McGonagall and Snape + totally a shallow Snape q

[Alex Boyd]

No: HPFGUIDX 112549

Hannah wrote, in answer to question about Snape's hair:

> People have some fantastic theories about this, it's 
> been great reading them.  Snape's hair seems significant, virtually 
> every time he is described by a character or in the narrative it's 
> mentioned.  

My initial impresison of the Snape's Hair Thing (along with it's pal,
the Snape's Nose Thing) is that JKR was trying to teach a simple moral
lesson about not judging a book by it's cover.  let's look at his Very
First Appearance in PS (SS).  It's on page 126, and he's described
with his 3 trademark traits--greasy black hair, a hooked nose, and
sallow skin.  Then he looks at Harry, Harry gets a pain in his scar,
and he comes to the (erroneous, as we all know) conclusion that Snape
had something to do with the pain.  He doesn't hear about Snape's
rumored involvement in the Dark Arts until fully a third of the page
later.  When Snape starts on being nasty, we-the-readers get the
impression that in this case the cover was an accurate representation
of the book.  But as the series progresses, we begin to suspect that
Snape's Nastiness is yet more cover--and we're still not sure what the
book is.  

I have a feeling that the general upshot of the Snape Storyline is
going to be that Good is not Always Pretty.  But maybe that's a
simplistic analysis.

The other thing I thought of as I was typing this up is that Snape's
appearance has almost all of the hallmarks of the stereotypical Wicked
Witch (his gender and lack of wart are the two missing elements of the
sterotype).  Not sure what to make of that.

Alex