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deathtocapslock“My reputation, Iago! My reputation!” Shakespeare, “Othello.”
*
Years ago on Snapedom we had a discussion about Snape’s relationships with his Hogwarts colleagues. It occurred to me recently to wonder anew about the changes in those relationships over time.
*
When Harry reported Snape’s murder of Dumbledore, Minerva and the other Hogwarts staff and Order members accepted Harry’s testimony instantly, though with shock and (in some cases) obvious reluctance.
Yet in the WW even more than ours, eyewitness testimony of a crime must necessarily be suspect. Polyjuice, glamours, the Confundus charm, all could cause a gull to testify, utterly sincerely but completely inaccurately, to another’s guilt.
The Order even had the ghastly cautionary tale of Sirius to remind them not to believe in appearances.
And everyone there present knew that Harry hated Snape so much that the boy would swallow even the flimsiest illusion incriminating his hated professor.
Hagrid had simply flat-out refused to believe Harry’s eyewitness testimony that Snape had murdered the headmaster.
Just as Hagrid had refused in book one to believe that Professor Snape had tried to kill Harry or would try to steal the Stone, despite the children’s eyewitness testimony attesting to Snape’s perfidy.
Minerva and the other staff, in contrast, accepted Harry’s word on the matter at once in book six. Not happily, no, but without a moment’s question.
As Minerva had NOT done in book one, when the Trio told her their suspicions of Snape.
Meaning that as of Book Six, most of the Hogwarts staff considered that killing Dumbledore was something possible to believe of Snape. Despite their having had no misgivings about calling him to help defend the school against the invading Death Eaters, they all credited Harry’s vicious slur—excuse me, unvarnished report—instantaneously.
Except for Hagrid.
Why the difference?
*
Let’s start by comparing Hagrid’s reactions on various occasions his beloved Harry testified against the professor. We’ll look first at the broom-jinx post-mortem in Hagrid’s hut (PS chapter 11)
“It was Snape,” Ron was explaining. “Hermione and I saw him. He was cursing your broomstick, muttering, he wouldn’t take his eyes off you.”
“Rubbish,” said Hagrid, who hadn’t heard a word of what had gone on next to him in the stands. “Why would Snape do somethin’ like that?”
Harry, Ron, and Hermione looked at one another, wondering what to tell him. Harry decided on the truth.
“I found out something about him,” he told Hagrid. “He tried to get part that three-headed dog on Halloween. It bit him. We think he was trying to steal whatever it’s guarding.”
Hagrid dropped the teapot.
“How do you know about Fluffy?” he said.
[Note that Hagrid’s very evident alarm and surprise here is, by what he chooses to focus on, at learning that the KIDS have found out about the Cerberus, NOT at what they’ve just said about Snape. For anything we know, he had already been told that Snape—or that some unnamed staff member—had been bitten while guarding the Stone on Dumbledore’s order. Perhaps someone had been down at his hut asking about the proper treatment for such bites…?]
….
“But Snape’s trying to steal it.”
“Rubbish,” said Hagrid again. “Snape’s a Hogwarts teacher, he’d do nothin’ of the sort.”
“So why did he just try and kill Harry?” cried Hermione.... “I know a jinx when I see one, Hagrid. I’ve read all about them. You’ve got to keep eye contact, and Snape wasn’t blinking at all. I saw him!”
“I’m telling yeh, yer wrong!” said Hagrid hotly. “I don’t know why Harry’s broom acted like that, but Snape wouldn’ try an’ kill a student! Now, listen to me, all three of yeh—yer meddlin’ in things that don’t concern yeh. It’s dangerous. You forget that dog, and you forget what it’s guardin’….”
Hagrid is not worried at all about Snape here; nothing the kids have told him has worried him in the least. Rather, he’s worried about the kids’ “meddlin’ in things that don’t concern yeh.” And he actually gets angry at the kids’ insistence on what they did, after all, witness with their own eyes.
Contrast this with Hagrid’s behavior earlier (in PS8) when Harry and Ron talked about their first week and first impressions of the Hogwarts staff:
… Harry and Ron were delighted to hear Hagrid call Filch “that old git.”
“And as for that cat, Mrs. Norris, I’d like ter introduce her to Fang sometime. D’yeh know, every time I go up ter the school, she follows me everywhere? Can’t get rid of her—Filch puts her up to it?”
Harry told Hagrid about Snape’s lesson. Hagrid, like Ron, told Harry not to worry about it, that Snape liked hardly any of the students.
“But he seemed really to hate me.”
“Rubbish!” said Hagrid. “Why should he?”
Yet Harry couldn’t help thinking that Hagrid didn’t quite meet his eyes when he said that.
“How’s yer brother Charlie?” Hagrid asked Ron. “I liked him a lot—great with animals.”
Harry wondered if Hagrid had changed the subject on purpose. (PS8)
Inferences from these two passages?
One: Hagrid’s not that good a liar. The obvious conclusion from PS8 is that Hagrid knew that there was, in fact, damned good reason for Professor Snape to “hate” James Potter’s lookalike son. But Hagrid neither held that grudge against the professor (if he did, he should be just as willing to trash Snape to Harry and Ron as he did Filch and Mrs. Norris), nor did he think it proper to burden young Harry with the real reason why Snape might “hate” him.
Two: Harry saw shiftiness in Hagrid’s defense of Snape in C8, versus heat in C11 . It would seem, therefore, that it was perfectly plausible to Hagrid that Snape might hate Harry enough on his father’s behalf to dock a single house point unjustly from Potter’s son.
(O! The unspeakable horror of such behavior! One whole, entire point! Cue the chorus to faint alternately on the sopha.)
Note that it’s (only) the unfounded (in his eyes) accusation that makes Hagrid angry with the kids. Accuse Snape of hating Harry for something Harry couldn’t control and taking a point in pure spite? Hagrid denied the charge, but without meeting Harry’s eyes.
Claim that Severus Snape would try an’ kill a child, any child, even James Potter’s loathéd son, or try an’ steal the Stone?
Rubbish!
And we saw that Hagrid’s trust in the professor remained utterly unshaken as of Book 6. After Hagrid and Harry put out the fire after “The Flight of the Prince,” Hagrid asked,
“But what happened, Harry? I jus’ saw them Death Eaters runnin’ down from the castle, but what the ruddy hell was Snape doin’ with them? Where’s he gone—was he chasin’ them?”
“He…” Harry cleared his throat; it was dry from panic and the smoke. “Hagrid, he killed…”
“Killed?” said Hagrid loudly, staring down at Harry. “Snape killed? What’re yeh on abou’, Harry?”
“Dumbledore,” said Harry. “Snape killed… Dumbledore.”
Hagrid simply looked at him, the little of his face that could be seen completely blank, uncomprehending.
“Dumbledore wha’, Harry?”
“He’s dead. Snape killed him.”
“Don’ say that,” said Hagrid roughly. “Snape kill Dumbledore—don’ be stupid, Harry. Wha’s made yeh say tha’?”
“I saw it happen.”
“Yeh couldn’ have.”
“I saw it, Hagrid.”
Hagrid shook his head; his expression was disbelieving but sympathetic, and Harry knew that Hagrid thought he had sustained a blow to the head, that he was confused, perhaps by the aftereffects of a jinx….
“What musta happened was, Dumbledore musta told Snape ter go with them Death Eaters,” Hagrid said confidently. “I suppose he’s gotta keep his cover.” (HBP, C28)
*
Contrast that with Minerva’s volte-face. In book one, when the Trio warned her that Snape would be trying to steal the Stone, she was as disbelieving as Hagrid.
“Look,” said Harry, throwing caution to the winds. “Professor—it’s about the Sorcerer’s Stone—”
Whatever Professor McGonagall had expected, it wasn’t that. The books she was carrying tumbled out of her arms, but she didn’t pick them up.
