severus snape: the anti-hero

If you're a Harry Potter fan then there is no doubt you know who Severus Snape is, but what you may not realize is that he may not be such a bad guy...you might even call him an anti-hero.

Severus Snape, the Half-Blood Prince, Head of Slytherin, Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor, Potions Master, Order of the Phoenix member, Headmaster of Hogwarts, and most importantly, a Death Eater...may not be the character you think he is. Snape is a very misunderstood character who in every book used his love for Lily and his companionship with Dumbledore to protect Harry, even when he absolutely did not want to. Most saw him as a cruel, cold, unpleasant man, but throughout the books he is mentioned 1,849 times all while proving himself to be a true Anti-Hero. Beginning with the first book, and traveling through every book after, this paper is aimed at giving explanations as to why Snape showed his true colors as the anti-hero even though it was not always clear.

Starting in the Sorcerer's Stone, the very first mention of Snape is by Percy Weasly, Ron’s older brother. Percy says, “That's Professor Snape. He teaches Potions, but he doesn't want to—everyone knows he's after Quirrell's job. Knows an awful lot about the Dark Arts, Snape.”. In the first book, he despises Harry because he looks like his childhood bully, James, and reminds him of the dead girl he loved, Lily. Throughout this first book, Snape and Dumbledore suspect that a teacher at Hogwarts is with Voldemort’s followers and trying to steal the Sorcerer’s Stone. Because Snape was very clever, he spotted Quirrell immediately and started closing in on him. Quirrell’s plan involved letting a troll out of the Dungeon, jinxing Harry’s broomstick during Quidditch, and simply trying to make it seem like Snape was the villain here. Harry and Ron spot Snape limping after he was attacked by Fluffy because he was trying to catch Quirrell in the act. He succeeded with the last task, pinning it on Snape, but Snape and Dumbleore’s partnership caught him with the other two tasks. By the end of the first book, Harry and his friends stop Quirrell and gain all of the fame, but it wouldn’t be without Snape this was possible. Snape stopped the hex on the broom, helped trap the troll, and finally confronted Quirrell, which resulted in him catching on fire, but underneath the tough skin of Snape you can see that this first book truly introduces him as the anti-hero.

Moving on to the second book, The Chamber of Secrets, Snape is less involved throughout this novel, but he does introduce Harry and his friends to two very important things, a spell and a potion. This may not seem very important while reading this book, but these two things help Harry and his friends to take down the villains in the later books. First, he introduces Polyjuice Potion into the picture. With polyjuice potion, when mad correctly, you are able to morph into whichever wizard you choose. The second, and in my opinion, most important, is the introduction of the Expelliarmus spell. During a duel with Gilderory Lockhart in front of students, Snape uses the disarming spell to smash him against the wall proving that the spell works. This simple disarming spell is a major component of the entire series. Spoiler alert...in the final book, we read about the Battle of Hogwarts, and Voldemort killing Snape. Harry, when battling Voldemort himself, uses the spell that Snape taught him, against the man that killed Snape. He may have not known in the second novel that this spell would come in handy, but he still taught it to his students knowing they could use it one day, little did he know it would be the spell that avenged his death.

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, is truly the start of where J.K. Rowling gave readers an insight into Snape’s true self. In this book, Snape has to battle his internal emotions when coming face to face with his past. Sirius Black, Peter Pettigrew, Remus Lupin, and James Potter, the people who bullied Snape in his childhood years, were the only things standing between him and conquering his task. When meeting Lupin for the first time in this novel, he has to help his werewolf friend, or foe in his eyes, by teaching his class because he turned into a werewolf. In this class, he “accidentally” teaches his students, Harry, Ron, and Hermione in the room, how to spot a werewolf. All while this was happening, another person from Snape’s youth showed up. Sirius Black, a misunderstood and not guilty suspect, escaped Azkaban and Snape’s goal was to bring him to justice when he arrived at Hogwarts. By the end of this book, Snape catches Sirius inside the Shrieking Shack where he brings him to justice and is crowned a hero by Cornelius Fudge.

