"Lapdog" and "snivel"

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 115154


Dharma wrote:
> <snip> "Snivellus" was also very clear to me upon first reading. 
The name implied very strongly to me someone who was borderline 
cowardly and likely to blither and whine in an annoying way.  

> Potioncat responded:
> I know better, but I'm going to anyway.
> 
> I'm going to add one more item to this fascinating discussion of the 
> nuances of "snivelling."  Never would have noticed it, but it jumped 
> out at me on the plane to SC.
> 
> SS/PS chpt 3
> Vernon has been driving all over creation, they've stayed in a hotel 
> one night Dudley has just asked if his father has gone mad. (Dudley 
> is 11 years old):
> 
> It started to rain. Great drops beat on the roof of the car. Dudley 
> sniveled.
> 
> "It's Monday," he told his mother. "The great Humberto's on 
> tonight. I want to stay somewhere with a television." <snip>
> 
>
Carol adds:
Great illustration of some very *un*Snapelike behavior on Dudley's
part! I doubt very much that Severus at eleven was a spoiled whiner
like Dudley. (Imagine the reaction of the harsh, hook-nosed wizard
father glimpsed in the Occlumency lesson to such behavior.) The
nickname does not fit what we've seen of Severus as boy or man, even
in his worst outbursts of temper, and quite possibly it means nothing
at all. It could be just a nasty, mean name that resembles "Severus,"
which James and Sirius pinned on him to show their contempt for "a
little oddball up to his eyes in the Dark Arts," who was neither rich
and athletic like James nor rich and handsome like Sirius. Skinny,
pale, studious types are seldom popular, especially if they can outhex
those who annoy them (when they're not caught offguard and outnumbered).

It would not help, either, if the Gryffindor/Slytherin rivalry that we
see in Harry's time also existed twenty years earlier that Severus
Snape was the quintessential Slytherin--ambitious, cunning, and
indoctrinated in the pureblood ethic. Could that be, maybe, what James
meant by hating him "because he exists"? Hating him not for what he
had done ("snivelling" on some forgotten occasion) but for what he
*was*, by birth and by training? And would not such a dislike of
someone he perceives as the antithesis of himself qualify as
prejudice? (Notice, btw, that James's dislike of Severus seems very
casual and offhand, something he has not thought out or even
questioned until Lily asks him what Snape has ever done to him, a
question for which he has no valid answer. Sirius's hatred of Severus,
however, is virulent and personal. In fact, James hexes Severus for
Sirius's entertainment, for no better reason than that his best friend
is bored. It's as if Severus is not a person to him but an object to
be manipulated.)

But I'm getting offtrack here. To return to the point, there's no
indication that the nickname has any basis for existence other than
its sound. We don't see Severus "snivelling" in the Pensieve scene
even though his gang has evidently graduated and left him on his own,
the accidental consequence of making friends older than himself. He's
always known lots of hexes and probably could have defended himself
quite adequately against any teenage aggressor had he not been caught
off guard, with two against one. I suggested earlier that perhaps
"Snivellus" is no more meaningful than Draco's "Potty and the Weasel"
or Peeves's "Potty Wee Potter," but it's nastier and it stuck--not
because it's appropriate but because the Marauders liked it and
repeated it and because it alliterates so nicely with Snape. Sirius is
so addicted to using it that he still does so at age 35, long after he
should have outgrown such childish behavior. We have no evidence that
anyone other than James and Sirius ever used that name (except Lily
when she's angry with him for calling her a "mudblood." She calls
James a "toerag" in that same scene). Lupin, in contrast, calls Snape
"Severus" both before and after he's reunited with Sirius in PoA,
almost as if he's atoning for his old friends' rudeness--and his own
weakness in not opposing them. (Interestingly, none of the four
Marauders uses the nickname when the map insults Professor Snape in
PoA. And whether Wormtail ever used it, aping his idol James, is
immaterial. It could more aptly have been used for *him.*)

One side note. The perception that the young Snape was "clearly
unpopular" is Harry's (via the limited omniscient narrator). Note that
only *a few* students are cheering (possibly fellow Gryffindors or
James worshippers?). Others look apprehensive, as if, like Remus,
they're uncomfortable with what's happening but afraid or unwilling to
speak out against the popular James and the handsome, arrogant Sirius.
And I very much doubt that the scene would have happened at all if the
older members of Snape's gang, Bellatrix and the Lestrange boys and
the rest, had been present to more than even the odds. (I wonder, BTW,
who the Slytherin prefect was and why he didn't take away points from
Sirius and James. Could it have been Severus himself, fighting back
rather than docking points? Will we ever learn the answers?)

Carol, not at all sure that this is a coherent post but hoping it
makes *some* sense!