One of the latest projects from the Wizarding World website is the new Harry Potter at Home, a project to help parents in need of distractions and education materials for their children. But the Harry Potter stories rightfully taking top billing over Fantastic Beasts again also means a return of fan theories. And no character is subject to more in-depth thoughts than Severus Snape, the Potions professor who turns out to play a big role in Harry's life. These Harry Potter Reddit theories about Snape are a reminder that this complex character still spawns new ideas decades on.
Snape also brings out powerful emotions in fans. For some, Snape's story is a beautiful tragedy of a man who loved and lost. His secret protection of Harry and his sacrifice is one of the story's tales of how love is the most powerful magic of all.
But there's another camp, one that says Snape's behavior wasn't beautiful and his love wasn't tragic. To them, he was an abuser, someone who wouldn't respect Lily Evan's boundaries. His joining up with Voldemort and the Death Eaters is proof he was an ugly bigot, and his grief over Lily's death was self-centered.
With two such diametrically opposed camps, it's no wonder Snape is still the subject of fan theories so many years on.
01Snape Is Both A Terrible Person & A Hero
As noted above, some fans insist Snape is a beautiful, tragic hero. Others argue he spent his life obsessed with the first girl who turned him down, and then became weirdly abusive to her son.
But what if they're both right? One Redditor has a theory that Rowling's view of Snape changed over the years as she wrote him. That's why in the early books, he feels like such a terrible person, but later on, he gets rehabilitated.
Is that so? Perhaps. Sometimes when fandoms disagree, the best answer is to embrace the power of "and."
02Snape Knew What He Was Doing Around Harry
One of the more famous moments in the early Potter books is Snape vs. Lockheart, where Snape disarms the fraudulent blowhard with "Expelliarmus." One fan thinks this was a deliberate choice to teach the spell's importance to Harry.
It's not such a far-fetched notion. After all, what Harry needed to learn was not to kill his opponent. In the end, this is the exact spell that wins the war, too. Could Snape have known?
03Snape Is One Of A New Three Brothers
The story of the Three Brothers and the Elder Wand dominates the finale installments of the Harry Potter novels. But one fan thinks that the Three Brothers have come again in the present-day timeline, and they are Harry, Voldemort, and Snape.
In the tales of the three brothers the one that received the cloak was the only one who greeted death like an old friend. Since at one point Dumbledore owned all of the deathly hallows he became death himself, that is why Harry meets Dumbledore like an old friend in the end of DH. So the theory concludes that Dumbledore is death himself while Harry, Voldemort and Snape are the 3 brothers.
04Why Snape Is Alive In Cursed Child
But the most significant issue is why Snape is still alive in Harry Potter & the Cursed Child's alternate timeline. It all has to do with Cedric being recruited to kill Dumbledore instead of Malfoy.
Cedric is likely more capable than Malfoy. For one, he's older with more experience. He also has more hatred. Malfoy just hates because his father tells him to. Cedric was humiliated in front of the whole school, and likely blames golden boy Harry. So, of the two child death eaters at school, Cedric is the more capable. Thus, he is chosen to kill Dumbledore. Cedric didn't have Death Eater parents to watch out for him and hold Snape to an unbreakable vow.
If so, then Snape doesn't betray Voldemort, and winds up alive.
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