The next book in the series, The Goblet of Fire, Snape battled his past once again. Voldemort was on the rise and his followers were becoming more and more heard. Not only is the school having to host the return of the Triwizard Tournament, but they are also having to cope with the fact that the Dark Mark, Voldemort and the Death Eater’s calling card, has returned and is becoming more prominent. The first heroic deed performed by Snape in this book is that he showed Cornelius Fudge his Dark Mark, which was still able to be seen from where Voldemort summoned him earlier in the book. He took his chances and showed him the Dark Mark to try and prove that Voldemort has returned. The second heroic deed done by Snape is at the toward the end of this book, Dumbledore and him have a conversation about the events that had been happening at Hogwarts and this leads to Dumbledore’s request that Snape become an undercover, double-agent, and rejoin the Death Eaters to gain as much information as possible.

The Order of the Phoenix, one of the darker books in the series, gave Severus Snape his most important task yet...he needed to hang out with Harry Potter. This task was the most important because throughout this book he had to teach Harry the art of Occlumency which is how a person can defend his or her mind against intrusion. In Harry’s case, defense of his mind was against Lord Voldemort. This was not the only time he helped Harry in his adventure, there were four other major times that he aided him. The first was when he gave Umbridge fake Veritaserum, then he lied about being out so he could get more, giving Harry’s message about Sirus to the Order of the Phoenix, and finally showing the Ministry that they had walked into a trap.

The Half-Blood Prince, the darkest book in the series had many main events that tugged on readers emotions and caused many tears and confused minds. Dumbledore was dying after returning from a mission that was used for finding and destroying Voldemort’s horcruxes, and he had one final mission for Snape. Reluctantly, Severus agreed and helped lengthen Dumbledore’s life by just a small bit. While all of this was happening between Snape and Dumbledore, Voldemort had given Draco the crushing task to assassinate his beloved Headmaster. Little did Draco and Voldemort know, Dumbledore passed the task onto Snape, and when Draco couldn’t bring himself to kill him, Snape took the job over and murdered his beloved friend, who you could even call his family. Harry was being nosy and snooped around Snape’s belongings and found an old spell book which had Snape’s handwriting inside of it. The annotations and notes inside of the spell book showed Snape creating spells under the secret name, “The Half-Blood Prince”. Severus Snape’s cold, dark mind was cut through in this book and you saw his true self, a person that was still in love with the late Lily Potter, and wanted to protect her son even if he wasn’t the biggest fan of him. By killing Dumberdore in the tower, he made students believe he was a murderer to protect the people he cared for most.

Finally, as we reach the end of Snape’s story, we arrive at the final book in the series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Because of Dumbledore’s orders to Snape, he is forced to appear loyal to the Dark lord while secretly protecting the students as Headmaster of Hogwarts. Even while being hated by most of the wizarding world for murdering Dumbledore, Snape kept one thing in mind, protecting Harry Potter. Snape created a patronus for Harry to follow so that he could find one of the most important horcruxes, the Sword of Gryffindor which was hidden inside a lake. Later in the book, Potter and his friends return to Hogwarts just in time for the big battle between the students and Voldemort and his followers. Snape was cast out from Hogwarts, being forced to return to Voldemort. After returning to him, he felt that something was off. Voldemort was telling Severus that he was confused as to why the Elder wand was not answering to him. He then suspected that this was because it would answer to Snape because he killed Dumbledore. Snape realized what was about to happen to him, but he was not fast enough to stop it. Nagini, Voldemort’s snake, bit Severus leaving him wounded and dying. In his final breaths, Snape did one last heroic deed, he gave the hiding Harry the many memories that would redeem Severus in the eyes of Harry. These memories explained his undying love for his mother Lily and how he was trying to protect him all of these years. After this final act, he passed away leaving Harry and the students speechless and hurting.

This deeply misunderstood character made a huge impact on this storyline. Though not always pleasant and cheerful, if he wouldn’t have done these different things, Voldemort would not have been brought down and he would not have made an impact on the Wizarding World. In the Epilogue of The Deathly Hallows, Harry says, “Albus Severus," Harry said quietly, so that nobody but Ginny could hear, and she was tactful enough to pretend to be waving to Rose, who was now on the train, "you were named for two headmasters of Hogwarts. One of them was a Slytherin and he was probably the bravest man I ever knew.” As readers movex through this series, they have a love-hate relationship for Snape, but by the end as he takes his final dying breath, readers and characters alike mourn this powerful, impactful, and anti-hero’s death.