The handwriting in the book (Was: Lily and Snape)

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 140373

Fabian wrote:
> <snip> JKR has said that she inserts information into the story by
using Hermione and Dumbledore. Hermione continously thinks it's a girl
who has written the extra notes in the book, at least until she finds
out its Snape book. So, it might just be that it was Lily's
handwriting and not Snape's.

Carol responds:
First, it's highly unlikely that Lily (or Snape's mother, suggested by
other posters) would invent the curses that Snape claims as his own,
particularly Sectumsempra and its accompanying note, "for enemies,"
and the curses are in the same handwriting as the potions hints. Both
appear to be the product of the same ingenious mind, young Snape's:

"The more Harry pored over the book, the more he realized how much was
there, not only the handy hints and shortcuts on potions that were
earning him such a glowing reputation with Slughorn, but also the
imaginative little jinxes and hexes scribbled in the margins, which
Harry was sure, judging by the crossings-out and revisions, that the
Prince had invented himself" (HBP Am. ed. 238).

Also, JKR has prepared us for this incident by describing young
Snape's handwriting in the Pensieve scene in OoP (which BTW also
provides our first clue since the duel with Lockhart in CoS that SS is
really knowledgeable about DADA):

"His [young Severus's] hand was flying across the parchment; he had
written at least a foot more than his closest neighbors, and yet his
writing was minuscule and cramped" (OoP Am. ed. 641).

Compare the description of the handwriting in the HBP's Potions text:

"Harry. . . saw something scribbled along the back cover in the same
small, cramped handwriting as the instructions that had won him his
bottle of Felix Felicis . . . : 'This Book is the Property of the
Half-Blood Prince'" (HBP Am. ed. 193).

I don't know about anyone else, but when I read that sentence I
remembered the description of Severus's writing from OoP and I
immediately knew who the HBP was. Snape's reactions to both Harry's
Potions performance and his use of Sectumsempra also make it clear,
IMO, that all the notations are his. They are certainly all in the
same handwriting: "[T]here was barely a page on which the Prince had
not made additional notes, not all of them concerned with
potion-making"  (HBP 194-5).

Hermione's assumption (same page) that the writing is a girl's is
almost certainly a red herring, as is the age of the book. Her error
does lead us to Eileen Prince, however, and to the interesting
discovery that Snape is a half-blood, hence the nickname written in
that same tiny handwriting. In any case, the lovely irony that "the
Half-Blood Prince had proved a much more effective teacher than Snape
so far" (HBP 239) would be completely lost if the annotations on both
potion-makimg and spells were not Snape's own. 

There's no doubt in my mind that Snape (as man and boy) is both a
Potions and a DADA genius (clearly established, IMO, by the Wolfbane
Potion and Veritaserum on the one hand and his invented hexes and
curses on the other). The question for me is whether Slughorn is right
about *Lily* being very good at Potions. Is he misattributing *her*
success at Potions to innate skill or talent just as he's
misattributing Harry's success (based wholly on the HBP's notes) to
Lily's genetic inheritance? Is Slughorn just trying to butter up Harry
by flattering his mother? Slughorn's "I don't think even you,
Severus--" (HBP 319) suggests that Harry is doing as well in Potions
as he remembers *Severus* doing twenty-one years earlier (a sad irony
from Snape's perspective since Harry is using *his* discoveries to
earn those marks), but he doesn't say, "I don't think even your
mother, Harry--" It's possible that Slughorn gave her high marks
because he liked her (as he clearly did). Or maybe Slughorn was lucky
enough to have two Potions geniuses in one class. We just don't know.

In essence, we *know* that young Snape was a Potions (and DADA)
genius, but we really don't know whether Lily was. Maybe it's just
fond memories of her green eyes and her "cheek" that Slughorn
remembers. At any rate, the only evidence we have of Lily's skill at
Potions is Slughorn's word. Snape's skill, in contrast, is evident in
every book in the series, and the handwriting is clearly Severus's and
not Lily's (or Eileen's). The hand that wrote "Sectumsempra (for
enemies)" (can't find page number) is the same hand that wrote "Crush
with flat side of silver dagger" (HBP 189).

I know there are posters who think that a shared skill in Potions
formed the basis for a friendship between Severus and Lily, but that
seems to me like pure speculation based on wishful thinking.
 
Carol, fearing that we've seen the last of Snape's potion-making as
well as his teaching