Snape: A Definitive Reading

by Lorrie Kim

Quite literally flown. Lily was pure magic. Nobody taught her this; she developed this rare skill by prolonging the joy of soaring on a swing, teaching herself the wandless, nonverbal magic of how to reproduce flight at will. That’s where Snape first saw flight. This shows us one of the ways the author imagines her late mother as a child, too, the girl with the surname Volant, flying.

Even as a child, when Snape spoke of magic, he was spellbinding. He manifested magic so young, Snape didn’t need wand-waving or spoken words to make it real. It was in his head, and in Lily’s head, as well, and that made everything real enough. Rowling was careful to show the full intellectual range at Hogwarts, but at one level, her story is an allegory about giftedness.

Beauty, well-being, the habit and urge to groom the self that is instilled by years of care and grooming from others, the conviction of lovability that makes one feel worthy of grooming: these are inequalities that separate Snape from Lily, alongside class and blood status.

Dumbledore accepts the responsibility: the two of them have entered into a bond. Dumbledore’s condition requires Snape to develop more understanding, more protectiveness, toward James and Harry as well as the person Snape loves: this is a magic spell. Snape has increased the range of his protectiveness because of an interaction with the man who accepted his plea for help. Snape is already more powerful than he was before. Anything. Narcissa came to Snape for the Unbreakable Vow in the same state of absolute desperation, saying there was nothing anymore that she would not do. Snape is pledging himself to Dumbledore because the life of a loved one is more important to him; he is offering his life for Lily’s. Dumbledore will use the new power he has just gained over Snape to continue to ask more love of Snape, more sacrifice, more protectiveness toward others. Not all of us are born into lives of love; not all of us receive the love we crave.

He asks, “Is this remorse, Severus?” Snape doesn’t reply. He doesn’t understand yet what Dumbledore means. Instead, he says he wishes he were dead. (HP/DH, 678) He is quite sincere. His life is over. From this point on, if Dumbledore intervenes and calls on the most vital thing remaining in Snape—his love for Lily—Snape can start again, from the beginning, and have a second chance to do right. It is too late to protect Lily, but if all goes well, Snape can help spare the innocent life of Lily’s son, whom Voldemort will surely attack again. Snape cannot live for himself anymore; his heart is broken by guilt; he doesn’t feel deserving. But he gave himself to Dumbledore when he pledged “anything” in exchange for Lily’s protection, and Dumbledore sees a hope. If he calls on Snape to live for Dumbledore for the moment, to do as Dumbledore orders him, and keeps calling on the part of Snape that loves, keeps calling on Snape to do more and more for love and protect others for love, there’s a chance that this love can grow strong enough to sustain Snape so that he can find his own reasons to live again.

The debt he incurred to Dumbledore is an emotional connection: gratitude, a form of love. This gives Dumbledore the closeness to suggest to Snape that he begin a second chance at life. Without that closeness, nothing would have tethered Snape to life once Lily died. Everything Snape does in life after this moment is extra. It’s a gift from Death. Snape is infinitely stronger because he doesn’t fear Death after this. He was willing to meet Death at 21; at Dumbledore’s offer, he goes under an invisibility cloak of sorts, takes on a life of double agency, to see what he can accomplish before he takes off the cloak and meets Death again. The two requests Snape made because of love for Lily are what created enough power to protect Harry Potter

This memory is an apology to Harry: 31-year-old Snape ranting to Dumbledore about his belief that Harry is “delighted to find himself famous, attention-seeking and impertinent.” This is almost hilarious in its lack of self-awareness, considering that in reality, Snape picked on 11-year-old Harry repeatedly until Harry finally snapped. The inclusion of this memory is an admission that he had been wrong. Snape’s rant is countered by Dumbledore’s marvelously balanced assessment of Harry as “modest, likable, and reasonably talented.”