“How do you know—?” she spluttered
“Professor, I think—I know—that Sn—that someone’s going to try and steal the Stone. I’ve got to talk to Professor Dumbledore.”
She eyed him with a mixture of shock and suspicion.
“Professor Dumbledore will be back tomorrow,” she said finally. “I don’t know how you found out about the Stone, but rest assured, no one can possibly steal it, it’s too well protected.”
Two points. Like Hagrid, she seemed far more concerned with Harry’s illicit knowledge than with his actual accusations. Unlike Hagrid, she didn’t specifically rise up in indignant defense of Professor Snape.
But then, Harry knew better than to make a point of whom, precisely, he was accusing of being a thief, didn’t he? He let slip “Sn—“, but then changed his accusation to “someone.”
Which is a very interesting little clue about Harry’s perception at that time of the relationship between his most and least trusted teachers, when you think about it.
If I go so far as to accuse X of being about to attempt a crime, presumably I have (or think I have) solid evidence against X specifically. If, conversely, I say that I think “someone” is about to do it—well, that’s a much weaker accusation, and one much less likely to have real evidence in support. And therefore much less likely to be believed, or even listened to.
(Not that Minerva’s precisely a model of listening patiently to accusations she finds ludicrous.)
The only reason to change from the stronger to the weaker accusation is if one thinks that naming the accused will itself bias the authority against one’s case.
Or in simpler words, the only reason for Harry NOT to accuse Snape directly is if he thought (or more accurately, felt intuitively) that naming Snape would make McGonagall less, rather than more, likely to take his charge seriously. That is, that Harry believed that McGonagall, like Hagrid, would trust her own reading of Snape’s character above the Trio’s earnest, sincere, and indeed accurate (so far as it went) marshalling of evidence against him.
Which effect would, of course, be the exact opposite to the effect of mentioning Snape’s name in connection to villainy to Harry and Ron in book one, or indeed at any time.
And if Minerva DID notice whom, precisely, Potter was accusing of such a crime (I suspect she did, at least upon reflection: Harry’s change was hardly subtle), she did indeed dismiss out of hand Potter’s outrageous accusations against the professor he was known not to get on with.
Contrast that to her reaction in book six (c27):
“Harry, what happened? According to Hagrid, you were with Professor Dumbledore when he—when it happened. He says Professor Snape was involved in some—“
“Snape killed Dumbledore,” said Harry.
She stared at him for a moment, then swayed alarmingly; Madam Pomfrey, who seemed to have pulled herself together, ran forward, conjuring a chair from thin air, which she pushed under McGonagall.
“Snape,” repeated McGonagall faintly, falling into the chair. “We all wondered… but he trusted… always… Snape… I can’t believe it…”
[Of course she means here that she CAN believe it, but wishes she did not.]
…
“He [Dumbledore] always hinted that he had an ironclad reason for trusting Snape,” muttered Professor McGonagall, now dabbing at the corners of her leaking eyes with a tartan-edged handkerchief. “I mean… with Snape’s history… of course people were bound to wonder…. but Dumbledore told me explicitly that Snape’s repentance was absolutely genuine… wouldn’t hear a word against him!”
She TALKS about having to accept that DUMBLEDORE was wrong about Snape.
But we can contrast her visceral reaction with Lupin’s, whose opinion about Snape was, per what he’d told Harry eleven chapters earlier (c16), that “It comes down to whether or not you trust Dumbledore’s judgment. I do: therefore, I trust Severus.”
Iron Minerva almost fainted at Harry’s eyewitness confirmation of the report that Snape was somehow “involved” in Dumbledore’s death. That Snape had killed him.
Lupin merely said harshly, “Snape was a highly accomplished Occlumens…. We always knew that.”
Which was shocked and stunned at having had a former trust betrayed, and which merely that Snape had managed to fool Dumbledore?
But both believe immediately that the charge must be true.
*
In the previous discussion of Snape’s relationships with his colleagues, I pointed out that in book two, their all allowing him to take point in the united attack against Gilderoy demonstrated that—at that time—they
trusted that Snape, like them, had at heart the best interests of the school and of the students.
Click here for the earlier discussion.
http://asylums.insanejournal.com/snapedom/154280.html
When did that trust shatter, and why?
*
I had previously argued that it was only Dumbledore’s murder itself that shattered it. But on reflection, the fact that Hagrid, and only Hagrid, entirely disregarded Harry’s eyewitness statement, shows that indeed Snape’s other colleagues’ trust in him had been previously compromised.
Their trust in Snape might well have changed when Snape showed Fudge his Dark Mark. The discovery that the youthful Severus had not merely run with a bad crowd for a time at Hogwarts, but had actually pledged himself to Voldemort, might well have caused his colleagues to revise their earlier, generally favorable, impressions of him.
Only—surely Dumbledore told Snape’s shocked colleagues at least as much as he’d said in Karkaroff’s hearing (and had told the Ministry previously), that Snape had changed sides and spied on the Death Eaters for Dumbledore “at great personal risk.”
Anyone at all conversant with the tactics employed by Lord Voldemort and his followers in the first war could make a moderately-informed guess as to how “great” a “personal risk” the double agent must have faced when he “changed sides.”
So, Snape had made a terrible mistake in giving himself to Voldemort, had quickly repudiated it, and had risked death and horrific torture to make amends for his original mistake. All Dumbledore would have had to add was that Snape had turned his cloak at the very time that Voldie seemed to be winning, while cowards were flocking in the other direction, and Snape would look like a hero, and his colleagues’ previous trust in him would be reinforced.
If, of course, Dumbledore wished it to be reinforced.
*
However.
There’s the matter of Snape’s cover.
Dumbledore might well have thought that Snape’s “return” to Voldemort would look more convincing if his colleagues did NOT truly trust his character, but rather extended the same ‘trust’ that Lupin did:
“Dumbledore trusts Severus, and that ought to be good enough for the rest of us.” (HBP16)
Voldemort knew (or thought he did) why Dumbledore believed in Snape’s repentance. If Dumbledore’s followers accepted Snape merely on Dumbledore’s say-so but didn’t fully themselves trust him, Snape would be rendered by that suspicion a less useful agent to Voldemort, to Tom’s disappointment.
However, their acceptance of Snape would then demonstrate merely their unswerving belief in Dumbledore’s infallibility, not that Snape might have legitimately earned their trust by demonstrating his personal probity and his loyalty to the school, the students, his headmaster, or his colleagues.
Conversely, if Snape’s colleagues universally (or even generally) seemed to accept him as someone who’d established his reputation as a good person, a teacher who clearly cared about the well-being of his students and his school….
We-ell, that wouldn’t exactly be the type of person who could find any reason to welcome Voldemort’s return, would it? Whereas a sadistic opportunist whose sick schemes to revenge himself on his old enemies’ kids had, for years, been partly reined-in by Dumbledore, might well think that a Voldemort regime would afford him more opportunities for self-expression.
So, if Snape’s colleagues trusted him too implicitly, it should follow that Voldemort should not.
So it might actually be helpful if Snape’s colleagues generally regarded Severus with a tinge of suspicion….
If so, was it merely the revelation of the Dark Mark that induced this?
In fact, wouldn’t it be much better if Snape had induced reservations among his colleagues long before then? Would Dumbledore not think it better if Voldemort’s sources reported (WELL before Voldemort’s call to Severus to resume his active service) that the double agent was regarded with some reservations by the other teachers, that they had {felt they had] good reason to harbor doubts about Snape’s underlying character?
This question, after ten years of apparent peace, might well have arisen to haunt Albus and Severus in the year that they first seriously entertained fears of Tom’s attempting an imminent return.
