S for Severus Snape (ABC Wednesday)

Alan Rickman as Severus Snape in the Harry Potter films

The name Snape is an old one with roots probably dating back to before the Norman Conquest in 1066 AD. There is also more than one place in England called Snape.

Severus is Latin meaning stern, strict, serious.

Severus Snape is Harry’s most hated teacher at Hogwarts. Already in the first book he and Harry take an instant dislike to each other. With Harry it is an instinct kind of thing; with Severus it is based on old grudges to do with Harry’s parents. He despised Harry’s father, and in later books, we learn more about why.

(spoiler warning)

As discussed in a previous post, I believe Rowling has been very conscious of coats of arms and family crests connected with the surnames of her main characters. The stag is a common symbol in heraldry, and it occurs both in the Evans coat of arms (the maiden name of Harry’s mother) and in the Snape coat of arms.

N.b. no direct references to these particular coats of arms and family crests are given in the books; this is all “under the surface” stuff. Importance (or not!) of heritage and ancestry are part of the story though. For example the Black family tree is presented in the fifth book, and the Peverell coat of arms is introduced as a mystery factor in the sixth one.

Harry’s “patronus” shape is a stag. (A patronus is a kind of personal magic guardian that among other things can protect from Dementor attacks. It is closely connected to happy memories and what/whom you love.) The stag was also his father’s Animagus shape (James could transform himself into a stag). In the last book we learn that Snape’s patronus is a doe, and so was that of Lily Evans.

Even from the fifth book it was possible to deduct that there might have been some kind of friendship between Severus and Lily in the past, before she started going out with James. Not until the end of the last book do we get the full picture though: Severus and Lily having a bond that goes back even before Hogwarts.

With Severus Snape, Rowling managed to create an intriguing and mysterious character who got much debated among the readers who followed the series as it was being written. While Harry was clearly the main hero, and Voldemort clearly the main representative of evil; one strength of this series of books is that it also has a number of characters less easy to classify; Snape being the most tricky of them all. And or course there is only one letter that dissociates Snape from Snake…

Not only is Snape Head of the Slytherin’ House at Hogwarts – “There’s not a single witch or wizard who went bad who wasn’t in Slytherin” (PS5; said by Hagrid). It also turns out in later books that he even used to be a Deatheater, i.e. one of Voldemort’s followers. And yet Dumbledore seems to trust him. But he never reveals his reasons…

As the seventh book opens, with Dumbledore gone from the scene, it may seem there is not much room for doubt any more, where Snape’s true loyalty lay. However, this is a book that has doubt as one of it main themes, and things keep getting twisted and turned a few times more before the story finally comes to an end.

 

 

O for Occlumency (ABC Wednesday)

Occlumency: “The magical defence of the mind against external penetration. An obscure branch of magic, but a highly useful one.”

Severus Snape to Harry Potter in The Order of the Phoenix, Ch 24

While Harry is spending the Christmas holidays at the house of his godfather Sirius, his most hated teacher, Snape, turns up and delivers the very unwelcome message that during the next term, the Headmaster, Professor Dumbledore, wants Harry to take private Occlumency lessons from no other than Professor Snape.

‘Dumbledore wants to stop you having those dreams about Voldemort,’ said Hermione at once. ‘Well, you won’t be sorry not to have them any more, will you?’

‘Extra lessons with Snape?’ said Ron, sounding aghast. ‘I’d rather have the nightmares!’

When the lessons start, Snape explains things a bit further. The reason why Dumbledore wants Harry to learn Occlumency is that the Dark Lord (Voldemort) is “highly skilled at Legilimency”, which is “the ability  to extract feelings and memories from another person’s mind”. (A Muggle would call it mind-reading, but in the wizarding world it gets a little more physical.) Occlumency, on the other hand, “seals the mind against magical intrusion and influence”.

Since Harry has a rather emotional personality, he never gets very good at occlumency; but, to quote Dumbledore further on in the story: “in the end, it mattered not”, because he has other qualities that serve him better.

Snape, however, is sort of the embodiment of Occlumency; his character remains a mystery throughout the series, and where his true loyalty lay was one of the favourite subjects of debate while readers were waiting for the last book in the series.

Names: Lily and James

Looking up the meanings of names used in the Harry Potter story was one of the things that made me aware of how much effort J.K. Rowling put into the details of her story.

One common flower name that has a lot more connotations than you might think is Lily – which was the name of Harry's mother.

The flower Lily, and hence also the name, commonly represents purity, innocence, beauty, death and majesty. In the Church, the Lily is used as a symbol of the Virgin Mary. The fleur-de-lis, a stylized design of a lily, is a common symbol in heraldry (particularly associated with the French monarchy), for example in coats of arms.

"Other folklore tells of lilies, unplanted by any human hand spontaneously appearing on the graves of people executed for crimes they did not commit. Some believe that planting lilies in a garden will protect the garden from ghosts and evil spirits. In China, the day lily is the emblem for motherhood. To dream of lilies in spring foretells marriage, happiness and prosperity; to dream of them in winter indicates frustration of hopes, and the premature death of a loved one."

Furthermore: "Long ago, Spaniards believed that eating a lily's petals would restore someone who had been transformed into a beast back into human form."

It is tempting to believe that Rowling knew about this. In his third year at Hogwarts, Harry learns that his father James was an Animagus; that is, he could magically transform himself into an animal (a stag). In his fifth year, through the magic Pensieve, Harry learns less flattering things about his father: "Judging from what he had just seen, his father had been every bit as arrogant as Snape had always told him." (OP28) Yet, as James grew older, he seems to have shaped up under the influence of Lily, and stopped playing cruel games just for fun.

James, by the way, is the English version of the Hebrew name Jacob, meaning: "He who supplants." Supplant means "take the place of". Jacob in the Old Testament outsmarted and took the place and birthright of his older twin Esau. Seen from the perspective of additional things that we learn in the 7th book about Lily's early life, it could perhaps be said that for her, James (in a way) came to supplant Severus...