Spinner's End

[houyhnhnm102]

No: HPFGUIDX 156724

Carol:
 
> who thinks that we can't necessarily deduce a working class 
> background or much of anything else about Snape's childhood 
> from the house he lives in as of HBP

houyhnhnm:

"Snape spat bitterly on the ground." (PS, Scholastic pbk, 
p. 224) I don't know anything about regional dialects or 
class registers in the UK (some have argued Snape's working 
class background on that basis), but to me spitting on the 
ground says working class. 

KJ writes:
 
> One of the things that picks away at my mind is the 
> name "Severus".

houyhnhnm:

Let's see?  What other wizarding families go in for Roman 
emperors' names?

There's Lucius Malfoy, but then his father had the un-Roman 
name of Abraxas.  Then there are the Belbys, with a Marcus 
and a Flavius (a Damocles, too, admittedly).

I notice that there are no Princes on the Black family 
tree.  That by itself isn't necessarily significant.  
What is, I think, is that there are no other Princes 
anywhere in the WW that we've heard of.  None attending 
Hogwarts, as far as we know.

Many people were so attached to that idea that Snape 
was an aristocratic pureblood that when that notion was 
canon-shafted in HBP, they switched to believing the 
Princes were the wizarding aristocrats (Snape Manor 
became Prince Manor).  If that's so, why haven't we 
heard of them anywhere before.

This is pure speculation, I know.  There is no canon 
one way or the other, but I think the Princes were 
nobodies.  If there was any snobbery in Eileen Prince's 
family, it was over their Belby connection.

Many readers have observed that the Malfoys act like 
nouveau riche.  Now there *is* a Malfoy Manor, but could 
it have been renamed? Could it have come to Abraxas Malfoy 
through his wife?  Maybe the Malfoy claim to fame is *their* 
Belby connection.  In giving his son an astronomical name, 
as was the custom in his wife's family, was Lucius following 
the pattern in his own family (in which he was named according 
to the traditions of his mother's more socially prominent family, 
rather than his father's)?

What if Eileen's mother and Lucius' father were Belby sisters? 
That would make Lucius and Severus first cousins once removed, 
I believe.