Snape's DE past

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 111183

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "arrowsmithbt" 
<arrowsmithbt at b...> wrote:
.
> 
> Snape was a good little DE - then suddenly he wasn't. Not only 
that but he betrayed his friends. Because make no bones about 
it, they were hisfriends. These were the Slytherins he was 
running around with at school; these are his natural allies. 
Nobody in the Order likes him; nobody except DD really trusts 
him - so why is he in so deep in the anti-Voldy coalition?<

I have to take exception to the last line. Hagrid trusts Snape, and 
the rest of the staff fall into line behind Snape quite handily when 
it's time to call Lockhart's bluff in CoS. It's true that JKR said 
children aren't fooled by this kind of sadistic teacher, but I think 
she meant they aren't taken in by adult attempts to sugar coat the 
situation. Kids don't believe that Mean Teacher is only doing it 
because he really cares, and they're quite right. 

Now, those of you who can't stand to see 'Snape' and the v-word 
in the same sentence can click on past, but I think ex-vampire! 
Snape is a much more magical reason for Snape to leave the 
DE's.  

Rank unadulterated speculation:
The way I figure, young Snape comes to Hogwarts ignorant of 
his true heritage (as is everyone else) -- he thinks he's the 
natural son of a purista father and a somewhat mysterious 
mother. Everyone thinks she poisoned her husband and ran 
away, but since he was a squib, nobody got too excited about it. 

The squib husband would be by definition related to a wizard 
family. So  Snape could resemble  his putative father, the 
hook-nosed man we saw shouting at his mother in the 
Pensieve, because they're cousins (or half-brothers, if you want 
to get really soapy.)

Growing up as a servant lad in a wizarding household, Snape 
manages to conceal the evidence of magic and everyone thinks 
he's a squib himself, until the Hogwarts letter comes. He's been 
allowed to dust the magical library, you see (there's so much 
Dark magic in there that it gives House Elves the vapors)  and 
that's how he acquired his very extensive knowledge of curses, 
much more than a properly brought up child from a dark wizard 
family would be allowed to learn at that age. It's supposed to 
stunt their growth, you see, which is why young Snape is so 
skinny and undersized.


But Snape is actually something  much more dangerous than a 
wizard/squib offspring--he's part vampire on his mother's side. 
This is bad news--what  happens is sooner or later the human 
part dies and that's when you get something like the vampire of 
legend: a walking corpse with an insatiable appetite for human 
blood. Snape is understandably horrified when he discovers 
this.

The fate which awaits him naturally leads Snape to be interested 
in the philosopher's stone, and that brings Snape to the attention 
of Voldemort, along with the recommendations of the older 
Slytherins who were Snape's friends at Hogwarts and have 
already joined the DE's. Of course, Voldemort discovers Snape's 
secret and has an interesting proposition for him -- a switching 
spell. Snape  can trade his vampire nature to Voldemort, and 
become fully human. Snape wants to be human, and besides, 
he suspects the alternative to going along with Master's idea 
involves torches and pitchforks, so he agrees. 

But fullyhuman!Snape discovers he's also, somewhat 
inconveniently, gained a human conscience. Unlike his fellow 
DE's, he's never learned to ignore it. Suddenly his debt to James 
Potter ("debt"is the world Dumbledore uses), which never 
troubled  Snape before, is looming large. Also, it doesn't seem 
as enjoyable as it once did to devise new and clever poisons to 
test on hapless Muggles and Muggleborns. Snape has no 
problem at all being outrageously cruel to those who have 
offended him in even the slightest way, in fact it satisfies his 
newborn sense of justice,  but suddenly innocent people aren't 
such attractive targets.

Snape knows he'll never be allowed to leave the DE's alive. He 
knows too many of master's secrets. His life is linked to 
Voldemort's by the switching spell, so there's no possibility of 
faking his death either. Voldemort will know he's still alive.  
There's only one way he'll be allowed to leave Voldemort's 
service --Voldemort has to be destroyed. Snape has no idea how 
to do that. Only Albus Dumbledore seems to think Voldemort can 
be beaten--but why would Dumbledore want someone like 
Snape on his side? 

Meantime, Snape finds himself more and more reluctant to 
follow the Dark Lord's orders. In fact he gets very good at 
disobeying them and putting the blame elsewhere. Now, we 
know that Lily Potter defied Voldemort three times and lived. 
What if, one of those times, it was because Snape helped her 
escape?  Lily remembers her debt to the DE who helped her, 
and pays it back by arranging a meeting between Snape and 
Dumbledore. 

Snape becomes Dumbledore's spy. In this capacity, he 
becomes aware that someone close to the Potters is a traitor. 
Snape thinks it's Sirius. When he learns that James intends to 
choose Sirius as the secret-keeper, he breaks cover and warns 
James, but James refuses to listen to him. When James is 
betrayed, ostensibly by Sirius, Snape has the sour satisfaction of 
knowing that if only James had listened to him, the Potters would 
still be alive. And he will never forgive James for getting Lily 
killed. Never. Snape thinks he sees that same arrogance in 
Harry, and that's why Snape hates Harry so much.

It's also why the idea that James picked someone else as secret  
keeper after all was anathema to Snape in PoA. He couldn't 
stand to think that James *did* listen to him after all, chose 
someone else, and that he and Lily died for it. 

Now this sets up an interesting dilemma for Harry and a bangy 
conclusion. In order for Voldemort to die, the switching spell 
must be reversed. In fact, if Snape isn't to become a living 
corpse, it has to be more than reversed, so that Snape becomes  
fully a vampire. But then, he won't have a human conscience any 
more. Can Harry, assuming he's ever come to trust Snape at all, 
still trust him when he's no longer human? 

Pippin