Spinner's End

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 156741

wynnleaf wrote:
> First I think there's the question of why JKR wanted to show us
> Spinners End at all.  Up to HBP, we knew almost nothing about Snape. 
> Assumptions among many fans were pureblood and aristocratic, like
the Malfoys and Blacks.  JKR has broken the myth of pureblood Snape. 
Why would JKR want to fool us into thinking Snape was from a working
class background?  I can't really see the point as we enter the "home
> stretch" of the series.
> 
> We know that Snape was using "used" textbooks in school.  That
implies coming from a poorer background.  Add to that, the greying
pants in the Snape's Worst Memory scene, which sounds like a kid who
didn't get new clothing very often.  
> 
<snip> 
> How could Snape learn so many hexes, etc. growing up at Spinners
End?  Hm, well, there's the library there -- perhaps belonging to his
mother.  He could learn a lot from that.  Also, Snape created lots of
spells in 6th year.  Perhaps he was creating spells even before
> Hogwarts.  If he came to school with spells he'd created, as well as
a lot learned from books, that would explain him knowing hexes and
jinxes that 7th years didn't know.
> 
<snip> 
 
> If Tobias died early in Snape's life, and Snape went to live with
> relatives, that doesn't explain away what was probably a lower
> economic situation (used textbooks, greying pants).  And if so,
where did the house come from?
> 
> The main objection I have to Snape not growing up with his parents,
or Spinners End not being his family home, is that after so much
silence on Snape's background, amidst such great curiosity about it,
JKR showed us what appeared to be a background almost completely at
odds with fan/reader assumptions.  I don't think she would have
appeared to have revealed his background so late in the series, only
to trick us and let us discover later that our assumptions (growing up
in a dark old wizarding family) were correct after all.  I just don't
see any point to that.  There's a lot of other things JKR is trying to
keep a mystery or surprise us about.  I don't think she's planning
another surprise like "Guess what?  Snape's really from a completely
different family background than you thought in the last book!"  
> 
> I mean, why would we *care* about such a twist?  We don't have a lot
> of reader "investment" in the Spinners End, working class
background. Why use that as a surprise twist?  There's no real impact.

Carol responds:
Impact or not, I can't reconcile Severus's growing up in a Muggle
neighborhood with knowing all those hexes, invented or not. Even if
the restriction on underage magic wasn't in effect when Severus was a
child, the Statute of Secrecy certainly was, and all those hexes being
performed in a Muggle neighborhood would certainly have been detected,
particularly if he hexed a Muggle. And Severus certainly identifies
with the Prince side of his family, which suggests, though it doesn't
prove, that he grew up with them--maybe as a kind of stepchild, the
*half-blood* Prince among the pure-bloods, which would explain the air
of neglect that Harry notes in the Pensieve memory and even the
greying underpants. If the Princes were like the Blacks, maybe they
didn't care about such things. Theri money would have been better
spent (in their view) on Dark artifacts. There's no indication that
Severus wore second-hand robes or any suggestion that his family was
as poor as the Weasleys.

I can't see young Severus dressing as a Muggle and attending a Muggle
school. (It's another matter for the adult Snape, who can Apparate and 
place anti-Muggle spells on his house, to hide there.) And having one
Potions book that belonged to his mother doesn't that all of his books
were second hand. Maybe a love of books runs in the family and he
inherited his mother's books--or the Prince family library. One things
for sure--those books didn't belong to Tobias. And Muggle houses in
industrial neighborhoods don't usually have wall-to-wall bookshelves
or magically hidden doors.

The house doesn't reveal anything about his childhood background. All
we learn about his background in HBP is that his witch mother married
a Muggle (which Hermione must have deduced, as someone said, from
Tobias's occupation and address as listed in the wedding
announcement). The idea that Spinner's End is his childhood home is an
assumption, and to me it makes no sense given all the hexes, which it
would have been much easier to learn, and much safer given the MoM's
methods of detecting illegal magic, to practice them in a house full
of pureblood wizards, Dark or otherwise, than in a Muggle
neighborhood, where he would easily get caught. And the magical
bookshelves are also a bit hard to explain in a Muggle house.

Why should we care whether Spinner's End was Severus's childhood home?
I have no idea. I just do.

Carol, who still thinks that Snape bought the place as an adult and
fixed it up to suit his tastes as a bachelor wizard who spent a lot of
time reading and not much time cleaning house