Eileen Prince & Grandma Longbottom

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 156450

Tinktonks wrote:
> 
> I think that it has been a well covered theory that Eileen Prince &
> Neville's gran were enemies, has anyone considered that they were
> friends? I'm not necessarily supporting the following theory
> exactly, I just want to put forward a theory that there are a number
> of possibilities why they were friends and what this could mean.
> 
> Longbottom & Prince where both members of the Gobstones club and
> became friends. They retained friendship & as Longbottom had no pure
> blood mania she went to the wedding to Snape. Longbottom gave Mrs.
> Snape refuge when she left her bully husband and took in her and a
> young Severus. The reason Snape changed his mind is because of what
> happened to Frank whom he shared much of his childhood with. The
> reason he is so harsh on Neville is because he (like his
> Grandmother) feels that he is letting his father down and not
> upkeeping the family honour of the family who helped his mother who
> he loved dearly. <snip>
>
>
Carol responds:
I don't really have an opinion on your theory, though it's interesting
to think how many characters (not counting future DEs) were actually
attending school at roughly the same time as Tom Riddle: Rubeus Hagrid
(briefly), Minerva McGonagall, Neville's gran, Aigista somebody (not
yet Longbottom), and possibly Neville's Great Uncle Algie (Algernon?),
whose name wouldn't be Longbottom, either, if he's Augusta's brother.
(Maybe they're related to the Princes or the Blacks or the Potters or
the Weasleys or all of them? After all, the pureblood families are all
interrelated.)

At any rate, I'm pretty sure that Augusta (Neville's gran) was a
Gryffindor in Mcgonagall's year because McGonagall knows that she
failed her charms OWL. That doesn't rule out her being a friend of
Eileen Prince's, especially if we accept the suggestion that the
fifty-year-old Potions text, originally supposed to be found in the
same year as the diary, is from the same year as the diary and JKR
just didn't change the date. That's an awful sentence, but my point
is, Eileen could be in the same year as Tom Riddle or maybe the year
before him (her sixth year being his fifth year), which would make her
roughly the same age as McGonagall and Augusta. I happen to think that
Eileen was a Slytherin, simply because it's so hard to explain
Severus's knowledge of so many hexes and his early interest in the
Dark Arts if she wasn't.

Just a suggestion regarding your theory--it might be clearer if you
referred to the characters by their first names as we do with James
and Li"Tobias" rather than "Snape" to keep us from confusing him with
his son and "Augusta" rather than "Longbottom," especially since she
wasn't yet married when she was a Hogwarts student (I hope).

At any rate, I wouldn't be surprised if there's some connection
between Eileen and Gran, but I think that Severus must have learned
magic from the Princes rather than the Longbottoms. And whether or not
Tobias was the man in Snape's memory, I think he was out of Severus's
life before the boy was eleven. Otherwise, it's extremely difficult,
if not impossible, to account for the early development of his magical
abilities. Just on a hunch that I can't prove, he was probably
precocious in both Potions and DADA, and I expect that he had more
than a bit of encouragement from his mother. (I think she's the one
who loved him. If she's alive and in her right mind, maybe she loves
him still.)

Carol, who used to think that the dog-faced woman (Agnes) was Snape's
mother and that her wicked husband cursed her, but JKR has thrown
Vanishing Potion on that speculation by making Tobias a Muggle and
giving the two women different first names