The Prince and Filch Family Trees

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 156667

Abergoat speculates:
<snip>
> Agnes Prince marries a Mr Filch and they give birth to son Argus and
> daughter Irma. Mr Filch is an abusive man and becomes particularly
> abusive when his son proves to be a squib (this is possibly the
memory Harry saw...it may have been legilimens Snape's memory OF dog
lady's memory...not Snape's own childhood) <snip>

Carol responds:
However, we don't have any indication that Filch is dark-haired like
the child in the memory. Also, the abusive man is hook-nosed,
resembling Snape more than Filch, whose nose is bulbous. I think
you're overcomplicating things here (though I do agree that the man
may not be snape's father because Harry doesn't recognize him as a
Muggle). Also, the poignancy and irony of Harry feeling sorry for the
little boy crying in the corner disappears if it isn't little Severus.

Abergoat:
As
> I mentioned earlier it explains how Snape 'ran' with Belletrix
> Lestrange even though Bella was at least seven years older than
> Severus...Severus was at Hogwarts the entire time she went to school
> there. JKR is sticking our nose in the fact that Bella is
> significantly older than Snape - so old that one would think they
> didn't overlap. And this may be why Severus Snape chose Slytherin
> rather than his mother's house - Ravenclaw. Because Bella talked him
> into it.
>
> As an added bonus it explains why James hated Severus Snape on first
> sight as canon tells us - Bella liked Severus and Sirius hated
Bella. That would probably be enough for James.

Carol responds:
I agree with you that the Black family tree as posted on the Lexicon
doesn't fit with Severus having been part of Bellatrix's gang at
school, even though canon seems to suggest that he was. I originially
speculated that he was three years younger, based on Sirius's
statement that he last saw Bellatrix (not counting Azkaban) when he
was Harry's age (between his fourth and fifth years). I thought at
that time that he was a junior member of the gang, a particular "pet"
of Lucius Malfoy, who is about five years older, and that Bella,
Lucius and all their crowd had left Hogwarts by the time of the
Pensieve memory (which would still be true if Severus became part of
the gang before he entered school).

But having him as *really* junior part of the gang when he's, say,
eight or nine years old, might explain a few things. If *Sirius* hated
him because he seemed like the ideal Slytherin child, the elder son
his parents would have liked to have instead of him (and in Sirius's
view, a bad influence on Regulus), he might have persuaded James to
hate Severus on sight. At any rate, Sirius' hatred of Severus seems to
me more virulent than James's and suggests that he's known him longer.
Also, James is unlikely to have known him before school began because
his family wouldn't run with the Blacks.

However, we don't need a complicated adoption story to explain how
Severus *might* have known the Blacks before Hogwarts. All we need is
for the Princes, his mother's family, to be a pureblood family with a
Slytherin background, possibly but not necessarily connected with Dark
magic (that may be Sirius's impression rather than fact) and perhaps
distantly related to the Blacks since all the pureblood families are
interconnected. (We see only a small portion of the tapestry on the
website and Harry sees or notices even less. The name "Prince" would
have meant nothing to him at that time. He didn't even notice that
there were Potters on the tapestry!) I agree that Tobias must have
been out of the picture by the time Sevvie learned all those hexes.
It's inexplicable with a Muggle around, especially an abusive one if
Tobias is indeed the man in the memory.

And speaking of Snape's memories (which I, for the sake of simplicity,
take to be his own), I promised Potioncat offlist that I'd bring up
his broom memory. Some people take it to mean that he isn't good at
flying, but since he has no problem as referee of the Quidditch game
in SS/PS, I think we can safely discard that interpretation. Brooms
don't try to buck off their riders unless they're hexed. Even the
school broom only shoots up into the air when it senses Neville's
fear, and little Severus seems more determined to stay on than fearful
in that snippet of a memory. Also, whatever Snape's character flaws,
cowardice is not one of them. So I think the broom was jinxed, much
like Harry's in SS/PS, but since he's nearer the ground he's in less
danger. The question is, who is the laughing girl? Who do we know who
would be young enough to be called a girl when Severus was, say, nine
or ten, and mean enough to laugh at him when he's struggling to stay
on a bucking broom? The answer, IMO, is Bellatrix. Possibly she was
his baby sitter (I've forgotten the British term for someone who
watches a child while his parents are away). At any rate, I'm guessing
that Bella not only thinks the jinx is funny, she put it on the broom
herself. Just a bit of fun speculation of my own, but pretty solidly
based on canon except for the baby sitter part.).

Carol, who thinks that the Sorting Hat chose Slytherin as the best fit
for Severus, who may have expected to be placed there in any case
because of Prince family history