AKA Harry’s first year at Hogwarts.
*
Severus had good independent reasons to establish himself, to Harry and the children of former Death-Eaters, as a Harry-hater in the very first class. That taking a point unfairly might cause his colleagues to feel Snape’s former (and natural and well-founded) antipathy to James was leading Severus to behave a bit unprofessionally towards Potter’s innocent son, might of itself have been collateral damage rather than a deliberate effect.
But there was an event later that fall, after Severus and Albus had clear cause to suspect Quirrell, which also must have lowered Snape in his colleague’s esteem.
Remind me again: why, exactly, did Snape volunteer to referee Harry’s second Quidditch match?
Oh yeah, to run interference between Quirrell!mort and Harry.
Which can obviously better be done on a fast-moving broom, while keeping track (official track, no less, with an interested and partisan audience critiquing one’s every call) of thirteen other children’s shenanigans and three balls (one of them a lethal missile)…
Than from the ground, focusing only on Quirrell and the probable victim.
As Severus had done in the previous match.
And Snape’s heroic, self-sacrificing, and obvious (to Voldemort) interference in Quirrell’s murderous plot was, in the event, rendered entirely null and void by Dumbledore’s last-minute decision to attend the match himself.
Really, shouldn’t Severus and Albus, sole co-conspirators in saving Harry, have been a little better coordinated with each other?
But, of course, we KNOW that running interference was Snape’s REAL motivation for refereeing, because we were TOLD so.
In confidence.
By Tom.
Whose record for truthfulness very nearly matches Albus’s.
However, in this case I reluctantly concede that Tommy was almost certainly the sinned-against, rather than the sinner.
Only, Tom’s record on figuring out what his loyal servant Severus was really up to wasn’t exactly stellar either, was it now?
Let’s look at what Quirrell!mort said:
“Snape was trying to save me?” [said Harry]
“Of course,” said Quirrell coolly. “Why do you think he wanted to referee your next match? He was trying to make sure I didn’t do it again. Funny, really…. he needn’t have bothered. I couldn’t do anything with Dumbledore watching. All the other teachers thought Snape was trying to stop Gryffindor from winning; he did make himself unpopular…. and what a waste of time, when after all that, I’m going to kill you tonight.” (PS, c 17)
*
I’m reminded (appallingly belatedly) of a comment I put in the mouth of the perceptive Miss Lovegood in my fanfic “The Protean Charm”:
“One of the things I came to understand is that, when dealing with the smarter Slytherins, one should always at least consider the possibility that what DOES happen is what they WANTED to make happen.”
*
So… what DID happen as a result of Snape refereeing that match?
Severus “made himself unpopular” among his fellow teachers. He established a reputation for himself as a cheater.
His colleagues considered that he went beyond the line of what was acceptable for a Head of House in cheating for Quidditch (such as “bending” a hundred-year ban on allowing first year students to play, or letting team members off homework in one’s classes the week of a match).
And, per the Weasley twins—our probable source for Ron’s original “information” that Snape blatantly favored his own house—he’d never done such a thing before.
Oh.
Is there a wall handy to bash my head against?
*
But of course there’s a huge difference between being willing to cheat a little too much to get the Quidditch Cup (after all, Quidditch!), and being willing to countenance harm to one’s students. Someone condemned roundly as a cheat might still be trusted not to deliberately hurt children under his care.
And the incident at the end of CoS where the other teachers followed Severus unhesitatingly in his attack on Gilderoy showed that they did then so trust Snape.
Harry believed (perhaps from the start) that Snape (Professor Snape, Harry!) enjoyed humiliating, frightening, and hurting his less-favorite students. Snape’s fellow teachers, however, might have evaluated him differently. They might possibly have thought that Severus was a little too free in his use of intimidation and sarcasm, but after all they themselves used ridicule (Minerva, Sybill, Filius, Hagrid), threats (Minerva, Hagrid), and abusing pets as experimental subjects (Filius) in their own classes. So if Severus’s colleagues disagreed in any respect with his disciplinary methods, it was about the degree rather than the kind of the methods he used.
And we readers repeatedly watched Severus issue threats he had neither the authority nor the true desire to follow through on. Harry’s worst fear was being expelled from Hogwarts, and Snape constantly threatened Harry with that.
But in fact, from book one on, Snape instead regularly helped to shield Harry when his misdeeds might have earned such a punishment. (In book one, Snape blackmailed the Malfoys into covering up Hagrid’s Azkaban-worthy illegal dragon, and the Trio’s expulsion-worthy complicity with him, and Harry and Hermione’s actually bringing the dragon into the school proper…. In book three, he assured the Minister that the children had been bewitched by Black into mounting their assault on Snape… In book six, an assault that would probably have been lethal but for his intervention---well. ‘Nuff said.)
It seems probable that Severus made other empty threats as well. (Indeed, in book four, Harry thought that Snape was repeatedly threatening to poison Harry, which manifestly never happened.)
Perhaps Severus might, on some occasions, have threatened to poison or to use as potions ingredients the next pet some dunderhead had improperly introduced into his classroom?
If Snape’s colleague had all repeatedly heard from students that Snape had issued such threats, or had heard Severus ranting in the staffroom about what he’d like to do the next time some student was idiot enough to bring a bloody pet to a class involving fire and volatile ingredients which included the damned pet’s bloody internal organs—didn’t the children REALIZE what might HAPPEN if a toad jumped into the wrong pot…?
And if Snape’s fellow teachers had all dismissed that Snapely ranting as fellow-instructor hot air—well, it must have been a considerable and unpleasant shock when Severus eventually followed through on the threat.
Maybe Harry and the Death Eaters’ children in Snape’s third-year Potions class weren’t the only target audience for Severus’s elaborate charade of poisoning Trevor.
Maybe they weren’t even the primary one.
*
The other Heads of House all backed Severus when he attacked Gilderoy near the end of Harry’s second year. At the very beginning of the next year, in one of his first classes, Snape (seemed to) cross another line in his treatment of students he disliked.
Hogwarts permitted instructors to confiscate pets brought to class and use them as experimental subjects, true. Filius demonstrated that in one of Harry’s first-year Charms classes. But to try actually to kill one…. no, that went too far. And the additional cruelty of using the little boy’s own botched poison to do so, making the child an involuntary accomplice to his pet’s death, his own incompetence the cause—
That’s just evil.
Snape’s s colleagues might well have had cause that night to exclaim in the staffroom, as Slughorn did some three years later: “Snape! I thought I knew him!”
Click here for my analysis of how Snape had never any intention nor expectation of doing Trevor any harm—he expected and intended Hermione to help Neville fix his potion, and was simply seizing the opportunity to establish firmly in the children’s minds that he was totally a sadistic bastard who would happily torture a little boy’s pet to death in front of him—without having to DO anything of the sort.
http://asylums.insanejournal.com/snapedom/263723.html
I’ll just digress to add that, on further rereading, there’s one nuance that I missed before. Snape capped his villainous performance by hissing, “Five points from Gryffindor. I told you not to help him, Miss Granger. Class dismissed.”
But in fact he had not told her that. He’d said only, when Hermione first volunteered to help Neville fix the potion, “I don’t remember asking you to show off, Miss Granger.”
If the KIDS had noticed this discrepancy, they’d simply have taken it as further proof of how unfair that big meanie was. However, Miss Granger and Mr. Longbottom were the most—maybe the only—law-abiding kids in Gryffindor. At that point in Granger’s career, if a teacher HAD directly ordered her not to help another student, there was the risk that she might have obeyed. Couldn’t take that risk….
So Snape turned down her offer with an insult but did not directly forbid her to do help. But at the very end he implanted in the children’s minds the suggestion that he HAD ordered her not to, and that our plucky Gryffindor heroes had been brave enough to directly disobey the villain’s evil orders. Much more heroic to defy the villain than to sneak behind his (carefully-turned) back!
A couple more points.
Neville’s other teachers had their noses firmly rubbed in just how deeply Neville had been traumatized by the incident by the news that Professor Snape had actually terrorized the boy so much as to become Neville’s boggart.
Which, by a stunning coincidence, was revealed that very afternoon.
By sheerest chance, a boggart moved into, of all places, a wardrobe in the staffroom—the only room other than Professor Snape’s own office or quarters where Severus might reasonably be found during his free periods. And the ONLY room (of the above cited) where another teacher might reasonably bring students for a practicum.
This boggart moved in the very day before Professor Snape’s lesson on brewing Shrinking Solution with the Gryffindors. And the day before Professor Lupin’s very first lesson with them.
And Lupin, also coincidentally, decided that defeating a boggart would make a very nice introductory practical lesson for his Gryffs.
Er, on whose suggestion?
Dumbledore and Snape couldn’t have known for sure that this part would work, but it was certainly worth a try.
*
For that matter, how many potions ARE there that can be botched in such a manner that a precocious fourteen-year-old could be relied upon to fix them? We certainly never saw Hermione help Harry or Ron to correct any of their messes.
And wasn’t it a fortunate coincidence that Neville just happened to make the exact mistakes in brewing this specific potion that Hermione knew exactly how to correct?
Should we really blame Neville’s notoriously bad memory here for the fact that he forgot that one rat spleen only was needed, and that a mere dash of leech juice would suffice?
Tsk, tsk, Professor Snape. I confess myself disappointed in you. Confunding a student must surely be considered most unprofessional behavior.
I had originally believed that our Severus had taken lightening-fast advantage of an opportunity that presented himself, to blacken his reputation without having to really cause physical harm.
Which we know he was reluctant to do.
After all, a professor of Hogwarts endeavoring, for political reasons, to establish a reputation for being a sadist might easily do so by, oh, say, repeatedly casting Unforgiveables on small animals in front of children whose parents had been tortured and killed by those same curses. (Relishing the child’s reactions, refusing to stop until another child—Miss Granger---shrilly put a stop to the direct torture of the spider and the indirect torture of Neville.)
In the interests of showing them what they’re up against, of course.
Or by turning a child s/he didn’t like—it would seem that in Snape’s case he’d have a wide selection of potential victimsl—into a small animal and repeated slamming the fragile body against a stone floor.
Or by permanently mutilating children in his detentions.
Or even have demonstrated his callousness about human suffering by insisting that children injured in his class wait until class was over to get medical attention for any injuries that were not actually life-threatening.
All atrocities we saw other Hogwarts instructors get away with performing [Barty, Barty, Dolores, & both Barty & Hagrid].
As I said, at first I assumed that Snape had seized an unforeseen (at most, maybe hoped-for) opportunity to use Neville and Trevor to put on a performance as pet-torturing sadist without having to harm a child’s pet.
But the more I think about that boggart, the more the whole thing smells to me like a deep-laid plan.
For what did our plucky Gryffindors find lying in wait for them when they entered that staffroom? Snape, “a nasty sneer playing around his mouth.”
And what had he been waiting to do?
He got to his feet and strode past the class, his black robes billowing behind him. At the doorway he turned on his heel and said, “Possibly no one’s warned you, Lupin, but this class contains Neville Longbottom. I would advise you not to entrust him with anything difficult. Not unless Miss Granger is hissing instructions in his ear.”
Deliberately drawing Neville’s attention to the last class and to Neville’s terror that his own incompetence would be used to kill his pet.
Remember too Neville’s (apparently quite rational) fear the year before: “They went for Filch first. And everyone knows I’m almost a Squib.” (CoS, 11) Neville’s a pure-blood; he knows perfectly well how his world treats those of even the purest of blood who are Squibs or nearly so. Neville’s own great-uncle Algie had demonstrated more than once how highly valued was the life of someone useless at magic (PS 7).
Really, the transference was neatly done. Neville’s long-standing (and well-founded) terror that he was magically incompetent and that his own world would kill him for this, were directed with one caustic comment onto that menacing (and eminently competent) figure in billowing black robes who had just tried to kill innocent Trevor … to punish Neville for incompetence.
And—surprise!—all Neville’s anxieties did indeed crystallize into one sinister boggart-image: Professor Snape, black eyes flashing, reaching inside his robes as though to pull his wand and attack...
One wonders—had Snape also been specifically ordered to give Lupin an opportunity to look good to Harry and the Gryffs? For he certainly managed that as well. If so, that part of the order must have burned him. As must the certainty that if the ploy did work, Lupin would be afforded the opportunity to make Snape look ridiculous in front of the Gryffs—and by gossip, the whole school. The Marauders strike again!
However, Lupin couldn’t have been that happy either; a closeted werewolf could hardly have wanted to demonstrate publicly that his boggart was the full moon.
I should imagine that Snape took a curtain call in the staffroom that evening, sneering icily, “I was entirely within my rights to use the child’s pet as an experimental subject, since he himself brought it into my class. I very much doubt that Mr. Longbottom will ever again presume to do so. The rest of you should be grateful; you’ve suffered as much as I from the ever-escaping Trevor, and one way or the other, I managed to put an end to that toad’s unexpected appearances in our classrooms.
“…What? I should be concerned that I’m the boy’s boggart? Excuse me? His parents are in St. Mungo’s, incurably insane from the Cruciatus, and the worst thing the boy can picture is me? I’m hardly to blame for that dunderhead’s utter lack of imagination.”
*
If the Trevor incident were indeed what broke his colleagues’ previous trust that Severus Snape was at heart a decent man who usually put his students’ welfare above his own petty feelings, Hagrid’s exemption from that otherwise-universal change of opinion is also readily explicated.
One, poisoning a toad, even a pet one, might well seem much less shocking to the man whose main job for fifty years had been killing animals to order.
We know that Hagrid doesn’t particularly care for toads (he disparaged them in book one), and at this point in canon he’d barely met Neville, to be care especially about Neville’s feelings. So to Hagrid, It’s not like Snape had committed an offense like trying to poison a dragon or somethin’ innerestin’.
(And later in the book we see Hagrid reproving Ron for his grudge against Hermione over Scabbers’ “death,” indicating that he doesn’t particularly empathize with other people’s love for their animals, however ferociously he may love his own monsters.)
But … two, this all happened at the exact same time that Hagrid was spending much of his time in a drunken stupor over Buckbeak’s attack on Draco. Remember, the Trevor incident happened in the very same class to which Draco swanned in late, having just at that moment been released by Madam Pomfrey. Hagrid wasn’t hanging out much with the other teachers, to hear their shocked murmurs about an attempted toad-killing and how traumatized poor little Nevile was by it.
It’s even possible Hagrid never heard about it at all. By the time he was paying attention to anything but his own troubles, it was all old news.
*
One last thing. If Severus had indeed, for years, been threatening to kill the next pet brought to his class, and had finally tried to make good on what his colleagues had always previously taken to be a completely empty threat—then how could said colleagues be ever after be quite sure which others of Severus’s threats hadn’t really been empty?
Like the ones about wanting to kill someone, say?
It’s truly terrible to realize that you don’t know at all where someone would draw the line—if they have lines left to draw—just that it’s not where you would. Living with an alcoholic parent who was intermittently abusive when drunk taught me that: even when she wasn’t at the moment doing anything, there was no way of knowing what she might do if her mood shifted. The uncertainty left me with dreadful anxiety even when nothing at all bad was happening.
I couldn’t know what she might do next, and I was never quite sure if there were, in fact, anything at all she wouldn’t do.
