Prince/Pince Re: Reason Dumbledore trusted Snape

[houyhnhnm102]

No: HPFGUIDX 171756

va32h:

> We do get a description of Eileen when Hermione 
> shows Harry her photo from the back issues of the 
> Daily Prophet. It doesn't resemble the descriptions 
> we've had of Irma Pince. I didn't say the man was 
> Snape's father, but he is described as having a hook 
> nose, just as Snape is always described as having a 
> hook nose, and since that is the feature that JKR 
> makes a point of having Harry describe, the extremely 
> logical inference is that the man is a male relative of Snape's.

houyhnhnm:

Madam Pince is described as thin, vulture-like with 
a shriveled, sunken face and a hooked nose.  All we 
know of Eileen Prince's appearance is that she was 
skinny, had heavy brows, a long pallid face and a 
countenance both sullen and cross.  The shape of her 
features is not described.  I don't see anything in 
these descriptions that precludes they're being of 
the same person, especially after the passage of 
possibly as much as 50 years.  

I agree that the man in the memory is probably 
Snape's father, but asserting that Snape inherited 
his facial features from his father is stretching 
it a bit IMO.  The appearance of the woman in the 
memory is not described except that she is crouching.  
Her face may not have been visible if she was crouching.  
Harry's vision of Snape's memory was brief and fleeting 
unlike his experience in the Pensieve when he had much 
greater leisure to observe, and it was of a scene that 
had taken place 30 years or so earlier whereas the 
people Harry recognized in the Pensieve memory were 
only around 13 years younger than their present day selves.

va32h:

> The boggart was Neville's boggart, not Snape's, and 
> it did not turn into a old woman wearing a vulture-topped 
> hat, Neville's boggart *was* Snape. Neville defeated 
> the boggart by imagining Snape wearing his grandmother's 
> clothes, which included the vulture hat. The boggart 
> also prominently carried a handbag - so what does that 
> symbolise? That Snape's father is the luggage handler 
> on the Hogwart's Express?

houyhnhnm:

I was not suggesting some kind of literal, concrete 
relationship between Neville's boggart and Madam Pince.  
Rather, Rowling associates imagery of an old woman and 
a vulture with Snape.  It is the imagery that brackets 
them together, not some kind of causal relationship.  
The same thing with the books.  Snape doesn't just like 
books.  He lives in a house in which (in the parlor at 
least) all the walls are filled with books from floor 
to ceiling, like a *library*. 

va32h:

> I doesn't matter whether I like the idea of Pince being 
> Prince - it just doesn't jibe with JKR's previously known 
> methods of revealing clues, so it doesn't pass muster with me.

houyhnhnm:

The only example you give for Rowling's "previously known 
method" is that of Aberforth.  I can think of at least one 
example of a passage in which she makes connections between 
two scenes or characters by using similar language to 
describe them.  One is the way in which Dumbledore's 
death is foreshadowed by the description of the dead 
unicorn in PS.  >>Its long slender legs were stuck out 
at odd angles where it had fallen and its mane was 
spread pearly-white on the dark leaves<< Now Dumbledore. 
>>Dumbledore's eyes were closed: but for the strange 
angles of his arms and legs, he might have been sleeping<< 
We don't need to told that his silver hair was spread out 
on the dark ground.  We can see it without being told.   
There is also the description of Harry asleep against the 
glass in his bedroom with his glasses askew that mirrors 
the image of Dumbledore dead.  Then there is the similarity 
of language to describe Harry's feeling of revulsion and 
self-hatred in the cave and the look on Snape's face on 
the tower.  We don't know the meaning of that yet, but I 
feel very confident that it has a meaning.  It was not a 
matter of Rowling being unable to think of new words.