[HPforGrownups] James & Snape: Related? - or Snape & Sirius?

[Magda Grantwich]

No: HPFGUIDX 110109

If Snape has to be related to anyone (something I'm not convinced
about but for the sake of speculation...), then there are good (or at
least not-bad) indications that he might be related to Sirius.  How
about as an illegitimate half-brother?

Why do Sirius and Snape have such a personal hatred going on between
them? JKR has said that the two loathed each other by the time of the
Prank, which was a result of this hatred.  We've all speculated that
while we can understand why Snape might hate Sirius, we're not sure
why Sirius reciprocated. So here's my theory.

There are many references in OOTP to 12GP being Sirius' mother's
house - and one very pointed one from Snape. It might be simply that
Mr. Black died first so that it was her house alone after that. But
perhaps the house (and the money) belonged to Mrs. Black's family and
all Mr. Black brought to the marriage was his pureblooded heritage. 

But why would Snape know or care?

Answer: he's Mr. Black's illegitimate son by a poor Miss Snape. The
Black marriage was not a love match; these kind of little mistakes
are tolerated provided that discretion is maintained. 

Snape's memory of being a little boy crying in the corner while a
hook-nosed man yells at a cowering woman? A near-destitute Miss Snape
has come to 12GP begging for child support with her little boy who
looks so much like his father and Mr. Black threatens her never to
approach him again. That would be a pretty traumatic memory
especially if its the first time Severus has ever seen his father.

Who is the hook-nosed man? Well, we've never seen a picture of
Sirius' father, have we?

Snape never eats at 12GP? He refuses to stay one second longer than
necessary in the home where he and his mother were humiliated -
although he greatly enjoys the fact that Sirius has to put up with
his presence.

Why does Snape hate Sirius? He was the legitimate son who had ready
access to the money and resources of the family and didn't appreciate
the importance of them (NEVER underestimate the effect of lack of
material security on the truly destitute - it's where revolutions
come from) and yet who were willing to see his mother and him starve.

Why does Sirius hate Snape? He saw Snape trying to be the son that
Sirius should have been with an interest in the DA and Sirius
despises anyone who thinks that the Blacks were worth emulating, not
realizing what it means to really be poor and feel unprotected
against the world.

There's no doubt that there's something very personal in the
Snape-Sirius hatefest. Most assume it's because of the Prank but the
Prank was the result of the hatred, not the cause of it. In the
Pensieve Scene, it was James who initiated the confrontation and
fought with Snape while Sirius was the back-up but there was
something very creepy about the way that Sirius worked to disarm
Snape and keep his temper roiling with his interventions.  James was
being, as someone on another site put it, a teenage-alpha-male-jerk
but it was pretty straightforward.  

Sirius's constant stream of put-downs are much more vicious (JKR's
term) and he does display an interesting obsession with Snape's
physical appearance - looks like his dad, perhaps?  Is Snape an
acceptable substitute for Sirius' growing antipathy to his/their
father?  It's easy for Sirius as a grown-man in his 30's to say that
he hated his parents and everything they stood for but would a
teenager still coming to grips with his heritage and personal
identify really not have found his growing distance from his parents
to be more troublesome?  Would he not focus a lot of that developing
revulsion against an external target?  

And if Mr. Black told Sirius about Snape's existence before he went
to Hogwarts (one of those man-to-man-father-son chats) and forbade
him to fight with Snape, wouldn't it be perfect teen logic to think
that as long as he was just backing James up, then it wasn't the same
as fighting with Snape?

Gives a certain undercurrent of emotion to James' response to Lily's
question - "It's more the fact that he exists, if you know what I
mean" - doesn't it?  

I'm not wedded to this theory, especially since it's very unlikely
that either Snape's or Sirius' backstories are that relevent to the
Harry-plot; also that there already are (IMO too many) instances of
characters we've already met turning out to be related to each other.
 But I think it does answer some questions that otherwise seem a bit
perplexing.

Magda


		
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - 50x more storage than other providers!
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail