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Snape and the Princes

torino10154

9/2/08 09:39 am

It's time for a discussion about Snape and the Princes. Was Eileen the last? Did she fall out with her family for marrying a Muggle? Were they an 'old wizarding family'? They don't show up on the Black family tree. There seem to be no others mentioned. How did she go from captain of the Gobstones team to unhappy housewife. Or did she? Did she hide her magic from Tobias? Snape certainly knew he wanted to be a Slytherin by the time he was ten or so. For that matter, is it common for wedding and birth announcements to make the paper? As always, if I've forgotten something important, feel free to expand as you see fit.

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• (Anonymous)

  9/3/08 01:43 pm (UTC)

  Quote:
  I'm not quite sure where Snape got his Slytherin pride from. Initially, I assumed it was from Eileen. But if she was that proud of her magic, it seems like she shouldn't be so cowed, because she would know that she has the strength to render Tobias helpless, whether she chooses to do or not. Maybe her magic wasn't that strong, or as Oryx suggests, it weakened in a manner similar to Merope's. In one fic I wrote, she acts submissive towards Tobias out of guilt, because she had used a spell to force him to marry her. But when Tobias wasn't around, she taught Severus about magic and the wizarding world.
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  Actually I said I did *not* think Eileen was another case like Merope of losing some or all magical ability as a result of depression or a similar condition. I can't see Severus developing his enthusiasm about magic if that were the case. I do think her cowering may have been the result of guilt - I imagine the scene in Severus' memory was the day Tobias discovered his son was a wizard and that he had been married to a witch all these years and didn't know it. Hence his anger and her guilt. I also think that under such circumstances Eileen wouldn't want to use magic to defend herself so as not to scare Tobias too much.
  
  We don't know if that scene is representative of the power balance between Tobias and Eileen all the years. For all we know, in later years Eileen may have started defending herself magically, if Tobias seemed likely to escalate the situation. All we have is Severus saying his parents argued and that his father didn't like magic, or anything else much. Now, kids in troubled home situations do tend to downplay things, so arguing could be euphemistic for 'dad beats mum to a pulp once a week', but OTOH his claim that his father didn't like magic much could also have been a euphemism for 'mum hexes dad with regularity' - or anything in between. All we really know is that at that time both his parents were around and they were not happy together. I suppose we can also assume his father had given up on him by then based on Severus' clothes and Tobias' absence from the train station (while Lily's family was there).
  
  - Oryx

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  • geri_chan

    9/3/08 03:05 pm (UTC)

    

    Actually I said I did *not* think Eileen was another case like Merope of losing some or all magical ability as a result of depression or a similar condition.
    
    Oop, sorry! *headdesk* This is what I get for reading too quickly when I'm tired. >_<
    
    I agree that there's so little information in canon that it's hard to tell exactly what the situation is with the Snapes, which is sort of frustrating. But I suppose in a way it's nice, since it gives fanfic writers the freedom to invent almost anything they want.

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