Will the Real Severus Snape please step forward?

[Zara]

No: HPFGUIDX 167763

> Goddlefrood:
> On Lily first, one thing that I find interesting about Snape 
> and Lily is that they were most probably in the same NEWT 
> level Potions class. I have a prediction relative to this, 
> which is that Lily was responsible for the Potions tips 
> contained in Snape's copy of Advanced Potions. Snape copied 
> from her, thus becoming more proficient at Potions himself 
> to the extent that he is often described in canon as the 
> Potions Master. 

zgirnius;
I will side with Carol's earlier posts on this subject. In the course 
of ragging on mistakes made by both Harry and Neville in assorted 
scenes througout the books, Snape demonstrates that he can tell by 
the look of a potion exactly when and in what way a student has 
failed to follow his instructions. This demonstrates that at each 
step of the process, he understands what effect adding an ingredient 
or following another instruction will have. This is the sort of 
knowledge that would permit him to make improvements - that he has it 
makes me believe he can, and therrfore did. Though I would not rule 
out collaboration - two such students in one class would, in my 
opinion, be very interested in the shortcuts and ideas of the other.

> Goddlefrood: 
> Even though there is a very good likelihood that Severus and 
> Lily were in the same NEWT level Potions class, it is unlikely 
> that their nexus to each other existed at any level other than 
> in the classroom. This would be supported by the fact that 
> Severus and Lily were in different houses and from what we have 
> been shown there is little interaction between houses except in 
> class or at Quidditch matches.

zgirnius:
Percy dates a Ravenclaw, as does Ginny. Neither relationship is 
Quidditch based. It also seems highly likely that Muggleborn Ted 
Tonks, the husband of the Slytherin Andromeda (Black) Tonks, was not 
himself a Slytherin. Based on Nymphadora's age, these folks had to be 
school sweethearts.

Goddlefrood:
> It is noted that Severus was saddened by Lily's death, however 
> the reason for this is more likely to have been because he did 
> not realise the consequence of what his reporting the partial 
> prophesy to Voldemort would be than that he was in love with 
> her, which view I do not favour.

zgirnius:
Just how saddened is Severus by Lily's death? Some sources relating 
to the question...

> JKR, interview on "60 Minutes:, 2002:
http://www.accio-quote.org/articles/2002/1002-sixtymin-stahl-
reedit.html
> Q: And what's this? You brought another book I haven't seen. 

> JKR: Oh yeah, this is so useful for me because I'm not a gardener 
at all. And my knowledge of plants is not great. I used to collect 
names of plants that sounded witchy, and then I found 
this. "Culpeper's Complete Herbal", and it was the answer to my every 
prayer. flax-weed, toad-flax, flea-wort, gout-wort, gromel, 
knotgrass, mugwort... just everything you could possibly... you know, 
so when I'm potioning, I get lost in this for an hour. And the great 
thing is it actually does tells you what they used to believe it did, 
so you can really use the right things in the potions you were making 
up. 

zgirnius:
The point of the above is that Rowling does not choose her real-life 
Potions ingredients at random. She reseqarches their meanings and 
uses.

And now, the first words Severus ever directed at our hero, Harry.

> PS/SS, "The Potions Master":
> "Potter!" said Snape suddenly. "What would I get if I added 
powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood?"

zgirnius:
So, what are the meanings, uses, and beliefs surrounding these 
potions ingredients?

> From http://www.botanical.com/botanical/mgmh/w/wormwo37.html,
> Wormwood:
> The Wormwoods are members of the great family of Compositae and 
belong to the genus Artemisia, a group consisting of 180 species, of 
which we have four growing wild in England, the Common Wormwood, 
Mugwort, Sea Wormwood and Field Wormwood. In addition, as garden 
plants, though not native, Tarragon (A. dracunculus) claims a place 
in every herb-garden, and Southernwood (A. abrotanum), an old-
fashioned favourite, is found in many borders, whilst others, such as 
A. sericea, A. cana and A. alpina, form pretty rockwork shrubs. 