And that’s the exact impression that Snape worked to make on the colleagues who had once trusted him.
*
Years ago on Snapedom we had a discussion about Snape’s relationships with his Hogwarts colleagues. It occurred to me recently to wonder anew about the changes in those relationships over time.
*
When Harry reported Snape’s murder of Dumbledore, Minerva and the other Hogwarts staff and Order members accepted Harry’s testimony instantly, though with shock and (in some cases) obvious reluctance.
Yet in the WW even more than ours, eyewitness testimony of a crime must necessarily be suspect. Polyjuice, glamours, the Confundus charm, all could cause a gull to testify, utterly sincerely but completely inaccurately, to another’s guilt.
The Order even had the ghastly cautionary tale of Sirius to remind them not to believe in appearances.
And everyone there present knew that Harry hated Snape so much that the boy would swallow even the flimsiest illusion incriminating his hated professor.
Hagrid had simply flat-out refused to believe Harry’s eyewitness testimony that Snape had murdered the headmaster.
Just as Hagrid had refused in book one to believe that Professor Snape had tried to kill Harry or would try to steal the Stone, despite the children’s eyewitness testimony attesting to Snape’s perfidy.
Minerva and the other staff, in contrast, accepted Harry’s word on the matter at once in book six. Not happily, no, but without a moment’s question.
As Minerva had NOT done in book one, when the Trio told her their suspicions of Snape.
Meaning that as of Book Six, most of the Hogwarts staff considered that killing Dumbledore was something possible to believe of Snape. Despite their having had no misgivings about calling him to help defend the school against the invading Death Eaters, they all credited Harry’s vicious slur—excuse me, unvarnished report—instantaneously.
Except for Hagrid.
Why the difference?
*
Let’s start by comparing Hagrid’s reactions on various occasions his beloved Harry testified against the professor. We’ll look first at the broom-jinx post-mortem in Hagrid’s hut (PS chapter 11)
“It was Snape,” Ron was explaining. “Hermione and I saw him. He was cursing your broomstick, muttering, he wouldn’t take his eyes off you.”
“Rubbish,” said Hagrid, who hadn’t heard a word of what had gone on next to him in the stands. “Why would Snape do somethin’ like that?”
Harry, Ron, and Hermione looked at one another, wondering what to tell him. Harry decided on the truth.
“I found out something about him,” he told Hagrid. “He tried to get part that three-headed dog on Halloween. It bit him. We think he was trying to steal whatever it’s guarding.”
Hagrid dropped the teapot.
“How do you know about Fluffy?” he said.
[Note that Hagrid’s very evident alarm and surprise here is, by what he chooses to focus on, at learning that the KIDS have found out about the Cerberus, NOT at what they’ve just said about Snape. For anything we know, he had already been told that Snape—or that some unnamed staff member—had been bitten while guarding the Stone on Dumbledore’s order. Perhaps someone had been down at his hut asking about the proper treatment for such bites…?]
….
“But Snape’s trying to steal it.”
“Rubbish,” said Hagrid again. “Snape’s a Hogwarts teacher, he’d do nothin’ of the sort.”
“So why did he just try and kill Harry?” cried Hermione.... “I know a jinx when I see one, Hagrid. I’ve read all about them. You’ve got to keep eye contact, and Snape wasn’t blinking at all. I saw him!”
“I’m telling yeh, yer wrong!” said Hagrid hotly. “I don’t know why Harry’s broom acted like that, but Snape wouldn’ try an’ kill a student! Now, listen to me, all three of yeh—yer meddlin’ in things that don’t concern yeh. It’s dangerous. You forget that dog, and you forget what it’s guardin’….”
Hagrid is not worried at all about Snape here; nothing the kids have told him has worried him in the least. Rather, he’s worried about the kids’ “meddlin’ in things that don’t concern yeh.” And he actually gets angry at the kids’ insistence on what they did, after all, witness with their own eyes.
Contrast this with Hagrid’s behavior earlier (in PS8) when Harry and Ron talked about their first week and first impressions of the Hogwarts staff:
… Harry and Ron were delighted to hear Hagrid call Filch “that old git.”
“And as for that cat, Mrs. Norris, I’d like ter introduce her to Fang sometime. D’yeh know, every time I go up ter the school, she follows me everywhere? Can’t get rid of her—Filch puts her up to it?”
Harry told Hagrid about Snape’s lesson. Hagrid, like Ron, told Harry not to worry about it, that Snape liked hardly any of the students.
“But he seemed really to hate me.”
“Rubbish!” said Hagrid. “Why should he?”
Yet Harry couldn’t help thinking that Hagrid didn’t quite meet his eyes when he said that.
“How’s yer brother Charlie?” Hagrid asked Ron. “I liked him a lot—great with animals.”
Harry wondered if Hagrid had changed the subject on purpose. (PS8)
Inferences from these two passages?
One: Hagrid’s not that good a liar. The obvious conclusion from PS8 is that Hagrid knew that there was, in fact, damned good reason for Professor Snape to “hate” James Potter’s lookalike son. But Hagrid neither held that grudge against the professor (if he did, he should be just as willing to trash Snape to Harry and Ron as he did Filch and Mrs. Norris), nor did he think it proper to burden young Harry with the real reason why Snape might “hate” him.
Two: Harry saw shiftiness in Hagrid’s defense of Snape in C8, versus heat in C11 . It would seem, therefore, that it was perfectly plausible to Hagrid that Snape might hate Harry enough on his father’s behalf to dock a single house point unjustly from Potter’s son.
(O! The unspeakable horror of such behavior! One whole, entire point! Cue the chorus to faint alternately on the sopha.)
Note that it’s (only) the unfounded (in his eyes) accusation that makes Hagrid angry with the kids. Accuse Snape of hating Harry for something Harry couldn’t control and taking a point in pure spite? Hagrid denied the charge, but without meeting Harry’s eyes.
Claim that Severus Snape would try an’ kill a child, any child, even James Potter’s loathéd son, or try an’ steal the Stone?
Rubbish!
And we saw that Hagrid’s trust in the professor remained utterly unshaken as of Book 6. After Hagrid and Harry put out the fire after “The Flight of the Prince,” Hagrid asked,
“But what happened, Harry? I jus’ saw them Death Eaters runnin’ down from the castle, but what the ruddy hell was Snape doin’ with them? Where’s he gone—was he chasin’ them?”
“He…” Harry cleared his throat; it was dry from panic and the smoke. “Hagrid, he killed…”
“Killed?” said Hagrid loudly, staring down at Harry. “Snape killed? What’re yeh on abou’, Harry?”
“Dumbledore,” said Harry. “Snape killed… Dumbledore.”
Hagrid simply looked at him, the little of his face that could be seen completely blank, uncomprehending.
“Dumbledore wha’, Harry?”
“He’s dead. Snape killed him.”
“Don’ say that,” said Hagrid roughly. “Snape kill Dumbledore—don’ be stupid, Harry. Wha’s made yeh say tha’?”
“I saw it happen.”
“Yeh couldn’ have.”
“I saw it, Hagrid.”
Hagrid shook his head; his expression was disbelieving but sympathetic, and Harry knew that Hagrid thought he had sustained a blow to the head, that he was confused, perhaps by the aftereffects of a jinx….
“What musta happened was, Dumbledore musta told Snape ter go with them Death Eaters,” Hagrid said confidently. “I suppose he’s gotta keep his cover.” (HBP, C28)
*
Contrast that with Minerva’s volte-face. In book one, when the Trio warned her that Snape would be trying to steal the Stone, she was as disbelieving as Hagrid.
“Look,” said Harry, throwing caution to the winds. “Professor—it’s about the Sorcerer’s Stone—”
Whatever Professor McGonagall had expected, it wasn’t that. The books she was carrying tumbled out of her arms, but she didn’t pick them up.