Dumbledore notes that Snape is braver than Karkaroff and muses, “I sometimes think we Sort too soon,” leaving Snape “stricken.” (HP/DH, 680) Was he disparaging the Slytherin capacity for bravery? Was he sorry that Sorting put distance between Snape and Lily so early, or that vulnerable young Snape was surrounded by peers who undervalued his bravery? It’s an odd comment, but it does confirm that Dumbledore believes Snape is not the same person he was as a teen. He has changed, and Dumbledore sees

Frequently, when Snape has been mean to Harry, it’s because he was afraid for Harry’s safety. His fear expresses itself as anger. It’s rather fun to see Snape scold Dumbledore the exact same way.

Dumbledore won’t tell Snape that the ring is set with the Resurrection Stone or that there are such things as Horcruxes. He doesn’t want Voldemort to learn about the Deathly Hallows through Legilimency on Snape, and he certainly wouldn’t want to tell Snape about Horcruxes and have Voldemort discover that Snape knows this secret.

Dumbledore sets the course for Snape’s final two years. He secures Snape’s promise to protect the students of Hogwarts if the school falls under Voldemort’s control, although Snape probably would have chosen this course of action without prompting. He orders Snape to track Draco. Then he tells Snape that the only way to save Draco is for Snape to kill Dumbledore.

Dumbledore is not saying Snape’s soul is disposable or less worthy than Draco’s. He is throwing himself on Snape’s mercy and asking if Snape thinks he might have what it takes to care for Dumbledore. Would he be able to kill for a protective reason, split his soul by killing, and then withstand the possibly fatal process of remorse that is the only way to reintegrate his soul? They can’t let Draco kill Dumbledore. In the unlikely event that he succeeded, he wouldn’t be able to recover.

No one kept an eye on young Snape the way Snape is now watching Draco. After more than 20 years since Sirius nearly killed him, Snape is asking for proof of care from Dumbledore, one more time. It’s brave. Dumbledore finally sees this.

But the cry from Fawkes tells us that this is about healing and second chances. Slughorn once let his weakness cloud his judgment with fatal consequences he never intended. He enjoyed being flattered by a rising star and ignored the signs that he should have been more circumspect. Similarly, Dumbledore ignored signs of Grindelwald’s evil and his sister died for it. Snape joined a hate group and Lily died for it. Dumbledore is saying, then, that Phineas Nigellus Black has never been responsible for anyone’s death and wouldn’t understand the immobilizing shame.

That’s why Snape’s eyes were fixed on Nagini in her enchanted sphere while Voldemort was going on about the Elder Wand. He was not afraid for his own life. He just knew the moment had come. He would have to put a stopper in death until he gave Harry his final message.

Again, the way Dumbledore speaks to Snape is callous, one jaded soldier to another. He does not answer Snape’s question; it is not safe to explain to Snape what he hopes will happen once Harry dies, since that answer would involve Horcruxes. He responds, instead, with another question, and Snape’s answer shows more than anything else how profoundly he has changed. Snape has learned to

calculate precisely which lives he cannot save and how to remain impassive when he must, a self-control he needs when witnessing the death of Charity Burbage. At all other times, he has been protecting others, feeling connected to them, increasing the potency of his magic with every life saved. This change in him shows the importance of Snape and Harry disliking each other to the end. They may come to respect and understand each other, but neither feels affection, nor is that a requirement.

If this came as a surprise to Dumbledore, then he hadn’t seen Snape’s doe Patronus for years, or perhaps ever before. As far as we know, the only people who ever saw the doe were Sirius, Dumbledore, Harry, and Ron. Dumbledore worked with Snape, depended upon him, but never asked him the private source of his growing strength. Perhaps he assumed that with time, Snape’s memories of Lily would have faded or been replaced. But Snape’s Patronus is powerful and effortless: it must be never far from his mind that all his protective powers have grown from that one original source, the

love for Lily that first made him feel that someone else’s life was more important to him than his own.

