Snapedom

Part II: Threat as Theatre

Let us hypothesize that Dumbledore had a quadruple agent among the Death Eaters. This spy’s life—more importantly, his mission—depended on his ability to persuade the Death Eaters (and the Dark Lord, should he return) that he was on their side, really. Whatever Dumbledore thought, whatever lip service he might pay to Dumbledore’s ideals, at heart the spy shared their values and tastes. Or so they must be made to think.



In Harry’s class, we know of at least four people who might report on Professor Snape’s behavior to former (and possible future) Death Eater parents: Draco, Vince, Greg, and Theo. Then there’s Harry himself, who will (inadvertently) eventually report directly to Voldemort. Snape presumably didn’t know of the mental channel between Voldemort and Harry until OotP, but he always knew perfectly well that the Dark Lord was a Legilimens. (A Legilimens, moreover, whose schemes to kill Harry and steal the philosopher’s stone were thwarted by Snape that first year.) Should Voldemort return again and capture Harry, he would be entirely capable of sifting Harry’s memories for information about Professor Snape’s loyalty.

As Draco showed us in HBP, someone who has either a conscience or squeamishness about physical violence really is not cut out to be a Death Eater. He (almost always he) might join, but he won’t be very happy about having to remain. To be a satisfied and successful Death Eater, one must be either indifferent to, or actively enjoy, inflicting pain and death on others.

So giving people the impression that you’re the sort who kills small animals for kicks (or in cold blood to make a point), is decidedly a good thing to do if you’re trying to persuade people you might credibly be a loyal Death Eater who’d be happy to see the Dark Lord return.

Which brings me back to the “poisoning Trevor” incident in Potions class in PoA. Like Professor Flitwick in PS/SS, the professor responded to Neville bringing his pet to class by using the pet in a classroom demonstration. What made Snape’s use of Trevor particularly cruel, of course, was Neville’s fear that his mis-made potion might hurt Trevor.

Let’s look closely at the sequence of events:



“Orange, Longbottom,” said Snape, ladling some up and allowing it to splash back into the cauldron, so that everyone could see. “Orange. Tell me, boy, does anything penetrate that thick skull of yours? Didn’t you hear me say, quite clearly, that only one rat spleen was needed? Didn’t I state plainly that a dash of leech juice would suffice? What do I have to do to make you understand, Longbottom?”

Neville was pink and trembling. He looked as though he was on the verge of tears.

“Please sir,” said Hermione, “please, I could help Neville put it right—”

“I don’t remember asking you to show off, Miss Granger,” said Snape coldly, and Hermione went as pink as Neville. “Longbottom, at the end of this lesson we will feed a few drops of this potion to your toad and see what happens. Perhaps that will encourage you to do it properly.”

He moved away, leaving Neville breathless with fear.

“Help me!” he moaned to Hermione.

Seamus, Harry, and Draco then talk about Sirius until …


Snape called, “You should have finished adding your ingredients by now; this potion needs to stew before it can be drunk, so clear away while it simmers and then we’ll test Longbottom’s….”

Crabbe and Goyle laughed openly, watching Neville sweat as he stirred his potion feverishly. Hermione was muttering instructions to him out of the corner of her mouth, so that Snape wouldn’t see. Harry and Ron packed away their unused ingredients….

The end of the lesson in sight, Snape strode over to Neville, who was cowering by his cauldron.

“Everyone gather ‘round,” said Snape, his black eyes glittering, “and watch what happens to Longbottom’s toad. If he has managed to produce a Shrinking Solution, it will shrink to a tadpole. If, as I don’t doubt, he has done it wrong, his toad is likely to be poisoned.”

The Gryffindors watched fearfully. The Slytherins looked excited. Snape picked up Trevor the toad in his left hand and dipped a small spoon into Neville’s potion, which was now green. He trickled a few drops down Trevor’s throat.

There was a moment of hushed silence, in which Trevor gulped; then there was a small pop, and Trevor the tadpole was wriggling in Snape’s palm.

The Gryffindors burst into applause. Snape, looking sour, pulled a small bottle from the pocket of his robe, poured a few drops on top of Trevor, and he reappeared suddenly, fully grown.

“Five points from Gryffindor,” said Snape, which wiped the smile from every face. “I told you not to help him, Miss Granger. Class dismissed.”

