Snape and Lucius ages Re: [HPforGrownups] Re: "Lapdog" and "snivel"

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 115667


Feklar wrote:
> 
> Yes, not just you, but many writers and posters seem to take it as a
given they were friends (or had a relationship of some sort) in
school, while it seems to me a bit more likely that it would have
started after Lucius graduated.  I also think it's possible they knew
each other though family or social gatherings, but that doesn't mean
they have much interest in talking to each other.  <snip>

Carol responds:
The problem with this view is that Sirius never saw Severus after they
left school. He didn't know that the young Snape had become a Death
Eater at about the same time that he (Black) joined the Order, or that
Snape turned against Voldemort and was spying for Dumbledore before
Godric's Hollow, or that he had been teaching at Hogwarts since about
the time of the Potters' deaths. He may have known that Lucius Malfoy
was a Death Eater, but certainly did not know that he had any contact
with Snape.

In other words, Sirius Black's view of Severus Snape as Lucius
Malfoy's "lapdog" must have been formed in the only time when he saw
the two of them together--when he and Severus were in their first and
second years at Hogwarts and Lucius was in his sixth and seventh. It
was, certainly, a very unequal relationship, but, based on Snape's
reaction to Malfoy's presence at the graveyard in GoF, there was
clearly some sort of bond between them--based, probably, on Lucius's
notion that a child who knew that many hexes would no doubt prove a
useful tool or ally at some point. I am *not* suggesting that Lucius
was a junior recruiter of Death Eaters at sixteen (he may well have
recruited the seventeen- or eighteen-year-old Severus when he himself
was a veteran DE in his early twenties, but that's a different
matter). We also know that Severus was "part of a gang of Slytherins,
almost all of whom became Death Eaters," and the natural leader of
that gang, while he was still at Hogwarts, would have been Lucius
Malfoy. Snape may well look back on the Lucius of those days as his
mentor, though I see no reason to think that he taught Severus the
spells that Snape's enemy, Sirius Black, credits him with knowing.

Whatever the relationship that Black has chosen to see as Snape's
"lapdog" servility to Malfoy, it could only have occurred at that
early point in all their lives.

Carol