Loving Lily is the best of Snape. It is not like Dumbledore’s untrustworthy attraction to Grindelwald. She was the first to teach him empathy, standing up for others, and the equality of the oppressed. They played together and created magic of it. She showed him, too, the power of defending the self by walking away. These are good idea...

Snape’s Sectumsempra, which severed George’s ear, was originally meant for a Death Eater who was about to curse Lupin. Snape never liked or respected Lupin, but he’s always protected him. His use of Sectumsempra gives the impression that he’s returned to his Dark Magic ways, useful for convincing Death Eaters and the Order alike, but it’s likely the last time he ever casts a Dark spell or even one meant to attack. This night falls between the time he killed Dumbledore and the time he purged his entire being with remorse.

With confirmation that the messy intruder was Snape, this line is much funnier: “Evidently Sirius’s bedroom had been searched too, although its contents seemed to have been judged mostly, if not entirely, worthless.” (HP/DH, 179) Even in the passive voice, the sentence resounds with Snape’s disdain for everything to do with this room and its late owner. Rereading this sentence in light of Snape’s memory involves extraordinarily layered perspectives and time shifts. We readers are going back in our own time, looking at this sentence anew and remembering how we read it before. The narrator is showing Harry’s perspective as he reads the evidence of the room, recognizing that someone had been there before him, reconstructing the probable process of that person’s search and the probable conclusions they eventually reached, considering again how the room looks but from the point of view of the unknown intruder. This person had judged Sirius, and not favorably. Snape is not in the scene at all, yet we can imagine his presence vividly throughout.

Snape curated these memories specifically for Harry. The memory showed Harry the second halves of the letter and photo—he must have intended to remind Harry of the experience of encountering the first halves. Harry had picked up several pieces of paper before finding the crumpled letter that started, “Dear Padfoot.” The letter was a combination report of quotidian and revolutionary life. Harry learned that his first-year flying lesson was not his first time on a broom,

a baby. No wonder it meant so much to Sirius to give Harry the Firebolt. He learned that they had had a cat, that Petunia had sent a hideous vase, that James had been proud of his baby’s ability on a broom . . . ordinary things that Harry would have given anything to have in his life growing up. The letter was an “incredible treasure” to Harry, as it would have been to anyone: “He stood quite still, holding the miraculous paper in his nerveless fingers while inside him a kind of quiet eruption sent joy and grief thundering in equal measure through his veins.” (HP/DH, 181) This is blood magic, this uncontrolled rush of painful love for and from his mother flooding all Harry’s being, changing him, bathing him in the oxytocin that is the Muggle name for the magic of love flowing in the blood to create more love, to help infants grow, to hasten healing, to create empathy and protectiveness. This is what Harry craved, having known 15 months of it and then no more until he gained his friends at Hogwarts. This is what child Snape craved when he gazed greedily at Lily, who had been raised with such love. This is what Voldemort craved so badly that he didn’t even know he craved it until he saw Lily’s love for baby Harry and then the force of his craving sent him howling into nothingness, unable to regenerate a human body until he stole the oxytocin in Harry’s blood with Lily’s love still in it.

Snape knew the rush of hunger for more of Lily would be unstoppable for Harry, like the letters from Hogwarts pouring in when he turned 11, more and more, because the one thing Harry has ever wanted is his own story, his own family. Harry had been given back so much of his father through knowing Lupin and Sirius, through wearing his cloak and flying his Firebolt. But he was still starved for his mother, still had so little of his mother except for her eyes, and this was something Snape could give him.

The concept of remorse is central to the seven-book series, but Rowling never shows us a character actually undergoing this painful process—except for one. Snape, fallen to his knees with tears dripping down his nose, is reintegrating his soul through remorse. This is how he recovers after splitting his soul through killing Dumbledore, as he implicitly told Dumbledore he would do when accepting their agreement. The process is so wrenching that a person cannot choose the areas in which to feel remorse. It must be total. This is how hideous we humans can feel when we finally face ourselves. And Snape cannot feel remorse for killing his friend

without also facing his almost unbearably profound remorse for something he did years ago, forcing himself for the first time to truly feel what he had done.

