No longer does the story show Snape as an ugly man. The usual gratuitous descriptors of his ugliness—the mentions of the hooked nose and the greasy hair during standard exposition—are now gone from the narrative. Rowling writes him with stark realism when he is being brave: when he pulls up his sleeve to show his Dark Mark, when he sings shut Draco’s wounds, when his eyes sweep the scene and he kills his mentor. He is heroic then, harshly beautiful as he does magic that no one else can do.
