How and when did Snape learn Occlumency ?

[Nora Renka]

No: HPFGUIDX 116493


--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Hannah" <hannahmarder at y...> 
wrote:

> Hannah: I think, like most of the other posters in this thread, 
> that Snape had a natural ability for occlumency, being someone who 
> shut down his emotions a lot.  As a possible abused child, and a 
> confirmed bullied child, he would be likely to have learned to 
> suppress his feelings.  So he'd unwittingly half taught himself 
> occlumency.  

I think this may well be true, but it's always...bugged me a little, 
about Snape and Occlumency.  Per what I posted a little while ago, 
about relaxation and all that--there's a real difference between 
shutting down your emotions as in hiding them from the outside world, 
and as in really and truly calming yourself and relaxing deeply.  The 
first person has suppressed their feelings from public view, but to 
stretch the analogy, it's like someone who is standing there in an 
apparent pose of relaxation, but I can still push over, because they 
aren't actually fully relaxed, they just look like they are.  [In 
other words, there's a big difference between a Snape who has managed 
to hide his seething resentment towards James Potter, and a Snape who 
has managed to deal with it so that he's actually not even really 
feeling it.]

Perhaps the fact that Snape *is* a good Occlumens is a clue that he's 
more of number two in fact...which sits uneasily with a whole lot of 
more obvious readings of the text, which *may* be a sign that we're 
going to get some canonical subversion of the more overt reading, but 
there's so much work to *do* to accomplish that...

I remain, as always, cheerfully agnostic.  :)

-Nora promises to write in TBAY style some day, when the creative 
inspiration gets back on track