HBP Chapter Two: "Spinner's End"

[for-diddled.livejournal.com]

* So it turns out Snape lives in a dilapidated northern ex-industrial town. Hmm. Somehow I just can’t get my head around GrittyWorkingClass!Snape. Still, at least I can amuse myself by imagining him saying all his lines in a Yorkshire accent.

* So Bellatrix AKs the fox and kills it. I thought you had to really feel the hatred in order to cast an Unforgiveable properly? Maybe fear is a good enough motivator as well. Or she thought it was an Auror, and her hatred for them meant she could do the curse. Although “I thought perhaps it was an Auror” makes it sound like she wasn’t really sure. Maybe Bella just hates everything.

* “We must be the first of our kind ever to set foot—” Interesting. So apparently Bellatrix doesn’t consider half-bloods like Snape to be “real” wizards, and apparently Eileen didn’t count either – anybody know what her blood status was? I’d thought that she was a Pureblood, though I’m not sure where I got this from – if she was, then maybe Bella considers her to have forfeited her magical status by running off with a Muggle.

* “The place had an air of neglect, as though it were not usually inhabited.” So, is this because Snape only lives here during the school holidays, or does he normally spend the holidays in Hogwarts, and the house seems neglected because he doesn’t live here at all? I suppose it would make sense for Snape to live in Hogwarts – his room there is probably nicer than Spinner’s End – but I’m not sure why he’d have suddenly started living out.

* Snape lives with Wormtail, apparently without killing or seriously harming him, even though Wormtail betrayed Lilly to her death. So, either Snape doesn’t know who betrayed the Potters, or he’s got a really impressive amount of self-control, or the whole Lilly thing was just an explanation to give to Harry.

* Wormtail’s storyline in the later books makes no sense. For one thing, why did he go back to Voldemort? JK Rowling wants us to believe that only Voldemort could keep him safe, but why not just find a Muggle family to live with? Or a family of foreign wizards? I doubt that, say, the Japanese would know the story of Peter Pettigrew, so he’d probably be safe there.

* And the way everybody treats him with total contempt is unrealistic too. Finding and resurrecting Voldemort was quite an achievement. He ought to be given (at least grudging) fear and respect, not scornful rejection.

* And the cowardice charge seems a bit off after GOF. Cutting off his own hand as part of a magical ceremony? Eek. I know I couldn’t do that.

* Also, WTF is up with everybody calling him “Wormtail”? Why use his childhood nickname, instead of his actual name?

* I don’t know why, but the elf-made wine just seems really jarring to me. Maybe because all the other mentions of elves make them out to be low-status menial servants, not high-quality vintners. It sort of reads like JKR has just ripped something out of another fantasy world and put it here without thinking about whether it was really consistent with what she’d written elsewhere – or, to put it another way, like mediocre fan fiction.

* Most of Bellatrix’s reasons for distrusting Snape actually have a really obvious answer. He was spying on Dumbledore, so he couldn’t do anything too suspicious else he’d blow his cover. Duh.

* “And – forgive me – speaking of dangers… you were facing six teenagers, were you not?” Ooh, burn. Although as fun as it is to see Snape verbally bitchslapping people like this, I can’t help but think it would be better if rather than having characters mock the villains for their incompetence, JK Rowling had just written less incompetent villains.

* The same applies with Snape’s screed against Harry’s ineptness and extraordinary good luck. Whilst it’s nice to have a character acknowledge this for once, it would be even nicer to have a more intelligent protagonist.

* So… apparently the half-blood Snape is “Draco’s favourite teacher”, “Lucius’ old friend”, “the Dark Lord’s favourite, his most trusted advisor” – even allowing for a bit of exaggeration here, can you imagine a Jew being told something like this in fascist Germany? No, neither can I. Surprisingly tolerant bad guys 1, pasted-on Nazi analogies 0.

* Sooo, with the Unbreakable Vows… who gets to decide whether Snape is really helping Draco “to the best of his ability”? Or whether it seems that Draco will fail at his task? Is that the Bonder’s job?

Comments

[condwiramurs.livejournal.com]

Heh, I loved this chapter just for the verbal skewering. But word on the incompetent villains and all.

I actually found working-class Snape immediately believable, I think for a number of reasons. Partly it fits with the sense I always had of him as someone who knew deprivation of some kind, but partly it comes from his habits, especially his rigid formality. Those born to the higher classes don't work so hard at formality and or loudly insist on maintaining it - they act like Draco and Lucius, comfortable and entitled. The ones who put such *visible* effort into constant formality and demanding shows of respect tend to be those striving for acceptance into a class higher than the one they were born into, and acutely conscious therefore of all the little things they are having to learn and work at in order to not appear lower-class. (But YES on Yorkshire Snape. Heh. XD Though he'd probably have worked at ironing out his accent as part of the trying-for-posh bit.)

