Pince/Filch

[houyhnhnm102]

No: HPFGUIDX 152526

Carol responds:

> That surprised me, too. Isn't there some reference, 
> somewhere, to Filch as "a failed wizard"? 

> especially if that father was abusive to him and 
> his mother. Also, if Filch were the man in Snape's 
> childhood memory, Harry would have recognized him 
> instantly. [...]There's no physical resemblance between 
> Snape and Filch. [...] 

> the description of Eileen Pince in her school photo 
> doesn't suggest that she had a hooked nose, either.)

houyhnhnm:

The "failed wizard" designation  doesn't sound familiar to me.  He is
not so characterized anywhere in PS where he is introduced.  Filch
appears 5 times in that book.  He is referred to as having pale eyes
or lamplike eyes (or rather Mrs. Norris is described as having bulging
lamplike eyes just like Filch's).  He wheezes.  That's about all the
physical description for Filch that exists.  His nose is never
mentioned in PS, nor if I recall correctly, anywhere else in the
books. Eileen is described as a "skinny girl of around fifteen.  She
was not pretty; she looked simultaneously cross and sullen, with heavy
brows and a long, pallid face."  She could have had any kind of nose
from that description.  Children frequently do not look like one
parent.  Sometimes they resemble neither closely.  I can think of many
examples in my own family.

Carol:

> More important, if Filch were a Muggle, he wouldn't 
> be able to see Hogwarts, nor would he long for the 
> old days when caretakers at Hogwarts used whips and 
> hung students by their wrists like medieval prisoners. 
> No, Filch seems to me to be part of the WW yet not 
> fully able to participate in it,

houyhnhnm:

Hogwarts is enchanted so that any strange passing Muggle cannot see
it, but does that mean that no Muggle can ever set foot there--Muggles
who have one foot in the WW already, such as Hermione's parents?  We
aren't told one way or the other, but as wizard-friendly Muggles can
enter Diagon Alley, it makes sense to me that Muggles could also be
allowed into Hogwarts under special circumstances and that somehow the
enchantment would be lifted in their case.

As for Filch's knowledge of the old punishments, he would have records
going back before his time, and the chains and manacles are probably
relics of his predecessor, too.

Carol:  

> Nor would a Muggle have an almost psychic relationship 
> with a cat

houyhnhnm:

I have a psychic relationship with my cat and I'm a Muggle.

Seriously, I don't see as much iron-clad evidence for Filch as a
Severus parent, as I do for Madam Pince, but I like the theory because
it opens up Filch's character so much, makes him so much more
interesting and sympathetic.

Maybe we  got our interpretation of the memory Harry saw during the
Occlumency lesson all wrong.  Maybe there never was any abuse, just a
couple of dissatisfied, cantankerous personalities in a mixed
marriage.  Tobias may have been a janitor or something similar in the
Muggle world.  He probably didn't have much in common with his bookish
magical wife.  But they rubbed along, looked out for each other in a
mean world full of wrongdoers.  I see their marriage as being similar
in some ways to that of Vernon and Petunia.

Except for the little tyke.  I don't imagine Tobias knew what to make
of his magical prodigy of a son.  And it would have been difficult for
Snape to look up to his Muggle father or see him as a role model.  I
expect they had a troublous relationship.

We don't know how Eileen and Tobias met.  There need not have been any
deception involved.  Obviously there are Muggles who have a tangential
relationship with the Wizarding World.  We know Muggle-born witches
and wizards can have siblings who are non-magical.  In extended
families there must be Muggles who have  knowledge of the existence of
the Wizarding world without really knowing too much about it.  Tobias
may have known he was marrying a witch without having any real
understanding of what he was getting himself into.

So Tobias accepted his strange magical wife and son without
understanding them or really knowing much about that world.  He had
his job, his buds that he met at the pub, sports probably.  His stange
son went off to magical boarding school and that undoubtedly relieved
a lot of tension in the household.  His world was routine, boring
perhaps, but safe and predictable.

Then his son gets mixed up with an Evil Dark Wizard, somehow
displeases him, and he and Eileen are marked for death.  Their only
hope of escaping a horrible fate is to go into hiding at Hogwarts.

No, Snape probably wouldn't want his Muggle father around, but they're
dutiful, those Snapes.  They don't have much use for people, but they
have a strong sense of duty.

Filch is dutiful towards Hogwarts.  Madam Pince is dutiful toward the
books for which she has the care.

Imagine how hard it must have been for Tobias at first, stripped of
his identity, wrenched from the world he's known all his life, and
thrown into such an alien one.  But he took it on.  He's done his best
to fit in, and he takes his duties as caretaker very seriously. He's
kind of heroic, it seems to me,  It's not surprising if, as the years
went by, he began to wonder why he couldn't do magic, too.

And Snape and Filch do seem to have a kind of intimacy even though
Filch calls Snape "professor" and Snape calls Filch "Filch".  Maybe
they have to do so for safety's  sake.  I don't expect it bothers
Snape very much.  And who knows?  Maybe Filch/Tobias is proud to have
a son who is a "professor"

I know!  Snape the son of Argus Filch.  It's not sexy.  But it's
poignant! :-D