Eileen Prince Snape (WAS:HPB writing/ Snape Timeline, etc)

rbookworm46 rbookworm46 at yahoo.com
Sat Jul 23 04:53:20 UTC 2005


No: HPFGUIDX 134314

Marcela now: I noticed that Hermione always thought that the writing 
looked like that of a woman's or girl's...

Christina:
I am 99% confident that it was Snape's writing in the book. Here's 
why:

(US HBP 193):
"Harry bent low to retrieve the book, and as he did so, he saw 
<snip>, cramped handwriting...."

(US OotP 641):
"So Snape... <snip> his writing was minuscule and cramped."

- - - - - - - - - - 
Bookworm:
(US HBP 537):
"Hermione <snip> pulled a very old piece of newsprint out...
<snip> Harry picked up the crumbling piece of paper..."

Could this piece of paper have been about 50 years old?  Could 
Eileen Prince Snape have been a classmate of Tom Riddle's?  

Newspaper will turn yellow and become very brittle with age.  
Severus would be about 37-38 years old `this' year; if Eileen
was 15 years old about 50 years ago, she would be have been about 28 
when Severus was born.  That fits with the timeframe Tom Riddle was 
at school; she would have been about 4 years younger than Tom.

These calculations are based on the newspaper being 50 years old.  
Obviously, there is a large margin of error.

1931	Eileen born
1938	Tom Riddle enters Hogwarts (see Lexicon)
1942	Eileen Prince enters Hogwarts
1946 	Eileen 15 (baseline for the calculations)
1959	Eileen 28, Severus born 
1996	Eileen 63, Severus 37

If wizard children are usually home-taught when they are little, and 
Eileen taught her son to read and write, it wouldn't be
surprising if Snape's handwriting resembles his mother's. 
What else did she teach him?  Where did Severus learn all those Dark 
Arts he knew before he arrived at Hogwarts?  From his mother?  

IIRC, once the trio found out Snape is the HBP, they just assumed he 
wrote the potions directions and other spells in the book.  I 
suspect Eileen was the author of those spells, not her son.

Ravenclaw Bookworm <who should have been asleep hours ago :-) >








More information about the HPforGrownups archive