RE Eileen, the Trio assume she's a pureblood, but we're never given confirmation of this fact. I like the Princes = purebloods idea myself, but there's relatively little direct canon support for it; it's really supposition. (Though I'm sure that JKR *meant* us to read her as pure, and to thus read Snape's story as a parallel to Voldie's, Voldie-lite, just as she meant Voldie's story to parallel the legend of Hitler's Jewish ancestry.)

I hear you on the cowardice thing. I think we're meant to read him as a coward because he preferred living, and doing whatever it took to stay alive, to dying. See Sirius' rant in the shack - 'courage' = willingness to die, the more pointlessly and grandstandingly, the better. That's why Gryffindor 'bravery' is meant to be the moral opposite of Slytherin cunning and self-preservation, and Harry's passive unthinking lamb-act is the thing that will defeat Voldie's Evil focus on never dying. The 'Wormtail' moniker: I have no Watsonian explanation (why and how would the DE's even know the nickname?), but Doyalistically I feel that it's probably an unconscious expression of JKR's contempt for the character. Just like the way she *always* has to remind us that the evil Slytherins are ugly according to conventional standards, with thinning hair or thick waistlines or pimples or bad teeth or greasy hair, etc.

Elf-made wine: WORD. I think she slipped into conventional fantasy pseudo-Tolkienism there for a minute and nobody in her editor's office (did she still have one?) noticed because hey, she DOES have elves.... Unless we were supposed to think of Dobby's cousin laboring to painstakingly squeeze each grape by hand, and conclude that *obviously* Snape is evil like the Malfoys because he relies upon exploited elf labor for his leisure?

It's not just the Malfoy connection and 'most favored' bit that require a bit of stretching when looked at in the context of what JKR TOLD us about the DEs and Snape - it's the whole idea that he ever voluntarily became a DE at all. Why on earth would a literal half-blood, even one with father issues, want to join a pureblood supremacist movement, and, more importantly, why on EARTH would these supposed supremacists want HIM in their exclusive club? Bella clearly doesn't think he belongs at this party, and it's not like he's on the list of political or strategic must-haves like Barty. So why did Voldie issue nobody-Snape the gilded invitation, and why did Sev accept it? (Also, what is up with Hagrid's assertion that Voldie tried to recruit the Potters?) I think a lot of the (admittedly very interesting) speculation about abusive!Tobias and Voldie feeling some personal connection to a fellow rejected half-blood come out of a need to make sense of this. I think the pasteded-on-yay Nazi imagery serves more to distract us from the actual specifics of what's going on more than it helps to clarify anything, grr.

[aikaterini.livejournal.com]

/I thought you had to really feel the hatred in order to cast an Unforgiveable properly?/

JKR basically threw out everything that she had said about Unforgivables in DH. They apparently don’t take much effort to cast after all, they don’t actually require a sadistic intent (unless Harry really did have enough blind, seething rage towards the man whom he’d never met before who committed the unpardonable act of spitting on someone he liked), and it turns out that they’re not unforgivable, since McGonagall calls Harry “gallant” for casting one and then proceeds to cast an Unforgiveable herself right afterwards. I guess that Sirius was wrong in portraying Crouch Sr. as a zealot who went overboard when he authorized the use of Unforgivables. Apparently, Crouch Sr. was just acting that way because it was wartime. And now hundreds of fanfics will have the good guys casting Unforgivables without breaking a sweat as a result. Fantastic.

/Snape lives with Wormtail, apparently without killing or seriously harming him, even though Wormtail betrayed Lilly to her death. So, either Snape doesn’t know who betrayed the Potters, or he’s got a really impressive amount of self-control/

Many people have pointed to the latter, especially since Snape can’t risk his cover. Still, his behavior doesn’t match up with his reaction in PoA to Sirius and Remus.

/Wormtail’s storyline in the later books makes no sense. For one thing, why did he go back to Voldemort? JK Rowling wants us to believe that only Voldemort could keep him safe, but why not just find a Muggle family to live with?/

Maybe because Wormtail is evil, JKR couldn’t stand to let him get away? Or she needed him to stay in the story because he was important...even though he didn’t really end up doing much, other than assisting Voldemort in his rebirthing ceremony? Yeah, Peter’s decision makes no sense. We’re told that it’s because he was afraid of Sirius and Remus...who gave up looking for him not long after PoA. And yes, somehow Wormtail didn’t think to jump ship to another country other than Albania. Because the plot says so, I guess.

/And the way everybody treats him with total contempt is unrealistic too. Finding and resurrecting Voldemort was quite an achievement. He ought to be given (at least grudging) fear and respect, not scornful rejection./

Especially by Voldemort. Peter is someone who betrayed his friends, faked his death, has a useful Animagus form, and was responsible for Voldemort’s resurrection. Voldemort should *not* underestimate him or dismiss him as frequently as he does. At the very least, he should be wary of Peter and keep a close eye on him, in case Peter decides to stab him in the back as well.