“How do you know—?” she spluttered
“Professor, I think—I know—that Sn—that someone’s going to try and steal the Stone. I’ve got to talk to Professor Dumbledore.”
She eyed him with a mixture of shock and suspicion.
“Professor Dumbledore will be back tomorrow,” she said finally. “I don’t know how you found out about the Stone, but rest assured, no one can possibly steal it, it’s too well protected.”
Two points. Like Hagrid, she seemed far more concerned with Harry’s illicit knowledge than with his actual accusations. Unlike Hagrid, she didn’t specifically rise up in indignant defense of Professor Snape.
But then, Harry knew better than to make a point of whom, precisely, he was accusing of being a thief, didn’t he? He let slip “Sn—“, but then changed his accusation to “someone.”
Which is a very interesting little clue about Harry’s perception at that time of the relationship between his most and least trusted teachers, when you think about it.
If I go so far as to accuse X of being about to attempt a crime, presumably I have (or think I have) solid evidence against X specifically. If, conversely, I say that I think “someone” is about to do it—well, that’s a much weaker accusation, and one much less likely to have real evidence in support. And therefore much less likely to be believed, or even listened to.
(Not that Minerva’s precisely a model of listening patiently to accusations she finds ludicrous.)
The only reason to change from the stronger to the weaker accusation is if one thinks that naming the accused will itself bias the authority against one’s case.
Or in simpler words, the only reason for Harry NOT to accuse Snape directly is if he thought (or more accurately, felt intuitively) that naming Snape would make McGonagall less, rather than more, likely to take his charge seriously. That is, that Harry believed that McGonagall, like Hagrid, would trust her own reading of Snape’s character above the Trio’s earnest, sincere, and indeed accurate (so far as it went) marshalling of evidence against him.
Which effect would, of course, be the exact opposite to the effect of mentioning Snape’s name in connection to villainy to Harry and Ron in book one, or indeed at any time.
And if Minerva DID notice whom, precisely, Potter was accusing of such a crime (I suspect she did, at least upon reflection: Harry’s change was hardly subtle), she did indeed dismiss out of hand Potter’s outrageous accusations against the professor he was known not to get on with.
Contrast that to her reaction in book six (c27):
“Harry, what happened? According to Hagrid, you were with Professor Dumbledore when he—when it happened. He says Professor Snape was involved in some—“
“Snape killed Dumbledore,” said Harry.
She stared at him for a moment, then swayed alarmingly; Madam Pomfrey, who seemed to have pulled herself together, ran forward, conjuring a chair from thin air, which she pushed under McGonagall.
“Snape,” repeated McGonagall faintly, falling into the chair. “We all wondered… but he trusted… always… Snape… I can’t believe it…”
[Of course she means here that she CAN believe it, but wishes she did not.]
…
“He [Dumbledore] always hinted that he had an ironclad reason for trusting Snape,” muttered Professor McGonagall, now dabbing at the corners of her leaking eyes with a tartan-edged handkerchief. “I mean… with Snape’s history… of course people were bound to wonder…. but Dumbledore told me explicitly that Snape’s repentance was absolutely genuine… wouldn’t hear a word against him!”
She TALKS about having to accept that DUMBLEDORE was wrong about Snape.
But we can contrast her visceral reaction with Lupin’s, whose opinion about Snape was, per what he’d told Harry eleven chapters earlier (c16), that “It comes down to whether or not you trust Dumbledore’s judgment. I do: therefore, I trust Severus.”
Iron Minerva almost fainted at Harry’s eyewitness confirmation of the report that Snape was somehow “involved” in Dumbledore’s death. That Snape had killed him.
Lupin merely said harshly, “Snape was a highly accomplished Occlumens…. We always knew that.”
Which was shocked and stunned at having had a former trust betrayed, and which merely that Snape had managed to fool Dumbledore?
But both believe immediately that the charge must be true.
*
In the previous discussion of Snape’s relationships with his colleagues, I pointed out that in book two, their all allowing him to take point in the united attack against Gilderoy demonstrated that—at that time—they
trusted that Snape, like them, had at heart the best interests of the school and of the students.
Click here for the earlier discussion.
http://asylums.insanejournal.com/snapedom/154280.html
When did that trust shatter, and why?
*
I had previously argued that it was only Dumbledore’s murder itself that shattered it. But on reflection, the fact that Hagrid, and only Hagrid, entirely disregarded Harry’s eyewitness statement, shows that indeed Snape’s other colleagues’ trust in him had been previously compromised.
Their trust in Snape might well have changed when Snape showed Fudge his Dark Mark. The discovery that the youthful Severus had not merely run with a bad crowd for a time at Hogwarts, but had actually pledged himself to Voldemort, might well have caused his colleagues to revise their earlier, generally favorable, impressions of him.
Only—surely Dumbledore told Snape’s shocked colleagues at least as much as he’d said in Karkaroff’s hearing (and had told the Ministry previously), that Snape had changed sides and spied on the Death Eaters for Dumbledore “at great personal risk.”
Anyone at all conversant with the tactics employed by Lord Voldemort and his followers in the first war could make a moderately-informed guess as to how “great” a “personal risk” the double agent must have faced when he “changed sides.”
So, Snape had made a terrible mistake in giving himself to Voldemort, had quickly repudiated it, and had risked death and horrific torture to make amends for his original mistake. All Dumbledore would have had to add was that Snape had turned his cloak at the very time that Voldie seemed to be winning, while cowards were flocking in the other direction, and Snape would look like a hero, and his colleagues’ previous trust in him would be reinforced.
If, of course, Dumbledore wished it to be reinforced.
*
However.
There’s the matter of Snape’s cover.
Dumbledore might well have thought that Snape’s “return” to Voldemort would look more convincing if his colleagues did NOT truly trust his character, but rather extended the same ‘trust’ that Lupin did:
“Dumbledore trusts Severus, and that ought to be good enough for the rest of us.” (HBP16)
Voldemort knew (or thought he did) why Dumbledore believed in Snape’s repentance. If Dumbledore’s followers accepted Snape merely on Dumbledore’s say-so but didn’t fully themselves trust him, Snape would be rendered by that suspicion a less useful agent to Voldemort, to Tom’s disappointment.
However, their acceptance of Snape would then demonstrate merely their unswerving belief in Dumbledore’s infallibility, not that Snape might have legitimately earned their trust by demonstrating his personal probity and his loyalty to the school, the students, his headmaster, or his colleagues.
Conversely, if Snape’s colleagues universally (or even generally) seemed to accept him as someone who’d established his reputation as a good person, a teacher who clearly cared about the well-being of his students and his school….
We-ell, that wouldn’t exactly be the type of person who could find any reason to welcome Voldemort’s return, would it? Whereas a sadistic opportunist whose sick schemes to revenge himself on his old enemies’ kids had, for years, been partly reined-in by Dumbledore, might well think that a Voldemort regime would afford him more opportunities for self-expression.
So, if Snape’s colleagues trusted him too implicitly, it should follow that Voldemort should not.
So it might actually be helpful if Snape’s colleagues generally regarded Severus with a tinge of suspicion….
If so, was it merely the revelation of the Dark Mark that induced this?
In fact, wouldn’t it be much better if Snape had induced reservations among his colleagues long before then? Would Dumbledore not think it better if Voldemort’s sources reported (WELL before Voldemort’s call to Severus to resume his active service) that the double agent was regarded with some reservations by the other teachers, that they had {felt they had] good reason to harbor doubts about Snape’s underlying character?
This question, after ten years of apparent peace, might well have arisen to haunt Albus and Severus in the year that they first seriously entertained fears of Tom’s attempting an imminent return.
AKA Harry’s first year at Hogwarts.