First point: When Snape started berating Neville, he knew exactly what was wrong with Neville’s potion. He knew, therefore, that the potion was salvageable. Then Hermione volunteered to help Neville put it right, and Snape scolded her for showing off. But he had taught Hermione for two years (and he probably knew exactly how she ended up with that fur and tail last year). If she said she could help Neville put it right (which was not that hard, after all, especially as Snape had just diagnosed—aloud—exactly what the boy had done wrong), she almost certainly could.

And it was AT THAT POINT—not before—that Snape threatened to feed Neville’s potion to Trevor. Oh, and not immediately—at the end of the lesson. And then Snape moved away. And then he STAYED away, carefully on the other side of the room; we know that because Harry was free to chatter with his neighbors.

Could anyone knowing Hermione imagine for a moment that she wouldn’t help Neville correct his potion, given such an opportunity?

Then too, it was only at the end of the lesson—after Snape had already seen that the potion was acceptable—that Snape made a point of suggesting that Trevor was “likely to be poisoned” if Neville had done it wrong. When he made the original threat to test it on Trevor, Snape didn’t use the loaded word “poison” (which suggests, though it does not absolutely insist, that the effect might be fatal). Had he used that term initially, its effect would have been to rattle Neville even further. Instead, Snape used the term only at the end of class, to implant in the students’ minds the idea that killing Trevor was his intent in administering the (harmless) potion.

If Snape had truly wanted to poison Trevor (assuming Neville’s botched potion to have been poisonous), he could have fed it to the toad at once. If he’d wanted to poison Trevor but also to savor Neville’s terrified anticipation, he could have made the same threat as he did, but moved Hermione to the other side of the room—Snape did move people, split up partners, on other occasions. Or he could simply have hovered over them (making the occasional withering comment about Neville’s blundering attempts to correct the potion), giving Hermione no opportunity to tell Neville what to do.

And one final point: if Snape had wanted to kill Trevor without repercussions to himself (“A regrettable oversight, Headmaster”) he could have done so with the corrected potion. All he had to do was “forget” to have the antidote handy. How long does a tadpole survive out of water? Would Neville even realize at once that his pet was suffocating, or, panicking, remember in time that there’s a water source in the room? Is the “icy jet” spouting from the gargoyle’s mouth even suitable for tadpoles? So Snape could—with no blame at all attaching to himself—have ensured that Neville’s pet suffered greatly or maybe died.

Instead, Snape had the antidote at hand and restored the toad instantly.

Indeed, killing the tadpole by withholding the antidote would have allowed Snape to show a nicely double face to his various target audiences. To the other teachers he could have claimed irritably, “Longbottom’s botched potion was harmless enough; I was just trying to frighten the boy into leaving his pet in the dorm as he should. And I never thought the potion would work, so I didn’t trouble to have the antidote handy. I never even considered the implications of the thing’s turning into a tadpole.” Whereas to Lucius he could have smirked, “I was careful not to have the antidote nearby, just in case the potion worked. But of course I told Dumbledore I simply overlooked the matter. The best part was, I even warned the stupid boy exactly what would happen, that his toad would become a tadpole.”

No, Snape had never any intention or expectation of harming Trevor. What he did was to seize an opportunity to put on a show: “I’m a sadistic b— who enjoys killing animals in cold blood!” And he established this firmly in his audience’s minds without having to harm a wart on Trevor’s little head.

Of course, the point could equally—in fact, better—have been made by actually killing an animal. Snape could easily, as I have pointed out, have seized the chance to kill Trevor. But he also could readily have engineered another type of show, and not waited on chance at all. We know that many potions use animal parts as ingredients; the potions master could have asserted that some delicate potion (wolfsbane?) required truly fresh ingredients, and put on a display of enjoying the ‘necessary’ preparations. Perhaps for one of Harry’s detentions, and making sure the word got back to the Slytherins.

Now, there is in fact one obvious drawback to using idle threats rather than actions to establish one’s reputation for callous cruelty—someone might notice that one doesn’t follow through. Bellatrix, remember, did see through Snape’s theatrics—though she attributed his “usual empty words, the usual slithering out of action” to self-preserving cowardice rather than to any distaste for brutality.

But that drawback to the method Snape used rather suggests that, in fact, hurting small animals wasn’t much to Snape’s taste. Unlike, say, Fred Weasley’s.