Snape and Spinners End house.

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 167363

wynnleaf wrote:
> First, I think we should assume that the direct statements that 
people make about the house are likely to be true.  Since Peter calls
it Snape's house and Bella says Snape lives there, it is probably his
house.
> 
> But was it the house where he grew up in?
> 
> The house has an air of neglect and appears that no one regularly 
lives there.  This does not seem to me like someone's summer home, as
most people keep up their summer/vacation home.  Therefore it's 
unlikely to be a house Snape uses a lot.  We know he has stayed at 
Hogwarts for some holidays.  Further, the books are high quality -- 
leather bound -- yet left in a house that is neglected.  If the books
are Snape's personal collection, and he bought high quality books, why
would he put them in a house that he was neglecting?  In other words,
if he cared enough to buy quality books, why not take care of them? 
Further, the furniture is worn, which also speaks of long use, yet
with the "air of neglect" seeming as though Snape isn't there often,
then how did the furniture get so much use?
> 
> From several essays by people in the UK, the house is apparently a
common style in mill towns -- a two-up-two-down, in which the house 
is either two rooms wide above and below, or (as is more likely in
this case) two rooms deep with the front door entering into the 
middle of the front room downstairs and the kitchen behind it.  You 
might want to check out some of the essays on this subject.  I could
link you to one, if you like.  Apparently some people who are 
familiar with the mill towns of Northern England think it looks like 
that's the kind of town where Spinner's End is located.
> 
> Add to that, the notion that some readers have that Snape is a 
northerner, and it would make sense that his childhood home was in a 
quintessentially northern town, and his house be a typical older  mill
town house.

Carol:
I don't think we can conclude anything beyond your first deduction:
It's Snape's house. Bellatrix is surprised that he lives there,
meaning that she, at least, has not been there before, but somebody
has, or Snape would not stock elf-made wine (not the only drink
available, or he wouldn't say that it "will do") or talk about
Wormtail's having lately developed the habit of listening at doorways.
Is Spinner's End Snape's childhood home? His summer home? (He doesn't
go there for the Christmas holiday, evidently?) A newly acquired
holiday? We don't know.

One thing we do know: the house is in a rundown Muggle neighborhood,
but it isn't a Muggle house. It has magically operated hidden doorways
in the bookshelves and it's lit by candles and candelabras, not by
electricity. I don't know when electricity became standard in England,
but I would think that any Muggle house built in the 1940s or later
would have it as a matter of course. So either this house was built
much earlier and taken over by a wizarding family (the Princes?) in
the early twentieth century at the latest, or it was converted to a
wizarding house by Snape, hidden doorways, candelabras and all. But
surely, if he had taken the trouble to convert a Muggle house into a
wizarding one, he'd have fixed the rickety furniture as well. (Surely,
Snape, powerful as he obviously is, can fix a rickety chair if he's
going to spend any time in the place at all.) It does seem likely,
however, that the books are his. Maybe they're protected from decay by
some spell. :-)

I don't think that the Muggle Tobias Snape would have lived in such a
house in the 1960s, when Severus was a child (assuming that his
parents were still together). I can't imagine any Muggle of his era
(the generation that came of age in the 1940s) living in a house like
that one. I can imagine it belonging to his Prince grandparents if
they, like the Blacks, lived in disguise among Muggles. Or I can
imagine one of Voldemort's (or Dumbledore's) agents acquiring it as a
hideout for Snape. For all we know, Mundungus Fletcher found it for
him, but since Wormtail is living with him, it seems more likely that
a DE or DE associate was the finder.

At any rate, the deduction that Snape is a northerner appears to
derive from the assumption that Spinner's End (actually the name of
the street, not the house, but, oh, well) is his childhood home. His
manners and speech patterns, with the solitary exception of spitting,
suggest otherwise. He's as cold and reserved and sarcastic as any
pureblood Slytherin, from Lucius Malfoy to Phineas Nigellus Black.

Carol, who thinks it's best not to assume too much about Snape's
background from the house at Spinner's End since we're likely to be wrong