*
Severus had good independent reasons to establish himself, to Harry and the children of former Death-Eaters, as a Harry-hater in the very first class. That taking a point unfairly might cause his colleagues to feel Snape’s former (and natural and well-founded) antipathy to James was leading Severus to behave a bit unprofessionally towards Potter’s innocent son, might of itself have been collateral damage rather than a deliberate effect.
But there was an event later that fall, after Severus and Albus had clear cause to suspect Quirrell, which also must have lowered Snape in his colleague’s esteem.
Remind me again: why, exactly, did Snape volunteer to referee Harry’s second Quidditch match?
Oh yeah, to run interference between Quirrell!mort and Harry.
Which can obviously better be done on a fast-moving broom, while keeping track (official track, no less, with an interested and partisan audience critiquing one’s every call) of thirteen other children’s shenanigans and three balls (one of them a lethal missile)…
Than from the ground, focusing only on Quirrell and the probable victim.
As Severus had done in the previous match.
And Snape’s heroic, self-sacrificing, and obvious (to Voldemort) interference in Quirrell’s murderous plot was, in the event, rendered entirely null and void by Dumbledore’s last-minute decision to attend the match himself.
Really, shouldn’t Severus and Albus, sole co-conspirators in saving Harry, have been a little better coordinated with each other?
But, of course, we KNOW that running interference was Snape’s REAL motivation for refereeing, because we were TOLD so.
In confidence.
By Tom.
Whose record for truthfulness very nearly matches Albus’s.
However, in this case I reluctantly concede that Tommy was almost certainly the sinned-against, rather than the sinner.
Only, Tom’s record on figuring out what his loyal servant Severus was really up to wasn’t exactly stellar either, was it now?
Let’s look at what Quirrell!mort said:
“Snape was trying to save me?” [said Harry]
“Of course,” said Quirrell coolly. “Why do you think he wanted to referee your next match? He was trying to make sure I didn’t do it again. Funny, really…. he needn’t have bothered. I couldn’t do anything with Dumbledore watching. All the other teachers thought Snape was trying to stop Gryffindor from winning; he did make himself unpopular…. and what a waste of time, when after all that, I’m going to kill you tonight.” (PS, c 17)
*
I’m reminded (appallingly belatedly) of a comment I put in the mouth of the perceptive Miss Lovegood in my fanfic “The Protean Charm”:
“One of the things I came to understand is that, when dealing with the smarter Slytherins, one should always at least consider the possibility that what DOES happen is what they WANTED to make happen.”
*
So… what DID happen as a result of Snape refereeing that match?
Severus “made himself unpopular” among his fellow teachers. He established a reputation for himself as a cheater.
His colleagues considered that he went beyond the line of what was acceptable for a Head of House in cheating for Quidditch (such as “bending” a hundred-year ban on allowing first year students to play, or letting team members off homework in one’s classes the week of a match).
And, per the Weasley twins—our probable source for Ron’s original “information” that Snape blatantly favored his own house—he’d never done such a thing before.
Oh.
Is there a wall handy to bash my head against?
*
But of course there’s a huge difference between being willing to cheat a little too much to get the Quidditch Cup (after all, Quidditch!), and being willing to countenance harm to one’s students. Someone condemned roundly as a cheat might still be trusted not to deliberately hurt children under his care.
And the incident at the end of CoS where the other teachers followed Severus unhesitatingly in his attack on Gilderoy showed that they did then so trust Snape.
Harry believed (perhaps from the start) that Snape (Professor Snape, Harry!) enjoyed humiliating, frightening, and hurting his less-favorite students. Snape’s fellow teachers, however, might have evaluated him differently. They might possibly have thought that Severus was a little too free in his use of intimidation and sarcasm, but after all they themselves used ridicule (Minerva, Sybill, Filius, Hagrid), threats (Minerva, Hagrid), and abusing pets as experimental subjects (Filius) in their own classes. So if Severus’s colleagues disagreed in any respect with his disciplinary methods, it was about the degree rather than the kind of the methods he used.
And we readers repeatedly watched Severus issue threats he had neither the authority nor the true desire to follow through on. Harry’s worst fear was being expelled from Hogwarts, and Snape constantly threatened Harry with that.
But in fact, from book one on, Snape instead regularly helped to shield Harry when his misdeeds might have earned such a punishment. (In book one, Snape blackmailed the Malfoys into covering up Hagrid’s Azkaban-worthy illegal dragon, and the Trio’s expulsion-worthy complicity with him, and Harry and Hermione’s actually bringing the dragon into the school proper…. In book three, he assured the Minister that the children had been bewitched by Black into mounting their assault on Snape… In book six, an assault that would probably have been lethal but for his intervention---well. ‘Nuff said.)
It seems probable that Severus made other empty threats as well. (Indeed, in book four, Harry thought that Snape was repeatedly threatening to poison Harry, which manifestly never happened.)
Perhaps Severus might, on some occasions, have threatened to poison or to use as potions ingredients the next pet some dunderhead had improperly introduced into his classroom?
If Snape’s colleague had all repeatedly heard from students that Snape had issued such threats, or had heard Severus ranting in the staffroom about what he’d like to do the next time some student was idiot enough to bring a bloody pet to a class involving fire and volatile ingredients which included the damned pet’s bloody internal organs—didn’t the children REALIZE what might HAPPEN if a toad jumped into the wrong pot…?
And if Snape’s fellow teachers had all dismissed that Snapely ranting as fellow-instructor hot air—well, it must have been a considerable and unpleasant shock when Severus eventually followed through on the threat.
Maybe Harry and the Death Eaters’ children in Snape’s third-year Potions class weren’t the only target audience for Severus’s elaborate charade of poisoning Trevor.
Maybe they weren’t even the primary one.
*
The other Heads of House all backed Severus when he attacked Gilderoy near the end of Harry’s second year. At the very beginning of the next year, in one of his first classes, Snape (seemed to) cross another line in his treatment of students he disliked.
Hogwarts permitted instructors to confiscate pets brought to class and use them as experimental subjects, true. Filius demonstrated that in one of Harry’s first-year Charms classes. But to try actually to kill one…. no, that went too far. And the additional cruelty of using the little boy’s own botched poison to do so, making the child an involuntary accomplice to his pet’s death, his own incompetence the cause—
That’s just evil.
Snape’s s colleagues might well have had cause that night to exclaim in the staffroom, as Slughorn did some three years later: “Snape! I thought I knew him!”
Click here for my analysis of how Snape had never any intention nor expectation of doing Trevor any harm—he expected and intended Hermione to help Neville fix his potion, and was simply seizing the opportunity to establish firmly in the children’s minds that he was totally a sadistic bastard who would happily torture a little boy’s pet to death in front of him—without having to DO anything of the sort.
http://asylums.insanejournal.com/snapedom/263723.html
I’ll just digress to add that, on further rereading, there’s one nuance that I missed before. Snape capped his villainous performance by hissing, “Five points from Gryffindor. I told you not to help him, Miss Granger. Class dismissed.”
But in fact he had not told her that. He’d said only, when Hermione first volunteered to help Neville fix the potion, “I don’t remember asking you to show off, Miss Granger.”
If the KIDS had noticed this discrepancy, they’d simply have taken it as further proof of how unfair that big meanie was. However, Miss Granger and Mr. Longbottom were the most—maybe the only—law-abiding kids in Gryffindor. At that point in Granger’s career, if a teacher HAD directly ordered her not to help another student, there was the risk that she might have obeyed. Couldn’t take that risk….
So Snape turned down her offer with an insult but did not directly forbid her to do help. But at the very end he implanted in the children’s minds the suggestion that he HAD ordered her not to, and that our plucky Gryffindor heroes had been brave enough to directly disobey the villain’s evil orders. Much more heroic to defy the villain than to sneak behind his (carefully-turned) back!
