Cataloging Snape's Behavior,

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 115671


Neri wrote:
> > Why does Snape prefer the cold dungeon so much that he made it his
office? It might be due to a mechanistic reason (like "Snape is a
vampire") but I tend to think it is a metaphor. IMHO JKR tells us 
that Snape is a cold person. Unnaturally cold, actually, so much so
that there is something suspicious about his humanity.
> 
> 
> Sandy here:
> I've always wondered if Snape didn't end up with the dungeon office
as a form of self-inflicted punishment for whatever deeds he might
have done as a DE. (nothing I can prove, just an occasional thought,
since he seems the kind of brooding personality that might do that).
Another possibility would be that DD assigned him the dungeon digs as
a gentle reminder that he *could* be in Azkaban, instead, but that is
out of character for DD.

Carol notes:
The Slytherin common room is in the dungeon, and perhaps the dormitory
is as well. So is the Potions lab. It only makes sense to have Snape's
office adjacent to the lab (as we know it is, because Hermione steals
potion ingredients from his office during class in CoS). It's probably
where he feels most at home--and even, metaphorically connected with
the Dark Arts he probably is still fascinated by. As for the absent
fire in the fireplace in CoS, he isn't in his office when Ron and
Harry arrived by flying car. Instead, he's waiting for them,
apparently just inside the main entrance. (He discovers them still
outside, looking through a window at the banquet and they follow him
"down a narrow stone staircase that led to the dungeons" and halfway
down [a] cold passageway" to his office, Am. ed. 78). In PoA, by
contrast, the fire in Snape's office is lit when he finds Harry with
the Marauder's Map and he throws something like Floo powder into it to
summon Lupin (Am. ed. 287). So he's not entirely immune to cold,
though he may be more used to it than Harry is.

BTW, we don't know exactly where his sleeping quarters are, but
evidently they're not attached to his office. In GoF, he speaks of
passing his office on his way to investigate the "banging and wailing"
on the stairs coming down from the fifth floor (where Harry is hiding
under his invisibility cloak with his foot stuck in a trick step) and
finding that someone has broken in (Am. ed. 469). Yet his office is in
the lower lefthand corner of the map (466)--very odd that he would
pass it going anywhere. At any rate, he later sweeps downstairs and
along the fourth(?)-floor corridor and slams a door (474). There's no
indication where he goes after that, but I'm guessing it's down to
another part of the dungeon, maybe along the west wall if his office
is in the southwest corner and he passes it going to and coming from
the staircase where Harry is trapped. So he sleeps in the dungeon,
too, in his long grey nightshirt. . . .

Carol, wondering why she went to so much trouble to verify the
locations for the "BTW" part of her post!