Snape's parents

[wickywackywoo2001]

No: HPFGUIDX 134736

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "littleleahstill"
<littleleah at h...> wrote:

> Dumbledore suggests in HBP that Merope's magic improved 
> significantly once her abusive father was removed from the scene. 
> The magic of Harry's abused childhood was also very under expressed 
> compared with the exuberances of the Weasley children, even 
> accepting the latter lived in a magical household.  So if this is a 
> scene chez Snape, then I suspect it is the fact that her husband is 
> a domineering git which is suppressing Eileen's powers. I wonder if 
> JKR intends this as a reflection of the inability of many people in 
> abusive relationships to remove themselves from the abuser? And I do 
> think this is Snape's family because I think we are expected to see 
> Snape/Voldemort paralells
> 
I don't believe we can judge from this very incomplete scene that
Snape's father was an abuser.  I never automatically grant absolution
to women, even if they're crying.  It's perfectly possible that
Snape's mother had done something terrible, and his father was
shouting at her because of that.  And she could be crying because
she's ashamed.  As I said on an earlier post, it isn't just cruel,
evil fathers who get angry.  Arthur Weasley was furious when he caught
his sons ignorantly fooling around with an Unbreakable Vow - he didn't
only shout at them, he *whupped* them, and yet I don't hear people
dismissing him as a domineering git with an abusive relationship with
his sons.  From the little we saw in that flashback, nobody was
hitting Snape, and we have no idea if this was a daily occurrence or a
once-in-a-lifetime memory.  

My theory is that Snape's mother was doing a little Dark Magic on her
own, possibly involving her son, and her husband was putting a stop to
it - perhaps they'd had an agreement on how to use magic, and she
broke it.  Rowling takes care to point out, in the old Daily Prophet
clipping, that Eileen Prince was plain and sullen, just like Merope,
and she often does follow the rather cliched pattern that good females
are pretty and bad ones are ugly, so I don't think we have to assume
that Snape's mother was an angel.  Rather than a Snape/Voldemort
family parallel, there could be a Snape/Hagrid family resemblance instead.

Wanda