> The whole family is remarkable for the extreme bitterness of all 
parts of the plant: 'as bitter as Wormwood' is a very Ancient 
proverb. 

> From http://botanical.com/botanical/mgmh/a/aspho080.html
> Asphodel:
> Botanical: Asphodelus Ramosus
> Family: N.O. Liliaceae

> The ancients planted the flowers near tombs, regarding them as the 
form of food preferred by the dead, and many poems refer to this 
custom. The name is derived from a Greek word meaning sceptre. 

zgirnius:
And these two ingredients, we learn, are used in the Draught of 
Living Death. This, from the guy who always wears black. (The 
traditional color or mourning in Western societies). Somehow, if 
Severus indeed did have a love of his life, I tend to think the lady 
is no longer with us, and his feelings about that fact are of a 
nature he finds especially hard to bear. All this does tend to make 
me think that she would have to have been Lily, to whose death he 
unknowingly contributed as a young man.

> Goddlefrood: 
> If Snape was invaluable to Dumbledore, then, as I have said 
> before, surely he would have been *more* useful away from 
> Hogwarts than at it, that is after the rebirth of Voldemort. 

zgirnius:
Indeed so. And yet, since the Wizarding World refused at the end of 
GoF to believe in that return, what we saw in OotP was a sort of Cold 
War, in which Snape seems to have played a role of some note. (All 
those reports to the Order, and his sending of the Order to  the MoM 
at the end of the book.) And in HBP, with the war turned hot, 
Dumbledore gave Snape the teaching position the poor man had been 
pining for all these years. (Not! As we both agree).  The expected 
outcome of this decision, in my view, coud only have been that it 
would cause Snape to leave Hogwarts for some more useful location by 
the end of the school year. Which is exactly what happened.

? Goddlefrood:
> A further matter that has been of interest to me, and for which 
> I have yet to see an explanation is how come Snape seemingly 
> never figured out that Scabbers was Wormtail and that may bear 
> further examination.  Not by me here and now, but perhaps one 
> day in the not too distant future I will look into it more 
> closely again, unless someone wants to offer an explanation, 
> which would be welcome.

zgirnius:
A discussion of why he would not have known prior to Spring of PoA  
has already been presented in response, with which I concur. Is this 
what you meant, or are you interested in the specifics of what 
happened in the Shack?


> Goddlefrood: 
> I have stated before that the decision to kill Dumbledore was a 
> snap one on Severus's part; IOW I do not believe it was part of 
> any plan between he and Dumbledore. My reasoning?

<snip Marauder examples>
 
> I apprehend that it gives us a key to his look on the tower, and 
> this is of course notwithstanding what I said in part 2 (Tobias 
> & the Angel), in that Snape ultimately blamed Dumbledore for the 
> prank incident, whether this was a rational belief I will not 
> say. What I will say is that any time Snape is reminded of the 
> prank his fury is terrible to behold. Therefore, Severus finally 
> snapped atop the tower and killed the man he blamed for years of 
> misery. 

zgirnius:
Any reason why you suppose Snape might have recalled it just at that 
particular moment? It seems to me he would have had other things on 
his mind at the time, like, for example, his Unbreakable Vow. Or is 
it your position that the Vow was as much the reason - the look just 
explains how he was able to do it?

> Goddlefrood:
> This is somewhat reinforced by my belief that we have been 
> misled regarding Irma. I put it to you all that she was the 
> sniggering little girl in one of the memories Harry had a 
> glimpse of when breaking into Severus's thoughts in an 
> Occlumency lesson.

zgirnius:
Maths are not the strong suit of Ms. Rowling, perhaps. However, I 
think she has mental images of her characters which have some 
correspondence to their ages, so that fact that her interviews place 
Snape in his latter thirties carries a good deal of weight with me. A 
playmate of Severus would have to be, at the present time in the 
series, a woman roughly 35-40 years of age. Madam Pince is described 
in OotP (Chap. 29) as having a "shriveled" face. That seems wrong for 
a woman of the age you suppose her to be.