Young Snape's cutting curse (Was: LID!Snape rides again)

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 150322

Ceridwen wrote:
 <snip>
> Sirius said Snape came to Hogwarts knowing more dark curses than the 
> seventh years (or was it half of the seventh years? either way, 
> that's impressive).  I suspect, given that Snape was eleven coming 
> in, that the curses he knew then were standard curses that were 
> available to anyone who wanted to find them.  And as he got older, 
> and learned more in school, he began to try inventing some of his 
> own.  Maybe modifying an existing spell at first, then being bolder, 
> and making something uniquely his own.  <snip>

Carol responds:
I agree with this paragraph but I want to make one quick note. Yes, it
was Sirius Black, not Remus Lupin, who said these words. (For some
reason, the quote keeps getting misattributed, maybe because posters
think, rightly, that Lupin is a more objective witness than Black.)
But Black does not say that eleven-year-old Severus came to school
knowing more *Dark* curses than half (and, yes, it is half) the
seventh years. He only says that he knew more "curses" than half the
seventh years. JKR is a bit inconsistent in distinguishing curses from
hexes and jinxes (and hexes and jinxes from each other; IMO,
throughout OoP she uses "jinxes" for "hexes," but that's another post.
I agree that these so-called curses were schoolyard variety hexes and
jinxes, some of them perhaps of his own invention (like the toenail
jinx he later invented).

And I agree that his knowledge of so many hexes and jinxes at such a
young age is impressive, whether he invented them or not. Assuming
that he got his wand on his eleventh birthday or soon afterwards, he
would have had not quite seven months to learn more than most Hogwarts
students had learned in six years. It's possible, of course, that he
used his mother's wand to teach himself before he acquired his own,
but that's still impressive considering that he would have been ten
years old or less.

What makes no sense to me is that he could have done so without
detection in a Muggle neighborhood with an abusive Muggle father. (I
tend to think that Spinner's End was not his childhood home.)

It's interesting, too, that his name, Severus Snape, fits the
alliterative pattern so common in the WW, going back at least to the
time of the four Founders (Salazar Slytherin, Godric Gryffindor.
Rowena Ravenclaw, Helga Hufflepuff) and also seen in witches and
wizards as diverse as Filius Flitwick, Minerva McGonagall, and Dedalus
Diggle. The Latin first name, that of a Roman emperor, also suggests
WW (and pureblood) practice: Compare Lucius Malfoy, Cornelius Fudge,
Rufus Scrimgeour, even Sirius Black (though the Black tradition of
naming children after constellations seems to be unique to them).
Tobias, in contrast, is a biblical name, the Greek form of the Hebrew
Tobiah meaning "Yahweh is good," not a Latin one. To me that suggests
that his witch mother chose his name, perhaps without informing his
Muggle father of her reasons. I'm wondering if perhaps she had more of
an influence on his naming and upbringing than the memory revealed in
the Occlumency lesson seems to suggest.
 
Carol, noting that mid-twentieth-century working class British Muggles
did not ordinarily name their children Severus