Misunderstood Snape

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 135155

-Cindy asked:
> > How did James know Snape's spells to use them on him?
> 
Leslie41 responded: 
> Interesting!  Obviously it's levicorpus that James used on Snape, 
> as we see in OotP when Snape is dangling upside down with his grey 
> underwear showing.
> 
> Well, James somehow got ahold Snape's book, obviously.  Filched it, 
> most likely.  Snape would never give up the book voluntarily to his 
> worst enemy, annotated as it was with his excellent notes. 
> 
> But obviously, Snape got it back, as it was in storage in his old 
> potions classroom.  
> 
> Though truthfully, as a teacher, I cannot imagine leaving something 
> so precious in my old office.  It doesn't seem like Snape to just 
> leave it lying around, but then it had to get into Harry's hands, 
> did it not?    
> 

Carol:
I don't think James got hold of Severus's book, which would have been
a valuable possession at the time. Severus probably taught the spell
to his fellow Slytherins and James heard him using it or talking about
it. (I hate to say it, but possibly his anger in the Pensieve scene
was not so much at his humiliation for being turned upside down and
showing his dingy underwear to everyone in his year as at having his
own spell used against him. That, evidently, was what rankled. Or so
it appears from HBP.)

As for the book, by the time Harry uses it, it's fifty years old, and
it was Snape's mother's before it was his. The Potions teacher for
both Severus and Eileen (a contemporary of Tom Riddle) was Slughorn,
who has returned to teach Potions and is clearly using the same
textbook he used before, out of date though it clearly is. 

I doubt that Snape, who brags in OoP about the hig pass rate of his
students on their OWLs, and who is told by Umbridge that his students
are more advanced than they ought to be for their year, is using a
textbook that was written before he was born, especially since he has
improved on the methods used to prepare the potions as presented in
that book through his own experiments. As someone else has pointed
out, he writes the spells on the board (or points his wand at the
board and they appear, which is certainly a better method) indicating
that they are in his mind and instantly available to him. Perhaps he
didn't use a potions book at all in his NEWT classes, or if he did,
I'm sure it was the best one available. Also, as someone pointed out,
Hermione gets perfect results in his classes by following his
directions, as she does not with the potions in the fifty-year-old
book Slughorn has assigned.

I doubt very much that Severus left this book lying around on a shelf
for twenty-one years. More likely he left it at Hogwarts after he
graduated. If he had the potions (and spells) in his head as I suspect
he did, he wouldn't need it any more. Perhaps Slughorn picked it up on
on the last day of class in Severus's seventh year and kept it all
these years without looking inside, along with the other used copy
that ended up as Ron's.

As for the idea that Severus and Lily were Potions partners, which
I've been encountering in a lot of posts lately, the only time we see
students from other houses working with the Gryffindors is in
Herbology, which they have with the Hufflepuffs. We never see
Slytherins and Gryffindors working together except in unusual
circumstances (e.g., Draco's injured arm and Ron ordered to cut up
Draco's roots). We never see Slytherins and Gryffindors as study
partners, mostly because of the enmity between the houses but partly
because of logistics: they have different common rooms and the only
place they could study together would be the library. I can't see
Severus, the Half-Blood *Prince,* braving the contempt of his
Slytherin classmates by studying with a "Mudblood."

There can be no question that the spells in the book are Snape's given
his reaction when Harry even *thinks* the first two syllables of
"Levicorpus." (And imagine Lily inventing Sectumsempra!). And there
should be little doubt, either, that the clever improvements on the
potions text, written in the same cramped writing we see in his DADA
exam in the Pensieve, are his own. He is a gifted Potions master, as
we know from other books (veritaserum, wolfbane potion, etc.) and
Slughorn remembers him well as a highly talented student. It's only
when Slughorn talks to Harry, when he sees the eyes that remind him so
much of Lily, that he mentions how gifted Lily also was at Potions.
It's possible that Slughorn, who remembers her with affection and more
than a twinge of guilt at his unwitting role in Voldemort's rise to
power and her subsequent death, is exaggerating her gifts. He also
wants to ingratiate himself to Harry, another reason for doing so. Or
it's possible that she was a gifted student like Hermione and did very
well in his class without being a genius, as Severus clearly was (and is).

At any rate, setting aside any unrequited love that the young Snape
may have felt for Lily (and I have no opinion on this theory), I think
it's very unlikely that he and Lily were study partners, much less
that the notes (written in Severus's handwriting in his book) were
hers. She would have written her notes in her own book if she wrote
them at all.

>From a literary standpoint, if the potions were Lily's the irony would
be lost. Harry never listened to Snape or learned any skill in Potions
in his classes, but now, thanks to the HBP, whom he doesn't know is
Snape, he has an undeserved reputaion for brilliance in Potions, and
is learning some useful spells as well--Levicorpus could come in handy
against a Death Eater. Muffliato allows him to share secrets without
being overheard. It would be foolish not to use such a useful spell
just because it was invented by Snape. On the very first day of
first-year Potions, Snape asked him in what ought to have been a
memorable way what a bezoar was, but it's only the HBP's very
un-Lilylike note, "Just stuff a bezoar down their throats," that he
remembers when Ron is about to die from the poisoned mead. Ron, in a
very real sense, owes his life to Snape, and that, I think, is an
important piece of the puzzle that it Snape, one for which JKR has
been preparing us since SS/PS.

IMO, Lily's importance to HBP is not her supposed talent with Potions,
which may be exaggerated by Slughorn's sentimentality and remorse, but
her eyes, which ultimately lead him (with some help from Felix Felicis
and whatever drink Hagrid was serving) to give up his memory of the
Horcrux conversation. That is a crucial piece of another puzzle, how
to defeat Voldemort.

Carol, wondering how anyone can doubt Snape's brilliance when he saved
Draco from Sectumsempra and Dumbledore from the worst effects of the
ring Horcrux