Snape's housemates

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 113760

Julie wrote:
> Is it only me, or does it seem odd that we haven't heard of any of
Snape's Slytherin housemates from his own year, other than the
Mauraders? Assuming Snape was in Slytherin, why are all of his
friends/associates--the "Slytherin gang"--so much older than him? If
the older ones like Bellatrix and Lucius picked Snape specially to be
part of their gang, what did they see in him that set him apart from
the other Slytherins of his year? Or was there another reason, like a
blood connection between Snape and the older Slytherins that we don't
yet know about? Or, maybe Snape wasn't Slytherin, but he was invited
into the Slytherin proto-Death Eaters gang because it was such a coup
to get someone from another house to join their evil clan (especially
if Snape was from Gyffindor). As others have noted, we still don't
have any conclusive canon that Snape was in Slytherin. 

Carol responds:
I think his precocity was pretty clear from the moment he arrived in
Slytherin: an eleven-year-old who knew more curses than most seventh
years (and apparently had an early interest in the Dark Arts as well).
Lucius Malfoy would have picked up on those traits and made use of
them, or rather, cultivated the little boy's friendship in hopes of
making use of his talents in the future. As for Snape not being a
Slytherin, I think his being head of Slytherin House and his loyalty
to the Slytherin team (even being willing to use Slytherin tactics to
help them such as allowing Lucius Malfoy to buy them special brooms
and rearranging the schedule so they won't have to play in the rain)
is a pretty strong indication that he really is a lifelong Slytherin.
Look at his personality, too--ambition and the pureblood ethic,
apparently instilled in him at a young age--traits that the Sorting
Hat would have picked up on, along with that interest in the Dark
Arts. The Sorting Hat tries to put children where they belong, and
surely it would not have placed Severus in Gryffindor, where he would
be miserable. ("Or perhaps in Slytherin you'll make your real
friends," SS Am. ed. 118). I'm guessing that after his gang left
school, Severus didn't know how to make friends on his own and was
rather lonely. And if his classmates were people like Macnair (perhaps
not a member of the original gang), who would want them as friends?
Maybe they were even jealous of him for his connections with the gang,
or he never bothered to make friends with the Slytherins who were his
own age, and by the time his gang left school, it was too late?

I'm also guessing that Snape's father (the hook-nosed man in the
memory, who is surely not Snape himself or Harry would have recognized
him) was a Slytherin who inculcated those same values in his
son--partly through fear and partly through example. Speculation, of
course, but the only evidence I can see that he was *not* a Slytherin
is his uncharacteristic courage. Everything else, including his
continuing association with Lucius Malfoy and Draco's rather
sycophantic respect for him, indicates that he is and was a Slytherin
from the beginning.

Carol, who wonders why people are suggesting that Snape might have
been in Gryffindor. (Wouldn't he have fit better in Ravenclaw if he
had to be in a house other than Slytherin?)