Flying (was Re: Do we really get our closer?

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 177191

Potioncat:
> Wouldn't it be just a kicker, if Snape learned to fly from Saint
Lily rather than from the Dark Lord? From the description, I don't
think he  was gliding, it sounded as if he had already covered some
distance.
> 
> I'm not sure if it was mentioned in this thread or another, but I
think Snape looked like a great bat as he flew because he always looks
like one. I don't think he actually turned into a bat (or as I had
hoped, a Hebridean Black Dragon.)

Carol responds:

I know I gave the impression upthread that I thought he had turned
into a giant bat, but I was trying to be simultaneously concise and
inconclusive. I agree with the posters who said that if he were an
Animagus, he would turn into a normal bat, and I *think* that the
batlike appearance relates to his black cloak fluttering around him
and to the swooping motion of his flight (compare Quirrell's
description of him "swooping around like an overgrown bat," SS Am. ed.
288). IOW, he swoops and sweeps and wears black and his cloak is
repeatedly described as billowing out behind him, all of which
associates him in Harry's mind and the reader's with a giant bat. (I
thought it was odd, however, that even the child "Sev" is described as
looking like a bat, flapping around in a coat that's too big for him,
poor little guy.)

Anyway, I don't think that Snape is merely gliding to the ground like
Child!Lily. He seems to be actually flying, a power that we've been
prepared for by seeing Voldemort do it more than once. Whether Snape
learned it from his "master" (and since McG is wrong about their
relationship, she could be wrong in her hypothesis as well) or taught
himself (as he seems to have taught himself Occlumency and
Legilimency), it's impossible to say, just as it's impossible to say
whether Snape (or LV) could fly without a wand.

My take on it as of this moment is that he was actually flying, in
human form, resembling a bat only because of his flapping black cloak;
that he taught himself (perhaps after seeing Voldemort do it); and
that he could do it without a wand if he had to, but that he would
never be thoughtless or careless enough to leave his wand behind (and
he was unlikely to meet an opponent who could disarm him). Snape was a
very powerful and talented wizard; the whole business of his death by
Nagini was a fluke (and only happened, IMO, because JKR wanted that
dramatic moment of looking into each other's eyes and needed Harry to
see those memories).

Anyway, I see no connection between Lily's "flying" through the air
like an acrobat on a trapeze and Snape's/Voldemort's ability to fly
without a broom for a considerable distance. One is a magical child's
accidental discovery, the other the acquired skill of a highly
talented and powerful adult wizard.

Carol, realizing that interpretation is in the eye of the beholder
when all we're given is characters' sense impressions (and their
unreliable interpretations of what they see)