Eileen Prince Snape

[potioncat]

No: HPFGUIDX 136557

Eileen Prince Snape

What do we know about Snape's mother?

HBP ch 25:
"The picture showed a skinny girl of around fifteen. She was not 
pretty; she looked simultaneously cross and sullen, with heavy brows 
and a long, pallid face. Underneath the photograph was the caption: 
Eileen Prince, Captain of the Hogwarts Gobstones team."

Eileen is Irish for Helen which means "light" or "a torch". The 
legendary Helen was also known for her beauty.

Eileen was a witch at Hogwarts. In spite of the one photo in which 
she looks both sullen and cross, she seems to have enough about her 
to be the captain of a competitive team.  That means she's good at 
it, and she works well with others to the point that she is in a 
leadership position in her 5th year. 

The match was important enough to be covered by "The Prophet" even if 
the article was boring to Harry. Was this an inter-school Gobstone 
competition, or an inter-school multi-activity competition? Perhaps 
at the same time there were chess matches, Quidditch games, dueling 
competitions? What other schools were there? Who did she meet?

 Could she have met one of Krum's relatives? His grandfather is 
probably around Eileen's age. Did he ever mention that his 
grandfather played Gobstones? I'm just thinking that Krum was "hawk-
nosed" and so was his father, and so was the man in Snape's memory. 
Oh, never mind that line of thought. 

Why would a young witch look sullen and cross when she's at an inter-
school competition? That's a big deal! She should have been happy to 
be there. Did her team lose? Was the object of her affections 
snogging someone else? 

If I've worked it out right, Eileen's time at Hogwarts likely 
overlapped with Tom Riddle, Minerva McGonagall and Hagrid. She would 
have had Dumbledore and Slughorn for teachers. She must have been 
around 30 when Severus was born, but we don't know how long she had 
been married. 

So she's no Helen. Not only does Harry note that she was not pretty, 
Ron comments on it later. Her temperament might not be too pleasant 
but we have conflicting evidence. Her name means light but is she a 
Dark Witch? (Think Lucius.) She had opportunity to meet wizards from 
other countries yet she married a Muggle. She wasn't in hiding, nor 
did she marry in secret. Both the wedding and later the birth of her 
son were in "The Prophet".  

We have other bits and pieces, but we're not certain how they fit. We 
have memories that Harry saw in Occlumency of a dark room and flies, 
and of a man shouting at a woman.

We don't know if Spinner's End is just a current work place for 
Snape, or if it belongs to him. Nor do we know if it's the home he 
lived in as a youth. It matches the description of the place the 
teenage Severus was in when he was killing flies. So either it is his 
childhood home, or we're supposed to think it is. So, let's go with 
that idea.

There are all sorts of stories in which a spinner with the help of 
magic marries a prince. Here we have an address near a spinning mill 
where a Muggle spinner marries a magical Prince. (On top of all the 
other assumptions, I assume Tobias works at the mill.)  Can Eileen be 
working Dark Magic in this Muggle home, or did Spinner's End belong 
to Eileen all along? We've seen other Dark Wizarding homes in the 
middle of Muggle neighborhoods. Is Eileen a Dark Witch or does 
someone else teach Severus the Dark Arts?

Who is the Shouting Man? Given his description he appears to be 
related to Snape. His father or grandfather? It's hard to understand 
how a Muggle could stand up to and frighten a witch. Maybe Severus 
gets his courage from his father. Perhaps Tobias has finally learned 
about the magic. Seems too similar to Riddle's family for me. As easy 
as it would be to think that Grandfather Prince was the shouting man, 
there still leaves the question, "Why was he shouting?" Neither the 
marriage nor the child was secret. Was something else going on?  Has 
Eileen made a deal involving her son and now she has to give him up?  
(Think Rumplestilskin and spinning.)

Or have I gone way too far from the real story to discover a bit of 
back-story for an unimportant character
yet again? 

Potioncat, ever curious.