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Hi all. I think last week was successful as far as responses go. So this week, I'd like to know what Severus planned to do after Hogwarts, before he decided to make a career of Death Eating. We know he took his OWLs seriously, he seems to have been gifted with both potion making and spell creation. He's a dab hand at Dark Arts and healing them. I don't think teaching would have been his choice. Although, at a higher level, perhaps.
What sort of profession would Snape have gone into after Hogwarts, Dark Lord notwithstanding?
What sort of profession would Snape have gone into after Hogwarts, Dark Lord notwithstanding?
I see these other careers as perhaps being possibilities. Just some ideas.
Owning and running an apothacary/potions shop at Diagon Alley (with someone else actually dealing with the customers.)
Developing and marketing his own potions and spells.
Tutoring the children of wealthy Wizarding families (the non- dunderheads, that is *g*)
A for hire curse - breaker.
Auror - (in an AU where he was never too involved with the Dark Arts. He has all the skills necessary for it. )
Writing Wizarding fiction (this would be more of a hobby, I think, but it might earn him some money.)
Working his way up as a stock and inventory boy at Flourish and Blotts and then evenutally owning the store or a chain of stores.
I guess the whole dark arts lost some of its evilness when Harry used the unforgivable in the Deathly Hallows. I guess they are not that unforgivable.
I think he would be a researcher for creating spells and potions and also the counter spell and antidote. My guess is that during rise of Voldermort that many wizards were fearful, and any mention of the Dark Arts got them moving in the opposite direction.
Naybe a potion-maker for St Mungos?
Also, I can kind of see Healer!Snape in a Dr. House light. He doesn't have to be nice to his patients (especially if they're DE's), and a healer for the Death Eaters, would they really expect him to? Something useful that would utilize all of his talents and wouldn't necessarily be hindered by his faults.
So I can kind of see, instead of him doing something as a real career (remember he was only, what, 21 when the war ended, so he would have been involved in the DE long before then) going on to have further education and making himself useful to the Death Eaters by providing them with healing in the way of potions & charms.
BTW, anonymous, I personally think the Unforgivable curses are just exactly that bad. That Harry could perform them so easily, IMHO, says something rather negative about Harry - and also about Rowling's moral double standards. But we've had that debate before!
I agree with you on all counts: Unforgivables being bad, it says something negative about Harry and Rowling’s moral double standards. I was just being kind of sarcastic. It was something that really bothered me in DH.
Other than that, I see him as a researcher, working on inventing new spells and potions, or maybe trying to re-create old spells/potions that modern wizards no longer know how to cast/brew.
To stay on topic I can also see Snape as an Unspeakable. I think the position its self would satisfy his personality, although depending on what "project" is actually being done, may or may not be as fulfilling.
Other than that, researcher isn't such a bad idea either. As he was already into inventing all kinds of spells at school, I imagine that he has a rather great interest into spells, how they work etc. and research + (re-)inventing would allow him to use all this.
And I actually like the idea of Snape as a lecturer at Wizarding university (does that exist, btw.?). I think that older students would be much more able to appreciate Snape's competence and his knowledge than all the dunderheads at Hogwarts.
But they'd probably be too prejudiced for that, despite Harry's announcement, so I rather see him as a private researcher or potions manufacturer who is called as an advisor here and there, but never quite trusted. Or maybe he leaves the country and goes to places where he's more appreciated.
(I made a tag for you. :) )
The professor's profession
If Snape doesn't retreat after the war, I'd see him as an Unspeakable. Who better for the job? He's already very good at keeping a secret.
Re: The professor's profession
My own guess is that that's part of why he did join Voldie--that there wasn't too much opportunity for an ambitious boy with his skills. I think his healing side was probably mostly suppressed while he was a student; his attention was turned increasingly to defense (and the best defense is...) and to proving himself. I think his taste was for research. But the Wizarding community is SMALL--who besides Voldie was funding a Dark Arts (or defense) R&D team or sponsoring original potions research?
In the centuries before university, government, and corporation-funded research, almost all mathematicians and scientists were independently wealthy males. A small community doesn't support creative work or research, so only those who were supported without effort of their own could turn much of their attention to pure research. Or, as Melville said about fictrion writing, "Dollars damn me."
Maybe the MoM sponsors some research; a lot of fanon assumes it, but we see nothing but bureaucratic departments in canon. We don't see universiities, and all businesses seem to be small and family-owned. I don't see anyplace Severus had an in; if he had any useful connections at all when he graduated outside his alliances with soon-to-be-Death-Eaters, we're never shown them.
I think he'd have had to take an unsatisfying and poorly-paid position as an apothecary's assistant and hope eventually to publish some of his potions research.
I don't think the wizard society we see really had any place to offer an ambitious, brilliant, creative but poor and unconnected boy: one reason why an organization that promised to turn that society upside down might have appealed.