Where did he learn it all? (was Re: Severus's memories and schoolyard curses)

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 150434

> Tonks:
> I am starting to wonder where Snape learned these dark arts that he 
> is said to know at age 12.  Before HBP I assumed him to be a pure-
> blood and from a family of dark wizards. But now we find that his 
> father was a Muggle. That begs some questions to ponder. Was his 
> mother involved in the dark arts? Was she the battered woman we 
> think she was, or not? What sort of family were the Princes?  Did 
> Snape know Bella as a child?  Why do Snape and Bella have such a 
> tense relationship? Does this go back to before DE days?
> 
> Questions, questions, questions.  Answers anyone??

Carol responds:
Small correction. Severus would have been eleven like everyone else
when he entered Hogwarts. The oldest students are those like Hermione
and Angelina Johnson who have September birthdays. If we count JKR's
website as canon, Severus was born in January, and would have been
just over four months from his twelfth birthday on entering Hogwarts.

As zgirnius pointed out (with excellent canonical support), we don't
know Eileen's blood status, but given Sevvie's knowledge of so many
"curses" (I think they were hexes and jinxes) at such an early age,
I'd venture to say that she was a pureblood and that zgirnius  isright
about young Snape being the only half-blood in the family. 

I am not, however, ready to go along with the working-class
background, which is pure speculation. I do think it would be very odd
if Eileen were intimidated by her Muggle husband and yet Sevvie
somehow grew up with such exceptional magical knowledge, so I
speculate, in turn, that the shouting man is Grandpa Prince and that
Tobias is nowhere in sight. (I don't think we need to speculate that
the Princes approved of the marriage; Eileen could have put the
announcements in the paper as an act of rebellion, which would explain
her father's anger when she brought the little half-blood to
contaminate their home after Tobias's death or desertion of his
family, which is how I (speculatively) interpret the memory fragment.

As for Bellatrix, if the Princes did have connections with the Blacks
and other purebloods, maybe Bellatrix is the girl who's laughing at
the scrawny boy (Severus) on the presumably hexed broom. (Brooms don't
try to throw their riders unless they're hexed or the rider is afraid
of them, and cowardice and timidity don't seem to be Snapeian traits.)
I like to think that Bellatrix herself hexed it, possibly at some
social occasion that they both attended. Or, given the difference in
their ages, maybe she was what we Americans would call his babysitter
when he was about eight and she was about fifteen. (I'm not proposing
this thought as any kind of theory or even speculation>)

Carol, still completely unable to reconcile Severus's growing up in a
Muggle neighborhood with a Muggle father and all those hexes (and, as
zgirnius suggests, their countercurses) and/or a precocious interest
in the Dark Arts