Snape the Half-blood?

[bluesqueak]

No: HPFGUIDX 44793


Is Snape a half-blood? Not half-vampire, or half-dementor, or half 
any other 'interestin' creature' but plain old half-muggle.

Consider: 'Severus' certainly sounds like the sort of name an pure 
wizarding family would give their child, but it might also be the 
sort of name a wizarding parent married to a muggle would insist on - 
to signify that *their* heritage is the more important.

'Snape' is an English place name. It could be either a perfectly 
ordinary muggle name, or an 'old wizarding family' name.

The Death Eaters *prefer* pure-bloods - but the half-blood Voldemort 
is unlikely to turn away an equally half-blood Severus Snape 
expressing a deep hatred of his muggle background and muggle blood.

There is no suggestion that half-blood and muggle-borns are not 
sorted into Slytherin. Malfoy might not want them there, but he's not 
the Sorting Hat. Tom Riddle *was* in Slytherin; and he was a half-
blood. In the MTMNBM, Moaning Myrtle has a Slytherin tie (since the 
balilisk killed her, she may well have been a muggle born). 

Snape refers to "foolish wand-waving". [PS/SS Ch. 8 p.102 UK 
paperback]. This is a strange comment for a full-blood wizard to 
make. For one thing, it isn't that Snape is bad at wand-waving. He 
shows considerable expertise in the Shrieking Shack [PoA Ch.19, UK 
hardback] and in CoS is described as having experience in duelling 
[See CoS Ch. 11]. Further, wizards brought up in the WW see their 
parents using wands as a serious tool from babyhood.[See especially 
GoF Ch.7 p.75 UK hardback for some baby wizards using wands]

What other wizard *ever* regards wand-waving as foolish? 

Harry, brought up in a muggle environment. PS/SS Ch 5 pp. 64-
65: "Harry took the wand and (feeling foolish) waved it around a 
bit...

For Snape to see wand waving as 'foolish' suggests that he's been 
brought up *outside* the WW, where wand-waving is just a game 
of 'let's pretend'.

Snape is good at logic. To quote bboy in post #44761:

> logic to a muggle is a systematic method of problem
> solving. If a muggle wants to make a chair, he needs to make a great
> application of the problem solving skills of logic and math, not to
> mention the skilled use of tools.

> A magic person on the other hand, waves his wand and has a chair.
> There really is no problem to solve, and therefore, they have little
> need for the same type of analytical problem solving that a muggle 
> does. 

> A magic person would have a hard time solving the Riddle of the
> Potions, because he/she has never had to lay our a problem in a
> structured way, anaylize all the aspects, apply analytical thinking
> and structured problems solving, and arrive at a correct answer. 
> These are all learned skills and few wizards have ever needed to   
> learn them.

So where did Snape learn them? Not only does he use logic in 
preference to a spell, he uses a riddle in the kind of format that 
Muggles solve for fun - a pure logic puzzle, different from 
the 'wordplay' riddle that the Sphinx later uses in Ch. 31 of GoF 
[pp. 546-547, UK hardback].

His love of potions would also fit with a muggle background - it's a 
very 'scientific' magical art: to quote Olivia in post # 44750 -

> Potions is chemistry. And just as chemistry requires a good 
> understanding of mathematics, so does Potions. They have to be very 
> precise in their measurements and some Potions seem to be very time-
> sensitive. It also requires a good bit of logic and deduction. Plus 
> they're learning about the different ingredients they're using, so 
> there's a little basic science in there as well.

Is Snape's background like Voldemort's and Harry's? A half-blood boy, 
brought up by the muggle side of his family? Whose 'muggle' relatives 
or foster parents disliked his magical blood; and who went the DE 
route as a way of trying to reject that side of himself?

And then, of course, he found out that the DE's were even nastier 
than the muggles...



Pip!Squeak
[and it would be funny if Snape's muggle foster family were called 
Evans, wouldn't it?]