/And the cowardice charge seems a bit off after GOF./

Actually, I think that Voldemort’s inexplicable treatment of Peter may be tied to the whole theme of “Bravery trumps all.” Even though Gryffindor and Slytherin are supposed to be deadly enemies and rivals and the polar opposites of each other, the Slytherins still have to value bravery. Snape is enraged when Harry calls him a coward, Voldemort tells Harry in PS/SS that he admires the bravery of his parents, and the source of Voldemort’s contempt for Peter seems to be Peter’s so-called cowardice. He tells Peter in GoF that he doesn’t count as a loyal servant because the only reason he went after Voldemort was because he was scared of his old friends. I think that we’re supposed to see Voldemort’s disgust towards Peter’s cringing subservience as disgust towards Peter’s cowardice.

/Also, WTF is up with everybody calling him “Wormtail”? Why use his childhood nickname, instead of his actual name?/

I’ve heard theories that “Wormtail” is supposed to signify Peter’s regression, to indicate that he’s little more than an animal now that he’s rejoined Voldemort’s forces. But yes, within the story itself, it makes no sense. Unless Snape went around telling Voldemort and all of the Death Eaters what Peter’s nickname was and that’s how everybody knew to call him Wormtail. But yes, why not just call him Pettigrew?

[oryx_leucoryx]

For a detailed picture of what Severus' home might have been like, see Whitehound's essay 'Spinner's End' (link in a separate post).

I thought you had to really feel the hatred in order to cast an Unforgiveable properly?

No, you just really want it to happen. The hatred part is fan speculation/interpretation. I understand that urban foxes are quite the pests in Britain.

So apparently Bellatrix doesn’t consider half-bloods like Snape to be “real” wizards,

In contrast to the Malfoys. But we know the Malfoys are the more pragmatic ones. Also, this should be yet another reason to suspect what Sirius said in GOF about that 'gang of Slytherins' that Severus was supposedly associated with. At best Sirius was referring to some occasion where Severus was tagging along his friend Avery who was meeting Bella for some purpose.

“The place had an air of neglect, as though it were not usually inhabited.” So, is this because Snape only lives here during the school holidays, or does he normally spend the holidays in Hogwarts, and the house seems neglected because he doesn’t live here at all?

Severus only comes there for the summer. (Supposedly only Filch stays in the castle in the summer. Which makes me wonder about Sybil - didn't Albus hire her to keep her away from Voldemort's reach? How does that work if she leaves school for several weeks every year?) Especially now that Tom was back - Severus needed a place where he could be reached by DEs.

Elf-made wine: Makes me wonder if elves control the wizarding food industry.

I'm not surprised about how the Malfoys treat Severus. They are not idealists. Severus' relationship with Tom should come up in one of my essays in my series about the first war.

[oryx_leucoryx]

The link to whitehound's essay: Spinner's End

[maidofkent.livejournal.com]

Snape as working-class Northerner definitely works for me, though I'd put his accent on the other side of the Pennines.

Re Bellatrix's comment and her view of Eileen, it's clear that Bella's never been to Spinners End before, so she might not realise this was Snape's childhood home, as opposed to a place that he moved to in later years. However, as you suggest, 'our kind' may simply mean 'pure-blood witches who haven't demeaned themselves by marrying Muggles'.

I'd always assumed that Severus would have known that Pettigrew was the Potters' betrayer from the end of Harry's third year onwards, that Dumbledore would eventually have explained things to him, though perhaps that was expecting too much. However, it would be difficult for Severus not to put to and two together when he saw Pettigrew with Voldemort. As to Severus's attitude to Pettigrew, I think that one reason why he had been placed with him at Spinners End was precisely so that Voldemort could see how Severus behaved towards Lily's betrayer, and Severus' self-control was one of the reasons for Voldemort accepting that Severus had 'desired her, that was all'. After all, Pettigrew had probably given Voldemort a run-down on how Severus was beside himself when confronted with Lily's supposed betrayer, Sirius, in the Shrieking Shack, and Severus would have had to pass that off as anger at his boyhood enemy. And that history probably does explain one reason why Severus is able to exercise self-control - Sirius was his attacker, the one who almost got him killed by a werewolf, whereas Pettigrew was simply a creepy hanger-on.

[oryx_leucoryx]

Re: Severus' rise among the DEs: Compare to the status of Mischlinge (cross-breeds) in Nazi Germany. According to wikipedia:

According to historian and Israeli Army and U.S. Marine Corps veteran Bryan Mark Rigg, up to 160,000 one-quarter, one-half, and even full Jewish men served in the German armed forces during World War II, including several generals and at least one field marshal, Erhard Milch.