhart had utterly failed to teach 
Harry how to defend himself and Draco isn't afraid to cast on the count 
of two. So I guess my question is, why, out of all the spells in the 
Potterverse they could have picked to humiliate him, why this one...lets 
get back to Tabouli's original question.

> Tabouli wrote:
> > And when Harry turns
> > out to be a Parselmouth, Snape doesn't seem surprised... he
> > looks "shrewd and calculating". Does Snape know something we don't?
> > (actually, he knows a helluva lot we would dearly like to know) Did
> > he pick that spell in order because he wanted to test a theory he
> > had about Harry, or Voldemort, or the failed curse?

And Elkins replied:

> It's certainly open to interpretation.  Personally, I have to say
> that it really doesn't look to me as if Snape's intention there was
> to smoke out Harry's parseltongue abilities.  It's highly subjective,
> of course, but what we are given there just doesn't leave me with the
> impression of Snape as a man awaiting the results of an experiment:
> he does not, for example, seem either surprised or disappointed when
> Harry freezes, rather than speaking to the snake initially.  I rather
> get the impression that he suggested Serpensortia merely as a way of
> entertaining himself.

Well, I wouldn't put it past Snape to not show his hand when Harry 
doesn't immediately burst out into Parseltongue. I agree with you that 
it's totally a matter of interpretation; Snape is his usual enigmatic 
self here, but while we're on the subject, and Tabouli did ask, I 
thought I'd prattle on about it.

One thing that makes me suspect that Snape might have been trying to 
smoke out Harry's Parseltongue abilities is simply Snape himself. That's 
kind of what he does, he has a knack for rooting out scandalous 
information about people. He's a little obsessed with it. He spied as a 
teenager, he spied as young man, and then there was that whole Quirrell 
thing. More on that in a minute.

> He does seem to suspect where Harry might have come by his talent
> very quickly, though -- that "shrewd and calculating look" *is*
> suggestive -- and it wouldn't surprise me at all if he'd wondered
> that about Harry before.  But I just can't quite force myself to read
> that scene as 'Snape tests out his hypothesis.'  It simply doesn't
> ring true to me.

Well, I suspect that Snape wonders a lot of things about Harry, and 
whether he was dead-set on proving Harry's parseltongue abilities once 
and for all or whether he was merely curious and figured "now's as good 
a time as any to try that serpensortia trick," I wouldn't be surprised 
to think he chose that spell for a reason.

As to what Snape knows/wonders/suspects about Harry, lets look at 
something obvious. Snape and Harry have a very interesting thing in 
common, they both have a cursed scar delivered by Lord Voldy himself. As 
of CoS, Snape knows this, but Harry does not. Well, if *I* were Snape, 
I'd be pretty friggin' curious about Harry's scar and what sort of a 
conduit between him and Voldemort it constitutes.

After all, we know (as you, Elkins, so powerfully described) that 
Snape's scar is the result of some heavy duty black magic. It seems to 
transfer at least *some* LV-originated power to the bearer: they can 
apparate to LV's location without knowing where they're going, and 
surely this can't be possible ordinarily (imagine the splinching!). 
Plus, the condition of the scar seems to indicate LV's power level, at 
least to a point. Evidently every DE noticed his scar fade to 
near-dormancy after LV was vanquised the first time; otherwise Karkaroff 
wouldn't get so upset at its return. So it seems to function as an LV 
conduit; power, information, connectivity. The potterverse equivalent of 
a cellphone and so much more.

OK, so Harry's scar is not *exactly* like Snape's and Snape knows, above 
all, Harry was an unwilling recipient, but still. He's a little 
paranoid, our Snape is.

Let's talk about the Quirrell connection. When Harry confronts him at 
the end of PS/SS, Quirrell huffs that Snape "suspected me all along." 
Oh, did he? Before the troll incident? Why? Well, let's look at an 
earlier scene, in fact our first introduction to Snape:

	Professor Quirrell, in his absurd turban, was talking
to a teacher with greasy black hair, a hooked nose, and sallow skin.

     It happened very suddenly. The hook-nosed teacher looked past
Quirrell's turban straight into Harry's eyes -- and a sharp, hot
pain shot across the scar on Harry's forehead.

     "Ouch!" Harry clapped a hand to his head.

Well, in retrospect I think it's safe to say that it wasn't Snape's 
malevolent glance that set off Harry's scar, but rather the contents of 
Quirrell's turban. But why did Snape think to look at Harry just at this 
moment? Did his scar suddenly burn too? And whether it did or not, he 
certainly must have noticed Harry cry out and clutch his forehead. And 
he certainly must have been wondering what was up with that, and how it 
related to Quirrell.

I'm always haunted by the part of the Pensieve scene where Harry watches 
his own face morph smoothly into Snape's. I always think 'wow, what does 
that mean!' In the context of the scene it would seem that the obvious 
parallel is their scars; Snape's face appears in the Pensieve to 
announce the intensification of his scar and Harry has showed up in 
Dumbledore's office in the first place with the purpose of telling him 
about how his own scar is burning. Dumbledore really doesn't contribute 
much to this discussion; he merely theorizes that Harry's scar connects 
him to LV and burns when LV is nearby or feeling particularly murderous. 
We knew this all along! Although you wonder if Snape wasn't musing to 
Dumbledore about his own worries about Harry's scar at some point 
previous.

> But of course, other mileages may vary.

Yeah, my mileage seems to have run off the map. I know none of this 
proves that Snape chose the serpensortia to expose Harry, but I think 
there's more than enough evidence that Snape has a lot to seriously 
wonder about LV's failed curse and how this has effected Harry. In some 
ways he probably knows about it more than any other 'good guy,' more 
even than Dumbledore himself. So you wonder how this will come into play 
in future books.

> About that "shrewd and calculating look," though.  If, as Tabouli
> suggests, Snape knows more than we might suspect about Voldemort or
> the failed curse, could this be due to his experience with the Dark
> Arts themselves?  Was there something about Voldemort's favored brand
> of Dark magic that might have made that odd form of soul-leakage that
> seems to have accompanied his failed AK a *more* likely side-effect
> for him than it would have been for, say, just some random wizard
> trying to use a Killing Curse on a mystically-protected baby
> Harry?

Soul-leakage is a creepy thing, eh? Can't really blame Snape for being 
paranoid.

I like your theories about divination, and how spiritual, yea, even 
demonic possession might be the only effective form. I don't have 
anything to add to this except that it seems to have a familial 
resemblance to Harry's own problems with having too much in common with 
LV, this soul-leakage, which is, to my mind, what made CoS as 
interesting as it was. I hope we see more of this in future books.

Oh, and I asked:
> > Are you suggesting that real, effective divination would be
> > unethical, and thus dark? Or something about the practice of it,
> > like necromancy, would be the darkening factor?

Elkins replied:
> I was thinking the latter, myself.  (On a purely personal level, I'm
> not very comfortable with the notion that there might be anything
> intrinsically unethical about divination.) 

But if you used your knowledge to play the horses, you'd throw off the 
odds for everyone else! That's so unfair!

Personally, if I knew the future I think that knowledge would corrupt me 
somehow. At least it could make me more cynical than I already am. 
What's life without hope? But this is assuming my foreknowledge was 
concrete and specific; not cryptic and poetic. In fiction, I always 
prefer the weird, easily-misinterpreted predictions myself.

~~Porphyria


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