Young Snape's cutting curse (Was: LID!Snape rides again)

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 150432

Carol earlier:
> > But Black does not say that eleven-year-old Severus came to school
knowing more *Dark* curses than half (and, yes, it is half) the
seventh years. He only says that he knew more "curses" than half the
seventh years. JKR is a bit inconsistent in distinguishing curses 
from hexes and jinxes (and hexes and jinxes from each other; IMO,
throughout OoP she uses "jinxes" for "hexes," but that's another 
post. I agree that these so-called curses were schoolyard variety 
hexes and jinxes, some of them perhaps of his own invention (like the
toenail jinx he later invented).
> 
> Valky:
> I have given this some pondering myself since we last spoke about
it, Carol, and I think I have a good theory about the difference
between curses and hexes/jinxes. Just going on the Bat Bogey Hex and
the Eat Slugs examples, it seems that Hexes and Jinxes are temporary
in nature, once cast they will eventually wear off after some
discomfort so they are in esscence basically innocuous, inconvenient
and uncofortable rather than dangerous.  Curses, OTOH, it seems to me
always need to be professionally countered by some expert in healing
arts, they seem more permanent and by extension of that hence rather
more a danger than hexes or jinxes. 
<snip>
>
Carol responds:

I agree that *logically* hexes and jinxes should be relatively
harmless and short-lived spells, that is, minor cursesthat can easily
be cured with a simple countercurse if they don't wear off on their
own. I would even add that hexes ought logically to be used on people
and jinxes to objects (the parchment that Hermione jinxed, for
example), but I don't think the pattern holds, especially in OoP,
where almost all the minor curses except Ginny's Bat Bogey Hex are
called jinxes. (That inconsistency with the other books always
bothered me because, as a copyeditor myself, I would have caught and
queried it, but, oh, well.) Aside from the Unforgiveable Curses, which
are too dangerous and sinister to qualify as hexes (or jinxes), I
think that the main consideration in naming the spells is not logic
but sound. 

Confundus, for example, is called a curse even though its effects
(unlike those of "Obliviate" are both minor and short-lived. Why?
Because "Confundus Curse" alliterates. So does the Conjunctivitis
Curse that Krum used against his dragon (and Sirius intended to
suggest to Harry to do the same). The DADA spell Impedimenta, also
short-lived (and used defensively) is also a curse, as is the
Leg-Locker Curse. At any rate, this nomenclature makes *some* sense if
hexes and jinxes are indeed curses but only minor ones.

So, IMO, the so-called curses that eleven-year-old Severus came to
school knowing--*not* labeled as "Dark" even by Snape's enemy Sirius
Black--were almost certainly hexes and jinxes, not powerful,
long-lasting Dark curses. (He was a little kid who had not even
attended Hogwarts at this point.) The darkest among them might have
been along the lines of Serpensortia, which Draco could cast in his
second year. Not difficult for a child to cast and very easy for an
adult to counter, but plenty scary for the kid on the receiving end.
In fact, if Severus cast spells like Serpensortia or Densuageo (the
tooth-growing spell) very frequently, the other kids would quickly
learn to fear or at least avoid provoking him. That might account for
his apparent unpopularity later, after his older friends (who no doubt
regarded him as a prodigy) had left.

I seriously doubt that child!Severus was casting really dangerous
curses, however, or he'd have been expelled. Again, JKR uses "curses"
very loosely and the term seems to include jinxes and hexes as well as
the Unforgiveables and Sectum Sempra. We know of very few truly Dark
curses but many schoolyard hexes and jinxes as well as DADA spells
which, though defensive, tend to be referred to as curses. I think
young Severus had quite an impressive repertoire of such "curses," but
that most of them were no more dangerous than Muffliato, Levicorpus,
and the toenail hex--all invented, so far as we know, when he was
about sixteen. Levicorpus is subject to abuse but is not in itself
dangerous and it's easily undone with a simple countercurse. Sectum
Sempra is a very different matter, being both potentially lethal and
requiring a complicated countercurse apparently known only to Snape.
Levicorpus and the toenail hex appear to be more characteristic of his
repertoire (which also includes helpful and nonlethal Potions tips and
the useful little charm, Muffliato) than Sectum Sempra.

I am still not convinced that the cutting curse in the Pensieve scene
was Sectum Sempra for reasons that can be found upthread. But if it
was SS, it was a very controlled version. If Severus had already
invented Sectum Sempra, before Sirius Black tried to kill him, then he
could have killed James, or at least hurt him very badly in
retaliation for the cruelty of the Scourgify spell, the public
humiliation of using his own spell against him, and the unprovoked
two-on-one attack. Instead, he merely cut his cheek. That, in a hurt
and angry boy who had already created a potentially lethal spell,
shows remarkable self-control.

I really don't think, however, that it was Sectum Sempra. I think the
"You wait!" means that Severus intends to come up with a spell that
will get James back and that the so-called Prank provided still more
incentive.

To return to firstyear!Severus, there is no evidence that the little
boy's curses were any darker than anyone else's. Only the sheer number
of them (and the fact that a very underage Half-Blood was practicing
magic outside of Hogwarts) is unusual. And the number of spells that
Severus knew is the point that Black is making: *more* curses than
half the seventh years, not *darker* curses than the much older kids
were using.

Hogwarts can be a cruel place, and the kids don't need Dark magic to
abuse each other, as James's using Scourgify to wash out Severus's
mouth illustrates nicely.

Carol, with apologies for repeating some of her arguments here and
wishing that JKR were more consistent in her terminology