A couple more points.
Neville’s other teachers had their noses firmly rubbed in just how deeply Neville had been traumatized by the incident by the news that Professor Snape had actually terrorized the boy so much as to become Neville’s boggart.
Which, by a stunning coincidence, was revealed that very afternoon.
By sheerest chance, a boggart moved into, of all places, a wardrobe in the staffroom—the only room other than Professor Snape’s own office or quarters where Severus might reasonably be found during his free periods. And the ONLY room (of the above cited) where another teacher might reasonably bring students for a practicum.
This boggart moved in the very day before Professor Snape’s lesson on brewing Shrinking Solution with the Gryffindors. And the day before Professor Lupin’s very first lesson with them.
And Lupin, also coincidentally, decided that defeating a boggart would make a very nice introductory practical lesson for his Gryffs.
Er, on whose suggestion?
Dumbledore and Snape couldn’t have known for sure that this part would work, but it was certainly worth a try.
*
For that matter, how many potions ARE there that can be botched in such a manner that a precocious fourteen-year-old could be relied upon to fix them? We certainly never saw Hermione help Harry or Ron to correct any of their messes.
And wasn’t it a fortunate coincidence that Neville just happened to make the exact mistakes in brewing this specific potion that Hermione knew exactly how to correct?
Should we really blame Neville’s notoriously bad memory here for the fact that he forgot that one rat spleen only was needed, and that a mere dash of leech juice would suffice?
Tsk, tsk, Professor Snape. I confess myself disappointed in you. Confunding a student must surely be considered most unprofessional behavior.
I had originally believed that our Severus had taken lightening-fast advantage of an opportunity that presented himself, to blacken his reputation without having to really cause physical harm.
Which we know he was reluctant to do.
After all, a professor of Hogwarts endeavoring, for political reasons, to establish a reputation for being a sadist might easily do so by, oh, say, repeatedly casting Unforgiveables on small animals in front of children whose parents had been tortured and killed by those same curses. (Relishing the child’s reactions, refusing to stop until another child—Miss Granger---shrilly put a stop to the direct torture of the spider and the indirect torture of Neville.)
In the interests of showing them what they’re up against, of course.
Or by turning a child s/he didn’t like—it would seem that in Snape’s case he’d have a wide selection of potential victimsl—into a small animal and repeated slamming the fragile body against a stone floor.
Or by permanently mutilating children in his detentions.
Or even have demonstrated his callousness about human suffering by insisting that children injured in his class wait until class was over to get medical attention for any injuries that were not actually life-threatening.
All atrocities we saw other Hogwarts instructors get away with performing [Barty, Barty, Dolores, & both Barty & Hagrid].
As I said, at first I assumed that Snape had seized an unforeseen (at most, maybe hoped-for) opportunity to use Neville and Trevor to put on a performance as pet-torturing sadist without having to harm a child’s pet.
But the more I think about that boggart, the more the whole thing smells to me like a deep-laid plan.
For what did our plucky Gryffindors find lying in wait for them when they entered that staffroom? Snape, “a nasty sneer playing around his mouth.”
And what had he been waiting to do?
He got to his feet and strode past the class, his black robes billowing behind him. At the doorway he turned on his heel and said, “Possibly no one’s warned you, Lupin, but this class contains Neville Longbottom. I would advise you not to entrust him with anything difficult. Not unless Miss Granger is hissing instructions in his ear.”
Deliberately drawing Neville’s attention to the last class and to Neville’s terror that his own incompetence would be used to kill his pet.
Remember too Neville’s (apparently quite rational) fear the year before: “They went for Filch first. And everyone knows I’m almost a Squib.” (CoS, 11) Neville’s a pure-blood; he knows perfectly well how his world treats those of even the purest of blood who are Squibs or nearly so. Neville’s own great-uncle Algie had demonstrated more than once how highly valued was the life of someone useless at magic (PS 7).
Really, the transference was neatly done. Neville’s long-standing (and well-founded) terror that he was magically incompetent and that his own world would kill him for this, were directed with one caustic comment onto that menacing (and eminently competent) figure in billowing black robes who had just tried to kill innocent Trevor … to punish Neville for incompetence.
And—surprise!—all Neville’s anxieties did indeed crystallize into one sinister boggart-image: Professor Snape, black eyes flashing, reaching inside his robes as though to pull his wand and attack...
One wonders—had Snape also been specifically ordered to give Lupin an opportunity to look good to Harry and the Gryffs? For he certainly managed that as well. If so, that part of the order must have burned him. As must the certainty that if the ploy did work, Lupin would be afforded the opportunity to make Snape look ridiculous in front of the Gryffs—and by gossip, the whole school. The Marauders strike again!
However, Lupin couldn’t have been that happy either; a closeted werewolf could hardly have wanted to demonstrate publicly that his boggart was the full moon.
I should imagine that Snape took a curtain call in the staffroom that evening, sneering icily, “I was entirely within my rights to use the child’s pet as an experimental subject, since he himself brought it into my class. I very much doubt that Mr. Longbottom will ever again presume to do so. The rest of you should be grateful; you’ve suffered as much as I from the ever-escaping Trevor, and one way or the other, I managed to put an end to that toad’s unexpected appearances in our classrooms.
“…What? I should be concerned that I’m the boy’s boggart? Excuse me? His parents are in St. Mungo’s, incurably insane from the Cruciatus, and the worst thing the boy can picture is me? I’m hardly to blame for that dunderhead’s utter lack of imagination.”
*
If the Trevor incident were indeed what broke his colleagues’ previous trust that Severus Snape was at heart a decent man who usually put his students’ welfare above his own petty feelings, Hagrid’s exemption from that otherwise-universal change of opinion is also readily explicated.
One, poisoning a toad, even a pet one, might well seem much less shocking to the man whose main job for fifty years had been killing animals to order.
We know that Hagrid doesn’t particularly care for toads (he disparaged them in book one), and at this point in canon he’d barely met Neville, to be care especially about Neville’s feelings. So to Hagrid, It’s not like Snape had committed an offense like trying to poison a dragon or somethin’ innerestin’.
(And later in the book we see Hagrid reproving Ron for his grudge against Hermione over Scabbers’ “death,” indicating that he doesn’t particularly empathize with other people’s love for their animals, however ferociously he may love his own monsters.)
But … two, this all happened at the exact same time that Hagrid was spending much of his time in a drunken stupor over Buckbeak’s attack on Draco. Remember, the Trevor incident happened in the very same class to which Draco swanned in late, having just at that moment been released by Madam Pomfrey. Hagrid wasn’t hanging out much with the other teachers, to hear their shocked murmurs about an attempted toad-killing and how traumatized poor little Nevile was by it.
It’s even possible Hagrid never heard about it at all. By the time he was paying attention to anything but his own troubles, it was all old news.
*
One last thing. If Severus had indeed, for years, been threatening to kill the next pet brought to his class, and had finally tried to make good on what his colleagues had always previously taken to be a completely empty threat—then how could said colleagues be ever after be quite sure which others of Severus’s threats hadn’t really been empty?
Like the ones about wanting to kill someone, say?
It’s truly terrible to realize that you don’t know at all where someone would draw the line—if they have lines left to draw—just that it’s not where you would. Living with an alcoholic parent who was intermittently abusive when drunk taught me that: even when she wasn’t at the moment doing anything, there was no way of knowing what she might do if her mood shifted. The uncertainty left me with dreadful anxiety even when nothing at all bad was happening.
I couldn’t know what she might do next, and I was never quite sure if there were, in fact, anything at all she wouldn’t do.
And that’s the exact impression that Snape worked to make on the colleagues who had once trusted him.
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