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This decision of Rowling’s has been unpopular with many readers, who object to the cruelty of announcing the last-minute reversal by staging a victory for the Slytherin children and then taking it away publicly, in front of competitors who wish them ill.

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Joanne Easton
It could have been done without this dramatic switch. While “even Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff were celebrating the downfall of Slytherin,” Draco Malfoy looks “stunned and horrified” (HP/SS, 306) and surely cannot be the only one to feel betrayed that the headmaster is leading three-quarters of the school to cheer against the remaining quarter. Disturbingly, the author presents the scene without any hint of sympathy for the Slytherins.
if this disturbs them, they must step back from the story and set themselves in opposition to the author, who has condemned this kind of inter-group hostility so clearly when it comes from Slytherin characters.
With everyone from the fellow students to the headmaster set against his Slytherin charges, we see that his snickering and bullying—still absolutely wrong, still shameful from a teacher—might seem to him, and his students, to be petty retaliation in the overpowering context of a school that will not protect them.
Snape, we are reminded, is “cruel, sarcastic, and disliked by everyone except the students from his own House . . .”
Likely Snape is only liked by his own because the other Houses view him and his Slytherin students as villains. Why not, then, play the part that has so unjustly been forced upon them?
With Chamber of Secrets, Rowling provides a bit more evidence that Dumbledore brings dangerous people into the school knowingly, and his staff must treat these criminals as colleagues.
In 2013, 15 years after the publication of Chamber of Secrets, Rowling confirmed that Dumbledore knew what he was doing when he hired Lockhart.
Are first-years allowed their own broomsticks? (HP/SS, 67) Why did Harry have one as a first-year? (HP/SS, 151-2) Are first-years allowed on the Quidditch teams? Why was Harry? (HP/SS, 152) Who usually pays for student brooms? (HP/SS, 165) Who paid for Harry’s? (HP/SS, 164) Did Harry need help paying for a broom? (HP/SS, 75)
How did the rest of the school react when Slytherin lost the House Cup at the Leaving Feast? (HP/SS, 306)
It may be that from a Slytherin perspective, Hogwarts under Dumbledore has demonstrated such entrenched institutional bias that it would be impossible for Slytherins to win anything fairly, even when they deserve it.
Filch shows us what Snape would have been without magic.
Snape ensured that Draco and Harry, who hate each other, learned to duel under conditions of genuine hostility by pairing them as opponents. He ensured that they learned Expelliarmus. He ingrained disarmament into them so that in moments of mortal pressure, it would be their default magic.
Dumbledore forbade teen Snape to speak of this event in any way that would reveal Lupin’s lycanthropy.
Judging from Snape’s behavior at the end of this book, he seems to have been traumatized by the combination of these
three elements: the sustained bullying, the near fatal prank,...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
Sorcerer’s Stone was the first year that Snape had to teach Potter the Second, lookalike child of a hated old classmate, preselected for glory and favoritism above the people Snape is trying to nurture.
In Chamber of Secrets, Snape covertly drilled students in de-escalation, including a protégé who was actively championing Death Eater ideas.
While Lupin holds the Defense position, Snape’s overtime duties are downgraded from de facto Defense teacher and Auror to support staff: Lupin’s on-call substitute and his private apothecary, since few other than Snape have the talent to brew Wolfsbane, the potion that allows werewolves to keep their human minds when transformed.
Another time Dumbledore pressures Snape to console one of his childhood abusers without a word of protest.
classroom tensions instigated by biased teachers are recognizable to many of Rowling’s middle-grade readers as an authentically serious issue.
Lupin then instigates collective mockery of Snape using a sexist, ageist image that the students would never have come up with
Lupin has legitimized a form of hatred. Just as Snape created a classroom atmosphere in which his Slytherins were “excited” at the prospect of a classmate’s failure, humiliation, and fear for his pet, Lupin has gotten a roomful of pubescent Gryffindors to engage in collective sexual ridicule behind a Slytherin teacher’s back,
“Crackers!” said Dumbledore enthusiastically, offering the end of a large silver noisemaker to Snape, who took it reluctantly and tugged. With a bang like a gunshot, the cracker flew apart to reveal a large, pointed witch’s hat topped with a stuffed vulture.
Rowling shows that after Lupin led Neville to ridicule Snape in ways the Marauders might have done, Snape conflates Neville in his mind with Peter Pettigrew. Even Harry registers that Peter Pettigrew, in his parents’ photos, “resembled Neville Longbottom.”
Evidence as to why Snape seems to relish in singling Neville out to harass him. Like Harry,Neville shares a striking resemblance to yet another one of Snape's abusers.
The map offers further personal comments from Prongs, Padfoot, and Wormtail, insulting Snape’s looks, intelligence, and greasy hair. In one thrillingly dreadful moment, Harry sees both the kind of words he’d love to say to Snape and the kind of insults that Snape used to endure from bullies who outnumbered him.
“Sirius Black showed he was capable of murder at the age of sixteen,” he breathed. “You haven’t forgotten that, Headmaster? You haven’t forgotten that he once tried to kill me?” “My memory is as good as it ever was, Severus,” said Dumbledore quietly. Snape turned on his heel and marched through the door Fudge was still holding. (HP/PoA, 391)
Hermione is regularly the only Gryffindor to be as concerned for Professor Snape as she is for others, despite Snape’s usual refusal to listen to her or acknowledge her.
