Rec & Snape Meta
May. 28th, 2020 05:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lightofdayeA rarity here from me. First Meta and secondly Snape meta. I'm not expecting this to be a great relevation to proper snapefen but here we go...
I am a bit of an protagonist centred orthodox as characters are concerned. I like good guys and dislike bad guys.
Now Severus Snape is intentionally a more complex figure than that: A person who while thoroughly horrible and unpleasant was nevertheless most definitely on the side of the good guys. Cynically one can still say it was his own selfish reasons rather than moral principle or anything of the sort, but still that's the side he was one.
I recently read a fic bytorino10154 at ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
hphet centred on Snape's very earliest days of teaching, which got me thinking a bit. (and is definitely worth checking out)
It's Deathly Hallows I think (or else fanon) that refers to Harry, Snape and Voldemort as the three lost boys of Hogwarts and it occurs to me that Snape is a very great foil to the other two in that sense. They didn't know about Hogwarts and their lives were a lot better went they went there. Snape knew about Hogwarts and expect his life to be a lot better there but every indication was that it just wasn't. He was unpopular, widely disliked and bullied by the Marauders and generally seemed to have an unpleasant time of it.
I've always like the retextualisation of 'Snape's Worst Memory' that's done by the Prince's Tale, in that it's not his worst memory because he was bullied by James one time as I might have thought from just OotP but because that's when he losts Lily's friendship which was probably one of the best things about his Hogwarts days.
Adding that together you beging to realise why Snape would not want to suddenly be back teaching at Hogwarts just a few short years after leaving it. Especially given that it wasn't his choice but was at Dumbledore's insistence. None of this really excuses what an utter dick Snape is to his students but it does go a way to explaining it.
I am a bit of an protagonist centred orthodox as characters are concerned. I like good guys and dislike bad guys.
Now Severus Snape is intentionally a more complex figure than that: A person who while thoroughly horrible and unpleasant was nevertheless most definitely on the side of the good guys. Cynically one can still say it was his own selfish reasons rather than moral principle or anything of the sort, but still that's the side he was one.
I recently read a fic by
torino10154 at hphet centred on Snape's very earliest days of teaching, which got me thinking a bit. (and is definitely worth checking out)It's Deathly Hallows I think (or else fanon) that refers to Harry, Snape and Voldemort as the three lost boys of Hogwarts and it occurs to me that Snape is a very great foil to the other two in that sense. They didn't know about Hogwarts and their lives were a lot better went they went there. Snape knew about Hogwarts and expect his life to be a lot better there but every indication was that it just wasn't. He was unpopular, widely disliked and bullied by the Marauders and generally seemed to have an unpleasant time of it.
I've always like the retextualisation of 'Snape's Worst Memory' that's done by the Prince's Tale, in that it's not his worst memory because he was bullied by James one time as I might have thought from just OotP but because that's when he losts Lily's friendship which was probably one of the best things about his Hogwarts days.
Adding that together you beging to realise why Snape would not want to suddenly be back teaching at Hogwarts just a few short years after leaving it. Especially given that it wasn't his choice but was at Dumbledore's insistence. None of this really excuses what an utter dick Snape is to his students but it does go a way to explaining it.
no subject
Date: 2020-05-28 07:35 pm (UTC)In any case, on the basis of that dialogue in OotP, it looks like he wanted a job at Hogwarts. But I remember reading somewhere – whether in one of the seven books, or elsewhere, I don’t know – that Dumbledore wanted to have an eye on him. I can’t find the information on whether he came to teach before or after Voldemort was defeated. In the lexicon it says it was c. 1980. (I write my fanfic only on the basis of the first five books, and I don’t know the last two very well.)