CHAPDISC: HBP24, Sectumsempra

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 161281

Quick_Silver:
> Wouldn't someone other then Snape have to know the healing
> counter-curse for Sectumsempra though? Snape used Sectumsempra on
> James but James isn't described as having any scars on his face
(going from vague memory here). So I'd say that a Marauder could
probably have healed Draco as well (which actually would make sense
since James knew Levicorpus).

Carol responds:
We don't know that the nonverbal curse or hex that Teen!Severus used
in the Pensieve memory was Sectumsempra. I tend to think that it
wasn't since there's no indication that James was "cut always" (no
blood flowing profusely down his face, no suggestion that the cut
won't heal, and, as you say, no scar that we know of).

I think that the spell young Snape used was a preliminary version of
Sectumsempra, perhaps just "Sectum" ("cut"), and that Sectumsempra was
a Darker and more dangerous version developed "For Enemies" after the
so-called Prank (the trick Sirius Black played on Severus to lure him
into the Shrieking Shack the following schoolyear). 

Certainly, we don't see anyone performing a songlike countercurse on
James, nor do I think he needed one. It's unlikely that he even needed
to go to Madam Pomfrey unless, like Draco, he was vain enough to be
worried about scarring, in which case she might have given him dittany.

I very much doubt that Teen!Severus would have taught Madam Pomfrey
the countercurse to a spell that he wouldn't want her to know he had
invented. Nor would the Marauders know the complex countercurse, even
if they got hold of Severus's Potions book, because it wasn't written
in the margins of the book.

I actually think it's a Flint that James knows Levicourpus, a
nonverbal hex. But even if it isn't (say the Marauders found out about
it by eavesdropping on the Slytherins), there's no reason why they
would know about Sectumsempra and its countercurse, which I think
Severus would have kept very secret (and perhaps had not yet invented).

Carol, who thinks that Snape and only Snape knows the countercurse to
Sectumsempra