Many readers have wondered at the insensitivity of Dumbledore’s eyes twinkling at a time of extreme upset for Snape. Is Dumbledore enjoying Snape’s powerlessness? Even, perhaps, mocking him? Is this another instance of Gryffindor versus Slytherin taunting?
At the end of this book, Harry, Ron, and Hermione watch as a resolute Snape openly declares himself convinced of Voldemort’s return, baring his Dark Mark to the Minister of Magic, and goes alone to Voldemort to start the long mission that will likely end in his death. It is one of the few times they, and we, see him absolutely as he is. Prepared or not, it is time, and he is afraid.
The Time-Turner-like journey he has taken with Dumbledore this year into his own past, preparing to make different choices so he can save innocent lives without being seen, has arrived at the critical moment. His preparations are finished. The grand operation of his second chance starts now.
of Slytherin, Snape is now an active Death Eater, answering Voldemort’s calls to strategy meetings about his campaign to seize power. He is the primary source of spy intelligence at Order of the Phoenix meetings. He tutors Harry privately in Occlumency, a magical way to seal the mind against intrusion. And he is part of the resistance to Dolores Umbridge, a bureaucrat posted to Hogwarts by the Minister of Magic to implement a totalitarian regime denying that Voldemort has returned and cracking down on anyone preparing to defend themselves against him.
The Occlumency lessons are the only times in the entire series that Snape praises Harry. He must be really impressed.
He remembers how it feels to be reviled at school for connections to Dark Magic. He sees his Slytherin students’ fathers at Death Eater gatherings. He knows things are only going to get worse. He’s their Head of House, possibly the only adult at Hogwarts that these boys trust, and unlike his work with Harry, protective feelings toward his Slytherins have always come naturally to him. Vengeful, ugly, angry boys with family crises and a tendency to Dark Magic: this hits home for him.
It must have been a long night for Snape. He had to investigate Harry’s coded message. He had to patch up members of the Inquisitorial Squad without letting them know their family members were in a battle that would determine his future and theirs. He had to hold Hogwarts together as the senior administrator with Dumbledore, McGonagall, and even Umbridge out of commission. He had to know what was happening from both sides, hide what he knew for the sake of the students, remain immobile, and wait.
The method used by the Order, as we learn later, is via Patronus.
Before he died, Sirius Black saw Snape for his true self and understood that Dumbledore was right to trust Snape.
“But I forgot—another old man’s mistake—that some wounds run too deep for the healing. I thought Professor Snape could overcome his feelings about your father—I was wrong.”
Dumbledore's apologies always seem insincere. "I forgot." "Old man's mistake". For someone so "wise" he tends to misunderstand the situation quite often. Likely because it benefits him until he is called out on his questionable tactics.
Hermione most likely racks up another life debt to him: “The curse Dolohov had used on her, though less effective than it would have been had he been able to say the incantation aloud, had nevertheless caused, in Madam Pomfrey’s words, ‘quite enough damage to be going on with.’” (HP/OotP, 847) Hermione is cured by “ten different types of potion every day,” and it seems probable that the resident potioneer and Dark Magic expert had a hand in brewing some of them.
The longer he can remain hidden, the more he can protect not only Harry but his own Slytherins, boys as needy as he was at their age. The Inquisitorial Squad showed him how easy it would be for others to turn them toward evil. He will do what he must to stay close and protect them.
Severus Snape bears the surname of his Muggle father, but in his magical textbook, he names himself after his witch mother, Eileen Prince.
Narcissa’s anguish affects Snape as nothing else has. His defenses are so perfected that Bellatrix’s attacks are child’s play to him, but empathy for a protective mother undoes him. He must avoid speech and eye contact with Narcissa while he figures out what he can offer without jeopardizing his plans: “Snape said nothing. He looked away from the sight of her tears as though they were indecent, but he could not pretend not to hear her.” (HP/HBP, 33)
In the few months before he makes most of them hate him, Snape is trying to teach the students how to stay powerful when they are voiceless or silenced.
But unlike Harry, Snape knows that sometimes the way to help others the most is to stay unseen.
Snape refuses to attack Harry. All he does is block, expending almost no effort. At this moment, Snape is fueled by grief for the friend he just killed and protectiveness toward Draco. This makes him vastly more powerful than Harry, who is fueled by vengefulness. Harry calls him a coward for not fighting back, which is absurd when Snape so clearly overpowers him.
“DON’T—” screamed Snape, and his face was suddenly demented, inhuman, as though he was in as much pain as the yelping, howling dog stuck in the burning house behind them—“CALL ME COWARD!” (HP/HBP, 604)
What can we guess about Eileen Prince as a mother? We know she raised her son in Muggle poverty, judging from the used textbook and the neighborhood of Spinner’s End. Snape is not materialistic; magical artifacts or trappings of luxury hold no sway over him; she did not raise him to covet worldly goods, perhaps helping him see value in intellectual riches instead. She was president of a social club: she associated Hogwarts with friendship. She would have passed that on to her son as his birthright.
Rowling confirms the connection between Snape and Machiavelli by naming her character after this book not once, but twice. Not only does Snape call himself the Half-Blood “Prince,” but in The Prince, Machiavelli praises a “ferocious,” “shrewd” emperor named Severus who killed a rival named Albinus (Machiavelli, 67). Rowling’s combination of the name “Severus,” with its implications of severity and severing, with “Snape,” which sounds like snipe or snip, creates a brilliantly unpleasant picture of a character who will be ferocious and shrewd about snipping the thread of another prince’s
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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.