Snape Quotes

“It is no wonder that Snape is feeling the strain of being the only one who can help Draco, the only one who can fight some forms of Dark Magic, the only one who can retain Voldemort’s trust while taking his place at Dumbledore’s right hand. In some ways, it’s a bit similar to being the Chosen One, although Harry gets credit for his sacrifices and the blessing of a clean conscience. Snape’s job depends upon his guilty past and upon the secrecy that ensures his sacrifices will never be seen.”
― Lorrie Kim, Snape: A Definitive Reading

“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.”
― Lorrie Kim, Snape: A Definitive Reading

“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. The ugly boy who grew up into a man so ugly that students couldn’t look upon him without revulsion. The master of Occlumency who was sealed shut so tightly, his eyes looked dead. The Master of Death who didn’t need a cloak to be invisible, completing his second chance at life, removing his disguise and meeting Death as a friend.”
― Lorrie Kim, Snape: A Definitive Reading

“Draco’s wand turns out to work well for Harry, “at least as well as Hermione’s had done.” (HP/DH, 520) The wand recognizes Harry’s and Draco’s magic as equivalent. This wand has cast Expelliarmus at a wizard of great power and then been taken in a disarming move by a wizard whose signature magic is Expelliarmus. It is an easy transfer of wand allegiance from Draco to Harry, prompted in large part by a recognition of interchangeability.”
― Lorrie Kim, Snape: A Definitive Reading

“Killing Curse, lingering and unpredictable. Dumbledore and Draco raised this magic together in their face-off at the tower. Draco disarmed Dumbledore rather than attacking, and once Dumbledore was wandless, cast no further spells against him. Dumbledore neither counterattacked nor defended himself, taking that time, unbeknownst to Draco, to freeze Harry in place. Draco learned that Dumbledore thought him and his family worth protecting—worth dying for. That magic joined with Snape’s grief and healing magic after Draco’s Sectumsempra wounds to create a young Death Eater who felt too much connection to others to be a killer. Draco had overpowered the greatest wizard of the age using Expelliarmus, the defensive spell that Snape taught Draco and Harry to use against each other so they could hate without harm. The Elder Wand recognized this magic in Draco as akin to Dumbledore’s in strength and willingly changed allegiance.”
― Lorrie Kim, Snape: A Definitive Reading

“Draco cast Expelliarmus. He could have, should have, attacked, but he disarmed, instead, and then attacked no further. The effort Snape has poured into this boy for the past six years has been worth it. He will not split his soul by killing. Covertly, against the efforts of Lucius, Bellatrix, and Voldemort, Snape has taught Draco non-aggression. He has fulfilled two of his three vows to Narcissa: he has watched over Draco and protected him from harm.”
― Lorrie Kim, Snape: A Definitive Reading

“Severus Snape.”
― Lorrie Kim, Snape: A Definitive Reading

“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.”
― Lorrie Kim, Snape: A Definitive Reading

“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.”
― Lorrie Kim, Snape: A Definitive Reading

“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.”
― Lorrie Kim, Snape: A Definitive Reading

“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.”
― Lorrie Kim, Snape: A Definitive Reading

“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.”
― Lorrie Kim, Snape: A Definitive Reading

“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.”
― Lorrie Kim, Snape: A Definitive Reading

“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.”
― Lorrie Kim, Snape: A Definitive Reading

“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.”
― Lorrie Kim, Snape: A Definitive Reading

“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.”
― Lorrie Kim, Snape: A Definitive Reading

“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 not the father’s or child’s. There was no magic to this act, but it raised emotion and cast a spell nonetheless: a mundane spell for remorse. Snape showed Harry through the memory that he understood what he had done. This memory is an apology.”
― Lorrie Kim, Snape: A Definitive Reading

“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.”
― Lorrie Kim, Snape: A Definitive Reading

“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”
― Lorrie Kim, Snape: A Definitive Reading

“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.”
― Lorrie Kim, Snape: A Definitive Reading

“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.”
― Lorrie Kim, Snape: A Definitive Reading

“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,”
― Lorrie Kim, Snape: A Definitive Reading

“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.”
― Lorrie Kim, Snape: A Definitive Reading

“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.”
― Lorrie Kim, Snape: A Definitive Reading

“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 ideals for him to keep in mind when giving form to his truest, most protective magical self.”
― Lorrie Kim, Snape: A Definitive Reading

“love for Lily that first made him feel that someone else’s life was more important to him than his own.”
― Lorrie Kim, Snape: A Definitive Reading

“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”
― Lorrie Kim, Snape: A Definitive Reading

“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.”
― Lorrie Kim, Snape: A Definitive Reading

“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.”
― Lorrie Kim, Snape: A Definitive Reading

“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.”
― Lorrie Kim, Snape: A Definitive Reading