Eileen & Tobias was (What is poetic justice? WAS: Re:

[lyraofjordan]

No: HPFGUIDX 143606

Potioncat quotes canon: 
> OoP, chapter 29:
> After Harry began seeing Dementors in his mind, he uses "Protego" 
and 
> saw three memories in Snape's mind. 
> "--a Hook-nosed man was shouting at a cowering woman, while a 
small 
> dark-haired boy cried in a corner...A greasy-haired teenager sat 
> alone in a dark bedroom, pointing his wand at the ceiling, 
shooting 
> down flies...A girl was laughing as a scrawny boy tried to mount a 
> bucking broomstick--"
> 
> Snape repels him, they are going to continue,
> 
> "He was sure he had just broken into Snape's memories, that he had 
> just seen scenes from Snape's childhood, and it was unnerving to 
> think that the crying little boy who had watched his parents 
shouting 
> was actually standing in front of him with such loathing in his 
> eys..."
> 


Potioncat continues

>  JKR is giving us some 
> information about Snape's family. Look at the OoP canon above, 
Harry 
> reflects and thinks,"...the crying little boy who had watched his 
> parents shouting was actually standing in front of him..."
> 
> JKR is as good as Snape at misleading with the truth...well, she's 
> even better because she taught him. But based on the wording, I 
think 
> Tobias is the man in the memory. Look at this again though. 
Although 
> the actual scene is described as a shouting man, cowering woman, 
here 
> the wording is "parents shouting." The woman may have been coming 
out 
> of a cower, or she may have been cowering, but shouting back.
> 
> The straight forward reading would be that the two people shouting 
at 
> each other were Snape's parents: Tobias and Eileen.

Lyra: 
On another list, someone wrote that seeing parents shouting at each 
other is JKR''s "kid shorthand" for indicating a bad situation at 
home. I tend to agree, and I think that's what Potioncat is leaning 
towards (Hope I'm not putting words in her mouth.) I never disputed 
Harry's interpretation that it was the Snape family -- mother, 
father, son (though the fact that he didn't notice muggle clothes 
does bother me a bit). He sees two adults shouting and a preschooler!
Snape crying. Harry didn't have a good home situation himself, and 
one element of it was a shouting adult -- in his case Vernon 
shouting at him. It's natural for Harry to emphathize with such a 
situation.

Putting aside issues of whether a muggle could abuse a witch, the 
scene can indicate an unhappy home even if there's no real abuse 
going on. As Potioncat points out, the couple are both shouting in 
Harry's recollection, it's apprently not a one-sided exchange. 
Tobias and Eileen could be arguing over money, or lack thereof, 
which probably caused at least as much tension in the household as 
any magic might have done. And continuing problems over money or 
similar issues can make one bitter and sarcastic as much as living 
with abuse can.

I wonder if this scene is tied in with the "fathering" issues JKR 
mentions. In her Time magazine interview, JKR said "As I look back 
over the five published books, I realize that it's a kind of litany 
of bad fathers. That's where evil seems to flourish, in places where 
people don't get good fathering." 

How many fathers do we actually see in the books? Vernon, who does 
an abysmal job with Dudley; Arthur, who is probably the best of the 
lot; Lucius, raising a baby DE; Tom Riddle Sr. who abandons his 
child before it's born; James, who dies defending his son before 
really getting much chance to be a father, workaholic Barty Sr. who 
sends his son to prison then sneaks him out. Some of the fathers we 
see are just brief snippets, or less: Catonic Frank Longbottom; the 
senior Potter who took in Sirius Black as a second son, shocked-to-
learn-he-married-a-witch Mr. Finnegan; and probably shouting Tobias 
Snape. If you accept that "fathering" is a sort of theme in the 
stories, it seems likely the shouting man would be the father of 
Snape, a major character, rather than the father of his mother, a 
minor prescence at best.

Lyra (as always, unsure if she's added anything worthwhile)