Snape: A Definitive Reading

by Lorrie Kim

Snape’s Patronus shows that he holds in his heart an image of a woman whose friendship and love helped form the best part of his nature. During this year when nobody knows Snape’s true self, Snape cannot depend upon external recognition of his nearly superhuman efforts. He can turn to his memories of Lily’s friendship as a guide: he can atone for his betrayal that resulted in her death by becoming, in the second part of his life, someone who would be able to meet the gaze of a person like Lily without shame.

Look at me. With those words, Rowling completes the incantation for the stupendous magic she has cast over seven books with her creation of Severus Snape. Everything about Snape is contained in those three words. The spy who longed for nothing more than to be seen. The double agent who killed the mentor who was the last person to see his true self.

He deprived Harry of Lily’s love years ago, dedicated the second half of his life to returning it, and it is done.

Snape, too, once yearned not to feel because of the weight of others’ deaths and could not endure the sight of the survivor, the orphan boy who reminded him of his guilt.

Snape probably lives with domestic abuse as well as poverty and neglect and has confided in Lily.

The disparaging way he speaks of Muggles suggests that his Muggle parent is the more unreasonable or despicable of the two, and this has led Snape to associate feelings of contempt with Muggles.

Snape disparages Gryffindor, saying, “If you’d rather be brawny than brainy—”

For all his attitudes about wealth and status, it is Lucius Malfoy who first makes Snape feel welcome at Hogwarts, in contrast to the eventual Gryffindors who picked on Snape before any of them had even been sorted into their desired houses.

Dumbledore notes that Snape is braver than Karkaroff and muses, “I sometimes think we Sort too soon,” leaving Snape “stricken.” (HP/DH, 680)

Snape created this experience for Harry. Snape staged the clues, a treasure hunt from the overturned troll’s leg to the scattered papers to the torn photo hidden under the chest of drawers, knowing it would raise urgency in Harry, showing him in inanimate objects what he could not tell Harry yet in words: Look for your mother’s story.

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.