Lily WAS: First lesson

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 185716

Alla wrote:
> <snip> I see in the text Snape knowing Dark magic (yes, it is enough
for me to see him inventing Sectusemptra) very early on, I see him
killing flies when he was a kid ( I am still not hundred percent sure
that it was him, but almost sure), which to me indicates that darkness
was in him since he was very young. >snip>

Carol responds:

In the snippet of memory in which Severus (and I agree that it's
him--who else could it be?) kills flies, the narrator specifically
identifies him as "a greasy-haired teenager." In the other two, he's
identified as "a small dark-haired boy" crying as a man yells at a
cowering woman and as "a scrawny boy" who rides an apparently hexed
broom as a laughing girl (presumably Lily) watches. I read the
fly-zapping scene as occurring after he's lost his friendship with
Lily, in contrast to the other two, in which he's, respectively, about
three or four and nine or ten.

Since green flashes aren't mentioned, we don't know whether he's
practicing Avada Kedavra on flies or merely killing time by "shooting
them down" using some other spell. To me, the scene indicates that
he's bored and friendless and has nothing better to do than to sit in
his room casting spells at flies. (He may or may not be a Death Eater,
but if he's already joined them, why is he sitting at home in  his
bedroom?)

Since the color of the spell is not mentioned, we don't know whether
he's AKing the flies or just Stunning them. (Harry, IIRC, practiced
Stunning on wasps and Impedimenta on a fly.) Or maybe he's killing
them with a special fly-killing spell that Wizards use as a magical
alternative to Muggle fly swatters. I can't imagine them tolerating
the nasty disease-spreading pests. They'd kill the flies somehow, just
as Muggles do, except that they'd use magic.

In any case, if killing flies is an indication of murderous intentions
or evil character, whether in teenagers or adults, we Muggles had
better take a closer look at ourselves.

Carol, who has killed enough flies in her lifetime for several hundred
prison terms if fly murder is a crime