All these years, he convinced himself of Harry’s arrogance, of his resemblance to James and not Lily, of flaws that Harry did and did not have, because he couldn’t endure the guilt of what he had taken from this child. Lily’s baby showed up at Hogwarts ten years later, abused and half-starved, prone to headaches, constantly aware that the mass murderer who attacked him would return to finish the job. Snape had been terrified to let himself feel the life he had really given Harry. Better to believe that Harry didn’t suffer. That Potter was so insulated by his arrogance, he could barely feel pain at all. That criticism would simply bounce off him without effect. The ordinary things in Lily’s letter, the garish bad taste of a godfather’s room, the quiet birthday teas . . . these are the things that Snape took from Harry. By tearing the photo, he recreated what he had done to Harry’s family when he asked Voldemort for the mother’s life but n...

Snape and Dumbledore are equally clear that they fight for the rights of Muggle-borns, just as Snape and Dumbledore both sacrificed the chance to save their own lives because they used their last moments to protect Harry instead.

The sight of Harry choosing to die without defending himself made an impact on Voldemort, just as the sight of Snape taking his hands off his wound convinced Harry to pay attention to the message Snape delivered. Harry and Snape both had something they valued more than their own survival.

Snape is a different case. He is also a Master of Death, unafraid and accepting of death but barely interested in any of the Hallows at all. He is the anti-Voldemort. Whereas Voldemort is obsessed with material objects, stealing cups and rings and lockets to house shreds of his soul, Snape depends on very little outside his own mind.

Snape’s signature magic is magic that happens inside the mind. He was a Master of Death without needing any of the Deathly Hallows at all.

He did not need the Resurrection Stone. He could recall the love in his interactions with Lily Evans as powerfully as the Resurrection Stone recalled Lily, James, Lupin, and Sirius for Harry.

He did not need a cloak to become invisible. Going undercover as the right-hand man of the tyrant he brought down was the same magic on a grander scale.

Snape died believing that Dumbledore meant to sacrifice Harry. Perhaps, once his portrait is installed, his portrait can talk to Dumbledore’s and understand better that Dumbledore meant to help Harry free himself of Voldemort. Perhaps Dumbledore’s portrait can finally explain that he withheld information about Horcruxes not for lack of trust but because he cared about Snape enough to protect his life. Perhaps, when she moves into the headmistress’s office, Professor McGonagall will get to speak to Snape’s portrait about the heartbreak of his apparent betrayal and her even greater heartbreak when she realized everything he endured while she attacked him. Whatever Snape’s portrait tells her, the other portraits can back up his story. They were witnesses to his final year.

with Dumbledore but with a literary figure from a different novel: Atticus Finch from Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, which Rowling once named as one of her top 10 recommended books for young readers. (Higgins, 2006) Scout, the narrator, remembers Atticus as “the bravest man who ever lived.”

As a child, Harry had vehemently rejected the Sorting Hat’s assertion that he could do well in Slytherin. He was terrified to think that he had anything in common with Voldemort or that the attack might have made him more like Voldemort. If Harry can tell his child he was once considered for Slytherin, he must be healed from his old trauma. But it also means that he has accepted his true nature as genuinely Slytherin enough to be considered for that house, independent of and outlasting his trauma from Voldemort. If his child is Sorted into Slytherin, Harry will be prepared to tell him how Slytherin can help him on his way to greatness. His image of the quintessential Slytherin is no longer Voldemort but Snape. His image of bravery, that quintessential Gryffindor trait, is not any of the Gryffindor loved ones for whom he has named his children. In Harry’s story as he tells it, Severus Snape is the name he passes to his children to define bravery.