Of Sorting and Snape

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 175195

Christy wrote:
<snip>
> 
> No doubt Snape invented at least one very nasty curse (Sectumsempra)
among others (e.g., Levicorpus, which can be used in a nasty way) and
must have practiced them to know whether or not they worked; but we
don't know under what circumstances he practiced his inventions (on
spiders, on those flies we saw him kill, who knows) or whether or not
he invented them with the intent to use them defensively, offensively,
or both.
> 
> And Judy, if I remember correctly (I don't have my OOTP book), Snape
did use Sectumsempra at least once at school -- against James in SWM.
> <snip>

Carol responds:

If it *was* Sectumsempra, which is labeled "for enemies" and could
well have been invented after rather than before the SWM, which would
certainly give him cause to hate James and Sirius, who had caused him
to lose control and insult Lily in his anger and humiliation. (And,
like Harry blaming Snape for Sirius Black's death, he would, I think,
have projected his own guilt and anger onto the boys he already
hated.) Certainly, having been dismissed by Lily as having already
made his choice to take up with would-be Death Eaters and
practitioners of Dark magic, he had more incentive before than after
the incident to invent a Dark spell designed for revenge.

No one pays any heed to the little cut on James's cheek in the SWM nor
is there any suggestion in the scene that it's Dark Magic, in marked
contrast to Harry's use of Sectumsempra on Draco in HBP, where it
requires a complicated sung or chanted healing spell. presumably
invented by Snape as the inventor of the curse itself, to close the
wounds. No simple nonverbal spell like the one used by DD to heal his
knife wound in the cave scene will save Draco from such a Dark spell.

Note that George's ear can't be replaced though his bleeding can be
stopped. He is "cut always" (unless Snape had had the chance to heal
him, which of course does not happen). James, in contrast, is not "cut
always." Neither the narrator nor Black and Lupin, who discuss the
incident with Harry later, refer to a permanent gaping wound or even a
scar on James's cheek from Severus's cutting hex (which, IMO, is just
a precursor or preliminary form of the Dark curse Sectumsempra, not
Sectumsempra itself). Or we could be dealing with yet another
continuity error on JKR's part, but I won't go there.

Carol, who thinks that if Severus had gone around using Sectumsempra
on his fellow students, he'd have been expelled by Headmaster
Dumbledore as surely as Gellert Grindelwald was expelled from Durmstrang